Do you know the American high school system works? How do we prepare for new campaigns? And is there a spellcheck feature on Wordsmith’s powers? All that and more on the first afterparty of Campaign 4!
We’re playing Masks for this campaign! You can access a running list of all the NPCs from Campaign 4 here.
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer (Connor Lyons): Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor (Shelley Craft): Julia Schifini
- Co-Host, Co-Producer (Rowan Rosen): Amanda McLoughlin
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: https://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: the drama and excitement of a superhero high school! Or marathon our completed stories: Campaign 3 for a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, the Camp-Paign for 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. School is in session, and folks, it is the first Afterparty of Campaign Four.
Brandon: Wee!
Julia: Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: I forgot my homework.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: All of your test scores are really bad. That's why you're in remedial Masks with me.
Julia: Yeah, that makes sense.
Amanda: Aw.
Brandon: Shit, shit.
Eric: Discrete Masks.
Amanda: Well, at least we're in good company, because everybody else is learning the new game system along with us.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Wee.
Eric: Masks, it's a good game.
Brandon: Everyone admit, who went to detention during high school? Any of you? Any of us? Any of us? I don't think any of us did.
Amanda: Not fucking once, Brandon. You know I wasn't cool enough to have sex in high school or go to detention.
Brandon: Eric?
Eric: No, I was a really good child.
Brandon: Okay, cool.
Eric: It didn't work out for me being a good child. How does— I wish I went to detention more.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I would have had that grit.
Brandon: Yeah, same.
Amanda: This might be a great opportunity to explain a little bit about the US school system, which, yes, does train students to be future members of the carceral state here in the US. But anyway, we're not talking about that today.
Eric: A carceral state?
Amanda: We are, instead, talking about— with suspension and detention.
Eric: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amanda: We're instead going to talk about something that Mixelle91 asked, "I'm not really familiar with the school system. Could you explain that a bit? As in, how long are you at this school for, and how many years are still to come?"
Eric: For sure.
Brandon: This is also an interesting question, because there are some variances in regions of the US. So like for me, it was sixth through eighth was middle school and then ninth through 12th was high school. But for Lauren, I think it was like sixth through 12th was all in one school.
Julia: Whoa. Small school district, I guess.
Brandon: Or maybe seventh through— in some places, seventh through 12th are one school and sixth is, like, junior high or something.
Eric: Yeah. There is so much variance. I think— also, I want to talk about this. I'll do it because I talked it the most recently. So when we were talking about high school, we are talking through ninth grade to 12th grade. That is pretty much going— you graduate when you were, like, 17, 18, and then you spend four years in high school. This is also something I did not know. I assumed that this was standard throughout the English-speaking world, but the way that we apply to colleges in the United States is weird.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: We apply based on your like— your sophomore, which is your second grade of high school, and your junior, your third grade of high school, based on those grades, pretty much. And you are sending out so many applications during junior year. You are also taking tests throughout that time, either the SAT or the ACT. Yes, we have two college aptitude tests.
Brandon: Or both.
Eric: It's stupid. They're— both. They're privately managed. The ACT is more about like stuff you learn in school while the SAT is definitely based on race science.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So it's just like— I don't know. So that's what we're doing. The point is, though, there isn't, like, the traditional college stuff going on here. That's why we have the ranking system, which I think is aligned more to what we learn about, like, private schools from the fantasy books that we read.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Which I think apes a lot of what we understand as Americans from British private school systems. So there's that ranking system, which is going to apply to superhero's future. But the fact is that, like they are done with school after this year. This is the last year of high school for our students.
Brandon: To be clear, also the ranking system also sucks.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: But that's the point.
Eric: Oh, it definitely does. Very much so.
Amanda: Yeah. So our characters are, you know, 17 or 18. This is their final year. They started in this school with— probably, like, turn— turning 13 into 14, so that's the age of the freshmen that we talked to at orientation. And this is actually pretty similar to the British school system in that. In British school system, before you go to university, you have two years of what they call college. Unlike American College, which is post school, it's secondary school. Instead, in England, your last couple years are way more customized. You might go to a different place, you get to specialize in the thing that you're going to go to university for. So it's a little bit like that, where, as, you know, seniors, you can tell we're in a bit of a, you know, a less structured area. We can take more sort of career prep style classes. So if that is helpful in a system that you grew up in, there you go. We're basically in our second year college.
Eric: I can't remember where we landed on this, but I think the thing about Water's Edge is also one of the best high schools in the region.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Like in the East Coast of the United States, Water's Edge is one of the best high schools. So the fact that it is for super-powered students only, unless there's exceptions, which I guess we'll get into maybe at some point, that, like, puts a lot of tension on that thing that Brandon said during the world-building episode, that there are other schools that have rivalries with a good—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —school that's also a superhero school. I think this also was related like— I can't remember if it is a private school or a magnet school, which is a specialized school that also was a public school in the United States. So I think it's private. It must be that. That— it must be, or at least specialized in some sort of way that you'd have to— you have to apply— because you got to do the whole application process that we talked about in episode one.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Well, I think— and I don't know this is true, but I think we said in the Campaign Two, that there are no private schools because private schools suck. So—
Eric: Right. Well, that was because this— that's because Lake Town City was good, but Jupiter is a different school system.
Brandon: Oh. Okay, okay.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah, Jupiter— that's the point of why we made Jupiter so far away. It is like a long suburb away from Lake Town City. Like, this is not part of the Lake Town City Public School System.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Gotcha.
Amanda: Which in Dr. Morrow's metropolis is totally free, indeed, go past us.
Brandon: All right. Everyone has to admit to what their school ranking was at the end of their senior year.
Julia: Oh, I don't know.
Amanda: We didn't know.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Only the top—
Brandon: What?
Amanda: —10% of our senior class knew their ranking. And if you weren't in the top 10%, you didn't know your number.
Brandon: Oh, okay. So I guess I was only one of the top 10%.
Eric: I did not know, but this was also during the wave. We're like, well, they took away superlatives from the yearbook. Like it was really like—
Amanda: Oh, no, because woke?
Eric: Yeah, 'cause of woke.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Eric: Yeah, 2009 woke. So I didn't— I mean, all— I— it was pretty good. It's all right.
Amanda: Nice. Cute.
Eric: This was also during the big push, I think, where it wasn't enough to have good grades to go to a good college.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: You had to have, like, 5,000 extracurriculars.
Amanda: Oh, Eric, it never was.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: You need a parent who went to that college.
Eric: I mean, you know what I mean. I feel like we were definitely growing up in, like, the SAT prep boom.
Brandon: Yeah, for sure.
Amanda: Word.
Brandon: All right, I'll say it. I was 17, I had 700. All right, it was cool.
Amanda: Brandon, that's very good.
Eric: Then he was quarterback and skateboarding—
Julia: That's very good, Brandon.
Amanda: That's really good.
Eric: —and number 17.
Amanda: Wow.
Eric: Jeez.
Julia: Homecoming king.
Brandon: No, I was not skateboarding, I was not skateboarding or a quarterback in high school. I was a music man in high school.
Amanda: Well—
Brandon: I had tuba.
Amanda: —that is a fantastic segue into some excellent questions we have about the world-building of Campaign Four including—
Eric: Can I say one thing before we pivot? Brandon was causing trouble with a capital T.
Julia: Yeah, it rhymes with P, and that stands for pool.
Brandon: Keep that all in, Julia.
Eric: Yeah, because he was the music man.
Amanda: Yep. That's really good. It's really good. You know, this is a joke-tocracy. The best joke wins, and that won. Incredible. Brandon, will you please take your tuba experience to tell us a little bit about what you think the band situation is at Water's Edge Academy? Lot of questions here about, like, other extracurriculars, other classes. We're gonna get deep into this. Don't worry.
Brandon: That's a great question.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I do think, like— yeah, because it's a private school. Like, they have, you know, full-on marching bands, but it's like a professional marching band and that, like— I don't know if they have a sports team or not, but it doesn't matter whether or not they had one. They would still have a marching band. And they definitely have a jazz band. They definitely have a show choir, like a pop choir.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: They definitely have a classical choir,
Amanda: Acapella or is that just show choir?
Brandon: Acapella as well. Probably— acapella is probably like an extracurricular thing, because— and—
Eric: Show choir is mandated by the school, but a bunch of not— but a bunch of guys who thought they were funny and weren't, started an acapella group, and then it got funded by the school.
Brandon: Exactly.
Amanda: Oh, no. Is there a sketch comedy group?
Eric: Oh.
Brandon: That's not up to me. I don't care. And then finally, they definitely also have, like, individual music classes. Like, I went to a different high school my freshman year and then transferred. But my first high school, they had like a guitar class that I got to take, like I got to take a—
Amanda: Wow.
Brandon: —classical guitar class, which was really cool.
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: I also have to assume that there's, like, classes that help train supers that have powers that are related to sound and music.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Oh, for sure.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: This is also very much like football players doing ballet situation. I think that all this stuff somewhat had to do the— well, science says if you know things about art, you're better at doing powers things. So there's a connection between the brain and the superpower part. So—
Brandon: Wow. Is that race brain science, Eric?
Eric: Shut up. So I think that there's definitely, like, funding in that stuff, but it has to, ostensibly, touch on making your powers better.
Brandon: I think so. I think also one of the music, like the head of the music program, I guess, is named The Soloist.
Julia: Ooh.
Eric: Oh, yeah, sure.
Brandon: And they have music powers.
