The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 8/9/23

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

How was your Gen Con? Which GCN shows from Gen Con 2023 will be available on YouTube or in podcast form? And what on earth is the State of the Pod?? These questions and more are answered on this week's jam-packed Fod! In We Are Stupid, we ask about the general pace of healing between encounters in Pathfinder 2E. Is SQSS Season 2 an example of a particularly dangerous scenario? Or are We Just Stupid? For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive content and benefits, subscribe today at patreon.com/glasscannon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Yo! What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to the FOD! It is Wednesday, August 9th, 2023, and I'm your old pal, Joe O'Brien. And I'm Troy. Ten hours of sleep, LaValle. Dude. What's your average over the last seven days?

Oh, three and a half, four tops. Oh, man, I do. I feel really well rested, too. I exercised this morning. It felt amazing. My voice isn't completely shredded. It's wonderful to be back. Yeah, so I came home.

I was out on a 7 a.m.m flight which means i was up at four i had a really horrible the last night of sleep and all of those nights of sleep at gen con are ridiculous it's never like oh i feel great uh you're just constantly like not thinking about the pain uh poor skid trapped in indianapolis eric mona trapped in indianapolis mona got trapped too after like boarding the plane earlier in the day. Oh. It had to take, yeah, it was just brutal. The key to leaving Gen Con is leave Sunday night or leave at the ass crack of dawn on Monday, which is what I did. Now, I originally was doing that mainly because I just knew that I would miss my family so much and I wanted to get home as soon as humanly possible.

would miss my family so much and I wanted to get home as soon as humanly possible. But during the time, my wife ended up taking the kids and Linus away to her mom's towards the end of my trip. And so they're not coming home until, well, now this is Wednesday, we're recording this on Tuesday, until today. So I came home to an empty house, which was really weird. I'm going from 70,000 people to zero people. And so I was just cleaning up. I had a lot of cleaning that I needed to do because things were such a disaster leading up to Gen Con. And then I had all these sports cards that I'd just been purchasing and leaving in piles, like Howard Hughes, with urine jars.

And so I had to sort those all by sport. And then I had some work I had to do for the project we're going to talk about in a second. But then I was like, I need to see other people. So I went to a bar at like 8 o'clock, this amazing little pub, and had dinner just sitting at the bar just so I could feel like I was around other people. And then I went to bed at 10.30 and woke up at 8.30. What an amazing feeling. I went to bed at the exact same minute, 1030 last night. So wonderful. Slept the whole night through. It was fantastic. But yeah, we are going to do a little Gen Con recap today, talk to you about what went down and what you can

expect to start seeing and hearing as we begin to release content that we recorded all weekend long. We're, of course, going to do a little dip in on the tour. Added a date. And the biggest news of today's pod. I said pod. Today's FOD is going to be the State of the Pod. An upcoming Troy LaVallee live stream. That's going to be.

Well, we'll talk about more about it later. But the State of the Pod. Not the State of the Niche. I've seen a lot of people very confused about what this is going to be. It's very clearly the state of the pod. State of the pod. So we're going to hear more details about that in a little bit. And then, of course, we've got to talk a little side quest, side see-ash.

We didn't have fodder last week, so we want to get back with you and talk to you guys about a few details on those most recent episodes that have aired of the fantastic. Give me the name of the module. What's it called? Have I said the name of the module? I don't think you have. But, I mean, come on. At this point, people who know, know. It's called the.

Something of the Beaupon. The Beaupon Cheese Party. It's the Beaupon Cheese Party. That's the first part. Yeah, the first one's called the Opal of bopan the opal of bopad what a fantastic adventure i'm so into it uh but it is very scary we're in a very scary situation now so we're gonna talk all about it all right let's get back to gen con uh gen con impressions uh let's start with that what was what stood out to you this year at gen con as a whole

as opposed to you know the last couple Gen Cons that we've been to? Well, I mean, this was our second year with the booth, and we were so much more prepared because last year, the whole idea for the booth and the from idea to concept to execution all happened in about 45 days. This year, we started our fiscal year planning for Gen Con. And so you could tell by Wednesday afternoon, how much all of that extra planning made a difference. Yeah. So that extra like five months of planning that we had access to to do that, the net result was being roughly 12 to 15 hours ahead of schedule at gen con right so like if you think if you think about it like that like two years ago at gen con our

stream was i was it about 90 minutes late two hours late at least yeah under two but almost on the first day i think we were two hours late to stream. And this time, we were out to dinner the night before with everything completely done, dusted, tested, and booth completely finished. I mean, it was incredible to be that relaxed going into the first session on that Thursday morning. came over Wednesday, because you guys got there early on Wednesday, and I was prepping Glass Cannon Live and the first Pathfinder show, and I walked in, you were like, it's done. We're like, everything's good.

And we still had a few more hours of stuff, but you were shocked, because we were doing test streams, we were running the audio, and everything was super clean. And there's just so much that goes into producing this booth and producing this weekend because we also have shows at the con and shows outside the con so our attention is is split

but man the preparation and the team that we have in place i just feel like i walked away from this weekend being like we can fucking do anything yeah yeah it was an incredible amount of teamwork. As exhausted as you and I were, everybody put everything that they had into its skid. It was completely burnt end to end, but you wouldn't know it from his performances on stage and in the booth. He was absolutely on fire all weekend long. We asked to jump in and do a lot extra because Matthew couldn't make it. Just said, yep, I'll do anything you need and stepped up and was wonderful. Behind the camera is Michael Meridian, our production coordinator, and Matt Brody, our cinematographer on Gatewalkers, came out with us and helped us shoot in the booth. And it looked amazing. It sounded, I think, better than it sounded last year. Oh, yeah. So keep an eye and ear out for that.

