Where did the Ship Battle Mechanics come from? How much magic is there in Verda Stello? And are we also haunted by Psalty the Singing Songbook? All that and more on this Afterparty!
Dive into our ship combat mechanics, classes from Mage Hand Press, the countries of Verda Stello, and other changes we’ve made for C3 HERE!
Sponsors
- Bookwyrm Games, whose Quest Chest Kickstarter is now live! Go to Bookwyrmgames.com to back the project or buy their previous two Quest Chests
- Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty
- Gender Spiral, a new podcast that you can listen to now in your podcast player!
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here.
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.
Transcript
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the piss— I mean Afterparty!
Eric: Noooo!
Julia: Oh, no.
Amanda: Oh, no I said it. I called the teacher's mom and I called it a piss party, oh, no. Now they're all gonna know that I have pissed before.
Eric: Amanda has coming in with the wildness energy today.
Julia: Started this call with, what's up slut! And now I feel like I—I—it— Amanda, it's 12 noon for us and 9 am for Brandon, bring it down, bring it down.
Amanda: Julia, that's—that's where it's coming from is you know, as soon as you get on the call and we're all like, oh yeah, dealing with stuff, it's gray outside, oh, just cloud of like ominous orange smoke.
Eric: That's true.
Amanda: Waking up with a migraine at 4 in the morning, you know, just like lots happening. And so I thought you know what, you know if we could really use, it's like a reset just like an— an energy gift ala seeing Troy Riptide's ripped torso on the dock i—in the Hold, do you know what I mean? Like I'm just—I'm trying to bring the same thing to you here today, so.
Brandon: I think 9 AM is a sluttiest time, so it's fine for me, you know?
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Brandon, why? Explain yourself.
Eric: He's never wearing pants at 9 AM.
Amanda:: That's true. We've never once seen Brandon's bottom half.
Brandon: Who can say?
Julia: That's true.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: It's weird there was like a— like a cartoon cloud hanging around like Brandon waist down when I saw him at your wedding.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: It's weird.
Brandon: The last time you saw me.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: No, the last time I saw him was before the pandemic. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Amanda: Oh my god, guys, the one time I forget that Julia and Brandon came to our wedding.
Julia: You know, it's really nice when you have a wedding and you're like, you know, I'm going to spend it with the people that I love and care and I really want to remember that they're there.
Eric: I do want to point out and I think all the married people will agree. You don't remember shit about shit during that time.
Brandon: Yeah, totally.
Eric: And you also end up spending the most amount of time with like a cousin you don't like.
Amanda: Yeah, there was some great photos—
Eric: Like—
Amanda: —of Brandon and the coffee ghost at our wedding. No, that was nice.
Julia: That's true, that's true.
Brandon: It should be fair that the thing I remember most about your wedding, no offense intended but it will be offensive, is the frozen coffee umm—
Julia: Man, that was good.
Amanda: That was intended.
Eric: No offense, when you source something it's part of you, Brandon. That we—we did that intentionally. I still can't believe that that happened. It was— it was wild. We got like the ice cafe, Tahini—
Brandon: Tahini and—
Eric: —slushies at our wedding that's from Edith’s, that I've been drinking since it started across the street from the office.
Brandon: It's so good.
Amanda: We had to rent a whole ass slushie machine, it's great.
Eric: I know. Here's the thing, Jen rented it and Jen is also incredible and awesome at her job. Slushie machine? Cheaper than you think it would be.
Amanda: Like 30 bucks. Yeah.
Brandon: What?!
Amanda: It does a lot.
Julia:: A 130 bucks?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: 130?
Amanda: No, no, no, I thought it was like less than $100.
Brandon: I thought you said $30.
Eric: I also thought you said 30.
Julia: Ohh.
Amanda: That is what I said, it is on tape.
Eric: It was like a hu—It was like a 100. Or it was less than you think it would be.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: I can't remember exactly what it was, but when we looked— when Jen was like, oh, we can make this happen, all we have to do is this. And she showed us like the ledger, the ledger man it was like, oh, that's a reasonable price for renting a slushie machine for one night.
Amanda: Yeah, fair enough,
Eric: I also— she also rented a bunch of other stuff because it was a wedding. So I don't know if it was like bulk priced, but still pretty good.
Julia: If it's under $100 I'm gonna rent one for like a party. I want to throw a jazz party this year y'all, like what if I need —
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: —like cocktails in the slushie machine?
Brandon: Girl, you should a 100%—
Eric: You should a 100% do that.
Julia: Sick, yeah, sick. Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. Also because like a lot of these places only do weddings and massive things, I bet if you just got one thing and you picked it up yourself, you'd save so much money. Or I'm gonna say that again cause Amanda sneezed—
Amanda: Tight.
Eric: —in the middle. She called me—
Amanda: I couldn't stop, I couldn't stop.
Eric: —she called me a slut in the middle of it.
Amanda: I couldn't stop, Eric. I couldn't help myself.
Eric: I—I feel like—
Amanda: [sneezing] Slut!
Brandon: Oh, excuse me, excuse me.
Julia: Ha-choo!, ha-slut, ha-choo!
Amanda: Okay, it's the newest TV show from USA Network.
Brandon: Oh, no.
Amanda: It is a detective where every time he's around a murderer he yells slut.
Brandon: Yup.
Amanda: I'm the detective and he's played by Nathan Fillion.
Julia: Slutter face?
Brandon: It's like a K-9 unit.
Amanda: It's called Rizzoli and Sluts
Brandon: Rizzoli and Sluts.
Amanda: Oh, no, Julia
Julia: You saw me drinking coffee, you saw it happen.
Amanda: No, it's called slut collar, you're right, you're right. No, that's something else, nope that's something else.
Julia: Shit. This is all staying in.
Eric: I want to point out I think that he—this is saying it because I didn't want to talk about this, that we have a totally new recording style that we do now.
Amanda: Yes!
Eric: Which I think is leading to this vibe. That we're do—that we're doing here.
Brandon: Law and Order SVU sluts.
Julia: Victims Unit.
Brandon: Victims Unit.
Amanda: Brandon, that's not appropriate, that's not appropriate, but I appreciate where you were going.
Eric: It’s about sex crimes!
Brandon: I was gonna say Victims Unit, Julia want, Julia dare.
Eric: It's the same show. Okay, here's the thing, is it— so we've been talking about how streaming—
Amanda: It's crime slut investigation.
Eric: How streaming has changed how we record. But now, and I think this is gonna happen in the future. We started we're—we're starting to record as soon as we get on the call. So now hopefully a lot of that stuff will come out in bloops now.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And I think that's wha—we didn't do that here. I mean that's why it's all coming out.
Brandon: Mainly. Oh, yeah.
Julia: My belly hurts from laughing.
Amanda: Yeah, Julia looks pained. Like she's passing a kidney stone of japes. Well, folks my intended jolt of adrenaline to our system aside—
Eric: It—it happened.
Amanda: —it's everything that just happened was totally my intention. We have three great episodes to talk about. It's the end of the book depository arc, where we have the hottest of exits, and our first-ever ship combat. Hey, that was exciting.
Brandon: Woo!
Amanda: And our second downtime episode, where I think we're really getting into the meat and potatoes and Amber and XP if what it actually is in this arc.
Julia: The vibes are good.
Eric: I know that we've only started doing like the groupings of three episodes together recently. This might be my favorite group of three episodes that we've done in my entire time doing Join the Party.
Amanda: Awww.
Eric: For sure.
Julia: There all such very different episodes. I can totally see where you're coming from. We had a very like, an interesting combat in like very traditional D&D sense. We had the ship battle mechanics, which were really, really interesting and really fun to explore, especially since we hadn't done ship combat before. And then we had a downtime episode where we had a lot of like new interesting things, so.
Eric: Yeah, lots of goofs. Yeah. And also like, from my perspective in terms of preparation, like the first one, I think kind of paid off the Book Depository arc, the second one I've been sitting on for weeks, and then the third one is like, oh, I've already set this skill tree up, and now we just go to watch it grow to put upon on it. And bloom and blossom and fruit.
Brandon: I'm sorry, I don't recognize plans that don't involve the word slut now.
Julia: Yeah, I'm sorry, only slut.
Eric: And you're gonna say I don't recognize puns that I don't make. That's a real conversation.
Julia: Also fair.
Amanda: That's fair. Well, let's— let's get into the details of these episodes, and then we also have a ton of great questions about the broader world, about the podcast, about our process, so I'm going to make sure we save plenty of time for that as well. But first, let's begin with episode 10 which the second to last Book Depository arc, and the last one kind of on the mainland of the Book Depository, where we finally confront Tessie the Storm.
Julia: Yeah, Eric, did you know that Piney was definitely like going to turn on us regardless of how we rolled in that kind of persuasion Troy Riptide moment there?
Eric: Yes, yes, I did. Something that we got to explore was like Tessie and Piney are very, very close. In my head they're lovers. I hope clear that—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I hope I made that come across.
Julia: I got romantic vibes from them, especially after Piney was crushed, and they were like save Piney.
Eric: Right. And I feel like regardless hmm. Not that I was expecting the ceiling to fall down on everybody, but when you make choices that go against the players, or trickery, I guess there's no better way. I really want to make sure that it gets paid off, right? Or at least it has justification. And the thing that you didn't know, is that Piney and Tessie were credibly close. You only saw Piney in a kind of like administrative role in the beginning of the arc. And then Piney was scary after that. So it's like, okay, maybe Piney is more juice than we think that they do. And then of course, everything that I had to stick to that. That's why the Tessie interaction happened the way that it is. The reveal that Piney was a magician was something that was revealed, but I kind of was building on that with the avocado man the entire time that I was really— that was really interested and excited about.
Julia: You know what, now I put those two things together, I was like, why is this avocado man so upset about like magic being used in a pirate crew. And it's because the avocado man probably knew that Piney had some magical abilities, right?
Julia: I was thinking about that Pi— you know he didn't know.
Julia: Ohh.
Eric: I just was—I—it was something that kept coming up and was the fact that the avocado man became incredibly important to this arc in general. And again, because I was pulling the word shark stuff out of— out of my brain while it was happening, it just kind of built itself from there, and then I had like, someone who doesn't like magic is there. And I think it would be interesting to pay it off in these various different ways. They're like, that's why he was up. He probably said something to the wrong person, and now he's spider food, right?
Julia: Yes. I was gonna ask as well, like with the avocado person, what did he do to piss Tessie off? And also, who were the other bodies that were in Tessie's office? Because clearly it was the avocado and his bond, but there were additional bodies in there as well.
