The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 9/25/24

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

Joe welcomes Jared Logan to the Fod this week to look back at his last couple months of running new, upcoming, and alternative TTRPGs and their supplements. Jared will summarize his takeaways on Deathmatch Island, Welcome to Night Vale, Broken Weave, A Life Well Lived, Paranoia, and more in order to help you decide what might work as an one-shot alternative for you and your gaming group! Submit your questions for Listener Mail at https://forms.gle/v5huj25dkVSmkbLEA Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/birwKjVIAoI 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 only way we go home is together. From new season now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, September 25th, 2024. I almost forgot the year there. And I am your good buddy, Joe O'Brien.

I am not. I am Sans Troy Lavallee today, unfortunately, but I do have a very, very good friend of mine and a fantastic GM on the network joining me. Ladies and gentlemen, for the second time this month, please welcome back to the FOD, Jared Logan. Good buddy. Hi, everybody. the FOD, Jared Logan. Good buddy. Hi everybody. Sorry Troy couldn't be here.

We wish him well with his program. We hope he gets out in a couple of weeks. Ah, and he feels better and he's able to recommit to his family, cause that's really who is, cause that's really who's been hurt the most in all of this. That's really who's been hurt the most. Oh man, it is a pleasure to have you back on. We got to have Blood of the Wild cast gathering on fodder.

How fun was that? That was awesome. That was a really great time and now I just get a little one on one time with you, which is awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. We're going to catch up a little bit because we haven't hung out in a while. We actually recorded games in a little while, a little behind the scenes look. And I want to hear about all the new games that you've been playing. So this FOD, we're going to do some news at the top, of

course, but then we're going to dedicate a good chunk of this to the new games that Jared was a part of or ran in recent months, whether that's from Gen Con or Friends of the Pod, and get a little bit of your feedback now that you've had some time to digest these things and some time has passed. I'd like to look back over and see, you know, pros and cons and what games you would recommend for what kind of gamers, et cetera. We'll go through the gamut.

So this could be a fad to, you know, for those of you out there that might be interested in checking out something new that maybe you didn't happen to watch these actual plays that ran during Gen Con, we can give you a kind of a quick summary of some new games that are out there or that are coming out in tabletop RPGs to kind of shake it up a little bit if you want to shake off the rust and try something new. So with that said, how you doing pal?

How's your last few weeks been? I two weeks ago, I had a horrifying pain in my testicle. Oh, no. Had to be rushed to the ER. And they couldn't find anything. They gave my they gave my testicle an ultrasound. And I asked if I could hear the heartbeat. And they said no. And then, um, they couldn't find anything.

They massage some gel on there and they put some gel on there and they slowly roll that a little dog for sound, uh, a tiny one that's meant for, uh, my, uh, little private area. And then, um, private area. They didn't find anything that was obviously what had caused the horrible pain. I just keep going back to the doctor and people keep going, I don't know. Well, in classic Jared fashion, you have a severe boy cried wolf thing about you, because you always lie about everything in your life with just making people laugh. And so I- You think I might be making this up?

I assume you're making this up. Oh no, this is all real. As it kept going, I was like, this isn't very funny. This sounds like it's real. It's real, it's real. And that sounds awful. Yeah, it's okay. And that sounds awful. Yeah. So you have a phantom theme.

I feel fine now. No, no, I feel fine now. But the day that it happened, it was like, ah! And then I had to like lay on a couch going, ah! Dude, that's horrible. So wait, and you didn't get hit with anything. This wasn't like a stray softball caught you in the nards.

No, no, no softball in the nards. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't accidentally shut it in a door. Um, uh, an angry pit bull didn't grab my, it was, uh, yeah, it wasn't an America's funniest home videos. Um, I'll go in and answer some questions the doctors have been asking me. No I have not been having sex outside my marriage. Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that. Well I'm glad it's better now, but still not diagnosed.

Yeah, but I mean I feel fine now and fact, a little while after it happened, it kind of went away. And so now I'm having to go to the doctor just in case, but nobody can figure out what it was. So, I have no settling. It's so strange. Yeah. It's, it's mysterious. Well, with that, let's take it to the news.

This week on the Glass Cannon Network, you might have missed it. Monday night, we premiered a very exciting one shot of Fester Purple Worm Kill Kill. Now, this is a show that was on the D&D Adventures channel. If you caught that when we played it out in LA. Jared, we played together, we were players in a game that Troy ran. You also ran a session, an episode of that TV show. Then, and now the folks over at Beetle and Grimm's are producing a book. They're kickstarting a source book that'll give you the key to short adventure ideas and hooks that you could do to run your friends through a one to two hour experience where level one

characters come up against an epic monster in D&D. So a really fun idea, the book looks amazing and the Kickstarter is up and running. We did a show with Troy running myself, myself and Sydney, Matthew Lillard and Ross Bryant through an adventure. It was really, really fun. And so if you didn't see it on Monday night on the premiere, go check that out. It's awesome. It's on YouTube and you still have one day left to check out this Kickstarter if you're interested in getting this book.