We're going to talk about that in a second. Hopefully, we'll get some content releases coming to you soon. There's also Tristan, who is our sales and marketing director. He oversaw the whole booth last year, too. And this year, even more prepared. He blew out his knee on day one and stayed the entire time. Just, I mean, the sacrifices that everybody was putting up. McD, who was there not only in an operational capacity to just help with things as simple as hauling equipment across the country. He drove it across the country from Philly. He supplied us with fruit and water and granola bars, like all that kind of stuff.

But then he was also out there community managing. He's talking to the nation. He's hanging out with people. He's exchanging information, getting details. I mean, it was just what an incredible team. And then, of course, all the folks that helped us sell in the booth, you know, all of them from Twitch at K Rob and Jim with two N's and etc. And it was just Grace and Kate. Yeah, Grace and Kate. It's just fantastic to have such a great team come together to pull that off. Because honestly, I look back at it and like, there pretty much wasn't a hiccup.

Like everything went according to plan, except for some Twitch funkiness, but that was on Twitch's platform and not on our end. We didn't drop a single frame in four days of live streaming, not a single frame, but do you know, it's like, so that's one part of it is like,

you want everything to go according to plan. And it did, which is amazing. And that's preparedness. Then the second part of it is like you want everything to go according to plan, and it did, which is amazing. And that's preparedness. Then the second part of it is like, is the content any good? You know what I mean? Sure. Are we going to be on?

Are we going to have the stamina to be able to come up with improvised shit all weekend long? And I think every single fucking show that we did from the booth to outside the booth to those live shows was was just like top top tier glass cannon network stuff i mean just from from stream to stream to stream everybody uh everybody was on and it was just we we created some some magic this weekend with this content so if you didn't see it get ready because we're going to be uh preparing those and getting them out there and you're going to be able to see like just uh this eclectic mix of uh some of the best content we've ever produced i feel like we're at the top of our fucking game right now and then everybody we work with just comes in and like uh it exceeds all expectations like rises to the occasion and

delivers uh yeah we're so excited just still thinking about it. Yeah, because last year, we brought in plenty of people that we had never even really worked with before. And this year, everybody that was in that booth, we've worked with at least once or twice before.

So there was a chemistry there. There was a familiarity there. So when people like Josephine McAdam or Norah Ibrahim came in, we have so many hours and hours and hours of experience with them.

Jason Charles Miller comes in, crushes it. Harley Kane comes back again this year, crushes it. Paula runs another game, crushes it, and plays in several others. I'm forgetting people, but it was wonderful to have everybody in there. And our staff back here, let's not forget. CJ, who's doing all the production and post-production stuff. So you're going to see a lot of content coming out soon that's going to be all uh managed by cj and then the and francis francis was here he was he was like live uh uh what do you call it uh live

subtitling captioning and live captioning your social media videos that you were sending from the floor like he was waiting in the studio for them turn them around live caption get them back i mean it just felt like the team was in new york and in indy and everybody was clicking and it was fantastic so huge thank you to all of them and nash please show them your love whenever you see them and you know you know behind the scenes there we we hosted an industry party um and we we did it last year and it was very uh very low-key we just kind of sent an email out to people like hey come we're gonna do this little party. And we hosted one this year.

And this is something I talked about to you at our first Gen Con. I was like, a couple of years, because we had went to a couple of parties and we're just like, holy shit, everybody's here. I said, you watch a couple of years,

we're going to have a glass cannon network party. And we laughed about it. Well, we, we, we had one, a legit one this time. And everybody in the fucking industry showed up for that party.

It's like, you just look around, and it was like a who's who, because people want like, finally, finally are starting to understand what it is that we bring to the table. Like, we're being taken seriously. Or this art of actual play is finally being taken seriously.

But I was like, oh man, this is just the beginning. Just the beginning for us eight years in. It takes a while to get warmed up. But yeah, we had a fantastic time. So let's talk about the content itself. You say it was great. I agree with you. We had a lot of shows that were, I mean, some surprisingly wonderful and some just as you expect.

But you should expect to see stuff. I mean, we're not going to put a timeline on it because we haven't even looked at the raw footage yet. But we think it's all good because what went up on Twitch looked good to me and sounded good to me. So we're hoping within the next week or two to be rolling these things out at some sort of pace. They'll go on YouTube and then audio will go on Patreon. Is that what should be expected? That's the plan right now. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So you'll see these things coming out a little bit by bit. Another one of those things that's going to be coming out, and I'll say this before we dive into the rest of Gen Con, is San Diego Comic Con. So we've talked with Marvel. We should be getting the high res of that footage soon. And we should be able to put that right up on our YouTube, which would be awesome. And then release that audio too, right?