Eric: I mean, I just wanted Tessie to be scary, honestly. And then I kind of just put that connection together that I showed it to you. Various people, various stuff. I mean, I said from the beginning, I wanted—I really wanted Tessie to be scary. And I think that making someone a spider and having someone be a pirate queen, which we haven't necessarily seen that much. Like the whole thing with Audrey is a different thing. But Tessie owns an island by herself. And like we've already talked about the kind of like loose confederation that's in the Hold. So Tessie has employees, has a definable like flag in place, and I wanted to make sure she was scary. So I think that like when y'all were doing those perception checks, I think when Umbi's specifically, and then Umbi looks up, and there's bodies on the ceiling, I thought that that woul— that would be cool and interesting and—
Brandon: It was.
Eric: —helped illustrate how— how scary and powerful Tessie actually was. Especially because y'all have been threatened by her and her associates for two episodes in a row.
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: Yeah. Definitely was.
Eric: Brandon, was that—did you— did you not know about the thing with the avocado?
Brandon: I didn't put together the—the magician stuff. Well, one I was focused on his wife, but uh—
Eric: Sure. Yeah.
Julia: Fair.
Amanda: True.
Brandon: I—I was thinking he just didn't like magicians in general, like magicians. I don't know. I didn't put— I was just like, this is just a cranky old man. You know, like Eric is playing a cranky old man.
Eric: No, he was, yo—you're right. I was so ha— with the fact that we all interacted with the avo man for so long, then I grabbed him and made him relevant, right?
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Troy doesn't know what you're talking about. He's never seen that man in his life.
Eric: True, fucking true.
Brandon: Do you think that when avocado reproduce, they like release their pit, and that grows into a tree, and then their kids like bloom on the tree? Is that how avocado Greenfolk spawn?
Amanda: Like someone pointed out in the meme, you know, looking at the parents and then the offspring that was the child's name, the precious child.
Eric: Oh, Orlando. Yeah.
Amanda: Orlando. Shh—shh it i— who knows? Who can say? Who can say?
Eric: I think it was funny. Yeah, sometimes I don't care like what the Greenfolk of the—the child of Greenfolk are, but I thought it was funny that like the avocado grandpa had only avocado like grandchildren.
Brandon: Yeah, it was.
Amanda: It's like recessive genes, you know?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Like how my parents hope that they'll have blue eyed grandchildren.
Julia: Good luck with that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Eric, I found Tessie— one, I found her very scary. But two, I also found her like really interesting, like, by the end of that arc, I in particular, like using Cammie's motivation but also Julia as a player was like really interested in what her motivations were. Because it seems like—and I know that like there's a saying where it's like all bad guys should feel like they're actually the good guys. And I was like really intrigued though by like, what exactly she wanted to do with her own journey in finding the salmon and using these glasses to reset the ring. And like, I want to know more, but obviously, she also like is trying to attack us with ships and whatnot. So I feel like I can't just be like, hey, Tessie, writing you a letter right now. Just wanted to check and see what's up, and what you meant by resetting the ring. What are your intentions?
Brandon: Julia, that was 100% I think that Cammie would do.
Julia: Yeah, you know I might do that now.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Now that I say that, I might just like casually write a letter, like just put it in a bottle and shoot it out into the water.
Amanda: Exactly. And then Brandon I'm sure it'll make you super comfortable when we communicate via you know, morse code, mirrors and also letters with people who may or may not want to kill us.
Julia: Yeah, that's fine, right?
Brandon: Mmmm, it's perfect.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: Yep.
Amanda: Cool. We'll just invite him over for tea, Julia. Both— both Aubrey and Tessie.
Eric: I love the idea—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —of just coming out and like on the deck, just like Piney's there. They're like, huh! Oh.
Julia: Hey!
Eric: Yeah, no, I ag—I agree with that. Troy did not have to find the glasses, I think is what it comes down to. And that certainly set things off in a particular direction. But you know, this one on one with Tessie could have went any number of ways, depending on whatever happened, right? Like—
Amanda: Really?
Eric: —I think that's got—oh, yeah, sure. You wouldn't ma— maybe you would have just had a—a casual one-on-one with a CEO.
Brandon: Just a photo op.
Eric: Using—yeah, right. Like, I mean, that's how it was framed, right? You walk in and you talk to Bob J. Pecker, and one of those Disney guys and you just like, it's just a one on one that you do with VIPs. It could have went totally differently. I didn't necessarily know where it was gonna go. That's why D&D is played one session at a time.
Amanda: Dang.
Brandon: One-quarter session at a time.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: No, it's— it's true. But like there, you know, at least in Troy's mind, there was absolutely no way that we were giving up those glasses. And not just because he's very into reading, but because he—you know, he could tell how much they wanted them, and that is as good a reason as any for any pirate I think to keep it really close to the vest.
Julia: Yeah, like seeing this thing has value and being like, oh, I want it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, for sure. I love to know also just everyone, how did y'all feel about Tessie, Brandon, and Amanda?
Amanda: I definitely found her very scary because she was unpredictable to me. The fact that she at the end sort of made the, you know, the very human call of there is something I care about more than my pride right now. Or we both know what the situation here is. I'm going to come after you, you're going to run, you're going to steal from me, I'm going to try to steal back but let's sort of like make a you know, a gentle folks agreement. And you know, you help out a thing that actually care about in getting Piney a bit free. And I'll give you a bit of a head start was so logical that it really disarmed me as a player, and I think you know, Troy took it at face value.
Brandon: Y'all are so wrong about that. It's not a gentle folks' agreement. I don't understand why you think that.
Julia: Cause she didn't like just kill us outright like she could have gotten out and like followed us and like really fucked us up, but—
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Someone being like, alright, I'm gonna hit you 20% less hard, is not an agreement.
Julia: Um, I don't know.
Amanda: It is though, if you're like, if you're both professional boxers in the ring, and you're like, yeah, man, I gotta like, win for my kid, and everyone's like, yeah, I know if I lose like, it'll be fine because I'm less senior than you. And then you know, you'd like you go through the motions, and you figure it out like it— we're engaging with other professionals or peers in a way that we haven't in many of our other campaigns before. Like it—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: —sounds a little bit to me—
Brandon: That's true.
Amanda: —like, you know, talking to Emily in Campaign Two, or sort of some of these other Supers, you know, like negotiating to try to get out of the underground scary government building. You know to like, at a certain point, people are at work, and like these pirates are at work, too. And I don't know, for me, it's like, it's very satisfying, while understanding that you know, if things break bad, I'd be like, yep, fair. You know, like, I'm not gonna be surprised that this is the wrong call.
Julia: Yeah, I think there was a certain level of calculated risk to it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: The agreement should have been, well one, we should have just killed Tessie. But two—
Julia: I disagree. This person owed us a favor now.
Eric: Well then Brandon, your character shouldn't have been at zero hit points.
Julia: Sucks to suck.
Brandon: But the— the agreement should have been we'll get Piney out, and then you don't send any boats after us at all, none. Not, we'll send them after you 10 minutes after.
Eric: I want to say two things. One is both of you have fair points. I think that there is like, it certainly wasn't a great deal, that is like I'm gonna give you a 30-second headstart. But then again, maybe that's the best you can get from a pirate queen.
Brandon: Unless she's dead.
Eric: I will admit, I really wanted to do the ship combat.
Brandon: Oh, no, I know, yeah, yeah. No, I did too.
Eric: Honestly, I really think that Tessie was offering the least amount she could give while still holding face.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Because, hey, don't you think people are going to hear about the big thing that happened at the Book Depository, an island that every single pirate goes to? This is like, like, a buckys exploding or something. Or I'm trying to think because it's like a truckstop, or like—
Amanda: Like has park control, yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: Like it's—it's kind of a big deal. So there's a few things happening at the same time.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Totally, I—
Amanda: You’re right like we had—we had all the power, like we— you know, had the proverbial like foot on our neck of, you know a person she cared about and like the guns were in our hands. Like that is how this would work out if it was a different kind of action movie. And I think the— the most fun thing about playing an actual play show, especially with you know these players and this GM is that take certain extent, all our characters are in different movies, and that makes for very fun interaction.
Brandon: Totally. I'm just saying that if we're in a pirate story, which we are. The thing that we should—that we should have done is not trust another pirate, because you should never trust a pirate. And so the deal would have been—like she was gonna send ships after us anyway, like period. And so the only way to get out of that situation without being attacked by ships was to kill her.
Julia: You know what, but I think the ships would have been sent anyway. Like, I think she probably has like—
Brandon: Possibly, yeah.
Julia: —protocols in place. I don't think killing her would have like solved anything really, in my opinion at least.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: And also like Cammie would—would never because Cammie is not motivated in that way to kill anyone. Cammie wants everyone to be friends, and that's fun.
Brandon: Yeah, sure Cammie, but I—I would like to point Julia to the not but like six months ago when Julia was like, we're gonna steal and murder.
Julia: Listen, man, I want you guys to do stealing and murdering. I mean, I'm enjoying the stealing part in particular, and I like conning people out of their amber and stuff like that.
Eric: Woaah!
Julia: And like Cammie's cool with stealing, that's fine, especially if it's from bad people. But, yeah no, I think that the outcome was basically like, no matter what, I think in order for us to have a good relationship with Tessie, and I say good and like quotations and like—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: —very nebulous definition of good, is that she needs to be able to save face in front of her crew.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: And if we call on her for a favor, she'll be more inclined to help us now.
Brandon: Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, next time we see her we'll have the at least like the moral high ground you know?
Julia: Right. And it also seems like we're working towards the same goal, like we do want to I think for the most part and we haven't like talked about the motivations of what our characters would do if they got the salmon. But like, we all want to like reset the— quote-unquote “reset the ring” even though we don't know exactly what Tessie means by that.
Brandon: Yeah, that's what I'm curious about and I— Eric, obviously you can't say anything about this, but yeah, I wonder like if anyone actually cares about resetting the ring except-- Eric’s doing a very--
Julia: Who can say?
Amanda: Doing a coquettish--
Brandon: A little “who can tell” face.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Coquettish.
Julia: Coquettish, the tongue is out, you know.
Eric: Sorry I left. I would have pulled off the gloves seductively, I forgot the gloves somewhere else.
Brandon: I’m curious if any of like the other like bad guy pirates or like more selfish pirates that's don't really particularly care about resetting the ring, versus just getting the wish.
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Oh, hu—a hu—I can say 100%.
Brandon: Oh, okay. Then yeah, I don't know if we're working towards the same goal really, it just happens to align down the same path until we get to the end, you know?