So head over to their Kickstarter if you want to get yourself in on a copy that the Kickstarter actually ends tomorrow. So now now is the time. But regardless, if you want to support the Kickstarter or not, go check out the video. It was a blast. We had a really, really fun session. That's a game that it's an interesting take on D&D. What are your thoughts on on the faster purple room kill kill model of, you know, kind of a completely guaranteed TPK one shot? Is this something that you would do in your private time? I love it. I would do it in my private time.

I have a couple of things that I love about it. First of all, I love that you get to see monsters that sometimes your campaign doesn't go on long enough to actually see. Yeah. Kind of get to see them that sometimes your campaign doesn't go on long enough to actually see. Yeah. Kind of get to see them in action. I love that it... Sorry, just to add on to that point, it's also very possible that you do get that far in a campaign, but you usually only ever see one or two of all of the monsters available.

You would have to adventure for years to see one or two of them. Yeah, yeah. And so there's gonna be tons out there still that you've never seen these 20th level type creatures. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, you get to try out some of those high level monsters. I also love that it really forces you to role play

or come up with solutions other than I attack, you know? You have to kind of, you know, focus on getting those role playing moments in or doing something clever that doesn't involve defeating the thing because you can't. And, um, and I also love how much that would annoy any type of rules, lawyer, men, max or power gamer type who was forced to play it. I like to think about his annoyance cause it is a man. Uh, and, uh, and, uh, just sort of love that. But, uh, and I almost forgot this, a two hour experience. I think people don't value that enough. You know, when people play role playing games, they're always like, they'll just

do six hour sessions. Like it's a matter of course. I don't do anything in my life for six hours at a time. Are you out of your goddamn mind? When we did the stream of blood, I said two hour games, max, you know, when you and I record episodes of blood of the wild, we do an hour at a time, you know, we usually do two episodes in a day. But anyway, I think that inviting your friends over and playing something that will be over in two hours, I don't think we can stress how great that is enough. That's just incredible. Cause like even board games, you're like, Hey, you guys want to come over and play a board game? The first hour will be me explaining how it's played.

Yeah. The next 30 minutes will be me setting it up. Yes. You know, and, and then we'll play for four hours and then it's an hour of cleanup. Like it's just wild. Tell your wife you'll be home at 3 46 AM tonight because we decided to play Lords of Water deep. I mean, that's a great example. Oh, it's not that complicated actually. No, I like that. But, but it, but it takes a couple hours to play, you know, to get into. And so anyway, uh, I really enjoyed it and you guys should check it out. See if you have

some fun with that. We also have been playing Ember, Foundry Tabletop's new digital tabletop game experience. This has been really, really fun. The last episode is tonight. So tune in for episode four, the finale of four apps that we did of Foundry's upcoming new epic ass campaign. Dude, so you know, in Blood of the Wild, we do Hexploration and you seem to really enjoy it. You like running a Hexploration style adventure. I think you've said it multiple times. You like that kind of adventure.

It's great. I love it. I love the fact that things can be tackled in a different order depending on who's playing and the decisions they make. And I think that that really does something that role playing games do that other media can't. It is more challenging for a GM because you basically have to prepare all of these hexes as you don't want them walking into a hex you haven't prepared, which

may have, which may have happened to me once or twice. Once or twice on an edited show. Yes, on a very edited show. So just, you know, it's a challenge for the GM to prep up. Man, it's really cool. And is Ember a hex crawl? I wasn't familiar. Yeah. So Ember is, yeah, it's a long form fantasy campaign in an original setting.

But part of it is Hexploration, but you literally move a digital piece on a digital hex map yourself. And as you move, it'll unlock Fog of War. You'll be able to see the next hexes. It's all automated. It looks amazing. And it's in pre-alpha right now. So you're not seeing like the whole scope. The game, I think as of now, or in its finished form, maybe even there might be more in its

finished form, they boast on the Kickstarter page that it is 25,000 hexes as of right now. With nearly everyone having something. That's almost enough. Well if they can get to that stretch goal, I'm sure they'll get another 10,000 hexes. It is really incredible, a huge, massive open world to explore. And the nice thing about this one is that, I think for GMs, the reason I'm excited to try to run, I think I might run it for some family of mine privately, is because you don't have to do as much prep as the GM because when you go to these hexes, like these

dialogue boxes pop up for the GM with just like quick summaries. They give you what to say and they give you the stats for everything you need and the dice roll is on and it's all digitized and it just, uh, that's amazing. Yeah. It has the ease of, it has the ease of use of a video game multiplayer, but it has the freedom of a true human run tabletop because they only unlock what you click. And so you're kind of like, yeah, anyway, it's really neat.