Amanda: Former villain?
Brandon: Maybe.
Amanda: Very good. Julia, purl.wisdom wants to know, "What are the most and least cool extracurricular activities? Is there a cheer?"
Julia: I don't know. Like, my instinct was to make it very similar to regular, like, high schools and stuff like that. But maybe like Uno reverse it, because the idea of, like, the cheerleaders being the sort of uncool aspect of the school is very funny to me.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Yeah. Like, school spirit, gross.
Julia: Right. And then the debate team is, like, our lead team.
Amanda: Oh, yes, because it has to be words and not powers, right?
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Like, that would be elite.
Brandon: Well, there's also smart people as a power, so— you know?
Julia: Or, like, persuasion abilities.
Brandon: Persuasion, yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: But that's— you know, they probably, like, are told not to use their powers for that.
Julia: Right.
Brandon: Yeah, for that reason.
Julia: In the classic like, "Oh, I have super powers. Why can't I try out for the, you know, track team style of high school super power TV show?"
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: What— there's that line from the movie Bring It On that's like, "You didn't have a gymnastics team, so I'm on the cheer squad." It's like yeah—
Julia: "You didn't have a gymnastics team. This was my last resort."
Eric: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Incredible. This also reminds me of a question from No Hugs Just Bugs, which is, "How much of your own high school experiences inspired the world-building for this super high school? What regular and irregular extracurriculars are available?" I am finding myself referencing the geography and layout of my high school a lot. Like, I am picturing the auditorium from the high school where Julia and I went, going out into the lobby as the PJ Lawbody Atrium, but just like much bigger and grander. And so I definitely find myself, like, applying, you know, all of the classrooms and hallways and just the color palette, because that to me, is the most identifiable, and that's why I love it. This is an audio story, because when we describe the cafeteria, the hallway, the lockers, the Atrium, all of you are picturing the thing that comes most to mind for you, which makes it feel so real in a way that, like, the most beautiful visuals ever could not touch.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, absolutely.
Julia: That's also why I'm almost a little hesitant to name any of the regular/irregular extracurriculars, because I want the opportunity to let them come up organically during play.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: That's fair. Well, name some of the funniest extracurriculars you did in middle school or high school, then. I'll start, in middle school, I was both on the math and science team, and I was the dumbest kid on that team, I swear.
Eric: Nice.
Brandon: And—
Amanda: Okay, number 17.
Brandon: Yeah. And chess club in middle school as well.
Julia: I didn't do a lot of extracurriculars because our drama department that Amanda and I were both a part of, required us to do 40 additional hours per month. So—
Brandon: What the fuck?
Eric: Brandon, it's a sweatshop. You need to understand—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —that it was a sweatshop. It's just that Amanda—
Brandon: Jesus Christ.
Eric: —learned how to use power tools.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: That's nuts. Well, yeah, in high school, I was also in the jazz band and the— I was in the band for the show choir. The— what do you call that? What did people call that? The glee club?
Julia: No, show choir is what we called it as well.
Brandon: Okay, Like the pop choir. Like, the pop—
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: They danced and they did pop music, yes.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, Brandon, it was in glee. We got it. We understand.
Brandon: Yeah, the glee choir. Yeah, the glee choir.
Eric: Yeah, you and Lea Michele, you were in glee. We got it.
Brandon: I would rather die, Eric.
Eric: Yeah. Shout out to Model UN. Model UN ripped.
Brandon: Yeah, that would have been fun. I wish we had that.
Eric: I'm surprised. I feel like it was— I feel like your school either decided to go all in on Model UN or on debate, like formal debate.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And, like, going to tournaments. But I think that all of the funding went to Model UN for us. Shout out to Boz Moon, which was at Harvard, and shout out to Corn Moon, which is at Cornell.
Brandon: That's the name of their teams?
Eric: That was the— that was where the conventions that we went to—
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: —the organized things. Because you, like, prep for this all year, and that's what you're trying to do.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: And so it was really fun as a high schooler going to Cornell and being like, "Wow. I can't believe I'm in Ithaca, New York. Wow."
Amanda: City of Dreams.
Julia: Was it a bummer that it was, like, just one event per year, basically?
Eric: No, because, like, we were prepping for it, and it was difficult. Like that was— and we did mock stuff as well, but it really took a long time to get ready for it, because everyone was there. There were awards. Like, there were— you really wanted to do well, and also there was a lot of fighting for, like, cool stuff. Because if you didn't get the right thing, or maybe you were like a freshman or sophomore, you got stuck with being like an NGO, in, like, the grand— in the council. Like, you're one of 200 people. You're not even a country. You—
Brandon: I love that it's a punishment.
Eric: Yeah. It's like, "Oh, you care about water? Boring."
Brandon: "Boring."
Eric: "I'm Bosnia, I—"
Amanda: Bad time right now to be an NGO as well.
Brandon: Yeah, ripped.
Amanda: Just to say.
Eric: But, I mean, I still remember being on a specialty— when I was a senior, being in a specialty program that was US versus Soviet Russia. And there was, like— everyone was different ministers, or cabinet members, depending on who you were. And everyone wanted to be Soviet Russia, and I got to do it. I was like the Minister of Communication, and I commissioned a comic of, like, a bear that saved the world—
Brandon: You would do that.
Eric: —for propaganda reasons, and it was great. And, like, they would run in— they were also, like— sometimes you got pulled out of bed at three in the morning because it was an emergency. It was a whole thing. It was like role-playing. It was full of role-playing.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: That's incredible.
Brandon: That's awesome.
Amanda: This is unlocking memory that we did a disaster preparedness exercise in sixth grade. Do you remember this, Julia? Where they— we, like, took a day off of regular school in order to— as, like, our graduating sort of, like, sixth grade— again, like we were 12, ending primary school to, like, be the communications people during a hurricane. Like it was, like, about weather forecasting. And so they're— like, you were— I got to be the shot caller of the person, like, sending resources to different places. But one team was, like, reading flood maps and doing weather forecasting, which— we live in a terrible hurricane zone, so this is pretty fucked up, now that I think about it. But other people were, like, set to, like, distribute aid and it was about, essentially just, like, doing spreadsheets. And there was, like, some kind of live tracker of, like, different slides that, like, the teacher put on the wall. Is this— do you remember this at all?
Julia: I really don't, but I don't have—
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: —a lot of memories of elementary school, so that is fair, and not me disbelieving you at all. That sounds like something that you would have us do.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: That's cool, though.
Amanda: Definitely happened. It was so cool. I'll probably remember the name of it at some point, but shout out, Mr. Marino in sixth grade, our teacher who, on graduation day, I spoke because I was the speaker, don't worry. And—
Eric: You spoke at your eighth grade graduation?
Amanda: Sixth grade.
Eric: Your sixth grade graduation?
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: That's tight.
Eric: See, this is because of woke. Everyone got gold stars.
Amanda: Yeah. And then Mr. Marino, before I left the building, sort of like, you know, stooped down and, like, put a hand on my shoulder, and is like, "Amanda, things are gonna be tough for you for a while, but it will get better."
Eric: Oh, no!
Julia: Oh, my God.
Brandon: No way, really?
Julia: That's fucked up.
Brandon: Oh, that's so awful.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: I want you to know that this is how teachers at school institutions react, saying one thing to a child on the way out, which signifies how I world-build this stuff.
Brandon: That's wild.
Eric: This is how it goes.
Julia: Damn.
Brandon: That's crazy.
Amanda: And Eric, that reminds me of a question from Dominique, which is, "How has your teaching experience helped you with your NPC teachers or perhaps harmed you?"
Eric: I mean, I think a lot about all the work that I did as an educator, whether it's like at Hebrew school or as a camp counselor and then formally as a teacher, and I've been thinking a lot about it now as a college professor, now that I'm teaching again, which is really nice. And then I think about, you know, my time as a student and as a camper myself. And there's just like— there's such a fine line between like teachers are humans, and they have foibles, and they will react based only on information they have. They know— they're not always going to be so clear about everything. You know, they make mistakes. And on the other side, it's like teachers are humans, which means that they are self-motivated. They like certain— they definitely prefer certain students to other students, whether justified or not. And also, like, institutions preserve power and keep the people who are in power maintaining that and going forward as much as, or maybe more so than whatever they're there to do, honestly. So it's like, take it from me as a kid who experienced, like, so much bullying in middle school and high school, and seeing it from that— from the other side as a camp counselor and also as a teacher. And this isn't like, "Oh, I moved from New Jersey to Texas. They made fun of me." No, this is, like, real shit. I'm not gonna get into it, but, like, I just want you all to know. Like, seeing— like, when you tell a teacher that you're getting bullied, they don't do anything because they're an adult. They go home, and they're overworked, and they're not paid enough. And also they're probably the gym teacher and an asshole as a person. Like, that's the thing. So when I'm thinking about these teachers, like they're such a fine line, if someone is a good teacher or a good person, that's because they are a good person, but there's only so much that they can do. I mean, literally, one of the Scion's moves when you're looking for the most important people is, like, what? If you roll poorly, they're busy and don't have time for you?
Julia: Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda: Oh, boy.