Yeah. The audio is bad for san diego comic con but that's because it's a con panel like they they're bad they don't have podcast mics you know it wasn't we didn't talk to the video team you know they don't know us like it wasn't our video people and so i'm trying to you know it's so different when we have our video people they know our rhythms and they know like when to do this it was just a different thing matthew's mic was out for the first 20 minutes. So it's not going to be up to our normal quality,

which would normally mean I just wouldn't put it up. Cause plenty of shows where I was just like, sorry, can't put it up. However, it's too big of an occasion to not try and cobble together something to get up on the internet. It was also a phenomenal show.

Exactly. So that brings me to Gen Con, Marvel at Gen Con. so we did marvel again at gen con they sponsored the booth it was so great to work with them yet again but we didn't continue that show or that story we did a new superhero story with established known marvel heroes in a new quick super group for a one shot and we had so much fun oh my gosh uh oh my gosh it was so fun and i peak tired for that stream but you would never know it uh except with skid doing math And we had so much fun. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. It was so fun. And I peak tired for that stream, but you would never know it except with Skid doing math.

Like, my God, that system is just fantastic. It's just fantastic. I even said it on the stream. It's like when I first read this, it was like a little worried it was going to be too. I was like, this is it doesn't have enough junk to it. No, there is maybe too much chunk. I mean, there is a lot of math and a lot of crunchiness because you just get access to so many powers. But I was like, all right, we're not going to have the whole team from San Diego Comic-Con out for this. So instead of doing those original heroes, let's really take the system in a different direction. Because the thing has like 70 pages of already made character sheets of established heroes. I'm like, you pick heroes, and I'll just come up with a little story and see what comes of it. We had a blast. We had an absolute blast. I demoed for a new group, Dragonbane. We talked about this. We did

it on Glass Cannon Labs. We created characters. Well, this was the one-shot adventure, and I think it turned out wonderful. It was really fantastic. Our cinematographer, Matt, was like, I might be walking right directly to the free league booth in my 15 minute break to buy that starter set. It's not even a starter set. It's the whole set. It's the whole game. They just trim it down and make it tight. So like, this is all you need to play the game. And everybody had a fantastic time. Jason Charles Miller guest on that one. And he was MVP of the session. He blew everybody away just with his voice alone. He was so wonderful. And his character was amazing. And everybody did a great job on that show. The biggest Pathfinder thing that we did the whole weekend, besides the Strange Aeons, Glass Cannon Live, was in the booth, we did a two-part teaser to sky king's tomb the new ap for 2e so if you want to

check that out it is an all dwarf party that we made we it was uh sydney and i and skid played with eric mona and the four of us made dwarves and we do kind of it's not going to spoil anything you know it's just sort of like a i will spoil it just spoils one section of the adventure the very very early beginning of Sky King's Tomb. But it gives you an idea. If this is something you'd be interested in trying out, check it out. And we utilized the mechanics from the new Rage of Elements book, which was the release at Gen Con. Yeah, Skid played a metal kineticist.

And Sidney had a familiar that was one of the new familiars that you can have. And everyone – I mean, I said this to Mona. I was like, man, we are like inadvertently really good at this because we showed off all these new powers that just came out in this one book. Mona was a cleric using the new pantheon. They put out a new dwarven pantheon in the um high helm uh uh supplement that just came out yeah so he did like a new deity that's like this dark twisted like demonic like deity of the dwarves it was just so cool he was brutal the heretic brutal the heretic my my dear uh it was just so good and then i did the barbarian using the new elemental rage builds instinct, elemental

rage instinct. So when my guy raged, I went into flames and you start like adding fire damage to all your attacks. So much fun. So I highly recommend you guys check it out when we drop that. We also did an alien RPG one shot that I have not seen one minute of yet. That's like one of the only things that I haven't seen a minute of. It was sponsored by Demiplane, who helped us out with the booth.

And they were keen on us using some of their showing off some of their alien tools. So everybody hopped on and was playing a one shot that Jared Logan wrote along with McD to run them through a one shot of Alien. And from what I hear from the players, it was awesome. Oh, man. How about Pendragon? Do you remember Pendragon? Pendragon. How about the next game that I want to play so bad in an extended campaign?

I didn't know about Pendragon. I had heard of it loosely, but I did not even realize that it was like Arthurian role playing. But yeah, it is just so up my alley. I say it a million times in the demo, but you got to check it out. I mean, the game, it's a true beginner's demo. Brian Holland from Chaosium ran it for us. And he told the guy who's doing the RuneQuest right now, if you guys are watching or listening to that. Brian Holland from the Glass Cannon Network. right now if you guys are watching or listening to that. You mean Brian Holland from the Glass Cannon Network? Brian Holland from the Glass Cannon Network. He was pretty adamant. He was like, don't even open it before we get to the Gen Con booth.

I don't want you prepared for anything. I want to do it like we would do a demo at the Chaosium booth. And so that's what we did. We opened it live on air. He brought the sets over and we started picking nights and started to tell this story, this brief story of night. And it was, I'm telling you, it was right out of George R.R. Martin, wasn't it? It was like, literally, you just felt like you were in a Game of Thrones story. It was fantastic. And then all of the amazing mechanics that that game uses for role playing and emotional sort of how your character responds to events. And then not to mention when you look at what your character sheet holds for

the longterm, I mean, it's stuff like, you know, it has when you're squired and when you were knighted, but then there's open spaces for like the year that you become landed the year that you become a knight of the round table, the year that you get your nobility.