No, no, no, I mean, I think that's gigantic because I have an at-home game and one of my players is constantly sending me links to like, he's like, check this out. And it's like a map making tool. And it's like, you kind of have to learn how to use, like you have to learn how to use a software system where you're dealing with angles and like making 3D terrain.

And I go, oh yeah, no, this looks like a great part-time job. Thanks for sending that my way Yeah, I would love to construct all of this for you Well, you know I do I do Enjoy that stuff a little bit. You got it. You got a lot of cool. It's cool It's just like sometimes I think players don't realize like that is all it is also how much work how much work. Yeah. And I only bring it up to say if Ember is like handing all

that to you. Yeah. That's that's beautiful. You know, like the chef's kiss. Yeah, for sure. All right. Real quick. A couple stream notes this week. Live streaming McD and I today. After this, if you listen to this early on Wednesday, two o'clock Eastern time today, McD and I are streaming Remnant 2 again. So excited to continue that adventure with him. And then Friday, this is awesome, Jared. We are continuing Skid, Rob Kirkovich and I continue our run of Space Marine 2. Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2.

We had a blast last week. Skid uses a voice modulator so that he sounds like a Space Marine in a helmet. He's like, for the Emperor Brothers. It deepens his voice. It sounds all mechanical. It is so funny. What is your history with Warhammer 40k? Have you ever any any level of it? You know, that's that is a geek Pull I haven't dipped in yet. Yeah, I haven't gotten wet in that one I haven't gotten super wet with 40k yet, but but I would I like that I like how everything looks I had some I had some Warhammer fantasy miniatures that I painted and played with a little while back but It's been a while now.

Skid is just a huge fan of the setting, and so it heightens my experience so much when he goes into detail about all of it. So anyway, check out that stream. We're going live 1 p.m. Eastern this Friday afternoon. Rob Kirkovich, Skid, and I with more Space Marine 2. All right, so let's talk about new tabletop RPGs. These are new ideas that have that are coming from publishers that we love. Could be ideas that are out and brand new that

you can check out could be games that were, you know, at Gen Con being announced or being kickstarted and might not really be out till 2025. But we were getting teases on them. And some of these are already out have been out for a while. So I want to start with the newest one, the one that we just finished two parts of just aired Broken Weave. Yeah. This was on Friends of the Pod. And you could go and check that out on YouTube if you missed it. You want to check it out. But Jared, give us a quick elevator pitch on Broken Weave. Like, what is this? What is this game? Sure. I can give you a really quick elevator pitch. It is a post-apocalyptic tragic fantasy.

That's how they describe it. That's a good description. It's for 5e, but it makes 5e almost unrecognizable as 5e. It still uses some of the main mechanics of 5e, advantage, disadvantage, but it changes all the classes. There are still, we can never say race anymore. There are still lineages or ancestries that you might recognize like elves or dwarves, but it even changes those in sort of a very meaningful way. And basically you're in this post-apocalyptic world where the apocalypse was magical. Something happened. There was a magical cataclysm that corrupted and poisoned all of magic.

And now the power of magic has transformed into an entropic force known as decay. And decay not only changes creatures, humanoids that come into contact with it. For example, if humans absorb too much decay They have the curse of wind and slowly their bodies become like these desiccated empty hollow undead creatures whereas the elves have the curse of earth so they slowly become like covered in crystal and become these like crystalline monstrosities. But decay also affects the land. It affects the monsters in the world, the creatures that were living in the world.

If you met a unicorn in the Broken Weave universe, it would probably be some sort of unspeakable, unholy thing you would normally meet in a Call of Cthulhu game. So is it pretty grim? It's just like everything is trying to kill you. It's super dark and like unfriendly kind of place. Is that like, can you not trust anybody you come across? Is it that kind of post-apocalyptic fallout kind of feel? Nah, yes and no.

I mean, the game also pushes hope a little bit. Hope is like a resource you have you're intended to Create like capital H. Hope. Yeah, like capital H. Hope. Okay. Yeah. Yeah Um, and you're supposed to create your own community and there's rules for creating your community And your community produces hope as a resource for your party to use but your community can also take uses hope as a resource for your party to use, but your community can also take crisis damage. So like your campaign could have like different crises going on at the same time,

and your party is trying to handle them, and you're losing population from your community as you try to handle them. And this all happened in our playthrough, you know, we played through one of their, you know their basic adventures, first adventures for it, called the Titan's March. And it was pretty awesome. Sgt. J. Yeah, I saw a clip online of your description of a Titan and then the artwork of the Titan. It was cool and very daunting. Huge, absolutely staggeringly large creature,