Eric: Like, Jesus fucking Christ. That is the truest thing I've ever seen from high school. And, like, Julia's gonna have to do that move over and over. Like, that shit's just real and I know that. And being able to be kind to other students and to the players is something I hope to do, but also there is, like, a realism about these, you know, adults that have trigger fingers to work on teenagers and don't believe them and make snap decisions. And also, like, how much do they care about this? I mean, Dr. Mo is a really good example of this. He— obviously, something happened to him. This is why he's doing this. And the whole time that I'm doing this, I'm like— he's such, like, a college professor in that he has no time for the nonsense that high schoolers give to you, which is a big part of being a high school teacher, is dealing with high schooler's nonsense. So he's like, "I don't care, whatever. Just do the grade. I'm here to teach you. I'm here to give you information into your brain, not deal with whatever you're doing as an 18-year-old." But, like, that's literally the job. He's letting you down on a big part of teaching, but of course, he doesn't know that. He was brought in because he has a big, fancy degree, and he has high-level superheroing knowledge. Like I've seen and experienced this from so many different sides, and I'm excited to bring this in and bring kindness, hopefully, but also the realism that I know from my own experiences, both with teachers and the institutions of schools.
Brandon: Now, could you also jump, like, a couple feet in the air? Just a little?
Eric: No, I have fire powers.
Brandon: Oh, okay.
Julia: Eric, you want to hear the fucked up thing about what you were describing as part of the Scion?
Eric: Uh-hmm.
Julia: It's part of the respect aspect, where, like, I don't gain influence with adults, I gain respect only. And it's when you seek out one of the characters named above, roll plus savior. On a hit, you find them where you expected. On a seven to nine—
Eric: Yep.
Julia: —they're juggling their own problems and may not have time to help you. And then on a miss, when you find them, the situation is dire. So the thing that you just said is not even the miss, it is just the middling results.
Eric: That is the mixed success, is that maybe they can fit you in while also needing to get home for their own kids, or to get a package, or because they're overwhelmed by something in their personal life that they can't tell you because they're adults.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Like that is— that's a mixed success.
Julia: It's fine.
Eric: Right?
Julia: Yep.
Amanda: Now, did you guys conspire with my therapist to have me enact the relative sort of, like, differences and safeties of independence versus interdependence and the mortifying ordeal of being known and kind of—
Brandon: Yes.
Amanda: —upsides and downsides and—
Brandon: Yes.
Amanda: —of that?
Eric: No, we've just been doing this since Campaign Two, Amanda. You're telling your therapist thinks you've been doing on Join the Party for a few years now.
Amanda: You know, he was wondering why I wanted to be called Sunchoke for a couple weeks there, so you're right.
Brandon: This is why every teacher in America needs to make, like, $150,000 a year.
Amanda: Minimum. Minimum.
Brandon: Like, minimum. Like— yeah.
Eric: There's also the thing about teaching that— I mean, so the reason why I stopped teaching is because there was a grade-fixing scandal at my school, and I got super disillusioned by the whole thing.
Brandon: Was it because you did it? Were you the fixer?
Eric: No. No, I wasn't. Believe me, it happened at a very senior level by the principal to raise the graduation rates.
Julia: That's fucked.
Eric: And it's like the thing that bothers me the most about teaching in a high school level— and like, my union was awesome. I was going to make $100,000 because that's how good the New York City teachers union was.
Brandon: Damn.
Amanda: Wow.
Eric: It was the best salary I ever had until Multitude.
Brandon: Wow.
Eric: Being a first year teacher. Is that, like— it does not make any sense from a job's perspective. Like, because it's being graded on a state level, and I know this happens in all jobs, but it's like it is— I was told that I was not allowed to get high marks on my evaluations because I needed to demonstrate growth over time. And you're not a "master teacher," quote-unquote, until you're, like, a fifth or seventh year. So it's hard being told that, like, you're not good at this for a very long time. Like, there's no employee growth as a teacher—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —in, like, a standard sort of office sort of way. I know they don't do really do that at offices either, but, like, it is so scuttled teaching, because it's not, like, a quote-unquote, "job." It's a, quote-unquote, "vocation," which is a lie. Like, that's not true.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But that's part of the problem.
Brandon: I mean, a vocation is just a job.
Eric: Brandon, you know what I mean. You do it for the love. You don't do it for the money if you're a teacher, which is a nonsense thing to say to a person.
Brandon: Yeah. Me and Lauren had a discussion last night about how all, like, senators and congress people and presidents, everyone should be making the average wage of Americans, which is like $66,000.
Eric: That's pretty good.
Brandon: Exactly how much, because that should be—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —for the love of it.
Amanda: Or even, Brandon, maybe the median wage.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: Wouldn't that be even more fun?
Eric: Ooh.
Brandon: Yes. Yeah.
Amanda: Wouldn't that be even more fun? Anyway, I would like to know from my fellow players, this was a question from LibraryChick, "What are you most excited to explore about your new characters?" And I'm asking this now because I think there are so many ways in which our real life experiences, the life we are living, the world we are occupying right now, are on my mind, at least, as we sit down to play. And it is both, like, more, you know, escapist and beautiful than ever, but also not escapist. It's kind of like a, I don't know, a training simulation for— at least for me in some areas of, like, my personality and my life. And just the ways I want to be a little closer to where Rowan is or wants to be. And it's all gurgling up in a delicious kind of soup in my body at the moment. Julia, Brandon, what are you excited to explore about your new characters?
Eric: Brandon, we're gonna not be worried about the fuck cut anymore, but it's Amanda explicitly talking about her inner soup.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: What kind of soup is it?
Amanda: Minestrone.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I knew you were gonna say that. I don't know why.
Brandon: Because minestrone's delicious.
Eric: Oh, let's all say the soup that's burbling up inside of us.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: Mine is borscht. It's cold.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: Oh. It must be really nice in the summer. You're like a cold pillow on every side.
Eric: I need it.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Is queso a soup if it's hot enough?
Julia: No.
Brandon: Okay. Then broccoli cheddar.
Amanda: It is if you try.
Eric: What's the soup that's the most cheese?
Julia: Mine's pasta fagioli, surprising no one.
Eric: Julia, I thought it would be rude to say I thought it would be Italian wedding soup, but fair. Fair.
Amanda: Brandon, Julia, what are you excited to explore about your characters?
Brandon: I just— as a player, I'm excited to genuinely try to play something— I know it's not like terribly different from Milo, but it's different enough that, like, as a player, I— there's already been a few times that I've had to make sort of, like, second decisions, because I'm— I think of the thing that I would say and then be like, "That's not what he would say." So I'm excited to play against— a little bit against type here and just explore what that's like as a player.
Amanda: Did that not happen to you as much in previous campaigns?
Brandon: Rarely. I mean, like, it does happen, of course, but like, I feel like it was just much more intuitive. Like, those characters came to me more intuitively, and not that they didn't have their— they all have their own sort of decision-making process, of course. But, like, they were all sort of more aspects of truth within me—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —of the truth soup, but yeah, I think I want to play Connor as a sort of, like— obviously, he's going to be me, because I can't get away from that. But, like, you know, something slightly different than what I'm used to playing.
Amanda: Well, part of that is related to Masks as well, right? Because our characters are supposed to be in flux. Their identities are not rigid and fixed. It's kind of the opposite of Umbi in that way, who, you know, you can probably to delicious results predict how Umbi would react at any given moment.
Brandon: True. That's true, yeah.
Julia: Yeah. And for Craft in particular, Craft is the, like, polar opposite of who I felt like I was in high school—
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: —in the sense that I felt very pressured to be— you know, live up to the expectations of the loved ones around me, who were expecting me to do well in school and everything like that.
Amanda: And, Julia, sorry, one of whom was a high school teacher? One of whom was a high school teacher?
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Is that right? Okay.
Julia: And so Craft is like the alternate timeline to myself, where I could feel that I could break down and be that burnout, but I never did. And so it is very interesting now to play that where it's like, "Oh, I could have just let go." You know?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Which I think is interesting.
Brandon: You still can, Julia, you still can.
Julia: Oh, I have at this point, Brandon. High school Julia did not.
Eric: Julia keeps edit— because Julia edits the Afterparty. She edits out her ripping big bong hits.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Right.
Eric: When she's not speaking.
Brandon: It's a real pain in the ass that I have to do it too for the other episodes.
Julia: Yeah. At least you can recognize the—
Brandon: The waveform?
Julia: —the waveform now.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: It's shaped like a pot leaf.
Amanda: Yes. Julia has a whole external hard drive that's just chunky rips, actually. Yeah. She shares it with Mischa. They both contribute. It's great.
Brandon: Guys, I can't tell you how many times I've stopped myself from just screenshotting waveforms and sending them to you and just be like, "This one looks like a dick."
Eric: Brandon, don't do that.
Brandon: Oh, I'm sorry.
Amanda: I want that so badly, why wouldn’t you do that?
Eric: Brandon, do that! Why wouldn’t you do that? Oh, my God.
Brandon: Because it's often. It's very frequent.
Eric: Brandon, that's why we have a channel for fun stuff. That's what Join the Party Team is.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That's why we have a Join the Party Work channel and a Join the Party Team channel.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: And I gotta admit, frequently, it's Amanda's who's looked like a dick, so I don't want to be like weird about that.
Julia: Damn.
Eric: No, it's great.
Amanda: I'm the person who would most love to have a waveform in a phallic shape. You know this about me.
Eric: It's not like you don't do stuff like this anyway. Recently, while you were editing episode three, you're like, "God, I love Rick Powers."
Brandon: Yeah, Rick Powers rules, man.
Amanda: We'll get to Rick Powers. Don't you worry. First, Julia, I wanted you to address an important question raised by Hanna4breakfast, "Does Craft grow her own weed?"