Eric: I touched on this a little bit, and I think this might come up in future episodes, or we've— we've worked it out in play, so I don't know if I'm saying something. I don't think I'm saying anything like groundbreaking or radical here. But like, so many action-oriented, combat-oriented campaigns wrestle with why are you an adventurer, right? Usually, that's in high fantasy, but that touches on other genres as well, as well. Why do people become pirates? 50 years ago, when the bell rings, people, why do you go out there, and then it's been out there for so long. I think that's also the big difference. And we touched on this between Umbi's backstory, and when Umbi started being a pirate, and when Troy's being a pirate. I mean, Umbi's literally been dealing with the Cascade from the beginning. And Troy became a pirate like six months ago. So we are already seeing it in our own crew, the different views of what is happening on the Great Salt Sea. Everyone has a different reason for becoming a pirate, whether it's high-minded or not, or if everyone—anyone even believes the salmon exists.
Brandon: Yeah, true.
Julia: It's true.
Amanda: For me I—I was really surprised and pleased to see that Tessie, you know, has some kind of broader interest. She's not I think trying to go after it for like just riches or whatever, she's got that. I imagine that it's more like a titan of industry who is also invested in climate change because they have a lot of like, waterfront property or whatever, you know, where—
Brandon: Why do you—wait, why do you imagine that? What's the—
Amanda: Because she wants to reset the rings specifically,
Eric: You guys didn't go to Lake Encounter, so that's also a big question mark.
Julia: That's true.
Brandon: Did she say she wanted to reset the ring? Did I miss that?
Amanda: Yeah. So at the end, right, like at the end of giving us the glasses—
Brandon: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Amanda: —no matter what you do, you know, like go you know, go—
Eric: Really like—
Amanda: —go ahead and do it.
Eric: —re—reset the ta—yeah, reset the ring and flip it in—
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: —and flip the table? Yeah.
Julia: Yes. And then I think Ca—I think Cammie's literally said–
Julia (as Cammie): The table needs flipping. And then just walked away.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: There are a bunch of pieces. She only showed you, what showed you, she was intimidating you. And again, the whole thing with Lake Encounter and what the bamboo bartender said like, that's a big question mark.
Brandon: Yeah, that's true. Man, I want to go Lake Encounter so bad.
Amanda: I know.
Julia: Maybe one day we'll return.
Brandon: Oh, we will. A 100%, we have to. I can't live without knowing.
Eric: Since we're talking about this, I do want to point out something that was in the Discord from Plate who is catching up.
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Plate was talking about Booky and told me about Psalty, the song singing book, that is a mascot from like a Christian, like an evangelical theme park, it seems like they've been to.
Julia: Let me see, hold on.
Eric: It is wild. I put a screenshot in the Afterparty documents at the bottom.
Brandon: It's truly incredible.
Amanda: Yeah. This mascot is Psalty with the silent P for salt.
Julia: Oh, Psalty, that was it.
Amanda: I—
Eric: Oh, I thought it was Psalmi, that's even worse than Psalty.
Amanda: No.
Eric: That's terrible.
Amanda: I've never seen this. And from the reacts several people have, but this was not my corner of Christianity that I grew up in. Man, this is amazing.
Julia: I'm just gonna really quickly read the TV tropes—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: —about Psalty.
Brandon: Ohh.
Amanda: Ohhh.
Julia: In the 1970s, Christian praise leaders, Debbie Kerner and Ernie Rettino were making albums of praise music and decided to try putting an album together specifically for kids. They made it appealing by mixing in some cartoonish sounds with children's church music, creating a cartoon mascot called Psalty the singing songbook, and by giving each album a narrative. So that's where he comes from.
Eric: Oh, man.
Brandon: It's weird to me that this is an evangelical thing because I'm pretty sure that that is the devil incarnate.
Julia: It does look like a horrifying creature. Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: In my head, so Psalty has his face. I assume it's a man, It’s just Psalty has.
Julia: I think that's fair.
Brandon: It's evangelicals, absolutely a man.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the spine of the book. In my head, Booky's face was on the– the cover.
Amanda: The face, yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, mine too.
Eric: Which I thought was interesting. I just think there's– I mean, it's haunted and I—I love it. So thank you Plate.
Amanda: Incredible. Oh, boy, if any of you listening out there, if like a parent or an aunt, or uncle played Psalty, and wherever this IRL situation was, we want to know about it.
Julia: I do.
Amanda: But—
Brandon: Yes.
Amanda: —listen, guys, we got into a—a bit of a scrape out on the open seas, doing ship combat!
Brandon: Woo!
Amanda: Combat, combat, combat, combat.
Julia: Ship combat!
Eric: Woo!
Amanda: And I want to know all about it. First, if we hadn't had that headstart, maybe it was just narrative flavor. But Eric, were there any sort of ways with mechanics that you dealt with having a bit of a headstart?
Eric: No, I just thought it was like a Pokemon battle.
Julia: Sure. Cool.
Eric: When someone looks at you and then it's happening. That's like the whole thing. Yeah, that's the whole thing of like, why it's like, combatant versus combatant, why it's like the Sea Whip versus—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —the Nina, the Pinta—
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: —and the Spider Maria, and not like all the ships at the same time, so that's that, yeah.
Amanda: Extremely good.
Brandon: Eric, I want to know about how you did it. Can you tell me how you made it?
Eric: Um, I guess I've been toying with how we were going to do ship battles for a long time.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: You know, there isn't anything that's good in like baked in the actual game in Dark Matter, which is the Sci-Fi setting from Mage Hand Press. There's like some really really crunchy ship mechanics. I also know that their ship mechanics from Star Wars 5e which Julia, I know you might have, I think you've dabbled with a little bit with the campaign you did with Mischa.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And like—and they've done it on Starstruck Oddysey, yeah. So they've done it before, it felt a little too crunchy for what we were trying to do and what we always do with combat here. And I've been really wrestling with like, what is tabletop RPG resolution? And what I've understood is like you play a game to tell a story, right? And I think that that's what I'm trying to drill down on. So I wanted to use a different type of mechanic that would elicit wins, losses, and ties. And it just so happens that rock paper scissors worked really well. And I wa—I was toying around with that. And then I wanted to like make sure all of you had stuff, and also to kind of mitigate what's happening here with the digital, the fact that Julia is in Long Island, and Brandon's in Seattle, and Amanda is hanging out with the sluts. So—
Amanda: Eighteen inches away from Eric’s face at all times.
Julia: You, that's you!
Eric: That's me, yeah, it's me, I'm talking about myself. So I—
Julia: You are the slut.
Eric: —so I also like wanted to make cards, and I—I did that on Canva and it's definitely what I wanted, and I sent this stuff to you a really long time ago. So it's something I wanted to keep in my back pocket that I was ready to do whenever we were going to do it. And being able to send it to you and let you have it in your hands was really, really fun, and I'm stoked on that.
Brandon: It sounds like it was sort of like top-down like you had like a goal or like an outcome you wanted to achieve via the ship mechanics? Like what was that thing that you were trying to then backfill with game?
Eric: Yeah, the goal that I wanted was, one I needed ship mechanics, right? I needed ship combat mechanics. But then two, I wanted it to be smooth and narrative, and I wanted it to be a team game. That's why I kept—that's the whole emphasis on this game about manning your station, is like either you can go do something else, but if you do that, then you're not working on the ship. I really love that from Starstruck Odyssey, like when—when lose character is like doing high-level Math while everyone shooting stuff, I thought was really interesting. And I wanted everyone to like participate, and that's why it's kind of like the ship acting as one together, and I wanted to give you all special moves. I also wanted the ship to have HP, which is something I thought was really important, especially in terms of like the ship right, as a feature of the skill tree. So I was thinking about that and everything we've learned from Monster the Week, I was really excited about. And then I ended up working with Mage Hand Mike on like what resolution should be. And I think that that's where we ended up coming with success, mix success, and then success for the enemy.
Amanda: Nice.
Eric: Because, you know, players want to—not a want to win, i—i—
Julia: I want, yeah, we do.
Eric: But originally I had ties and like we would just reroll, and I thought that that was less interesting–
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —than tha—that was less interesting. I liked the mix—mix success mechanic and the fact that I can hit you within—with one HP down every time, I thought was really important.
Amanda: Especially after playing Monster of the Week, it feels like yeah, you take your licks sometimes, but it's in favor of advancing like you do it for a reason. Which feels like giving players more agency which I like.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Totally.
Julia: Yeah. I—again, yeah, the Monster of the Week—and the minute you were like, and then there's a mixed success, it's like we learned how to do this already. Yes!
Eric: Right, exactly. So yeah, it was a lot of referencing things you already knew how to do, which was rock, paper, scissors, and then resolution, right? That's why the game mechanics felt like that, it's like prepare, do your things, and do your special abilities. And then below that is rock, paper, scissors, and then it's narrative resolution and then we go again.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Have you posted photos of the Rock Paper Scissors card somewhere yet?
Eric: Yeah, they're all over there on the socials and they're on the website.
Brandon: Great. They're so pretty.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: They are so pretty. And Eric, Mage Silverleaf in Discord wants to know, you said you sent the envelopes to players a while ago. How long have you been sitting on this giggling to yourself? Because we all know you're definitely giggling to yourself.
Julia: That's true.
Eric: God, I did screenshots of this stuff. I think y'all got these in April, right? Like early April.
Brandon: Sounds right.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: And we played this episode in kind of mid-May, so good month there that we had them in hand.
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: It was. Yes, so yes, I was giggling to myself. I mean, you know, you do stuff for your players so they knew you had fun, but you do stuff for you. Which is that I get the thi—y'all have to sit with that. I will—my question to you three is, what did you think was in the envelopes?
Julia: I thought it was gonna be like a secret thing where it's like, ah, yes, you roll the dice and you look at this person and they say to you, now open your envelope, that's your secret. You know what I mean? Like sometimes like a DM will like slide you like a piece of paper to tell you a secret when you're at like a table or something like that.
Eric: Right.
Julia: I thought it was gonna be something like that. But like, listen, new game mechanics, I'm always excited. The listeners can hear me scream. The stakes of rock paper scissors have never been higher!
Amanda: I know.
Julia: Obviously.
Amanda: And I was like, wait, if you take away one option, we have a 50-50 chance of getting it right.
Julia: It at least a mixed success, yeah.
Eric: I want to point out that that only stacks if Julia rolls at te—if—
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: —Julia has a 10% chance of rolling a 19 or 20.
Julia: That's true.