the Titans. That's a very cool concept. What a smart adventure because I think it really, really takes 5e and kind of flips all your expectations about it because in the very first adventure that you're meant to run for a broken weed, there's a creature that's so huge and so invulnerable that just throwing spells at it and attacking it is not going to work. So what do you do? And you have to explore and come up with ideas and strategies. I thought it was a really, I think it's really cool if you have players, there are all these players that will only play 5e. Do you know these people? There's

also like, there's also some famous GMs who will only play 5e. And I don't quite get that. I love 5e. I think it has great mechanics. I don't always like the default world that it comes with, which is like, elephant people. But I do really like the mechanics. I do also like the cleanliness of the mechanics.

I think that it's very Straightforward low barrier to entry and and fun, right? This if you have a group that's like we only play 5e and you've been dying to play something. That's a little bit more horror themed or post-apocalyptic themed or even sci-fi themed because has like a, it does have a fallout vibe to it. You would like this. Can I ask you one more question before we move on?

What, you said that magic caused the apocalypse and that magic itself is a source of decay and tropic magic. Is that considered to be separate from the magic that PCs would know and be able to cast? Or does that drastically change the class like the idea of casting magic in the way it is in D&D? Drastically changes. The classes are completely different and you will not play a wizard or bar or like a sorcerer that's just... No. There's nothing adjacent? There is something called the Harrowed.

And the Harrowed is a person who has learned to manipulate the forces of decay, usually to their own detriment. So they can call up powers that might seem magic adjacent, but there's always a cost. They always have to think about the cost of taking the decay in on themselves. It's very, very dramatic. I think it's very cool and dark. It's kind of, you need mature players.

If they're gonna go, why would I take a decay point? That's not optimal. If they're gonna do that, then they may be, you know. Not the game for them, probably. It's not for them, yeah, yeah. Is it, is it unusually deadly or is it similarly? Deadly in mechanics to D&D like are you still getting three rolls? You know to save death saves that kind of stuff or is it like unusually?

Harsh and deadly in terms of the mechanics mechanically. I don't think it's more deadly Okay, and I would say that the theliness factor could be, that dial could be turned setting wise, depending on what kind of game you wanted to play. Okay. All right, cool. I'm going to go through a few more games here. I'm honestly just curious because you and I have not talked much since even Gen Con. When we have talked, it's just been like, blood of the wild, record, record, record.

And so we haven't really had a chance to, I haven't had a chance to get your impressions. I want to go back to some of these games you played at Gen Con, one of which piqued my interest honestly, the most that we saw come up during that, which was that I didn't, wasn't a part of, which was Deathmatch Island. Yes. What did you think of Deathmatch Island? Well, I loved it. I loved Deathmatch Island.

I bought Deathmatch Island at Gen Con I loved it. I loved Deathmatch Island. I bought Deathmatch Island at Jim Con. I bought a copy. Yeah, I want to run it at home. And I think it particularly worked really well for people who haven't played Tabletop before. Because I think you can get a session done in a couple hours. And it is a theme that I think people are super familiar with. Yeah, go ahead.

Getting a session done in a couple hours, does that include creating characters? Creating characters in Death Match Island takes about two to five minutes. Okay, that's so cool. So you can have your friends over, create characters and begin playing and finish a decent session in two, two and a half hours.

Like a couple evil hack games, it's an evil hack game. It gives you a character sheet where you really just circle some options and you're done. And it's not even that many options, but the, you know, and it can be deceptive in how it looks like it's a narrative, let's just feel our way through it game, like a storytelling game, but it's not.

It's super crunchy. It's just not it's not quite math crunchy It's more like cause and effect if then crunchy and it has a fantastic theme So if anybody doesn't know it's about you know shows like squid game or movies like Battle Royale or Books like the Hunger Games. It's about a bunch of people are put on an island and for we think entertainment sake told to kill each other with guns and knives and sharp sticks of bamboo

and things like that. So I think it's just something people can immediately get into. So are the PCs a team, like a squad that is trying to kill the other teams? And if they're the last team standing, they, or is it like only one individual wins or? They're an alliance. It's usually called an alliance in the book.

And that's essentially true. Basically there are phases of the game and these are literal phases in the fiction, in the setting, where the first phase before the klaxon, before the horn sound, you explore the island and you find resources and you gather weapons. And then the horn goes off, it means it's time to start killing, because only half of the people are going to leave island one. Only half are allowed to leave island one and go on to island two. So you have to start fighting for your life.