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: No, I don't think so. Because I think I've mentioned several times going to the dispensary and everything like that.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Julia: So I don't think that— maybe Craft gets some homegrown from someone else on campus occasionally.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: But I don't think that she's out here growing her own weed. That seems like too much work for Craft.
Eric: If only you had some sort of weather powers to help facilitate that out. I don't know.
Julia: Who can say?
Amanda: Who can say?
Eric: Who knows? Who knows? Let me know if this is something that's like spoiling a little bit too much or, like, is pulling the curtain back too much. I have these, like, ideas that I'm supposed to remind each of you about based on your archetypes. Would you like to know what they are?
Julia: Sure.
Brandon: Yes.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Okay. So I think that like you're all going on your personal journeys, but I have to push on not only you as individuals, but on your character archetypes at all times. That's why I like Masks. We were like— we're playing this game. I'm going to hit you with this, and it makes me feel like I'm telling— like writing TV. It makes me feel like I'm writing Justice League Unlimited or Teen Titans in a very sort of, like— I was referring to anime in Campaign Three, but a ve— in a similar sort of, like serialized animation sort of way where it's like I have 30 minutes to tell this story. We need to make sure the character archetype that is this person gets addressed. So let's start with the Nova. This is Rowan. Remind them of past collateral damage.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: Damn.
Eric: Reveal a terrible truth of their powers. Make their powers flare out of control. Stoke their conditions, because that's related to your flares. You need to have a lot of conditions which lets you have more and more flares. And then introduce threats only they can tackle.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: Good shit.
Julia: That's a very frustrating one to hear as teammates of Rowan's.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: I'm sure that'll never go badly.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Again, Powered by the Apocalypse doesn't tell you how to do this. They just say, "Do this," and gives a singular example.
Julia: Cool. That makes sense.
Eric: So I'm not sure how to do this, necessarily, but I know it's something I have to do, or that the book keeps telling me to do. For the Scion, blame them for their parents' deeds, grant them respect, make demands on them, interrogate their reason or deeds, and introduce characters tied to their parent.
Julia: I like that one.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: This one's good. The Scion is— was from the final expansion. The sing— the unbound, the one where I have a lot of the school stuff that I've been using.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So it's the most, like, developed. It's cooked the most in the sauce. But at the same time, they say that you shouldn't have more than one character from the expansions because they're complicated.
Julia: Right. That makes sense.
Eric: So that's a little different. And then they're transformed. Brandon, get ready for this. You might under— you might get it, reject them.
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: Rude.
Eric: Show how they are feared or hated.
Brandon: Rude.
Eric: Attack them with unthinking hordes.
Brandon: Rude.
Amanda: Aaah.
Eric: That's kind of interesting. I think that would be more of the Bull too, because the Bull is supposed to be like a super soldier. And—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —that's also a thing you do there, so that's kind of interesting. Remind them of what they've lost and see their true self.
Brandon: You can't.
Amanda: Wow.
Brandon: Because I'm see through.
Eric: Oh, I can see it. It's your liver. I can see it.
Julia: But I can see your true liver.
Amanda: That's incredible. And so, Eric, do you just, like, kind of review that during play to sort of remind yourself of stuff? Because these sort of feel like almost prompts that a GM could use if you're a little bit stuck on what to do next.
Eric: I mean, that's the whole game, right? I'm not rolling dice, and there's— I'm encouraged to prep less. Like, I have this— these arcs, right? And that— so imagine that, like, I have built out a full story arc for things— in a similar way to Monster of the Week of like, what are the all these villains and NPCs want that are part of this cohesive story, right? I've done this for the interview for the villain one, but, like, I can't plan too much, because then I have to respond to things you all want and what happens on the dice. Like, the way that successes and failures go, they literally are forks in the road, telling me what exactly I need to do. So, like, I need to come up with this stuff. Extemporaneously, I'm supposed to use these as prompts to figure out what to say next.
Brandon: Nice.
Amanda: Righteous.
Brandon: Yerr.
Eric: I think— if you listen closely— because we've recorded a few episodes in advance, so if you listen closely, you'll hear, so I'm definitely using a bunch of these as we do our first full arc.
Brandon: You're gonna say you can hear me under my breath, going, "Oh, fuck. What happens next? What happens next? Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit."
Eric: But even in episode three, I mean, we're seeing it by introducing new NPCs. Like, I'm making them in contrast to each of you.
Amanda: No. Not a dramatic foil.
Julia: I don't know about that.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Eric: I mean, in certain— you know, in different certain ways. But you can definitely see, as I start— keep introducing NPCs, it's like I need to create this roster of people at the school to make you look at your archetypes in different ways.
Amanda: Eric, EepyFella wants to know, "How many of these random NPCs are spontaneously going to become plot relevant?"
Eric: Honestly, they— any of them could, if I feel like bringing them back. It's a very sort of comic book storytelling sort of thing where it's like, "Well, someone wrote this and made this, so I guess they're going to be a linchpin to the world being saved, huh?"
Julia: I think it also depends on, like, what we decide to do as well, right?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Like, if we decide, "Oh, you know that NPC you mentioned in episode two, well, in episode 30, I'm gonna go back to them and ask them a question about," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Exactly.
Amanda: Eric, Kazy also wanted to know, "How long can we expect this campaign to go on for, on a scale from Camp-Paign to Verda Stello?"
Julia: Solidly in the middle of that.
Amanda: I'd say, yeah, solidly in a in a five to seven range of the Camp-Paign to Verda Stello timeline.
Brandon: Five to seven range. That's—
Amanda: You know? Yeah.
Brandon: —so confusing.
Amanda: One to 10, where one is the Camp-Paign and 10 is Verda Stello, I think we're in the sort of five to seven range.
Julia: Yeah, I think that's right.
Amanda: Julia's following me.
Brandon: Yeah, that sounds right.
Julia: I understand what you're talking about.
Amanda: Thank you so much.
Eric: You know, games that are not D&D move really quickly, so—
Julia: True.
Eric: —we might get more plot done in 52 episodes than we did in, like, 70. So—
Julia: True.
Eric: —who knows?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Who knows? Do you think we'll get exactly 69 episodes, Eric?
Eric: No.
Brandon: Oh, shit.
Amanda: Damn.
Eric: Sorry. The Adventure Zone Balance claims 69 because they're the first people to come up with a 69 joke, so they get it.
Julia: As is their right.
Eric: Right.
Amanda: Speaking of this comic series that we are building all together, so many great questions about the comics of it all, and the framing of how we think about it, and also specifically what inspirations we're pulling from. First, tactically, SavedMan97 wants to know, "In the comic title, is the delta spelled out or is it the delta symbol? Who looks like a little triangle."
Eric: It's Delta, but the A is a triangle.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: Right. So you can do— it's both. It's all, like you whatever stylized accordingly. Like on the book binding, you know, maybe they make it just the triangle to make it shorter, but you could spell it out however you want, like on the front.
Amanda: And Aiden, a Cryptid asked, "What comics are the biggest influences on you, Eric, for this campaign? And for everybody else, what are you reading comics-wise at the moment?"
Eric: I mean, a big one for me is the Teen Titans cartoon from our youth. God, I love that so much. I'm re-remembering that HBO has all of the DC unlimited stuff on there. So I just watched all Justice League Unlimited, which was great. I watched Young Justice as well. Just trying to combine the superhero storytelling that I love with some CW teen shit, honestly.
Julia: You gotta start watching the CW, like, DC shows, too. They're silly.
Eric: Maybe Legends of Tomorrow, it seems like the silliest, and we've been talking about it a lot. Like, I don't want to get into the Arrowverse. I need something like standalone.
Julia: Well, Legends of Tomorrow is not standalone. It's very much part of the Arrowverse.
Brandon: Yeah, they're all connected.
Julia: Like, there's several characters they pull— I would say the early seasons of The Flash are very fun.
Amanda: They are.
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: Supergirl is fine. You don't need to watch Arrow.
Eric: No. I guess I just don't want to watch, like, Arrow and Supergirl and The Flash. Like, I just want to watch Legends of Tomorrow, a— like, without watching anything else.
Amanda: I'm sure someone on Reddit has given a primer for people who didn't watch those.
Julia: Yeah, I would say watch the first, like, two seasons of The Flash so you can get Wentworth Miller and then go to Legends of Tomorrow.
Brandon: Actually, Eric, so I have a better— okay. So this is all great, but what you could do instead to just get all of this out of the way and just do it all in one shot, just watch Supernatural instead, to start—
Eric: I— Brandon, I knew— I said in my head, I was like, "It would be rude to say that Brandon's gonna say, "Watch Supernatural." And then you said it.
Julia: He did the thing.
Brandon: The only good CW show.
Julia: Rude and wrong, sir. Rude and wrong.
Brandon: I am not a big comics reader, mainly because I am a killjoy. But I do watch a lot of, like, superhero comic-y stuff, like on TV and movies. So currently, I— obviously, I'm— we just finished— as we record, we just finished the Daredevil finale—
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: —this week, and that was pretty good.
Amanda: Now, Brandon, is it true that Matt Murdock has no chemistry with his romantic lead, or am I just a foggy Matt chipper?
Brandon: It's kind— that's kind of intentional. Like Charlie Cox is— it's impossible for Charlie Cox not to have—
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: —chemistry with someone.
Amanda: He does.
Brandon: So if it doesn't, it's on purpose.