And then like the year that you die. And then that is expected that you would then pass that onto your, to your childbility and then like the year that you die and then that is expected that you would then pass that on to your uh to your child and then you start playing kings yeah you start playing your child so it's like crusader kings the loose uh idea he gave us was that each game session generally is like a season or two seasons so it's like a quarter of a year or like a half of a year it's like what you play in one game session, the passage of the lives of these characters. And there's rules for combat and there's rules for, you know, jousting and stuff like horse competition, horse riding, jousting competitions. We had a joust! We had a tilt!

I tilted against Troy's character. Oh my God, it was so cinematic. Yeah, it really was. And there was so, by the time we jousted, there was so much story to both characters. Like, oh man, it was perfect. Yeah, I mean, we've always wanted to play like a Westeros-type game. And maybe we just take like the Pendragon system and skin a little Westeros story. It would be so easy to do.

So easy. So easy. Then we have – I did a similar demo of the Gloomhaven RPG, but I did it with character creation. So we, I sat everybody down, Sydney came, Matthew was originally supposed to be in it. So Sydney came, but she's never played a minute of Gloomhaven. And so it's great. I thought a real introduction to the system in general, introduction to Gloomhaven in general. to the system in general, introduction to Gloomhaven in general, and then everybody created characters. And by the end of it, everybody was so pumped to get together because we're going to get together soon and play those characters in a one-shot adventure that will be streamed and the audio will be released on Patreon. Then we did Modern Cthulhu.

We did Modern Cthulhu Bachelor Party, another Brian Holland joint at the booth. And that you talk about that one. Yeah. I mean, we played a lot of Cthulhu this weekend, but the, the modern Cthulhu thing that he ran in the booth, he sat there with no,

not a single thing in front, not even dice in front of him and weaved this story together. That was masterful. we were all just like watching an alchemist at work we we you know this this was kind of our dread uh like we did dread in the booth last year this was our our kind of silly uh dread thing but he had this uh idea that's a precursor to a thing that he's writing that chaosium is about to release so this is sort of a prequel to that adventure. So he knows the world of this so well.

It's just four guys go to a log cabin for a bachelor party weekend. And it's not what you think. It was absolutely horrifying and obviously hilarious as well, because we're all goofing and punchy. But it's a tight, it's a tight 90. It's 90 minutes total. And it tells this whole terrifying story as a precursor to something he's working on. And I love the title.

I told you this after the fact. It's called Alone Against the Static. Yeah. And it's just like, oh, it's going to be awesome. Then what else out of the booth? Oh, D&D 5E with Paula Deming. Paula Deming GMed that game. Fantastic. That's another one that I actually didn't see a minute of, but heard great things. Paula said it went really, really well. We did a teaser for Professor Purple Worm Kill Kill. We did a preview, I guess you could say, which is the show that you and I talked about on Fodder that we couldn't go into great detail on, but we flew out to LA back in may and shot an episode.

You shot two episodes. I shot one episode of this series. That's going to be coming out on a D and D what do they call it? Fast channel, fast channel on a D and D fast channel where they're just one hour, one shots basically. But watch that, watch this little one hour thing we put together with Matthew Lillard and

Bill Ray are from beetling Grimm's. They were the production team behind Faster Purple Worm Kill Kill. And they give us some insight into how it all came together. And then we actually show the first-ever clips and samples from the production. TV show clips. Joe and Troy on TV. It looks like amazing. Amazing.

It was a legitimate TV show. And you can see those clips and get a sense of what's coming down the pike in the fall. We're hoping that'll be released. What else? Two shows at the con. I'll do this very quickly. We had our modern Call of Cthulhu show, the one that I kept talking about. Like, I'm so excited about this scenario.

If you've ever read, there's this collection of one-hour modern Call of Cthulhu stories called Fierce Sharp Little Needles. And I got this over a year ago when I was like, we're doing a Call of Cthulhu show at the John. And there is a one in there called Poetry Night by Oscar Rios. And I regret, I forgot to say it at the end. I wanted to shout this scenario out. Well, that's the scenario that I ran for Joe, Skid, Nora, and Sydney. And it was. This was streamed on the Gen Con channel. So you can go to Gen Con's Twitch channel and watch this. You've got to kind of – some of the names have created a link that goes straight to it.

Otherwise, you've got to scrub through that day because they just go live and then end the live at the end of the day. But holy shit. I mean, Nora was on another planet. Everybody was. And it was a horrifying, very, very dark scenario. But man, talk about a tight two hours that was like, we were five minutes left and everyone was like, there's

no way Troy's going to end this. And we did with like a minute to spare. Please watch that. And of course, we did the Busted Mufflers Saturday night, Saturday at 5pm to 7pm. Just a wild show that sadly only exists in that room. But man, it's unbelievable. It's so sad that it only exists in that room because things happened that we want to carry forward so bad. And I'm going to forget all of it. Major repercussions. Yeah, it was all over the place and like off the wall, completely off the rails, like all of the Busted Mufflers shows. But at the end, it kind of came together in something that is going to change the Busted Mufflers forever. It's true.

And then we had Glass Cannon Live. We started book four of Strange Aeons at Helium Comedy Club Thursday night. And talk about off the rails. That show. I don't want to say too much because we're working on the video. I mean, holy shit, dude. The whole tour this year, we have been firing on all cylinders.