And the game is interesting because you really, you collect your dice pool and roll before you say what you do. And then based on your roll, you then describe what you did and how it went. And- All right, so would it be, what is this this core mechanic? Like what are you rolling? Are you rolling D sixes? You're rolling all kinds of dice because all kinds. Yeah. You have like a dice,

a die for your occupation and your occupation might be TV reporter or novelist, or it might be a traffic cop or it could even be Skid's character was the like everybody else who had a normal job and his character was like a secret agent from MI6 who had been put on the island. Oh my god. So everybody has an occupation die then they have a name die. The name die goes up as you collect XP and XP is not is tracked as followers. So someone somewhere is watching this and the more cool stuff you do, the more follows you get and the more follows you get,

your name die goes up and gets higher. Oh my God, that's amazing. And on and on like that, like weapons give you dice, when you collect weapons. And it's a mixture of all the polyhedral dies, there's D8s, there's D10s, There's D6s. Is there a D20? Do you roll D20s?

You know what? You might not get up that high, but there's definitely D12. I think usually those kind of systems cap out at D12s usually. Yeah, and you all roll and then there's even a winner among the players. So whoever rolled the highest among the players gets the most followers, you know, and gets a little bit more narrative control about what happened. So it is this game. It is this like battle Royale, this free for all where you're trying to murder the other alliances. But there's another layer to the game and I think that's what makes it really special Which is your characters can try to explore areas of the island that are off-limits to the players of the game and Discover the secrets of deathmatch island like who's running it who's making you do this?

Who's watching it? What's going on? And the rule book has a lot of these locations sort of mapped out for you and there are so much weird shit Hidden around the island and it's like so it's like lost. It's exactly like lost. Oh wow very much like lost so Lost meets the hundred of the hunger games. Yeah, very interesting our players found ratings for deathmatch island sounds very interesting. Our players found ratings for Deathmatch Island, meaning like the number of followers or whatever and like a filing cabinet, but it went back to the 1800s. Weird. Weird stuff like that. I mean, that's cool. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I love it. And I can't wait to run up to some people. Well, clearly you love it. You bought it. That's awesome. Yeah.

What about a life well lived? A life well lived. You bought it. That's awesome. What about A Life Well Lived? A Life Well Lived! I loved that title. I think that was just like a character creation mechanic. Is that right? It's got a character creation section that's quite large that gives you new ways to create characters for 5e. It also has a bunch of rules that you can graft on to your 5e campaign. Oh, like a suggested adaptations or I can't think of the word I'm looking for, but like you're sort of just slightly changing the rules. Very slightly.

I mean, there's like downtime rules, you know, so that you can do things when you're not adventuring. Supplemental rules. Yes, supplemental. Absolutely. There are camp craft activities. So assuming that your party is camped out, there are things you can do that makes camping into kind of a mini game. Well, like Baldur's Gate 3. I don't.

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't have access to a TV, so I don't know what these video games are. Right. Well, in Baldur's Gate three, when you camp, when you do like your long rest and you can't, it'll bring up like a camp screen and it's sort of like the, you have resources that you have to spend to like for eating and stuff like that. But then you have like the NPCs are kind of all in their stations and you can go and talk

advanced storylines, do romantic quests and stuff if you want. But yeah, that sounds interesting. Camp mechanics. Yeah, camp mechanics. And the Life Path character creation system is so great. If you've ever played Traveler or maybe watched Voyagers of the Jump, that's just what Traveler uses. you know, that's just what Traveler uses, but it's basically, you know, every little step in your character's life,

you roll a die on a random table and find out something about them, and then that is how you get your attribute numbers. That's how you get your skills and things like that by, and you'll be able to go, oh, I know stealth, because when I was little, I rolled that I always would steal mushrooms from farmer maggots field.

And I think that's really, really cool way to create characters. I think it adds a lot of depth and it also sort of creates a world for you. So if you're like, I wanna play in this specific world, don't do that with a life for you. So if you're like, I'm going to, I want to play in this specific world. Don't do that with a life. Well lived, let, let a life well lived, tell you what is in the world and fill in the map for you. Cause it'll tell you character a belong to a fishing village where the water got

poisoned. And it'll tell you that character B was lost in the forest for three years and had to live, had to learn how to live with feral knolllls or whatever but anyway it kind of builds the characters and the world for you that's awesome that sounds it actually sounds kind of similar to my experience playing cyberpunk red we played cyberpunk there was a kind of a cool life path system but what you saw happen by the end of it is it also sort of built in a plot. You know what I mean? Like with everybody's factions and allies and enemies and the stories that they had all

been through and the motives that they all have, it sort of gave the GM all they needed to start creating conflict and putting people in positions to create story. Just from the life path system. I think this is a cool way to play. There are a couple of games like this, which kind of like build like the story for you a little bit and then tell you to go with it. And I think that that's a great way to play, you know,

instead of coming in with like a pre-written module or, you know, your own like very detailed ideas as the GM, just kind of like let people do these story prompt systems and then go from there. Yeah, I like it. All right, let's move on, because I'm curious about this. This is the only one on this list so far,