Amanda: He has chemistry with his glasses and cane also.
Brandon: Yes, but you don't really get to why— or, like, you don't really get into that to—
Amanda: Okay.
Brandon: —like, the last—
Amanda: Okay.
Brandon: —few episodes, so that's probably—
Amanda: Okay. Okay.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Thank you.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: And Julia, I know you were responding to Aidan in Discord, which, by the way, an incredible place and a reason enough to join patreon.com/jointhepartypod as a paid member. But when we're talking about the splash pages, Eric, when you're narrating splash pages in the actual episode, and Julia, when you are picturing them in your minds, what artists or art styles are each of you thinking about and drawing from? Aidan said that they picture Connor in a frank, quietly art style.
Julia: Hmm. Real quick to answer the previous question, The Power Fantasy is one of the comics that I've been reading lately. Very good. The first trade should be available for folks if you want to, like, take it out from the library or get it online, or whatever. And I am a really big fan of Chris Buchalo's artwork. It was one of the examples we gave our artists who we commissioned for the campaign for character art. And in my mind, that's one of the, like, examples of comic book art when I think of the comics when I first started, like, reading them on a monthly-to-monthly basis.
Amanda: Hey, speaking of those illustrations, tight as hell.
Julia: Tight as hell.
Amanda: Good job, Giovanni Mejia.
Eric: Good.
Amanda: Eric, what artists, what art styles are you drawing from?
Eric: I don't know. It's just fun to say splash panel. There's a bunch of mediums that I like looking at from the outside, that I don't really understand and participate in, but I like to look at them and I like the way that they fit together. Superhero stuff, I get immersed in. I don't really love DC and Marvel stuff. I really like— I always say that some of my favorite art is superhero stuff in response to what DC and Marvel does. Like, that's why I like sentinels of the multiverse so much. That's why I like a bunch of books.
Brandon: Really, not like other girls, really.
Eric: Shut up, Brandon. Which is also why I really like— what's the one with the Viltrumites, the one that's on Amazon?
Amanda: Julia and Brandon just did the exact same head tilt.
Eric: Unfightable. Un-divisible. What the fuck is the one with that— on Amazon?
Brandon: Invincible?
Eric: Invincible, thank you.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: That's why I'm really liking Invincible and The Boys, even though they're like, really trying to be satires. Like, I like hearing— seeing the responses to superhero media. I feel this way about wrestling. I feel this way about horror movies. I like the way that they fit together. I like the cogs, even though I don't like watching it, necessarily.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: So when I just say splash panel, I'm like— I just like there was a full page drawing of this character here, and—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —Masks allows me to use the language of the form to tell the story, which I really missed, from Campaign Two.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Hell yeah. All right. Eric, we do have to ask you about your opinions on the multiverse, so I'm gonna give you a little bit of time to just kind of, like, think about that, because I know it's not something you probably prepared coming into this recording today.
Brandon: Right, yeah.
Amanda: So while we wait, I'm just gonna nip on into the kitchen and get us some more Arnold Palmers.
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: Be right back.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, everybody, it's Amanda. Welcome to the midroll where I have some delicious mint Arnold Palmers for you. You're welcome. Thank you so much to our newest patrons who have helped us get three people closer to our goal of 50 new paid patrons, Rafe, Mage, mist and K.S. Folks, we are only 20 new or returning or upgrading paying patrons away to playing another One Shot from the character creation episodes that we played out in the One Shot Derby two. I'm so excited the One Shot Derby final episode that we promised you is coming to you so soon over on the Patreon. So if you want to be like Rafe, Mage, Mist, and K.S. and listen to the One Shot Derby, you gotta become a paid patron, y'all, at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. If you like Join the Party, I know that you are going to love the other shows that are part of our Multitude podcast collective. And one of them that I have been enjoying and thinking about so much recently is Tiny Matters. This is where you dive into genes, microbes and other tiny things that have a big impact on our world, with scientists Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti as they take apart complex and contentious topics in science to rebuild your understanding of everything, from deadly diseases to ancient sewers to forensic toxicology. They are so, so good. The show is amazing. It's got beautiful music, sound design. You are gonna love it. Subscribe now to Tiny Matters, wherever you get your podcasts. We are sponsored once again this week by Mage Hand Press, where, of course, our friend Mage Hand Mike, and everybody over at Mage Hand Press is so excited that their work is now on D&D Beyond. Specifically, you will remember from Campaign Three, we used a lot of things from Vadla's Spire of Secrets. Well, the best stuff in that huge, ambitious book has now been boiled down to a good handful of options for 5e and it is now on D&D Beyond. You never have to play human fighter again. I promise you. You can be things like a illegally distinct Spider-Man rogue. Yes, it's illegally distinct. A living tree Mandrake, a murderous plushy Gepettin, anything you want. There are six subclasses, two species, 12 spells, new feats and magic items, all of which are now on D&D Beyond. And of course, you can always go to magehandpress.com to see everything they make and take advantage of the 10% off sale they are running throughout the month of April. Just a couple of weeks left, folks. And as always, you can check out the giveaway that they are doing for 10 copies of Valda's and 10 codes to the Dungeons & Dragons Beyond player pack. All of that and more at magehandpress.com. Finally, we are also sponsored by Audio Maverick, a nine-part documentary podcast about one of the founding fathers of radio. If you ever heard about radio dramas or Dick Tracy or Mystery Theater, you are unknowingly learning about the work of Himan Brown, who was a New Yorker, who was really into the, like, commercial potential of radio. He would walk into like a toothpaste office and be like, "Hey, toothpaste guys, give me some money to make art." And they said, "You know what? Good." And it was really exciting. And if you love podcasts, specifically and especially fictional podcasts that build worlds, like Join the Party, you are enjoying something that is in the tradition of the golden age of radio. So you can hear archival audio from almost a 100 years ago, plus contemporary interviews with media scholars and podcasters to both learn about the birth of radio, the height of radio drama and the golden age of radio, but also, and in my mind, most importantly, the ways that this old medium inspired the things that we are doing in podcasting right now. So listen to Audio Maverick in your podcast app now, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you are, go listen to Audio Maverick. The final episode is dropping May 1st.
Gustavo: Oh, hi there, listener. Gustavo Sorola here with the cast of Tales From The Stinky Dragon podcast, and we're about to set the record for the quickest DND session. Everyone roll initiative.
Barbara: I got the highest roll with a 19. I move 10 feet toward the listener and say, "Hi, I'm Barbara Dunkelman. You should listen to our show, Tales From The Stinky Dragon. It's an immersive DND, actual play show with a fully voiced cast of characters plus sound design." And then I finish my action with a high five.
Gustavo: Go ahead and make a dexterity check. That's an 18. Oh, that's a good high five.
Jon: I rolled a 16 on initiative. I walk over to the tavern piano, I play a sixth song and say, "Hi, I'm Jon Risinger. Wow. Do you hear that?" Tales From The Stinky Dragon also has its own original score. It's like a movie, but for your ears."
Gustavo: All right, yeah. Go ahead and roll a performance check.
Jon: That's a two.
Gustavo: Not your best, Jon.
Jon: Okay. But I promise, the show's actual music sounds really good.
Blaine: Okay, me next. I moonwalked up to the listeners, "Sup? I'm Blaine Gibson. You should really check out the show. It's funny, heartwarming, and perfect for everybody. I'm talking DND veterans, people new to the genre, old people, babies, everybody." And then I do a back flip.
Gustavo: All right, roll an athletics check.
Blaine: That's a Nat 20. Woo!
Gustavo: Okay. That leaves Chris.
Chris: "Hi, I'm Chris Demarais. Please subscribe to our podcast." And then I draw my sword to attack this!"
Blaine: No, put the sword down! put the sword down!
Chris: "Get this! Take them inside! Get them! Get them! I dare you!
Gustavo: Now, it's your turn, listener. Subscribe to Tales From The Stinky Dragon, wherever you listen to podcasts today.
Tom: Hey, do you like role-playing games? Well, you should check out Mystery Quest. It's an actual play podcast where we focus on all kinds of indie TTRPGs with a rolling cast of special guests. You can find us anywhere where you get your podcasts. I'll see you there.
Amanda: And now, back to the Afterparty.
[theme]
Amanda: Okay. So, like, the multiverse is good, right? What— is it— what— is this a reference? Because as things are coming out and people are like,
"Eric, what an astute observation on the Marvel-verse." I'm like, "Oh, is it?"
Brandon: You really don't know what he was referencing, Amanda?
Amanda: No.
Brandon: Oh, wow.
Julia: Oh, wow.
Brandon: Okay.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: What are you talking about, babe?
Eric: What does Brandon and Julia think I'm referring to? You guys are better at like—
Julia: Literally, everything that Marvel has been doing with—
Brandon: Yeah, the MCU.
Julia: —Loki and with all of the alternate timelines—
Eric: Right.
Julia: —and different universes within their television series and movies.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah. It's like— I— the multiverse as a storytelling tool, makes sense for comics, right? There are comics coming out at all times. Theoretically, every single thing that's in a comic is canon, unless it's not. It totally makes sense for the storytelling within that form, but like the fact that big corporation, Disney and Marvel, used that to sell us 20 movies in a row that all blow, all the ones after Infinity War and, like, are leaning into the timey-wiminess, just so that they can make more money and be bad at it. It drives me insane. So, like, the question is, why would someone do this? And I think this functions both in the fiction we're talking about in the one we're here, is that if we believe in the multiverse, the way that they're doing this is okay, and we will give them money for giving us bad slop. And I hate it.