And this one was no different. It was, and it had a little bit of everything because obviously that show has a sillier tone. It has plenty of silly, plenty of goofy, plenty of fall out of your seat laughter. But there was some stuff that I wanted to do at the beginning of the show with, you know, Aldo and Atticus's character in particular, now that you have your memories back, that was very, very much a much different tone than the rest of the show. So get excited don't get as excited about boss fights as I do about the initial

conceits of a new book, the role playing aspects, the meeting new NPCs, getting the idea of what's the next chapter in the character's lives. I just, I love it so much in that it did not disappoint. It was like the first day of school. You get to show up,

like start over. You get your new cat. You're like new characters. So let's just really, I'm going to, I'm really going to track treasure this time. And I'm going to sharpen all my pencils. Yeah. I love that. You're like new characters. Let's just really, I'm going to, I'm really going to track Treasure this time. And I'm going to sharpen all my pencils.

Yeah, I love that. And then finally, we did Call of Cthulhu Live Friday night, a scenario that I was like, you know me, I'm not Mr. Homebrew. I don't like anybody doing homebrew on the network because I don't trust it. But I was like, fuck it. I'm doing it. I have a cool idea. And also I have the best improvisers in the game up on stage. And we did the show with Rob Kirkavich, Kate Stamis, Nuri Ibrahim, you and Skid.

And holy shit, we're working on the video for that one as well. What a wild, wild show. I had no ending in mind. Really, I didn't know what the last 45 minutes of that show was going to be like. I was like, let's just see what happens in the moment. And we had an absolute blast. Absolute blast. Absolute blast was amazing. And I'm so glad that that one was recorded so that everybody can partake

in that awesome Athenaeum show. Oh, and we forgot one from the booth. Escape from New York. You weren't on it, so you forgot it. But I was there. Mona's GM debut on the network. Mona GM'd a run through of the everyday heroes system escape from new york campaign uh just a small sample of it and i did

it with rob kirkovich uh skid and who was the last person jared jared. That's right. Rob Kirkavich, Skid, Jared, and me played in Escape from New York as GM'd by Eric Mona. And I thought that it was phenomenal. It was sponsored by Syrinscape. And we used the new Syrinscape Escape from New York sound set. And as soon as I started playing the music, Skid was getting chills. And Rob Kirkavich said he might cry. Like, the music is so good it feels like you are making your own movie uh you know with that setting and it was just it was

hilarious and awesome and uh intense too it was really intense it's funny you made the rundown for this i think you just went with like your memory because there's two other things that happen at the booth that are yeah yeah i'm just fast grim oh that's right fast fucking grim jared did the character creation for it a week before uh gen con and then had uh nora sydney kate and josephine or paula paula yeah paula it was paula nora kate and sydney through vast grim it's this like mork borg in space the like grim dark space thing please watch that they had an absolute blast with that i keep saying absolute blast that that's what i that's what i think of when i have a good time i had an absolute blast and then sydney and kate

did a twitch takeover we can't how could we forget to mention their 30 minute twitch takeover but is that going to be released on youtube and in audio i'll have to watch it we'll pre-screen it pre-screen that one i watched about the first five minutes and they were amazing they were amazing out of the gate but yeah i don't know where it went from there so yeah we'll have to we'll have to check that out but uh man we only have so much time in this spot let's get back to business we we need to talk about the state of the pod but uh and that's what i'm excited about but before that uh real quick state of the pod in two minutes give me the two minute rundown on uh we added a date well as we haven't added it yet we've added internally they don't know about it yet one month from today dude one month from today we're back we're back on the road we're back in boston uh we haven't

been to boston in like a year We're going to be at the Paradise. I think we can sell that show out. Over 200 tickets sold right now. There's, as of right now, 69 tickets left. Nice. Please sell that out, Boston. If you sell that out. Come on, Boston.

Come on, Boston. That's our homecoming show. Dude, I cannot. I don't want to ever leave my house again, but I also can't wait to go to Boston for that show. Do you realize that after the Boston show, we are going to have to get up at about five in the morning to drive back? Yep. I thought about this yesterday. Because it's the first Sunday of football, and we can't miss one minute of football.

Yep. I'm used to getting up the day after the show and hopping a plane. I am just going to be up at six and on the road by seven so I can get home for the pregame shows. Yeah, exactly, dude. It's the opening kickoff. Open at day. Or you know what? Maybe I'll just go home and watch with my dad all day.

That's what I'm sad about. Well, am I going to have to get my own ride to Boston? Oh, that's right. I'm driving like all of you. Yeah, I guess we're – sorry, everybody. Everybody's getting up early. Anyways, that's happening. And then in October, we're doing Chicago and St. Louis.

St. Louis, there are 20 tickets left. I have no concerns about that selling out. Huge thank you to all of St. Louis and surrounding areas. They've been waiting for us to come out there. But then Chicago. What the fuck, Chicago? We're not even half sold in Chicago. We used to sell out Chicago at the drop of a hat.

I guess people are tired of seeing us out in Minneapolis. Or maybe they all live in St. Louis. Let's go, Chicago. That's a big town for us. Chicago should get together with LA and hang out, because they're both the worst together. Let's go, Chicago, or we're never coming back. It is a mystery.