I believe, that is based on a very popular IP, and that's Welcome to Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale is Welcome to Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale is a role playing game that supposedly brings to life and brings to your table the world of Night Vale from the podcast. So talk to me a little bit about, I think a lot of people know about Night Vale. I actually did an interview about this game, so I don't need to go into too much detail

on here about mechanics and stuff. If you want to see a shorthand about the mechanics, I interviewed the game designer for Welcome to Night Vale. You can find it on the YouTube channel, but I'm curious some of your takeaways and impressions of how the port was of, you know, the Night Vale world into a role playing game. Did you enjoy it?

Well, we had a good time. We had a really good time. I was at first a little daunted because I had not been a regular listener to the podcast and there is a lot of world that has built up over many years. Yeah. So I was a little unsure, but the setting guide they give you is pretty thorough and the basic gist of the world of Night Vale, you know, the, the gimmick of it, if I may be permitted to call it that, you know, of, uh, of sort

of like this extremely bizarre town where literally anything is possible. That's, that's a kind of an interesting game to play because we don't often play in worlds where literally anything is possible. So for example, one of the example characters you could play was a scorpion. Literally it was a S the arachnid, a small scorpion. And I was like, that can't be right. And it was, it was right. That's you can play as a scorpion.

And at first, you know, you might go, how was that going to work? How does he hold his sword? And then if you kind of let that go and just allow yourself to just really exist. And you know what I think night veil exists in it exists in a more like literary space. Like, you know, like when people go, you couldn't film that book, you kind of can't film Night Vale, you know? So you have to allow yourself to understand

that you're kind of in the realm of word play a little bit. You're kind of like in this sort of liminal space. And we had a blast, you know, just getting as weird as we wanted to. Yeah. It's not realistic. It's not realistic. It's the opposite of that, but it's fun.

Right. Yeah. It sounds a lot different than Broken Weave. It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Like a grim, dark, post-apocalyptic setting, a fantasy setting. I thought the mechanics sounded interesting, where you're. I believe it sounds somewhat similar to Deathmatch Island in that you are right.

I believe your skills are tied to die. You have a D12 as your best skills. Your D10 is slightly worse. Your D8 is slightly worse skill. Right. Okay, cool. Then before I move on to my, I have some wrap up questions on these games and a listener mail.

I'm curious if there's anything else that you've played in the last few months, any other new games that, you know, didn't air, that weren't part of the glass kind of network or anything that you just happened to play. Well, I got to, I got to run the Moria. Yeah. A Moria adventure. The one ring. Yes.

That was a big part of our free league day. That was a big four hour session. How is the, that's the one ring by free league. How is the one really? How is the Moria book? I had to have a chance to cry. Now I want to play it so bad. So my at home game right now is the one ring.

I'm a giant free league fan and I want to play all of their games. I've played Coriolis, Blade Runner. I've played a lot of the One Ring now because that's my current at home campaign. But of course I planned my campaign before I got the Moria book and now I'm like, oh, I have an idea for an entirely different The One Ring campaign. So at one point in the future, I'll be able to run The One Ring again and do an entirely different campaign. So at one point in the future, I'll be able to run the one ring again and do an entirely different campaign. Because Moria is like, it's a book that, you know, it's just a bunch of locations inside of Khaza Doom, but it's kind of a campaign in and of itself. Because if your

characters were just searching, you know, the kingdom under the mountain, you could go on for session after session and have an awesome time. And it gives you special mechanics for traveling down there and, and exploring down there and trying to find places down there. So yeah, um, I loved it. I loved it. I didn't realize you were running a one ring home game. Is it, and it's an original campaign, like a campaign of your own design? I, no, not quite. I have their adventure book, Tales from the Lone Lands, and I have their setting source book,

Ruins of the Lost Realm, and I've kind of just tied a bunch of stuff together with my own stuff. So, you know, like in between two of the adventures from the adventure book, I might have a session where it's just my stuff. And how many players do you have?

I have five. Oh, wow. I was curious if you had three because I know you really like three. I really like three. I'm fine with four. Five, I start to think it's too many, but they're good friends.

And how could you send them away? And everybody wants to play. And they don't all show up every time, as we all know from our adult lives. You can't get them to show up. I literally scheduled a game the other day, and then since then I've had three of the four players go, you know what, I'm gonna be two hours late.

And I'm like, then you're not coming. Yeah. Yeah. We're just doing, we're moving on without you. Yeah. You also mentioned to me that you, and I'm not sure if this is true, did you actually play Paranoia?