Eric: Then that's when you can definitively stack the tasseography on top of the double down.
Julia: It was good.
Amanda: It was— it was exactly enough Math for my brain to handle, so I much appreciated that. I was wondering if it be something along the lines of parts of a code, or a puzzle and needing to kind of fit those together by collaborating with each other, and maybe like our characters would think of it, keep it a secret, but actually the trick was putting them together. So I knew each of us had it, and I thought it might be like a slightly different, you know, physical object that we had to sort of collate or figure out how they fit together.
Julia: Like a cipher or something. Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah. But this was dope as hell, and they look beautiful.
Brandon: Yeah, I thought it'd be something along those lines of like, maybe like a treasure map or something. But I was hoping that it would be a card that you had mailed to me previous to this recording, not this one. But the—the recording that when I mention that said you will blow up the ceiling of the Book Depository. And then I'd be like, how did you know?!
Eric: I wanna also say, I know we've moved on. I have no problem with that narrative choice, that was fun.
Brandon: Oh, I know.
Eric: And also like, I also want to point out, because I didn't say this explicitly, but I had in my head, that ceiling had a lot of HP. Umbi has a thing where he does double damage to structures. So when I gave you the— I think the— we said that the—the ceiling had like 40 or 45 or 50, HP double that, like that thi—this is a real building that Umbi blew up with his terrifying and powerful bombs, and it took two, liike that saying something. So I—I have absolutely no problem with how that all shook out. And listen, we all rolled like garbage, except for Troy. I rolled like garbage for at least three NPCs. So like— and then Julia rolled badly and Umbi rolled badly. Like, that's how I do, that's how the dice do. Like you can only control so much.
Julia: My favorite part of that whole thing, and then we'll move on with Brandon saying—
Eric: Yes.
Julia: No, no, let me go first.
Eric: Yes.
Julia: I wanna do this first.
Eric: The thing Brandon said was, “No, let me go first because you guys will do things based on what I do.” And we're like yes.
Julia: And we sure—Brandon, we sure did.
Eric: We did. We did.
Julia: We sure did.
Brandon: Again, I thought that I would take away the radius of the bomb, and just make a single hole in the ceiling, and then we could use it to escape.
Eric: No, absolutely not.
Julia: You keep underestimating how much damage your bombs do to structures, and like you have a whole feature that says it does double damage to the structure.
Brandon: But my defense, a lot of video games, you throw a bomb on the wall, it blows a hole in the wall and blows up the wall. You know what I mean?
Eric: Shout out to Mage Hand Mike —
Julia: We did.
Eric: —who explicitly said, it was a 10-foot radius in the book.
Amanda: We did however have some evidence to the contrary when we were leaving Esca Island and all of the leg sap blew up when we were going for the cash register, so.
Julia: Hold on, hold on. Did you say that's a 10-foot radius?
Eric: I think so. Whatever—
Brandon: No.
Eric: —it is in there.
Julia: Is it a 5-foot radius, so that means it's a 10-diameter?
Brandon: I—I think it's a diameter. I don't remember exactly.
Julia: Okay, okay, sorry. I just like—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: —I was just like, that means it's 20 feet, that's so much space.
Eric: The thing I was—the point was, it was the same size as the room. I said it e— I said it explicitly.
Brandon: I understand that, but I took away the radius, I couldn't do that. But it doesn't matter like if—if you blow up a thing and then lose the structural integrity of the thing then yeah, it's gonna— it's gonna crumble.
Julia: The buildings coming down.
Eric: Yeah, that's–yeah, that was why it had so much HP. That's why it had so much HP.
Julia: Ah yes, okay. Anyway, not gonna harp on Brandon's bombs anymore, I promise.
Eric: It was great. I love it—
Amanda: It was excellent.
Eric: —I loved it, it was great.
Julia: I honestly can't imagine how that scene would have gone if you hadn't blown up the ceiling now. Like I had plans—
Amanda: I know.
Julia: —but it worked out better this way I think almost, besides us both getting absolutely crushed by rubble, but—
Eric: I'm surpri—I mean, honestly, it would have been a problem because though uh— hey, here's the thing, Piney is a powerful magician. And those trees were messing all of you up.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: What's the class you're using for magician? Are you using wizard or something?
Eric: Remember, I don't use classes for NPCs.
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Eric: I can do whatever I want. A magician is kinda like there's a question later. Actually, can you talk about the magic in Verda Stello?
Amanda: Yeah. Kazy asked, “It's come to my attention that we haven't actually seen much magic aside from Cammie's tea magic, which seems very subtle. With Piney literally growing a forest I have to ask, how common is magic in Verda Stello? Is it used all around the world or only in specific places?”
Eric: Yeah, I mean, like it's truly like a weird and wild place out on the salt sea. And I think that there's a lot of things where it's like, I don't know what do you know? Like, you know, it's not like high fantasy where like, mmm, I mean, like even in Lord of the Rings, like Gandalf is very important, right? Like who's someone who's that powerful who's out there doing stuff like Sauron, there's a reason why he's up at the top, right? Because he's a very powerful–
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: –dude.
Brandon: At that point in the— in the timeline, magic is very rare in Middle Earth.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. And I think that there's something similar about it being like, it's like a weapon. I—it's like a weapon, right? And it's— if you have power, you are more powerful when you have powers. And we touched on this in Campaign 2. You are more powerful than the regular person, and as much as people try to like hoard stuff, but I think it's also like a little scary. In One Piece, if— which is something that I'm very inspired by is like, you know, a devil fruit and getting the power from the devil fruit is sca—
Brandon: A coconut?
Eric: —re. Yes, from— no, that's the devil's fruit. I don't get any— I don't get any powers for you to coconut. Um, when you eat, and then you get a power, it's scary. And like, it kind of changes the power dynamic of anything you're in. Is like, oh, I can have a 100 men and one guy, but if the one guy has a power, it's over, right? Especially if they're very powerful. So I think that being a magician, I thought it was kind of like this murky arcane designation that was put on to someone like Piney who made something appear. While, and you know, we have witches, we've seen this from Baba Rutabaga, and the curses that she puts on other people and this is what Cammie's doing. I mean people have stuff and I think it's a little bit more squishy, but having power, capital P power, whatever that means, is important when you're kind of out on the Great Salt Sea.
Amanda: Yeah. And in my mind, all of the different nations sort of deal with power in their own ways. It's like in Open Fields, you have religion kind of placed on top of just the existential horror of—
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: —growing stuff that looks like you, and how to deal with that in Overstock. You—you know, very sort of like intellectualize and—and have you know systems and focus your energies on other things. In the Crags, it is all about, you know, you and your particular environment, you know, just surviving and the kind of that's where all the— the power is concentrated.
Eric: Yeah, you just survive it. You intentionally live next to it, because even if it's scary, you need it.
Amanda: Yeah. And Hothouse has civil service and structures. And so I think the idea of pirates more generally, but especially magic is kind of like, man, if someone's operating outside all of these strict systems, and I can't kind of put you into that box, I don't know what the hell to do with that, and that is very scary.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. Piney is also like different. I mean, you could tell, Piney is, is doesn't look like a lot of the Greenfolk we've seen before. Piney also can't see. We—we don't know what's going on with the silk is wrapped around their eyes. Like, you know, Piney stands out in more ways than one.
Brandon: I mean it's a cool fashion statement. Number one.
Julia: It is.
Brandon: I like it.
Eric: For sure.
Brandon: But—
Julia: We totally got distracted from ship battle though.
Amanda: No, no.
Eric: No it's—no, it's fine.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, but no, the ship battle I just—was trying to do something narrative that everyone knew how to do and just kind of like bearing it out in little ways. I think also just like making the scene more interesting, because it's like, oh, hey, there's an archipelago over there if you want it. It helps us narrate what's happening by using the success mix success, success for the other team mechanic. And that like you—you tell me what you want, tell me what you want and I respond or I tell you what's happening. It's kind of is also the thing that makes it all happy. And again, winning is not killing the other team, it's not being in combat anymore.
Julia: Yeah. I spent a lot of that episode just like very seriously thinking about all of the like pirate and ship media that I've ever consumed.
Eric: It's so great, I loved it.
Amanda: Julia, you came to hell through, it was awesome. I loved that like darkening and dampening of the ships like.
Julia: Thank you. Yes, I read it— I read that one in a—in a book.
Amanda: Book about barrels?
Julia: Book about barrels, no. Book about ships.
Amanda: Ah, book about boats.
Julia: But Eric, were there any opportunities that you were kind of planning on giving us during the ship combat? Or were you for the most part just kind of going off what we decided to do and reacting to our choices?
Eric: The only thing that I prepped with is special abilities, of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Spider Maria, which was being able to fling if you shot a cannonball, you could fling it back. So that was the only thing I prepped. I said explicitly that—that the enemies had special abilities as well. So I just trying to—I wasn't going to make a game, make you play it, and then say, surprise motherfucker I planned something else like, I was really trying to meet you where it was because we were doing something new.
Julia: Gotcha, gotcha.
Amanda: And we didn't di— get away and sails off home to the Hold. But folks, let's just take a quick little break, I'm going to refill our dip trio with some more pinto bean dip, and I will be right back.
Julia: What about the Spider Maria dip?