It's one of our first shows we ever did. It sold out in a heartbeat. It was one of my favorite shows ever Because it was the show where I I remember it was the show in January 2019 Where I announced that I was going full time Yeah On the Glasgow Network We were going full time

It was so wonderful The place was packed The niche was amazing I do wonder Maybe they're just splitting out to Minneapolis and St. Louis But yeah I don't know But come on out to that

Because I love the pizza I love that city And I'll be sad if I never go back, but I'm threatening to never go back. And then tickets are going to go on sale next week for the last show of the year. We're only doing four more shows this year, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and Philly. We're going to be there for Pax Unplugged, doing a Philly show back at City Winery, the Christmas sweater party. Although if they don't turn on the AC I'm going to go there shirtless Because it's so fucking hot

But we're coming back to Philly And those tickets are going to go on sale next week So stay tuned to social media And to this to find out how to get those tickets Or just go to our website That is the tour Let's talk about State of the Pod It's pretty wild for it to be August

And be like there are only four shows left That's it So yeah if you want to see us in 2023 It's's gotta be Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, or Philly. Last night, uh, when I was sitting on the couch, after I got home from my little solo dinner, I like took out my remarkable and started going over my to-do list and cleaning stuff out. Just like wiped away all the Gen Con stuff, wiped away all this, and just trying to look at like the end of the year between now and December.

And that's the first thing that astounded me. I'm like, oh, there's only four more shows. I'm like, I kind of think I have those prepped already. And that's my goal. It's like, just get this stuff prepped, set it, and forget it. Because before you know it, I'm going to have to start running some time for chaos.

But in the meantime, let's talk about State of the Pod. State of the Pod. What is this? Well, I'll tell you what it's not. You mean State of the Niche. No, like a typo on that graphic? No? Well, I'll tell you what it's not. You mean State of the Niche. No, like a typo on that graphic? No. Yeah. Let me tell you what it's not. It is not State of the Niche. I see people pontificating,

trying to guess, like, oh, they're going to talk about release dates for this, new tour dates for this, or a new series. No. We are going to talk about the Glass Canon podcast. We're going to talk about the Glass Cannon podcast. We're going to talk about the Glass Cannon podcast campaign two.

We're going to talk about Game Walkers. And it is going to be a show that you do not want to miss. The plan right now is I'm going to come on. Hey, what's going on? Bebop and Scat talk a little bit up front. I'm going to announce our official sponsors. We have official sponsors for the pod. Any other big news? We've got like several contracts on the table right now. Maybe things will get ironed out between now and Friday. And if so, I'll announce those things as well. But the focus is going to be on Gatewalkers. You're going to find out the release date. You're going to find out the release date of something that's going to come before the actual release date. And we're going to debut all of my sit-down interviews with

the cast that happened months ago talking about their character. We did it forever ago for Androids and Aliens. I think we did it for Ruins of Aslan. You know, very, like, we sat there, probably had an iPhone camera. Uh,

this is a multi-camera shoot and we did it for blood of the wild, but it was audio only, but that would, but it was great. Yep. So we're doing this. We had, uh,

multiple cameras. We went out to all over, uh, the five boroughs of New York, uh, shooting these videos where I just sit down and talk about the characters. So this is going to be the carrot, like the reveals about the beginnings of the ideas of these characters.

We're talking ancestries. We're talking classes and so much more. And also just like – Even a couple of feats. I think I might have mentioned a feat. You certainly mentioned a few other things. But we also just sit down and chat. So there's a lot of that as well.

It's getting to know people a little bit better, getting to know their neighborhood a little bit better. This place that they love to go have a drink. It's awesome. Yeah. I think people are really going to like that. It's going to be a long stream. It's probably going to be two hours. And time permitting, I'll sit at the end and maybe do a little Q&A. But I'm going to be queuing up these videos, showing them for you, giving a lot of announcements about the pod, the Glass Cannon podcast. it's not the state of the nation i'll probably still do that in november like i always do but this is the state of the pod you gotta be there live um and that's all i'm gonna say about it and if you say it's gonna be two hours that

means it will absolutely be four hours he only ever says things and uh and they double in line whatever he says double it and that's the length of any live event that he does the character creation videos alone if i just played them start to finish would take about an hour and a half yeah so you're gonna talk a lot more than 30 minutes i don't have a whole lot to say less is more joe less is more yeah well i'm looking forward to that what time does that start 8 p.m eastern live twitch.tv slash the glass cannon is this going to be released elsewhere because it's it's a very twitch streamy kind of thing like yes is there going to be an audio only version of the state of the pod yeah you know what um what we're going to

do is the following week all of those individual character videos are going to appear on youtube so monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday we'll drop one video a day, but just the video, a standalone video, my whole presentation and whatnot, that's just going to be available on Twitch. I'm not going to release a podcast of that because it won't play very well. So the character videos are what people are going to want to really see. And then when you and I do fodder the week after, we can kind of go over some of the details of the announcements. Will the character build videos be released as audio only? I don't know yet.