Brandon: Yeah. All right.
Eric: And I think that functions both the in the— in what I'm saying, and also what Dr. Mo was saying.
Brandon: I mean, yeah, I just— every time I think of it— look, I— maybe I have a bone to pick with Marvel, but like every time I think about the current slate and remember that Quantumania was— existed and that fucking scene where ants kill Kang, it's like, what the fuck were we doing, guys?
Eric: As people who work in media, you can obviously see when a choice is made for money or real-life reasons.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And it's like, why was that not good? Oh, because of this. This is in so many other movies, right? Where it's like, well, someone was a problem, so we had to cut them out. Like, I think the best example is like, what was the one? That one where Heath Ledger was in it, and then he died, and Professor Magorium’s Big Emporium Forium?
Julia: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Eric: And, like, then they had to have, like, four different main characters to edit around the fact that Heath Ledger was dead. I think that's true. I'm not gonna look it up, but you know what I'm talking about. Like, you can tell when art is made— is compromised by real life. And—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —I think that when it's for real life reasons or for tragedy reasons, I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles. But if it's for money reasons, literally, fuck yourself. And that's how I feel about Miss Minutes.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: We've a couple of very thoughtful, kind of wide-ranging questions about the business behind this media, about how we approach telling the story and choosing how to do it, which I love. And listen, y'all, you're the best, Join the Party listeners. Like, I can't get over you. You're so good.
Eric: We— you know people say that, but like, you really are, you really are wonderful. You're all great. You're all very thoughtful. Tell me all of your media criticism. All I want is your media crit of my work. You can put it. I won't respond to it, and maybe I won't read it. But like, I want you to write it and put it somewhere, honestly.
Amanda: Absolutely. So the first question that I really wanted to get into, this is from GloomDweller, who says, "A game like DND is expressly not designed to enable PvP combat."
Eric: True.
Amanda: Which for those out there who don't know what that is.
Eric: Player on player ouchies.
Amanda: Got it. And other such conflicts among player characters. Masks, seems, from what little we've seen so far, much more flexible in terms of the character interactions and how one player can directly affect another, for better and worse. Has emotional bleed affected any of the previous campaigns or this one so far? And regardless of whether it has or not, how do you mitigate negative effects of bleed at and away from the table?" What an incredible question that would have belonged on Games and Feelings.
Brandon: Bleed, as in like, from one event to another event if you— later in the series of events?
Julia: I think they're talking about, like, out of character versus in character.
Amanda: Yeah. So Gloom is pointing out that unlike in DND, where we— it would be bad for us to act against the party's interests, and we do sometimes for, you know, for fun. In Masks, you do. Like Brandon, your character and Julia's character had negative consequences because of a potential and failed interaction. Let's purchase first from the PvP nature of it all. So Eric, Masks asks characters to act on each other, right?
Eric: Yeah, you can definitely do that. I think the thing that I try to stress in these first few episodes is that there's no such thing as a party in Masks. Like, obviously, there's a problem if you go off on your own, but superheroes go on their— off on their own all the time, and they're usually fine. Like, there is no danger of splitting the party. It is not like a maxim to be crossed. And similarly to PvP, like, if you're fighting someone who's your friend, that is bad on its own, but it's not like, "Oh, my God, earth-shattering. I can't believe you would do this, use all of your spells on me instead of all the baddies." Because Dungeons & Dragons is made to use violence against enemies as much as possible. So why would you spend it on anything else? Because of so much are about emotions and feelings and growth in Masks, it's about teens. You can try to make someone do something else, for better or for worse. And I think that everyone is allowed to make their individual decisions. And I like that it's discrete. When you try to make someone do something else, when you try to influence them, you have to make— put it out there, and then the other person takes it or rejects it, which we see an influence. We see it all the time throughout Masks. You have to put it out there, and then someone else needs to take it or reject it. And then we roll to see what happens next. You only roll dice if you don't know what happens next in Masks, and I really like that. And also I don't roll. Like, these are player situations. Like, it—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —doesn't even involve me. It shouldn't involve me.
Julia: I also think that in Masks, it's very interesting that in terms of the team points, which we haven't gotten a chance to see in character, I don't think. But the fact that, yes, you can have your team points and get those extra points if your teammates are supporting you, but also you can act selfishly and hurt your teammates and take the advantage, which I think is very, very interesting, and also very team-like.
Eric: Yeah. I— we keep just rolling numbers that it doesn't make sense for you guys to use team, which I think it's so funny.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: The other thing about acting selfishly is you don't just get the bonus. You have to shift your own labels, which I think is sick.
Julia: Right.
Amanda: Brandon, Julia, have either of you experienced emotional bleeds, sort of feelings from in world, in play, bleeding out to after the session is done?
Julia: No, I don't think so. Like, I think in general, if I'm watching any of the other characters make a decision, I trust that those players know what they're doing. And, like, you know, it's going to work out fine in the end, and even if it doesn't, it's a fucking game, so who really cares?
Brandon: Yeah, I don't think so either, but for a different reason. Like, I think of this show very much as, like, a job, like, in a— not in a bad way. Like, it's not like a drag or anything. But like, I need to make the best thing we can make and, like, oftentimes that means conflict and, like, emotional stakes and stuff.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: So, like, I know ahead of time those things are going to come up and, like, those are good for the story and good for the characters, and good for the listening experience. So, like, I'm prepared if something— you know, like that were to happen, like, I'm just prepped for that to happen. So I know not to, like, let it bleed into my personal life, you know?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Amanda, what about you? You just said that your character was, like, you trying on feelings you wanted to have. Do you feel that way?
Brandon: I will say that's also— that's always been an Amanda, you know? That's— all of our characters have been doing that, you know?
Amanda: Yes, in different ways. And this is like a new and, you know, like every time, uniquely prescient aspect for me. I experienced this in recording episode four. So—
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: —when folks are listening to next week, something does happen where afterward, I kind of had to take a beat and ask myself some questions, and ask you guys some questions about making sure that everything I did in character is okay, which you're gonna hear and the answer was yes, of course. That was dope.
Brandon: That's another thing that I should— that we should mention is, like, we're also have been— because we've done this so long, we're pretty good about that, just, like, checking in if everything's okay and this is okay, that we're doing this, so that helps. Yeah.
Eric: I think that this is something that needs to happen if you're running actual play, but also doing it on your own table. Like, make sure you're very clear on the principles and personality of your character. Because more than anything, if everyone understands this is what your character could do, and you're not using it as a shield for you to intentionally mess with someone else's fun, then it's like, "Oh, hell yeah. I love that you did that random thing." Like when we were doing it, like when we were doing the thing in episode two, where— and of course, it's my job as the referee, when Craft was like, "Connor, get out of the way." I'm like, "No, we're gonna use the PvP stuff. Let's see what happens here." So it's like, Craft is like, "Yes, get out of the way. I'm going to Thunderbolt it." And Connor says, "No," but not no, be— willfully, no, I'm not quick enough to make this decision right now." That's great. It's like, I'm not responding to the team calls in a team sort of way, like in— that you would be in sports, or like in a tactical unit that were— as a professional crime fighting unit. I'm not responding to your call. I hesitated, and now things went badly.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: When— and I got to do things that went badly. Connor was right there when a robot exploded underneath him. Like, it was great.
Amanda: Yep. Yeah.
Brandon: It happens.
Amanda: That's not personal. That's Masks, baby.
Eric: Yeah. And then you destroyed a fountain because you were—
Julia: Fair enough.
Eric: —bad. Like, great.
Amanda: Hey.
Eric: Like, good. What's wrong with that? Now, I think Masks allows that to be storytelling, instead of, "Ooh, bitch, the rogue and the wizard are fighting."
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: It is very much a different style of gameplay, though. Like, I think— I liken it to, like— Lauren just finished Veilguard, Dragon Age, Veilguard.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: And, like, that type of RPG is, like, there's so many feelings in relationships. It's all about, like, how people talk to each other, and then on the other side of that, there's like, you know, what a,
quote-unquote, "traditional" RPG would be like. The ones from 15 years ago, and they're just like— they're night and day different games, and that's sort of what I'm trying to still figure out as a player, too, between Masks and D&D.
Eric: Oh, yeah. Dragon Age is not Baldur's Gate, is not Skyrim, truly.
Brandon: Yeah. Skyrim is a good example, yeah.
Julia: But Lauren loves a game where there's complex feelings between the characters.
Brandon: Shock.
Amanda: Shocking.
Julia: Shock.
Brandon: Although she— I don't know that she loves the game or not, but yes.
Amanda: Here is another really good big picture question, this one coming in from Mike, "Besides world-building, how else do you prepare for a new campaign? How do you tackle stuff like balancing the party? How much do you tell each other as players in order to keep secret, some of the fun stuff, without having a negative impact on the storytelling aspect?"
Julia: I really like this, because I want to talk about this as a— how we created our characters, which is we don't tell each other shit—
Amanda: Yep.
Julia: —before— we tell Eric stuff. And I assume, Eric like, if we had all picked the same class or something like that, or that our characters were too close, you would have told one or both of us.
Eric: Yes.
Julia: If that was the case.
Eric: Let's ask Brandon. Brandon was the last one to choose his character. How much did you know of— that I told you about Julia and Amanda's choices?