Amanda: That’s the chips, Julia. That’s the chips.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda, and welcome to the mid-roll. I think this campaign is making me more of a bug a person which I am really here for. I've always loved you know, butterflies and bumblebees, the cute bugs to like. But I saw a little inchworm the other day in like some soil around a tree bed, and I was like hello friend, what area of Verda Stello are you from? So here is to having a more open attitude to all of the creatures that roamed the earth. Welcome back. Welcome as well to our newest patron Shannon. Shannon. I hope you enjoy the Battle of the Bronte's One Shot Derby finale that came out a few days ago. The video is so crisp, shout out Eric Hamilton Schneider for helping me make sure it was as good as possible. A crisp 11 gigabytes, a crisp, 1080p. People, you have to become a patron to listen to and watch available for all patrons, the video, the finale of the One Shot Derby. Where we played Victorian children, and we'll tell you more about it later in the Afterparty. But god it was so fun, it's a full 90 minutes, a tight 90, you might say, and I loved it. And the reactions are pouring in, people loved it too. So if you have been thinking about joining the Patreon, wondering about it, you're like, oh, you have the Discord, is amazing, I get that. But like, do I really want another place to hang out online? No judgment, you can just join and watch the One Shot Derby and then enjoy party planning instead. More Join the Party content for you. And listen every single week that we do this, that we stream that we put up party planning, it's all because of you. And it makes us better and better at what we do. So if you like this, if you want more during the party, and if you want to help us keep going and growing. Go to patreon.com/jointhepartypod. We will also love if you could text a friend about Join the Party. Whether or not you can support us financially, the best way to help the show grow is to sit one person down in your life, virtually or in person,, and say, listen, this is the deal, this is the podcast, let me start with episode one, you will love this tea witch, this himbo, this old, old man. Whatever you think will ensnare your friend, tell them and get them started. It is so helpful and so heartwarming to see you share your friends reactions as you get them into the show, on social and in the Discord. So it's huge help and it costs you nothing but it gives us so much. So go ahead, sit them down, and text them a link to jointhepartypod.com/start. It is busy over at Multitude. We have new hires, we're working on new projects. And this week, I want to make sure that you check out Spirits. This is the show that Julia and I have been working on for 7 years and counting. It is of course a history and comedy podcast focused on everything folklore and mythology and the occult. And we so often focus on things like feminism, queerness, and modern adulthood. Basically asking why the stories that mean stuff to humanity mean things to us, and why we keep them going after centuries and centuries of time. We have so much fun. We have been doing a great job I must say. And by we, I mean Julia. In researching new episodes, we've done a ton of episodes recently on the tropes and fairy tales. We've talked about true names about fairy tale towers, and I know Julia has some incredible stuff up her sleeve. So come on over, you can start listening with any of the 340 plus episodes that we've released over the last 7 years. There's a ton to enjoy and you can do it in any order you want. Go to spiritspodcast.com or search for Spirits wherever you download your podcasts. We are sponsored this week by Quest Chest from Bookwrym Games. Which they sent us their previous two Quest Chests in the mail and they are beautiful. The wax seals, the real paper, the candles, they are so beautiful. And Bookwrym Games, of course, makes modules and TTRPG accessories. And right now they are taken out this ad because they are running their first ever Kickstarter for their third ever Quest Chest. This is a system agnostic TTRPG module with both physical and digital stuff. The physical stuff includes props, puzzles, and the digital includes narrated voice over music and more, including fully static out encounters in D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, and Powered by the Apocalypse for levels 1,3,5 and 7. It is really amazing stuff and I love that each Quest Chest comes with five full sessions. You can run each of the first four sessions independently or tie them together, with the fifth session bringing together all of those narrative through lines. It is so cool and the quality is great. So go to bookwyrmgames.com. That's bookworm with a Y. B O O K W Y R Mgames.com to back the Kickstarter or buy the previous two Quest Chests and plus check out all their cool extras. Like dice accessories, even D&D Candy. Once again, that is bookwyrmgames.com. The show is also sponsored by BetterHelp. And we all know how easy it is to get lost in what everyone else needs from you and run from thing to thing, and helping person after person and look up several hours or even days or even weeks later, and be like wow, I can't remember the last time I did one thing for me. And I know that for me, it is really only in therapy that I get to focus on and have someone else asked me questions about what I'm doing for myself, and how I think that driving myself into the ground, to the benefit of all those around me is actually affecting me and the people closest to me. Listen, it's not the way to be helpful to people in my life to make myself exhausted, and you know, have only kind of drags left at the end of the day. And I'm really grateful that when I could not access therapy near me at an affordable way with a person I got along with who was taking new patients, I was able to get support via BetterHelp. And if you are trying to start therapy in a way that is easy, convenient, and entirely online, it can be really, really helpful. Find more balance with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/jointheparty today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterHELP.com/jointhe party. And finally, we are sponsored by Gender Spiral, a new podcast about all things gender. Their interviews with folks across the gender identity spectrum, they explore what it means to be a human in our modern gendered world. Now the show is hosted by two people, one of whom I'm pretty sure you may have heard about, Ally Beardsley, a comedian, and actor who you may know from Dimension 20 over on Dropout and other CollegeHumor work. And their co-host is Babette Thomas, an artist, radio producer, and researcher extraordinaire. Both Ally and Babett are non-binary people and they are together on this podcast to go on a quest to explore topics surrounding identity and gender by interviewing the people who are experts in the topic, aka queer and trans people. Trans and Queer's folks are constantly examining their experiences moving through life in a society focused on very binary definitions of gender. And I think that no matter whether you are queer, trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming, or Cis, you can learn something about ideas of gender and how gender roles influence all of us in our modern world. No matter your identity, Ally and Babette invite you to join them on their gender journey. So go ahead and look up Gender Spiral in your podcast app. They are releasing episodes every Tuesday starting June 6th. And now let's get back to the show.
[theme]
Amanda: Alright, folks, we are back, and it's time to talk about our downtime episode. Where I—
Brandon: Good, cause I’m full of dipped now.
Julia: So good dip.
Amanda: Good.
Julia: So many bean.
Amanda: Got to walk it off Brandon, got to stretch it out. Gotta go ahead and dig for some treasure. Brandon, how does it feels to finally know that the treasure is on the map and that you are pranked by Fun Mandy Potash?
Brandon: It feels great now because now I know that every time I do it in the future, something will be in the chest or whatever.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: That's true.
Eric: Right. I can't say—
Amanda: True.
Eric: —explicitly. Only one of them had nothing, you're right.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: So, you—
Julia: You got rid of that one.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: And it's only treasure from now on.
Brandon: Eric, I think Er— I don't know if you actually did, but it seemed like Eric felt so guilty, because for one—
Julia: He's like, I'll give you something, I'll give you something.
Brandon: Yeah—
Amanda: Genuinely sad.
Brandon: —but like, it was fun for me. I was like this is hilarious, this is very good. I got tight chest and a funny note.
Eric: Can I tell you explicitly what my notes say?
Brandon and Julia: Yeah.
Eric: If you roll four on the day, it just says empty, in my notes. And then I'm like, I have to have something else, why is it empty? And then the whole thing with the Fun Mandy Potash note ended up being interesting.
Amanda: But that so much plot ramifications
Eric: I know.
Julia: Damn!
Eric: I didn't see that coming. I did not see that coming at all.
Amanda: Wow.
Eric: I did not see that coming at all.
Amanda: Wow.
Eric: Yeah, no, I—I did feel bad. I did feel bad, like--
Brandon: I don't know why you did it. I thought it was funny.
Amanda: It was really funny and I'm really glad that we— that we did that like it was a great use of the glasses. We got some information and we got to get that scary rhyme. I think all rhymes are scary to D&D players. Get in touch, that's what I feel.
Eric: Oh, yeah no, I wanted to tell— yeah, that happened. I can't believe that happened at the end of the ship–
Julia: Yes.
Eric: Battle episode, that when—when y'all— we had enough time to see that.
Julia: Yeah, and we didn't even talk about the mysterious light that may or may not have been my best friend, Audrey, so.
Amanda: Oh my god that's right. I know that I'm totally into us meeting up with, and Brandon probably rightly thinks that it will be dangerous.
Brandon: What is wrong with you people?
Julia: It’s fine!
Brandon: You don't want to kill the pirate queen. You want to go talk to the mysterious light Eric described as one of the dangly things on the giant fish that eats you.
Amanda: Uh-huh.
Julia: I don’t think necessarily that's what happened. We don't know that for a fact.
Amanda: We were close to the surface, that's true.
Julia: True.
Eric: I don't know the author's dead, Eric can shut the fuck up. Who knows what he said. That's—that's very funny.
Brandon: Y'all are the nicest most trusting pirates to ever sail the salt sea.
Julia: There's a reason Brandon, it’s not like I'm just choosing to be you know, a thembo and, you know, very nice.
Amanda: Like me.
Eric: I'm really excited about the keys. I'm super stoked about it. I kind of wanted to kick the salmon thing into high gear. It seems like we were kind of just like, feeling out the world a little bit, but now we have like a real main quest path. I guess, if you—if we were playing Zelda.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I don't know if—I'm curious to see what you say about this, Eric. If it's just like who can say or— or if you can clarify. I'm curious because it's not a 100% clear in text, you know, quote-unquote “text.”
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: If the key is directly relate to the salmon and the wish, we can assume they do, but they potentially could.
Eric: Yeah, I think you're gonna assume they do. Well, that was the point, I mean, it's on the same stone. So—
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: I—I did want, I think it'd be really mean of me if it wasn't like, it's like, no, this is for another thing.
Brandon: No, I mean, like, you know, it could be a separate part of the quest, you know, or like a part along the way to the quest or whatever.
Eric: I— it's related. It's on the— it's on the road. In the way that Tears of the Kingdom is laid out, there's like a bunch of main quests. It's like there's a category of main quests, like the main one is like, help Zelda, kill Ganon, and then there's like a bunch of other stuff below that. So I think it's all kind of like in the main quest barrel, or category.
Brandon: Oh, like the Book of Barrels.
Julia: The Book of Barrel.
Eric: Yeah, Book of barrels, yeah.
Julia: The keys feel very much to me because I'm still playing Breath of the Wild.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Um, feel like the Divine Beast like main quest arcs, rather than like the go defeat Calamity Ganon. So like finding the wish-granting salmon is the defeat Calamity Ganon, and then—
Eric: Right.
Julia: Getting all the pieces together by doing the divine beast arcs is the keys for us.
Eric: I was just really interested in this being like something that not everyone knew. That like that's why Tessie was being so cagey about everything and why the glasses were important and the stuff that she had, were all important. Like, I wonder how many people know about the keys. So I wanted to make this clear because some people had asked about this in—in the Discord and I was being kind of subtle about it. There are four keys.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Because I wanted to like they— I wanted it to match the rhyme. Because it's—it's a key in the sky, a key for maze, a key that smasma, smash, smash, smash smash ma. So I want you to assume that there are four keys, but the–you don't have like—you have no indication about what that fourth one is.
Brandon: It will be so funny if the rhyme scheme was A B A.
Eric: A B A Q.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: A key in the sky, a key for maze, a key smasmashma, and also a sandwich.
Amanda: You’re right. But I—I do want to know Julia, as did MalignantSloth in Discord. “How's Cammie feeling after putting the glasses on? That scene was incredible and made me feel so many goosebumps like I was watching a movie, but how did Cammie feel coming out of it?”
Julia: Fine. I think like what you guys have to remember is Cammie specifically in her build has a thing against like, getting weirded out by weird shit.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: So everything's fine, you know, Cammie's just like—
Amanda: Alright.
Julia: —chillin. She's like—
Julia (as Cammie): Oh, this is a new experience. Great.
Eric: That was so much fun.