I don't know. Maybe. We haven't discussed that internally. They're very much so not like shot on podcast mics or anything like that. Like they are like, you know loose lobs out in the city. I don't know if it'll lend itself to audio. Yeah, I know people get bummed out about that. I don't like it! And I get it, but if the

audio isn't great, it doesn't hit our quality standards. It works for something like this, but it may not work for a pod. Let me figure that out. We still hadn't decided that, and I'm mad that you brought it up. Well, I just like to pre-ask the questions people are absolutely going to ask no i know i know but uh the you'll be able

to watch them on youtube at least um and then maybe maybe we'll we'll add them i don't know normally i'd come in at this time and be like we are stupid and talk about all the rules that we got wrong in two weeks of side quest side ses. And I'm sure that there's a few. But Professor Eric was unavailable. No office hours for Professor Eric as he was busy running a thousand games at Gen Con. Professor Eric, while he did not make an appearance in the booth, was an official Paizo GM in the Sagamore Ballroom all weekend long. We ran into him at the very end. And he looked as

exhausted as we were. But sounds like he had a great Gen Con. And he's really excited to get back on board with starting to listen to our content and get us get back to us with rule corrections or whatnot. So I'm not going to focus on rules today. I just want to focus on a couple questions. As you approached this. Well, yeah, I mean, as you guys know, spoilers abound. Don't even listen to this if you're not caught up on SideQuest SideSesh, because these are a couple of really big sessions as we get into the vault proper and begin unlocking, so to speak, the puzzle of the four seasons that lies beneath. four seasons that lies beneath the hallucinations of, as you,

you know, insert the lock and enter into a landscape that represents each season written in the module or something you came up with. Just curious. I don't remember what you're talking about. When I put the key in the lock in like the winter side, I guess it was, or no, the summer side,

it was like, I all of a sudden saw myself like on a beach and it was like like you know these like uh hallucinations for lack of a better yeah it just says that you experience the opposite of like so if you go in winter you experience summer so i was just improvising that i didn't have anything i figured um that's why it was probably sloppy it was real sloppy so that's why i figured uh yeah I mean, just I'm trying to write less because it always sounds better when it's off the dome. But yeah, just very vague in how they experience that. But tip of the penis to you for realizing immediately. My rib.

How to break that. Like of all people, Mr. I hate riddles. You got it. You like totally got it. And dude, I'm so my brain is so all over the place. I didn't even make the connection to the fact that like the greetings, you always say the opposite. Yeah. Like I just knew it was the opposite. But I forgot like that's the whole thing they set up at the beginning. And you riddle. And I was still very, very, I was not sure I had it. I was very nervous because it's a huge commitment.

You're taking these move actions to move across this huge landscape. So it's going to take you two rounds, at least, even if you're triple moving, to move all the way across to the other thing. And the entire time you're getting blasted with elemental damage. And I did not have a lot of hit points. So I was like, this is a big risk I'm taking on this puzzle. I think it's this. So I just gonna go with it and uh so glad that it turned out to be right because normally my instincts are 180 degrees wrong and it's wildly dangerous if you guys don't figure that out soon i mean you figured it out and you still almost uh had oh man everybody was

down to like single digis, bro, after that encounter. But awesome encounter, really, really fun. And then we get to what I consider the chef's kiss, the pivotal moment, the moment that every GM loves more than anything, which is when the trusted NPC turns on the party. You guys didn't see it coming. We've had a few of these in the many, many years that we've been uh gaming together talk to me all about this one when did you find out uh do do they mention it the first time he's his name is mentioned in the book that he's going to attack them later like how did this all this traitorous bastard story all come together oh yeah i mean it's in the adventure summary so so you know that Leljeshen is going to turn on them.

So, my goal in these situations is to always play them like you never see it coming. Because if I even give a hint to it, and you start thinking about that, it changes everything. And his motives are not I'm evil! They're much deeper than that, and I'm not going to reveal that, but that's why

it made it a lot easier to play him as someone honorable because his motives aren't like, fuck these guys. It's much different. But, you know, a real – I had a little minor issue with the module, and this has come up time and time again, and you're a bit of a healing apologist. So I'm curious your thoughts on this. These are back-to-back things. You go from the traps straight into the dungeon. So I had Leljeshin give you some potions, even though you were going to fight him. And the way I justified it was like, you know, he doesn't even know what's on the other side of the vault.

So he wants to make sure that you guys can take care of it and be at the best so that he can take the crown and whatnot. But like, if I don't do that, it's ATPK. And another thing is those traps reset like immediately. So you guys, there was just no chance. And so I wonder if we're just missing something. No one has brought it up. I don't read the boards as much anymore, but I feel like, and this is a

2E adventure, so it's not a 1E conversion where it's like, ah, you just go Cure Magic, Cure Magic Go On. So I just don't know. It's impossible if he doesn't. Now, he did have things that he's supposed to give you, and I didn't give them to you earlier. And so they do give you, they were what i gave you but like that juggernaut uh juggernaut john yeah that's what i gave you i didn't even give you potions i gave you those

because those are listed as things he's supposed to give you um but i just i don't you're really that trap resets i'll look but well maybe we can get maybe we can get a little feedback from professor eric on this after the fact um uh he he usually listens to the fod Well, maybe we can get a little feedback from Professor Eric on this after the fact. He usually listens to the FOD. And maybe he can just give us some insight on it. And he knows that scenario. He's a PFS veteran GM. So he knows that scenario.