Brandon: I don't think I knew anything other than, like, very basic, just sort of trusting you and me like, "This is better for party composition. Like, let's do this one, because this— the other one might be too close to what someone else was doing, you know?"
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Am I wrong?
Eric: No, no, that's true. I really tried—
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: —really hard to be like, "Hey, the— just don't choose the same thing that someone else did." Honestly.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: After choosing my playbook, I asked Julia for help in naming my character.
Brandon: I mean, yeah, I think that was a necessity.
Julia: Both of us did.
Amanda: But in all of us shows, all— the ones that we were most drawn to, were any of you drawn to other playbooks?
Julia: Yeah, I had, like, two backup ones in case the Scion didn't pan out for whatever reason, because I always like to have backups, because I don't want to feel like I'm leaving myself in the lurch if the first option doesn't work out for me. But I— like Amanda said, you both reached out and in our little, like, group chat and being like, "What should I name my character?" And I genuinely thought Brandon was going to do a, like, Beast Boy-esque character based on what he had, like, asked about. He's like, "I would kind of want, like, an animal name." I'm like, "Ah. Brandon's doing Beast Boy. I get it. How about Connor Lyons?"
Amanda: Was it for fun?
Brandon: I don't think I said I wanted an animal name, Julia.
Amanda: You did.
Julia: You did.
Amanda: Yeah, you did.
Brandon: Did I?
Julia: Hold on, I'm pulling it up.
Amanda: It was like a Moony Moonerson.
Julia: I'm checking the group chat.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I think that was just the theme that came away from it. Yeah, my first ones were Nathan Beck, Benjamin Black, or Ethan Ellis.
Julia: No, no, no. Hold on. There were—
Brandon: I'm in it right now.
Julia: I know, but then after that.
Amanda: At some point, you're like, "It'd be funny if his name was Lion Lyon."
Brandon: Julia did— said, quote, "Gotta do a last name that is vaguely animal, but actually— but isn't actually, like, Drake or Lyon or something." And I was like, "That's a cool idea."
Julia: Well—
Amanda: Well, once more, Brandon, he was a clone.
Brandon: To be clear, I know that was a really dope idea. I loved it, but it was your idea.
Julia: I don't know why I told you— I don't know why I said that. There was something in my brain that— I don't know. I don't know.
Amanda: Maybe you hoped he was going in a beast direction.
Julia: I think because I thought you were doing the transformed. I was like, "Oh, okay. So that means transforming it to animals."
Eric: You know, that's funny, because I feel like when we talked about the transformed, because Brandon and I also took a little while to settle on this, and I think we should talk a little bit about Connor just as a character.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Because we touched on this a little bit in the world-building, but I feel like we intentionally didn't want you to be transformed into an animal.
Julia: Yeah, sorry. I found the part that my brain—
Brandon: Okay.
Julia: —looped incorrectly, which was you sent a bunch of names and I said, "Do you want alliteration or nah? Also, what's the vibe?"
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: And you said, "Think Beast." And my brain said, "Beast Boy, okay."
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: And then I started listing a bunch of names that were like animals, but weren't like Drake, Lyon, Robbins, Crowe, Gosling, Behr.
Brandon: Yeah, and that's correct. Sorry, there's nothing wrong with it. You— what you said is the correct choice to make.
Julia: No, no, no, I understand. I was just like, "Wait, hold on."
Amanda: This didn’t come from nothing.
Julia: Why did I get Beast Boy? Why did I start doing animal names?
Brandon: Yeah, because I do think of Conor as very beast-like in my conception, so—
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: —yeah.
Amanda: But, yeah, Brandon, I would love to know, I concur with Eric, this question is from Mike, "What was your thought process when creating Connor? He feels very unique and different from your previous characters. I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of surprised by the not so chaotic character. No offense, I love your chaos, too."
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, I always— the first thing I'm thinking of is, what have I not done yet? And so that's my guiding principle and then I sort of backfill from there. So my first thought was, like, I need to do— and I do sort of vacillate between chaos and collected, as you've seen, but I wanted to do someone who was more of an Amanda leader type.
Julia: Aw.
Brandon: Or an Amanda, like, together type, I guess. So that was my thought. And then, yeah, we just— I just looked through the classes to see what's cool and what could fit into that sort of stereotype and get away from there.
Eric: I think it's so funny that you think that Connor is close to Milo, because I just don't at all.
Brandon: Well, I still need some time to develop him, too, but yeah.
Eric: Because it's like— I remember you were asking me about this, and I'm like, oh, you know— something that Brandon does at work all the time is like, he talks to people who are irrational rationally, and talks them down and figure things out. I'm like, "You don't really do that a lot when we're playing Dungeons & Dragons." He's like, "Oh, I did that with Milo." I'm like, "No, you didn't. Milo's not earnest. Milo didn't, like, keep control of stuff. Like he was, excited and he wanted to do things that he believed in, and he did it but— when putting his head down and using his ghost powers." Like, I don't think Connor did that. I don't think Connor did that at all.
Brandon: Milo, yeah, he was earnest, but all the rest of it was true.
Julia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Eric: So it was like— it was fun for you to do this, and it's like, "No, you should have someone earnest who's trying to hold— earnestly holding everything together, and is pushing himself to sublimate chaos, even if it's good for them, for the good of everyone else."
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I agree. Yeah, Milo is, like, intentionally, sort of like a mess of a young man.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: And I want Connor to be the opposite. I just haven't had enough time to— with Connor to really feel what the— yeah, what the thing is.
Eric: Oh, yeah. Listen, it's only been three episodes, plenty of time.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I'm just touched that you thought of me and said, "Transparent organ jelly."
Julia: Hell yeah, dawg.
Brandon: That's how I see you, Amanda.
Eric: Well, I want to ask Julia a question about this.
Julia: What's up?
Eric: I said this explicitly in episode one, but like, the whole point of the Scion is the Scion has to be good at superheroing. That's the whole point of the class, is that the tension comes from, I— you could be really good at superheroing or you could be good at villaining. And you're like, "Nah, dawg, Fuck 420, blaze all day." So it's kind of funny that, like, all these NPCs are like, "Hey, dude, get your shit together because that's literally archetype." And you're like, "No."
Julia: "No." Because I was thinking about the delinquent originally or something— what's the other one? The reformed?
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I was thinking about the delinquent or the reformed, and I liked those. But when I came down to looking at the different playbooks and the different moves that each of those playbooks had, it was much more interesting to me to have this conflict between, oh, people expect bad things from me. And while I'm not going to live up to those expectations of villainy, I'm also not going to feel like I need to be pushed in the opposite direction as well. And that— being pushed in that opposite direction so aggressively is what burned Craft out in the first place.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: If we were playing freshman year Masks, I would definitely have played like the reformed or the prodigy, or something like that.
Eric: For sure. I wanted— yeah. It's going to be a lot of, like, Craft dealing with the Scion playbook and it's like—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —can Craft be herself while also achieving at a high level?
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: I also don't think we answered your question earlier, Amanda, about other playbooks, because I was originally— when we first— very first very first started talking about Masks, I was also thinking about the Scion. And Julia was like, "Oh, I wanted that." So I—
Julia: I don't think it was, "Oh, I wanted that." I think I said,
Staking my claim, Scion." And then Brandon—
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Julia: —I didn't even know that you were considering the Scion, Brandon.
Brandon: Yeah, exactly because I— yeah, because I wanted— you seem really excited about it, so I wanted you to be able to have it. Some of the other ones I was thinking about was the other two were like the two twinny twin ones.
Julia: Oh, my God.
Brandon: Where it was like one— I forgot what they're called, but one is yourself from the future, come back in time as the—
Amanda: The Harbinger.
Eric: Ah.
Brandon: The Harbinger is like an adult version of you.
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: Who's like grizzled, and you're like the optimistic one.
Julia: Oh, there's also the innocent, which is similar to that. Just like—
Eric: No, no, no, no. Brandon's talking about the innocent. The harbinger is the one that has doom surrounding them at all times.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: Like, "Hey, the world's gonna end, and it's probably my fault."
Brandon: That's the innocent. And then, yeah, there's another one that's just like— it's a single person that's, like, split into two, kind of.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Like, they're twins, but like, they sort of function as one person.
Julia: The joined.
Brandon: The joined, that was fun, too. But—
Amanda: That’s awesome.
Brandon: —then I thought about the logistics of having to do two characters at once.
Julia: Well, no, the joined is really interesting because your character is fundamentally linked to another hero on the team, which has to be a PC with their own playbook.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: So you would have had to, like, reached out to me or Amanda.
Amanda: Right.
Julia: And been like, "What if I was your twin?"
Eric: "What if we— what if my power only works when I'm around you? Is that weird?"
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: It's a very— that one is such one that's for a table, that it's like, "I need my—like, let's have two friends playing this—"
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: "—and put some tension into it." And I'm like, "I don't know how that would work in this podcast."
Amanda: Yeah. So Eric, were there any playbooks that you were kind of like, "I don't think this is gonna work for an actual play show."?
Eric: That one— I mean, that one, honestly, only that one.
Julia: We even need, like, four more people at our table in order to make that work.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: The delinquent is a tough one, because it's like, why are they at school for us—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —specifically, and that's in the book. That's, like, when they tell you how to use the— in the unbound expansion, when they tell you how to use the school setting. They're like, "Hey, so the delinquents, like, why are they here? You figure that out." I played the star before, and it was fun to do. And it comes from, like a pre-influencer everywhere TikTok sort of world. And I think that a lot of, like, superhero media does not capture the influencer superhero very well, and it's just one that I feel like we'd have to do something really special other than like, "I do it for the gram," constantly.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: There has to be, like, some depth there, which would have been hard.