Brandon: I'm just putting this together now that like Cammie is like one of her defining traits is their ability to adapt to things. And one of the defining traits of Umbi is his like extreme reaction to things.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: So that's interesting. I don't know, just putting that together.
Julia (as Cammie): Just going with the flow bro.
Eric: Yeah. That whole scene was so much fun to do of like, immediately doing like, a Wanda-Vision situation.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Where it's like, oh, boom, it's the 1950s because I said so.
Amanda: Exactly right.
Eric: Like it's just fun.
Julia: Great.
Eric: It was just fun to do.
Julia: With all the peas and characters, it's great.
Brandon: Oh, I—I didn't even realize it now that you said there was poodle skirts. And I don't know what the fuck a poodle is Eric?
Eric: Oh, it doesn't have the poodle on it. It's the poodle skirt is the— is the skirt itself.\
Amanda: The shape.
Eric: I think it has like—
Julia: It's—it's a whole wheat poodle.
Eric: Oh, yeah. No, but that was just fun, and you like—and you learning about that and just being able to go, [mumbles] it was—it was just really funny.
Amanda: I like guys— it was—it was like—
Eric: Amanda's freaked out, yeah.
Amanda: It was like hearing the code coming out of the—over the airwaves on Lost. Like that was the amount of just visceral like, my body knows this is wrong. And I—I was like, I was— I was transported. It's like I wasn't in the scene, because I was just sitting here like, full goosebumps in a way that was extremely I don't know, transporting, it was amazing.
Julia: I—I loved it. In the moment realizing exactly what those glasses did like back a couple episodes was like the coolest fucking thing ever.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Thank you.
Amanda: I think that hit me in that moment instead of when I was actually in the scene.
Brandon: It hit you like a Researchers Delight does?
Julia: Woo!
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: Woo!
Amanda: You know it, baby.
Eric: Well, it's because the first one was on a cooking show set.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And then it's like what the fuck is this, and then since then, like having the—the really murkyness of Fun Mandy Potash is bad handwriting, and now this other one that was all yellowed and smudged. It's been really fun kind of like literalizing what that means.
Amanda: We're feeling the limits of it, yeah. Speaking of drinks that hit you like a wrecking ball, Moose Gotato would like to know, “was Harold always going to drink the potion, and what would have happened if one of the PCs had instead?”
Eric: A lot of people ask this question.
Amanda: Yeah, Savedman did, “was a shipwright always gonna be a shadow?” And Sebolicious was also like, “what if Troy drank it? What would have happened?”
Brandon: I don't think you would have let that happen, right, Eric?
Eric: What do you think would have happened?
Brandon: My impression and I'm curious to see what you think about this. My impression was that like, you're 100% sure what we're gonna choose on the skill tree, right? Because why would you. And you needed to make a shipwright, when we decided to do that, and you had a good idea to make like a shadow Harold. And you thought of a cool way to do it, like a fun way to do it. I think you made the potion as a way to get to there. I don't think you made the potion and then from the potion Sil came. Because there was a reason that like Harold literally grabbed that out of Troy's hands or whatever it was.
Amanda: I was surprised by that. Maybe I was not following or I was gullible, but I— it didn't even occur to me, like I thought Harold was just being you know his saucy self, and—and wanted to grab that a drink that might have given Troy those abilities instead.
Brandon: He was not trying to medicate, that was just my impression.
Amanda: Yeah. No, I was surprised too. I— I love it and I love Sil. And Julia, Silkvio was an incredible name and uh I'm—
Julia: Thank you.
Amanda: —very, very, uh again put on edge lately by the voice effect that Brandon put on Eric's voice for Sil. But Eric, what was your intention? What was your thought?
Eric: Julia, what do you think would happen?
Julia: We would have gotten a shadow Troy, and he would have been a great himbo in our shipwright the entire time.
Brandon: That would have been cool.
Julia: Because it was the— if I remember correctly, it was the same like type of magic as when Cammie does her duplicity hex. So yeah, we probably just would have gotten a shadow version of whoever drank the thing. In this case, it was Harold.
Eric: Alright. Skip forward 30 seconds if you want the magic DMing kept, kept—kept buried in your mi—in your mind.
Amanda: If you think Eric's more impressive DM if you don't know what the answer is, skip forward ten seconds.
Eric: Yes, go to page 52. If you want to hear my explanation guide.
Brandon: Hold on, Eric, I know that page!
Julia: Oh, no, he fell off a cliff. Go back, go back, go back.
Eric: There was a trap below you and you died. Yeah, I mean—I—yeah, I don't know what to say. I mean, yeah. The thing is, is that you spent the money on a shipwright, I had to give you that, right?
Brandon: Right.
Eric: So just doing what's fun. Like who knows?
Julia: Yeah!
Eric: If someone really wanted to drink it, something different would have happened but like—
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: —I kind of went into it, that like Harold wanted to do it. Harold wanted to drink it, especially because everyone else is— Harold has to like stay on the ship and like do ship stuff. It's like, well, then I'm gonna get a special thing this time. And yeah, I don't know.
Brandon: No, it was great. Sorry. None of that was critiqued, by the way I loved it.
Eric: No, I don't think it was critique. I don't think it was a critique. It's just like, sometimes when I explained this stuff, it's like, you really want to go behind the small world after all right?
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: Like some of you, I know will appreciate how the mechanics fit together. But other view will be kind of—be kind of—
Amanda: It take the shine of, yeah.
Eric: —it take the shine of if you lose the magic. Also, so many of you keep sending me that goddamn Instagram reel, Tiktok, of that one tall, skinny white guy, saying it's like, it's like, oh, I stole my DMs binder and then opens up and then it's red light, and it says it's blank and he looks stupid for 10 seconds. Y'all keep doing it, then don't listen to these episodes if you want the magic of DMing kept. I'll tell you if you want to improve your game,but like it's a combination of putting a lot of work into things that need to be prepped ahead of time, and a lot of energy expended to do things on the fly. It's both.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. Very early on in the show you described DMing as you experienced it so far for the podcast as like preparing a bunch of different cards, and the deck can be shuffled in any order. And that— that has been a metaphor that's really worked for me going on. Where you know, there are tools and then you adapt them to what the situation calls for. It's like you're doing your mise en place. And then you can like use your little garnishes as you need to, you know, as the orders come in, and I think that's a lot more flexible. And for me at least makes me feel like there's no wrong answer. That I can you know pursue things. I can go after things and I know that you know, the railroad tracks, you have all the parts within your backpack, and you're gonna leave them down in front of us as we're going.
Julia: Yeah, Eric, this is—I've been watching a lot of Top Chef lately. You know, when Tom Colicchio like looks at a dish, he's like, this has been tweezer to death. So I feel like some people expect DMs to do things. But no, sometimes it's just like, why do I have to tweezer this thing, it's still gonna taste fucking good when you eat it all together, you know?
Eric: I agree. I love talking about this stuff. And Brandon, you're right. That's a 100% how I look at, and you've been listening to me talk about this stuff for 6 years.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: That—that's certainly not a criticism. I just do the thing that makes you all happy.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: And I have a bunch of different tools that I can do that whether it's prepped or not prepped. Here's the thing, here's a— here's a really good example of this. I didn't know that Cammie was gonna jump into the newspaper immediately. I had the newspaper prepped, I didn't know exactly what it's going to look like, and I'm like okay, it's the 1950s because I think this will be fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: But I did know what was on the stone tablet. I also had prepped a ton. I had the—the chip mechanics in my back pocket for months. And same thing with the skill tree. Like exactly what Brandon said, I know what's on the skill tree. I know what it could be, but like, I don't have that stuff written out, I don't have that written out what everyone's gonna do or say, and then you make a decision on the spot.
Brandon: I mean, I think everyone also has to remember that like the downtime episodes specifically are like the most out of narrative episodes like in the game episode, because like we have to decide how we want to play the game, not necessarily what our characters want to do. So like yeah, of course, there's gonna be a little bit of like improv and figuring out and then like so— like we decide what we want to do and then how to play the scene. Like that's the most, that will get on those during those kinds of episodes. So of course, there's got to be a little bit of that.
Amanda: Yeah. We don't tell Eric or even each other necessarily what we want to spend the amber on or the XP on in advance. We show up and do it and—
Eric: Yeah. And sometimes people make choices with the amber and it goes in a particular way. I'm not looking at it my players specifically about choices they've made with the amber. But uh, we'll see.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Uh, weird, I just dug a hole, pull up a chest and open it and there's a notes just a slut on it.
Julia: Oh, interesting.
Amanda: Oh, Mandy. Oh, he's fine. There's actually a great time to read LibraryChick's question which is, “I was wondering what part of the skill tree the crew most wants to explore next?"
Eric: Okay, so I—to give you an update on what we've done so far. You have dig and rolled once, which is four. So one, two, three, five and six are still there. Doctor Doctor is full at the moment, and that we have religious Havana at the moment. And maybe that will gain more as the campaign goes. So that was kind of set at the moment. Magnolia Network is still not touched. Lords is in the manor is still not touched. Monster Wrangler has not touched, the Puts and puppets pirate palladium is not touched. You have one in shipshape, now that you have a shipwright, and that has three different upgrades spinning off of it. And then once you can do kind of continuously are, you can unlock an NPCs backstory, and you can always like hold on to the amber if you so choose.
Julia: Yeah. We still haven't looked at the restaurant guy at all. One of us needs to go next time we're here to the Outback Steak House.
Amanda: Yes. And I am so excited about the Monster Wrangler. I need to meet the crab.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And that is the thing I—idea. Troy has been taking over the team a bunch, but that's— that's something that if we have extra amber floating around, I will advocate for.
Julia: Yeah, definitely.
Brandon: I want to unlock the backstories of Aubergine, definitely. And yeah, Monster Wrangler for sure. Obviously, I want to dig and roll off all of them. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I want all of these, I guess?
Amanda: I know, I know, it's hard.
Julia: I think the one we haven't touched yet the It— that I particularly want to invest more in, is the putts and puppets pirate palladium.
Amanda: Yes. And I—I really— I—I know this was kind of a—a thing that I thought and I'm open to being wrong. But I do think that by sort of improving things around the Hold, and kind of doing soft power in that way, it'll give us if not like an actual unlocking, a sort of like narrative leg up when becoming Lords of the Manor and getting to a place where we can you know, earn—earn passive income sorry to say, or at least, you know, bring the folks of the Hold firmly behind us. I—I definitely want to do over the long term. But in—in the meantime, listen via the Sea Whip is feeling pretty low on HP to me, so I think that a kind of continuing to upgrade the ship itself is also a pretty smart use of our Amber.