Yeah, so what I had heard is that you hated Paranoia when you played it. You heard that? That's what I heard from somebody. Oh wow, that's so funny. I talked a lot of shit on paranoia. This is like four years ago. I played it one time. I know, it's been a while.

And I talked shit, but I mean, I gotta own it. I mean, I did talk shit on it. But I also like, there's one important piece of context here, which is paranoia in the grand scheme of things. It might have been the first game that wasn't D&D or Pathfinder I ever played. Like really, like outside of, I played like Fiasco once at like a con, but like I never played games that didn't have like tactical movement and attack roles, right? Okay, and so I was kind of getting frustrated with the vagueness of it all and they're like just do whatever you want

You know in your round. I'm like, well, I can't get over there and hit that thing, you know in a round you know and Troy Kipion like Stop thinking about everything in terms of a action and a standard action. Like, that's not what you're doing here. You're trying a different kind of story. And I'm like, I don't understand this game. Now, after all these years of playing, you know, blades with you in particular that right around that time is when I got introduced to blades in the dark. And then I mean, so many of these other games call of Cthulhu included Delta Green,

like I just, I've expanded the way my brain thinks about RPGs a little bit more, and I think that I'd be more interested in it now for sure. But did you just play it this year for the first time? No, I had played it when I was in high school, so many years ago, and then there have been like five editions since then, but the newest edition, Clint Trucks, my good buddy Clint buddy Clint trucks who some people might be

familiar with my goal is to get through all the games he has on his shelf because he buys role-playing games with never thinking he's ever going to play them yeah I'm trying to play all the games on his shelf so he had the new paranoia edition and Kevin Culp our friend the designer Kevin Culp who designed time watch he wanted to play paranoia edition and Kevin Culp, our friend, the designer Kevin Culp, who designed Time Watch, he wanted to play paranoia. So we played with Kevin, his wife Peggy, and Clint and Rob Kirkovich.

And oh my God, it was so fun. Talk about a change of pace. Like if you are really kind of getting a little burnout on whatever campaign you're currently playing, put paranoia down on the table for one, because you only need one session. Joe, I played the adventure out of the back of the book. They nuked an entire section of Alpha Complex in the first 30 minutes. There was a nuclear explosion.

This is the only game where that can happen. And you go, OK, let's keep going. Like, you know, it was just absolutely batshit nuts. I was like hard gaffaw laughing like many times. I will say it is a challenge for the GM because even though the rules, especially in the new edition are extremely simple, the setting creates so much chaos because the players are constantly turning on each other

and they're constantly trying to do things without the other players noticing that they're doing them. And I'm getting, I had to figure out my system for getting secret messages back and forth from the players. Very tricky. But once you get that... That was one of the things I remember not liking is that I have a

very, I have a knee-jerk reaction a very anti-PVP. I just don't like it. But that's just a knee-jerk. If I think about it and I think about why it is the way it is and how to approach PVP

and especially if you have the right players, it could be amazing and hilarious and awesome. But yeah, I remember being like, what? And now I have to like win against my friends. And I don't I don't, you know, I'm not interested. But I mean, that's not what I have to win against your friends. You have to kill them. Right. I think we got Rob Kierkevich down.

It's you start you have six clones, remember? And I think we got Rob Karkovich down. As you start, you have six clones. Remember? And I think we got Rob Karkovich down to clone four. At one point he was like trying to get through this broken door, like squeeze through it. And he asked the computer that rules alpha complex for help. And the computer was like, no problem. And then cut him in half with the door. Like, that sounds like, uh, yeah, some, some good, uh, guffaw laughing fodder. We had some guffaws, some, some hard guffaws. That's great. That's great. Are you Dave, a claims free hybrid driving university grad who signed up online? Well, Dave, this jingles for you. Who saves with TD Insurance? Because he's a clinch for having

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for details. All right. I am going to move it on here to listener mail. Every once in a while, you know, the niche writes in, they got questions for us. I found one here that I thought could be a good one So Nikolo sing us in we're gonna do a little listener mail here before we wrap it up Thank you Nicholas Lowe. This one from James in Seattle. Interesting question here as we're talking about all these new games. I wanted to throw this out at you and I'm curious what your answer is.