And maybe he can give us some insight on to like, well, look, this is why most parties don't even move forward without a cleric or a bunch of potions in their backpack. Or maybe it's like this one was the exception to the the rule this really was such a brutal combat and i've seen parties die i'm curious uh to get his take on it here's a look the trap is powered by the eternal bloom it resets after five minutes at which time the doors to the vault slam shut once again if i had done that not only would this have been a 40 episode side quest side sesh but like you die and so i just had to not do that it was was it 4d6 damage every time the blast went off each blast failure is 4d6 success is 2d6 critical failure is 4d6 plus drained or enfeebled you get a condition because they're all what was the d was the DC? The DC is...

And so this is the same whether you're playing the... 24, DC 24. Yes, it's ridiculous. And this is the same whether you're playing the 3.4 version or the 5.6 version. Are we playing a 3.4 version? You're playing the 3.4 version. No, let me scale down to the 5.6, John, here,

and see what it is. Oh, yeah, I didn't even look at that. 5.6, it's DC 27 Fortitude, and it's 2D6 plus 2 or 4D6 plus 4. Got it. And then the critical failure, you get persistent damage and other shit. That is brutal. It's always Fortitude. There's got to be one of you that's going to be a little light on Fortitude.

And you have no potions you know you shouldn't have to have a healer but even a healer a five minute reset there's not a lot you can they all go down again i mean you never get into that room so i don't know i just either we're missing something or people are like yeah no no that that's a that's a pc killer yeah i'd love to hear yeah so write in let us know is are we missing something or is this just a particularly brutal set of encounters uh that that set us up for that but uh i don't want to talk too much more about it because it's getting me thinking about other stuff uh in terms of um in terms of pathfinder mechanics that we all talk about in uh in our gatewalkers session zero and stuff like when we got together and talked, we were very like, you know,

we were addressing all these issues that we've come across in our couple of years of playing to E. So it's, I don't want to talk anything about what we talked about behind the scenes because you'll see stuff roll out in these character videos. All right. Well, you know what?

I think that's good. I think we got to go. Oh no. Wait a minute. Wait, we can't leave without talking about how like Rufus is going to die. So, yeah, I actually talked to Jared right after the session and I was like, before we connect on the next session,

like let's talk a little Turkey on the crunchiness of going down with persistent damage. I think you, there was a flow chart that was talked about or made by you. Yes. I think you, there was a flow chart that was talked about or made by you. Yes. I wrote a little flow chart and it's just, it's, it's a character killer,

a PC killer. And I, and I think, you know, I'd love to hear Eric's thoughts on that too. If that's the way he has seen it in, in society play, it's like if you,

or, you know, he also runs home games on APs and stuff. If you go to dying and you have persistent damage you're essentially immediately you're dying immediately you roll a recovery check if that doesn't go well if you happen to fail that you go down one then damage ticks and you go down another one like it's it's really really deadly and you have to roll a natty 15 to get out of that now people people can come and help you, but like, all they can do is do like an aid role basically. And you still have to make

that role. You still have to roll a natty 15 at some point in order to get out of that, uh, that situation. Sometimes you can make it a natural 10 or sometimes it can be something that's so obviously cured, right? Like if it's persistent fire damage and we dump you in a pool maybe you can just say it's over but like there ain't no pool around so it's like it's going to be a really really bad situation and i'm sad because i really like rufus and i want to uh i don't want him to go out this way but in playing with order the amber die they lost a character this way in their um what's it called the uh abomination vaults the abomination vaults the uh one character death that they had so far i don't think they've had more than one so far uh was persistent damage and the whole party was standing

there like they had a healer and everything like trying to help and it just like the healer was out of heels and the medicine the the out of battle medicines you know treat wounds takes 10 minutes you can't do it and just they couldn't make the the fit dc-15 flat check and it killed the character so we'll see what happens next week yeah this is why hero points are so tomorrow night really yeah i mean hero points just i i get it like this is why people love them but like hero points also they don't remove the drain i mean they don't remove these persistent damage it just kind of gives you buys you more time uh yeah you can drop that hero point you lose the dying condition you immediately stabilize and then you immediately take damage from the persistent damage and you start the

process over again like it is a killer kill luck you guys better be juicy and gatewalkers this is gonna be a lot of deaths in book one is there a lot of persistent damage i mean the game is built that way i'm just seeing it more and more in in all the things we play persistent damage is like the i think the devs are like everything is gonna have persistent damage so fun you know yeah i really like it honestly because it goes to show the the increasing uh effects that this damage taking has on you. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't just go away, you know? Like, there are a lot of things that are going to create ongoing damaging effects that you can be alive. I mean, you know, lots of people die like this, right? Like, they're injured. They're still alive for a little while, but they are just dying and

dying and nothing you can do can stop it. even with all the technology we have even with all the you could be at a hospital and still it just is not enough and i i it's neat to see that represented in uh in in the game mechanics but that doesn't mean i want rufus to die oh man well let's wrap it up there great post gen con john uh looking forward to get back to work here, man. Back to recording. We got Get in the Trunks. We got Voyages of the Jumper off and recording. And we got SideQuest Side Sesh each night.

We got State of the Pod Friday night, 8 o'clock Eastern. So much cool shit going on. Please come hang out with us. Chill on Twitch. Listen wherever you listen. And very exciting updates coming this Friday. Until then, take it easy, everybody. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Bye. Maybe I'll go back to bed. Snooze. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network. For more podcasts and live streams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com. And for exclusive shows and content you can't find anywhere else, subscribe today at patreon.com slash glasscanon.