Eric: Right. Which could— just you know, that shipwright, has the ability to heal the ship.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: The Sea Whip still only has three points of HP.
Julia: Yeah, we need— we need more HP.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: So the answer is everything. We’re excited.
Julia: Everything. The answer is everything.
Eric: God, I want to talk about Aubergine for a second.
Amanda: Oh my god, yes.
Eric: That was my—that was so much fun. That was great. Ge—getting another crack of the French accent was so good.
Amanda: And the hat, and the cloak.
Julia: Cammie just wants to be friends, so bad.
Brandon: The attitude was just uh, chef's kiss.
Eric: Thank you.
Amanda: I know, truly incredible.
Eric: When we said—when—when we said the same thing at the same time [laughs]
Amanda: I laughed hard out loud, hearing it again.
Julia: Oh, goodness. Oh, goodness.
Amanda: And our final question from the downtime, at MalignantSloth asks, “Is everyone excited about their new-level abilities? And is Troy excited to shoot bomb arrows?” More than you know, folks.
Julia: More than you can possibly know.
Amanda: So excited.
Brandon: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I don't—I don't have any—anything else to say except for watch this space.
Eric: You got so much stuff, Brandon.
Julia: I've—I've got some exciting third-level spells that I am keeping close to the chest until I can use them.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: And also the hex that I unlocked with my new level. I am so excited to do shenanigans with. I cannot stress to you how excited I am about it.
Amanda: I'm very stoked to see that come out. Well, folks, we also have some great game and character questions and some about the podcast itself. So this one is from Spacemangotgames. And they have a quick world question, “do cryptids exist in Verda Stello? What did we think they would be, if so?”
Julia: I think cryptids definitely exist in Verda Stello. I think Eric and I have talked about that privately before, whether or not cryptids exist—
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: — in Verda Stello. Like particularly that wou— I think that was the same conversation we developed Baba Rutabaga, with?
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: So I'm—I'm curious to see if we—we see more of them in the future.
Brandon: Are cryptids the same thing as like monsters, like drag—like, Here Be dragon kind of thing, or are they different?
Julia: Yeah. No, I would think that they are if only because, like you know, it's a—it's a creature that there are stories about. And whether or not the stories are true or not, is kind of like the fun part of cryptids. I—Eric's gonna give you a who can say, which is why I jumped in there real quick.
Eric: I don't know. I mean, it's—it's funny. What Amanda said about like, the societies of Verda Stello dealing with the world in which exists. Like of course, stories come out about creatures that exist. But at the same time, it's like, well, if you see sea monsters all the time, what is a cry— what does a cryptid mean, right? So I'd say yes. We'll see, we'll see. I mean, we already saw one, is the god da—is the da—is the angler fish. So we'll see.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Julia: And our big crab.
Eric: Yeah, big crab.
Amanda: Brig crab.
Julia: Big crab.
Brandon: Although I don't think our big crab maybe it's necessarily, I don't know, but he doesn't feel special. He just feels like he's a big crab that lives here, you know.
Julia: He's a giant crab that eats ships, Brandon.
Brandon: Special to us, but no one seems to be that particularly like fazed by him. So like, I feel like maybe there's lots of, quote-unquote, "lots of big crabs," you know living in the world.
Eric: Right. Like, if you got off in, it's like, oh, yeah, you're gonna come visit me in Portland. Yeah, get off a good six. Avoid the big foot, and then just like take it a few miles down like—
Julia: Yeah, Brandon, come on.
Eric: Is that a cryptid, you know? I—I agree with Bra—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —I agree with what Brandon's putting that, I understand his side.
Amanda: Yeah, unexplored parts of like the depths, I think are very common.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Simran.dewani wants to know, “ Is Cammie going to make a friendship bracelet for Audrey the rotten queen?”
Julia: Oh, that would be so cute.
Amanda: Of seaweed.
Julia: Oh, I want to do it now.
Amanda: Weave it, then dry it. It was so cute.
Julia: That would be really cute.
Amanda: Dominique asks, “could Aubergine maybe make hats for Troy and Umbi based on Cammie's hat pretty, please?”
Julia: That would be cute. What if we all had matching little outfits?
Eric (as Aubergine): Oh, I'm just supposed to do things that have you tell me to?. I guess I am, oh, that I am fast food, oh, it's magic. It's coming out of no where, oh it’s fine.
Julia (as Cammie): We would pay you.
Brandon: I would kill to have us three half matching, you know those like, like classic sailor outfits that like kids will wear in cartoons or whatever.
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: Like—
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: —matching outfits like that. That would be amazing.
Julia: Brandon, yes, Brandon, yes.
Amanda: Well, uh—
Julia: Brandon, yes.
Amanda: Uh, Brandon, Dominique was thinking along those same lines because they also suggest, “Troy maybe could sell a photo calendar of him in sexy positions for good Amber.”
Julia: If that's how we unlock like soft power on the—
Amanda: I don't hate this.
Julia: It would have Lords of the Manor are first step there, is like yeah, we want everyone to like, like and respect us, so we're gonna sell like sexy calendars of Troy.
Amanda: Incredible. I would love that.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: At_facevalue wants to know Eric, when you say the four plant nations in the intro, do you mean for us to think of Avatar The Last Airbender?
Eric: Yes, I explicitly wrote it to be like that, yeah.
Amanda: Very yes.
Eric: Althou— I mean, you know, Avatar: The Last Airbender pulls from anime constantly. It's like—I mean I saw the thing is you know how Spaghetti Westerns were just called Spaghetti Westerns, because they were all filmed in Italy. Someone called like this type of that style of show like hamburger anime is like Ame—straight up American ones. And that's—that's literally what Avatar: The Last Airbender is. The introduction of One Piece, reminding people what the point of what we're doing here is, every episode I felt was really important. Like the pre— like the— this pre intro to every single theme song. I just I—I, it was important for us to Have in the show.
Julia: Yeah, I love it.
Amanda: And I know this is a choice that we talked about once and haven't like revisited. But ending the show with the shanty again is just wonderful, and makes it feel like truly another episode on the Great Salt Sea, and I love it a lot.
Julia: Hell yeah, bro.
Amanda: SneakySloths asks, “Y'all have made comments and jokes about if I die, this is my new character, which has got me thinking, has a character ever died in one of your campaigns, but you decided that's bad for the plot, and kept them alive? No judgment either way, just curious, that's one of the things you wouldn't change even if you felt it might negatively impact the story you told.” This is really fascinating because it would never occur to me to say no, I don't want this character to die. If—it maybe— maybe, you know, this is one of those things where you do such a good job, Eric, and I've almost exclusively played games, you know that you have run, but if it got to that point, it would feel like it was earned to me. And dealing with the consequences would be, I don't know like not dealing with the consequences would feel false. But that's just me.
Julia: Yeah. I would trust Eric implicitly, like in handling that situation really well. If the—you know, if the dice rolls led to one of my characters dying like, I know you would handle it in a way that was both satisfying to the audience and also devastating. So—and then it would you know, I liked the opportunity to like maybe mixed things up and—and play a different character and whatnot. So like, as much as I would hate to see Cammie die, if narratively it made sense, and like, you know, these things happen. And especially in a pirate campaign where the stakes are extremely high, yeah, like, we would figure it out, you know what I mean?
Brandon: Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. No, it's never happened. Yes, I would trust Eric, but I saw Eric, you tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't feel like the Eric Silver cinematic universe involves a lot of dramatic deaths. Maybe like getting lost in a void or something, you know, but like, I don't know.
Julia: Yeah, I mean, the closest we've come is Amanda getting dipped into the time sea, and then having to totally like revamp your character—
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: In a different timeline. Like that's—
Amanda: An ambiguous end to campaign two, where I have my opinions, but people can kind of draw conclusions.
Julia: Yeah, but you didn't like, i—it wasn't in the middle of a campaign where you had to then change—
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: — a character and play someone new for the rest of the campaign?
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Let me say two things about my, yeah, my theory on this, to build on what Brandon said. One is, I think y'all have chances to do wild things and have dramatic moments that don't involve death. I think if you have to wait for death to do it, you might be putting a little bit too much sought on your enemies, and now I gotta kill my player for them to understand that like choices have consequences. Second thing, that's not how I run combat a lot. I think that there are so many opportunities, very little, very few opportunities, would it be the three of you are in a deathmatch, with no way to get out. I just don't think that that's how fights work. I don't think that's how battles work. I don't think that that's how narratives work in general. I don't love that. And in the addendum to that, I am not easing off of the pedal at all. But the addendum to that is also we don't have a full healer ever, because there are three players here. Like so, and also death is so squishy in high fantasy because there's always a cleric there. So I mean, we're gonna see what happens with Havana, if you have a doctor on board, but, you know.
Brandon: I trust Eric to give us more interesting drama. Like there's so many more ways to inflict conflict and pain and suffering on your character than just killing them.
Eric: Exactly.
Amanda: It takes, yeah.
Eric: And then you have to live, and then you have to keep living.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: Like that's how I feel. I don't know if that's like my Jewish narrative stuff, that like people need to live with their consequences, and you don't get to die and go to heaven and just you're— and you're out and then you're a martyr like that's just not how I think or whatever. But I care much more for making someone make a really hard decision and then have to live with it. That's I— infinitely more dramatic and interesting.
Brandon: Totally. I agree.
Julia: Yeah, but Eric, what if I choose to play the martyr class from Valda's Spire of Secrets?
Eric: Then that's a little bit too crunchy for an actual play podcast, Julia.
Amanda: We'll have a conversation.
Eric: But no, yeah, of course, they can die. It just—it just doesn't happen a lot. Umbi got down to zero, we—we can't ignore that.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: We did not ha— really have a healer. If Cammie was in a much worse situation, then we would have had a problem.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Because that guy was underneath ceiling rubble with zero HP and someone needed to go get him. So like, it just so happens.
Julia: What if we put him there?
Brandon: Who's counting, but you know, Umbi was at zero underneath a pile of rubble, and then I don't know. One of my—my colleagues and friends and people who I share a boat with let this—
Julia: Simultaneously healed both of you, hiding at the same time. Yeah.
Brandon: Went to go— no, went to go kill someone else first an enemy who—
Amanda: Made sure you were okay before we diverted any energy to Piney.
Eric: Sorry, Troy said a tight action movie line, before any of that shit happened.
Amanda: You're right here, you're right.
Julia: That's true.