James says, I'm curious if you folks have ever heard of a game called Torchbearer. And if you have, have you ever considered giving it a shot on the channel? I've never heard of it. Have you heard of it, James? I have heard of it. Okay. I forget what- Do you know anything

about it at all? I forget what rule system it uses, but it uses a fairly famous and popular rule system to do a dungeon crawl. Yeah, so he- Yeah. Very good, very good. He said, if I had to give an elevator pitch, I would say it's like your standard dungeon crawling OSR game, but with one clever design mechanism that gets players to worry about

time, light, food stores, and pushing their characters to their desperate and dramatic limits. Anyway, I wanted to bring that oh and also in any case love the network and the content. Thanks so much for continually putting out high quality actual plays with a genuinely funny cast. Thank you, James. Appreciate it. So I'm curious, I just want to kind of bring up here, this, we've gone back and forth about this a little bit in Blood of the Wild early on we talked about wanting to track Rations yeah wanting to know like if you don't hunt successfully for a couple days You're gonna be hungry. You're gonna get fatigued like this this kind of thing matters I brought it up as something I'd be interested in you said let's do it that I think that that's fun

but I also know that we are both, we both tire very easily of minutia in our RPGs, things like counting your crossbow bolts, and you know, like tracking your coin weight, you know, things that can just be kind of like they feel like they kind of take away from the game a little bit. Some people love that stuff. So I'm kind of curious what your initial reaction is to hear about a system that really mechanically accounts for time, light, foods and food stores in order to push characters to their dramatic limits. What are your thoughts on that? I think it sounds awesome. Here's the thing. If the system is really kind of built around that a little bit, that

sounds really dramatic and exciting and scary to me. The problem you run into sometimes is you've got these giant everything in the kitchen sink systems like D&D 5e or Pathfinder, and they have a lot of things to keep track of and remember. And then in addition to that, someone wants you to count every crossbow bolt or, you know, uh, go shopping and know everything that's in the shop. That's one of my pet peeves that play players are like, uh, we would like to shop for two hours. I don't want to do that. And then they're like, so what, what do I see? What's available? I don't know, man. Like I've been sitting around at home being like, you know what I'd What do I see? What's available?

Sitting around at home being like, you know what I'd be really into right now is just stocking the shelves of an imaginary shop So I think if the game is, you know built around it then it can be really fun I also want to say I love tracking rations in our blood of the wild game and I intend to keep doing it. I occasionally see some people go, I wish they weren't cracking the rations all the time. It gets dull and I'm like that gets duller than I have plus two I roll I that's 17 up no that's 24 like that that's dollar than combat. And all I think combat and the tracking of rations are equally, you know, they have a mechanical component, but I think they're interesting and no spoilers, but.

Deciding to use rations or not had an extremely important impact on our particular campaign at one point. That's true. Even if it only gives you moments like that occasionally, I think that it's worth it and also like, you know, we've talked about camp craft activities with, with the light well lived. I mean, I feel like the, the, the hunting and the foraging in our game has led to so many cool role playing moments.

Yep. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are times when two characters will go hunt together. And that's kind of like their time to connect, talk, get separated from the group. And yeah, exactly.

Develop those relationships. The adventure map doesn't really have a city that you're going to. There's no tavern. So the hunting is when the characters hang out together and talk and do things like that. And it also creates interesting story when like the hunt fails, you know, it's like, well, what did you do wrong? Or you can very quickly turn that into like, why are there no animals here?

Like what's happening to this part of the forest? Like, why is there, you know, signs of life are just like dwindling? I don't hear any birds. It's eerie and creates tension. It opens the door to a lot of interesting story, which it sounds like this is what James is highlighting in this Torchbearer game. It's not tracking all this stuff just for the sake of tracking all this stuff. It's because it inevitably leads to desperation, to true survival

mechanics, dog eat dog kind of stuff. If there's only so much left, am I going to take the food and run? Am I going to kill you rather than starve to death? Tough, tough questions, but you would think realistic questions in a brutal fantasy dungeon crawler. You know, it's not always just heroes marching toward the light with the sword of victory. It's like, things can get ugly down there. And I think that's an interesting concept.

And if Torchbearer is old school, you know, you're not as powerful as you would be in a Pathfinder or a 5e game. So, you know, you're a frail little character. That sounds fun. Let's play it. Let's play it, dude. Let's do it.

Jared, good buddy. Thank you so much for hanging out. I appreciate you hopping in on the FOD. It was great to catch up and hear your takes from all these games. I definitely wanna check out Deathmatch Island really bad. And Broken Weave actually sounds really cool as well. I'm like, really do I need another 5e setting? Like there's a million out there, I don't really care that much

and the way you described it I'm like, that sounds awesome. Awesome. Like the decay, pushing back against the hope and how it's so der- it's practically a different game. The twisted ancestries, like yeah. It just sounds really, really cool. But anyway, thank you again for your time, everybody. We got, you know, as always McDermott and I are streaming today Remnant 2. You got Class Cannon podcast live, not live, but premiering tomorrow night, eight o'clock Eastern. And then, you know, more great stuff coming, including Space Marines 2, Space Marine 2 with Skid, Rob Kirkevich and I on Friday at 1pm Eastern. So come check it out, join us live, join us in the chat, we have a great time. But if we don't see you there, have a great weekend and we'll see you on the FOD next

week. Bye everybody. Bye bye. 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

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