Amanda: You gotta get—you got to find your light it makes everything more, you know, more effective when you just like deliver it, you know dramatically.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: So I—I just think that like the dice roll— there have been a lot of precarious situations. Where if one thing went differently, it would have been a problem. Like thi—you can look through campaign 2, I've said this a lot. If something went differently, someone would have been dead. It just keeps on happening.
Julia: The dice tell a story, y'all. That's it, that's it.
Amanda: We just shape it and put in barrel facts when required.
Eric: Can I also point out you guys were in such a scary situation at the end of episode two?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You were in such a bad situation, you are level three, there was a set of cultists around you and a monster waiting to— ready to get at you, and some Nat 20s got you out of this goddamn situation.
Amanda: Very cool.
Julia: That's true.
Eric: I just want to point out. I just want to point it out.
Brandon: What if this— this campaign ended on episode two and we just died.
Julia: Yeah, we got a total party kill and we all had to reboot with new characters.
Eric: It would have just been a cold open to the campaign.
Amanda: It's– I mean, it's true. Listen, we're having fun and like maybe that's the you know, the culture of pirates in the way that like the Great Salt Sea deals with the—the nearness of death in its own way. Where you know we have fun and all's fair in love and piracy and sometimes you come back with fewer crew than you left.
Brandon: Well apparently our pirate crew is close to death ever. So, whatever, guys. Not you, Eric.
Eric: No, not me. I'm not—I'm not—I'm chillin', I'm sittin’.
Amanda: We'll see, we'll see, it's a lot of fun. Alright, folks, we're ready for a little spoiling of the plank before we say farewell for today.
Eric: Yar!
Julia: Let's do it.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Avast Ye!
Amanda: Alright, MalignantSloths says, “Troy is described as a butterfly gunman with clipped wings on the intro, but he hasn't really mentioned it. Even when cleaning and sunning them, he didn't point out anything different about them. Am I taking a metaphor for a butterfly who doesn't use his wings too literally, or is there something that's happened and we just haven't heard or explored it yet?”
Julia: Amanda.
Amanda: Can I get this one, honey?
Eric: Yeah, you say it. Yeah.
Amanda: Who can say?
Brandon: I honestly don't know. So I’m interested to find out.
Julia: Yeah, we don't know.
Amanda: From Aidan, a cryptid, “I know you used to have guests on campaign one, but have you ever considered guests for campaign three?”
Julia: Who can say?
Amanda: Who can say?
Eric: I mean we had guest—
Amanda: Could you say?
Eric: —we had guests because we had two players. But uh, which is why we did that. I am working on something to have guests. Putting guests into regular episodes is difficult because they felt like we were really throwing them into a narrative especially—
Amanda: Yeah, like here's 40 episodes of context before you—before you come in.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And then the choices you make really scare people that's— I mean I hear that from all the time, from folks all the time. I think like Three Black Halflings deals with this the best since they're like a variety stuff and they do it in a anthology wise. I am trying to think of a way to get some other people into Verda Stello. And I think that I have a really interesting idea.
Brandon: Just put them in the ground and water them Eric, and they'll grow.
Julia: That's how it works, even with the bugs.
Brandon: Little kiss on the nose.
Eric: Mwa, mwa!
Amanda: Lindenparker wants to know, “if Umbi's been repairing the boat and found the bottle instead of Troy, would we now have two Umbis?” Get at this a little bit, and the answer is who can say?
Brandon: You're supposed to say that you don't already have two Umbi's, and just haven't met one yet.
Julia: I think someone did ask if we were going to meet Umbi's siblings at one point.
Amanda: That was Colin, yes.
Julia: Yeah. So maybe, maybe. Maybe Umbi the twin.
Eric: Into the Umbiverse.
Brandon: Into the Umbiverse.
Eric: Across the Umbiverse.
Amanda: Ohhh.
Julia: Oh, god.
Eric: Just a bunch of old men.
Amanda: You're three seeds, I'm three seeds.
Eric: It's just a conversation in being Brandon and Umbi in his head, but for an entire episode.
Amanda: Oh, I wanna see—
Eric: Umbi—
Brandon: I love the idea that like, yeah, the camera pans across the sea of Umbi's and—and they're all just looking at each other going—
Brandon (as Umbi): What?! What you say?! What?!
Julia: What if we all played Umbi's? What if we all played Umbi's—
Amanda: Oops all Umbis.
Brandon: Oh, my god.
Julia: —across the Umbiverse.
Amanda: Listen, if um— if Lefty wants to make an animatic of it, we'll make it, we'll make it.
Eric: Umbi alone was the thing I was trying to think about.
Amanda: Alright, folks. And finally,, Mage wants to know, yes or no Eric, do you know what the salmon is?
Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Yeah, brah. Not even a who can say, yeah brah.
Amanda: Oh, no. It’s like I'm perched on the edge of the plank, and then I was taking steps forward, and now somebody's like, I mean, you can whatever you want, and I'm like, what?!
Eric: No, I pushed you off the plank, you're in the water now. Yeah, of course, I do.
Amanda: Oh, boy.
Brandon: Eric, you know they said The Salmon, capitalize, not just salmon, right?
Eric: Oh, spicy salmon rolls was that what you're talking about?
Julia: Yes, the crunchy salmon?
Eric: Oh, I was thinking about lunch. Sorry.
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: No, I—Yes, I do know what the salmon is. I also want to say I'm having so much fun playing Join the Party right now. And like, I'm holding myself to a higher level, but like, you know, there's also like me showing that to all of you and you all participating and making it interesting and fun. I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. Again, these three episodes are great, but I'm also really excited for what happens next at the Bullseye games. I'm really stoked about everything. And it's getting— I like— oh, this is gonna be a 15 episode arc, but like, I keep— I keep thinking about all this stuff. I'm really— I'm really enjoying how they— the show's going. Tell your friends, tell your lovers.
Julia: Hey, hey, bud—
Brandon: Tell your parents, tell your siblings.
Julia: Hey, bud, us too, we're really enjoying.
Amanda: Us too. I have never had more fun role playing than I—I am in this campaign. It's amazing.
Julia: Troy Riptide, baby.
Brandon: Amanda, just truly unlocking it.
Julia: No thoughts, just vibes.
Amanda: No thoughs, just vibes.
Eric: I—I'm gonna say this out loud, because I think I've been doing it and I want to keep doing it. Every single episode of Join the Party, I would love to do something that like people have never seen before in an actual play.
Julia: Hell yeah, dawg.
Eric: And I think I've been doing it over the last few episodes. And sometimes it's the skill tree, and then that's the thing, and then things that are growing, things have already put in the— put in the ground, seeds that are blooming. But like I truly think that every single episode I'm doing something that no one has really seen in a— in a popular actual play show. And I'm gonna keep doing it. And I'm feeling really good about all that.
Amanda: Hell yeah, man.
Julia: Yeah. I think we did something in the most recent episode that we recorded, that I have never seen in another actual play podcast.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: And I am so excited for people to hear it.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Especially because Amanda says something that literally made everyone on the call, die.
Eric: It was incredible, it's so good.
Brandon: It was a TPK of the actual players.
Eric: That's true.
Amanda: Yes, it was.
Julia: It was us.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Sorry. Now we're all playing Cranberry Bog. So that's ho— what we came back.
Julia: Uh-oh.
Eric: I—I wanted to use some of this stuff, like we've seen some of this stuff in video, but some of this stuff has never been on an audio before. Definitely not on a podcast, and like being able to render some of the best things about playing tabletop RPGs, and also like, what people have done in video for actual play, I think where I'm— we're getting a lot of that. And I'm—I'm feeling really good about that.
Amanda: 100%. I think you are so inventive. I think Julia is an S-tier player. I think Brandon's sound design is bringing the experience of playing this game that you've been invested in for years with your friends to folks who are not themselves players, which is incredible. And what makes this—this genre so impressive, and I am about a third of the way through my barrel book and I have many more chapters to go.
Julia: Yes!
Amanda: So folks, get excited man. There's—there's— there's only bigger and better coming down the pike from Join the Party.
Brandon: Maybe we should do a tier list on the stream sometime of our—of our Join the Party characters of the past.
Eric: That could be interesting, it could be fun.
Amanda: So is everyone agreeing not to be offended when Tuna wins or—
Eric: I can be uh— I—you know we don’t use NPCs, it would be players only. I don't know, it's—it's interesting.
Amanda: So figure it out.
Julia: Eric gets to pick one per campaign.
Eric: Yeah, I'll pick my favorite NP— I'll pick my favorite NPC, for sure.
Amanda: That sounds fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: But the one I had the most— the one I had the most fun playing as, yeah, for sure. I mean, Aubergine, I don't even know who my favorite NPC is right now.
Amanda: No, me neither.
Eric: I'm having fun playing Aurelo. I'm having a lot of fun playing Aubergine. I'm having fun playing Harold—
Amanda: Oh my god.
Eric: —and Havana.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Like all the enemies, I had a lot of fun playing Piney. And I was just coming up with like single-use characters is fun, like the Cranberry Bog, and—and Piney, and when I came up with Piney in the first place. So I'm just—I'm— I'm really enjoying myself.
Julia: Hell yeah, dawg.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Julia: You're doing a great job.
Amanda: And hey, if you are all caught up and you're like, oh, God, I need more from these people's twisted minds. We have fresh and ready, the One Shot Derby Battle of the Bronte's, full-length one shot. Not just audio folks, video. That shit was edited. That shit has a background image, that shit in 1080p and it's available for all patrons to either listen to or if you want to deal with existential horror of hearing our voices come out of our faces. Video is available for all patrons. Go ahead now, patreon.com/jointhepartypod.
Julia: Go check it out.
Brandon: Maybe one of us is dressed like the old Victorian ghosts? Maybe we're not, who can say?
Julia: It was me.
Eric: I want to remind everyone how much fun it was that the three of you really committed to your voices and Mary's voice was Eric Silver.
Julia: It was.
Eric: It's like—it's like I've given myself a treat.
Julia: Hey man, you do voices every single episode.
Eric: I know.
Julia: And a lot of them.
Amanda: And you get good break.
Julia: Yeah, you deserve that break.
Eric: Yeah. And I just thought it was— I thought it was funny with Angel terrorizing me. I'm like what the fuck? What the fuck, come on!
Amanda: Incredibly fun. So go ahead, join the Patreon, and listen to or watch Battle of the Brontes. Well Until next time folks, have a good one.
Eric: Byeee.
Brandon: Byee.
Julia: Later.
Amanda: May your rolls, trend ever upward.
Eric: See you later, sluts!
Julia: Woo!
Transcriptionist: KA
Editor: KM