Amanda: Kazy asks, "What playbooks would you assign to the rival team and why is Wraith a doomed?"
Eric: Oh.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Does that strike you all as true?
Brandon: Yeah, I think so.
Julia: Yeah. I'm curious about Wraith. I think we need to learn more about Wraith before I can say what her class is.
Eric: You know, similarly, as I say, when we play Dungeons & Dragons, the wonderful thing about making NPCs is I don't have to assign classes to them. So it's like—
Julia: Fair.
Eric: —I don't have to assign playbooks to them, but you're actually— you're absolutely true. We don't know, because, remember, superhero powers are not necessarily tied to specific playbooks.
Amanda: Yes. Yeah.
Eric: It's about their archetypes in the story, and we don't know yet. We don't know what the three of those folks are doing. You could probably guess. You could probably make some assumptions based on their— into their one episode introduction, because I'm laying the symbolism on thick this year. But, yeah, I mean, you— I don't know. We don't know yet.
Julia: I'm also so curious about Wraith, especially the— and I don't know if you dropped it as a joke or if it's a real thing that happened, but Wraith saying that she spent the summer in hell, interning under Mephisto, who, in my mind, is a villain.
Amanda: Uh-huh.
Julia: I was like, "What? Who would allow you at the school to do that?"
Eric: No, that's real. That was a real thing, baby.
Amanda: Oh, baby.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Huh. That's interesting.
Amanda: In my head, TeamCast is the Harbinger, which is the only other playbook I considered, because I played it in our other campaign with Marquez and Megan. It was so much fun. Why is this funny? Why are Julia and Eric laughing? Because the flavor text is, "You're from the future, and you know how things turn out. You came back with a mission to make sure history changes for the better, but things just scrambled. Your memories are not quite right." And I just really obsessed with this idea of TeamCast occasionally having very truthful flashes forward to what could happen in the future if they don't change things.
Brandon: That's really funny. I like that.
Eirc: Julia, that reminds me of Skeets from Booster Gold.
Julia: I was gonna say, that's very Booster Gold.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: So that makes sense.
Eric: That's very good. Yeah, coming back from the future, but not— but things aren't correct. Yeah, Booster Gold is a superhero from DC, where he's just like a dude in the year, like, 3000 something. And he comes back to become rich and famous while using superhero tech. And he has a robot called Skeets who has, like, future Google, and knows when everything's going to happen.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Oh, wow.
Eric: So that's how he makes money and tries to be famous by knowing when things are going to happen.
Brandon: That's cool.
Julia: I was guessing the newborn for TeamCast, but that's just me.
Eric: That would have been good, too.
Amanda: Here are some very cool, crunchy character questions that I'm stoked to get into. So first, from Brae, "How does it feel to have the sword of Damocles that is an inevitable appearance from LTC's premier girlboss, and she-E-O, Emily Slaughter, hanging over your heads?" And I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Correction, Brae's display name is Brae, Emily Slaughter's intern.
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: I'm so sorry.
Julia: I'm sure it's gonna be totally fine when we see her.
Amanda: I'm sure that's not gonna kind of mess with Craft's life at all.
Eric: I'm saying this too, as y'all start recommending Campaign Four to your friends, which I hope you are, because we're living in a post D&D world. Like it's wonderful playing other tabletop RPGs, it's wonderful. I'm really going to try, really hard, not to lean on— waiting for in a very Star Wars or Marvel sort of way, waiting on the pop from remembering something in the past. So it's like Emily Slaughter is baked into Craft's life, but like, please don't wait around, waiting for, like, the PCs from the previous campaign to show up as, like, professors. Like, I really want to make this accessible to other folks. So it's like I'm really trying to be judicious here. If we were doing like a game set, like a 1,000 years in the future, is like we better see one NPC who's like now a 1,000 years old and about to die. Like, I only want to do it in really fun and interesting ways.
Brandon: Can I pitch that we don't see them during the entire campaign and at the post credits scene at the finale? It's just them eating shawarma.
Eric: Yeah. And all of them were wearing eye patches.
Amanda: All right. You got lots of time to start drawing that, folks. So—
Julia: Eric, speaking of Emily Slaughter, can I tell you a line that you said that has been stuck in my head for, like, three weeks?
Eric: Yeah, sure.
Brandon: Is it Pepa?
Julia: No, it's, "I didn't go to Costco. Who went to Costco?"
Amanda: Incredible.
Eric: Oh, I'm like notetaking— you know, inserting motherhood into this girl boss' life is so funny to me.
Amanda: Uh-huh.
Eric: So I just— I had so much fun. I remember when we were doing this in episode three, where I'm like, "If you're going to do this and clear a condition with this, it needs to have actual consequences. Do you want to buy Connor a bunch of Twinkies?" And you're like, "Yes."
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yes, I would.
Eric: So I'm like, "I need to turn the knob way up for there being consequences."
Amanda: Incredible.
Eric: Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed that.
Julia: Yes, it was a good one. It's just the cadence has been stuck in my head for days now.
Eric: I imagine her texting her that. Were you texting you that?
Amanda: I have had the cadence of Wordsmith stuck in my head for weeks, and we had some very good questions all about Wordsmith.
Eric: Oh, my God.
Amanda: Firstly from SavedMan, "If Wordsmith doesn't know how to spell a word, does it appear above his head misspelled, or does his power have spell check?" And then a follow up question from Jenny, "If there is spell check, does that mean there's also auto correct? If so, could it get confused and write a completely different thing to what Wordsmith was trying to say?"
Julia: Eric, can I pitch you something for the answer to this?
Eric: Please.
Julia: A lot of, like, times when you're looking at superhero media, particularly like people getting powers and then learning how to use them better and, like, most optimally. A lot of times they're like, they'll have to do very specific training that is specific to their powers. And I think Wordsmith's very specific training was doing a lot of spelling bees.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like, on top of, like, a Mayan pyramid. Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: That's awesome.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I'm gonna give you the nerdy answer, which is that the answer— I think it's closer to what Julia said. I think that Wordsmith had to study spelling very clearly, because it's like words have power, words have meaning. This is the whole thing that it worked with. He only conjures objects while speaking Esperanto. So every time there is emphasis in English, it's just like the word above his head, right? So it's like, that is— in English that, I guess, like it's always spelled right, because the words are the words he's saying, and they're always spelled right. So I guess they're spelled phonetically. Like if you mispronounced a word, it'd be spelled differently, maybe.
Julia: Yeah. That makes sense.
Eric: But in, like, a similar way that, like magic, like that Zatanna and Dr. Fate uses is just speaking English backwards. It's like in order to do magic, Wordsmith has to speak Esperanto, so that isn't as much of an issue. But to answer your question, no autocorrect, yes spell check.
Brandon: So, Eric, do you know off the top of your head what the Esperanto word for broom is or—
Julia: Mop.
Brandon: —mop?
Amanda: Excellent follow-up, because we saw Wordsmith create physical items with his words, continue SavedMan, "Is this something he can do intentionally or something that happens when he gets excited or emotional? Is it just random?"
Brandon: That'd be so funny if he got excited and just made a mop.
Julia: Mops.
Eric: I think that there's a lot less power in English, so that's why he created mops, and they disappeared, and they disappeared after you were done using them. And I thought it was funny just to say that it said mop on the side of the mop.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: It was very funny.
Eric: So it's like—
Julia: So it was very funny, right.
Eric: You know, the stuff from the introductory scene of episode one, like we saw him doing— like he said escape and he used like— it was like an escape rope and Pokemon, like he conjured a sword to fight those crocodiles, alligators?
Amanda: Whatever.
Julia: Alligators.
Eric: What are the ones that live in the sewers?
Julia: Gators.
Eric: The gators. Right, right.
Amanda: Eric is not possible to know the difference between an alligator and crocodile.
Eric: Right. Right, right, right.
Amanda: Not possible.
Eric: Right. So those are powerful, but I think he just like low-level— there's less magic in English.
Julia: That makes sense.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Than an intentional language, intentionally—
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: —put together.
Eric: I was— I also want to give a shout out to Brandon for allowing me to do pickups of episode one, because I really wanted to make up some proper nouns for stuff that I didn't get to hit on in episode one when we were recording it, because superhero storytelling is all about the proper nouns. So it's like coming up with, like, the name of the book, coming up with all that. So that was really important to me, and I'm glad I got to fill it in.
Brandon: Well, shout out to Eric for absolutely nailing the— what do you call that? The just continuation of tonality in the pickup?
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: It fit in perfectly, you know?
Amanda: Hmm. Delish.
Eric: I've been doing this for a little while, bud.
Amanda: Occasionally, my therapist would be like, "That was really beautifully put." And then when I'm feeling really like— you know, like I want to deflect compliments, I'm like, "I'm a professional talker. Like, that's just a me thing."
Brandon: That's funny, because I just tell my therapist to fuck off.
Eric: Brandon kick flips out of the room.
Brandon: I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Eric: And he gets charged 150.
Brandon: I'm kidding.
Amanda: Here's a question from Moss, very important logistics here, Brandon. Okay. "If Connor is wearing normal clothes, do the clothes—"
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: "—also become invisible? If they do, does Connor know some cool tech person that can make special clothes that aren't see-through? How can I submit these questions to the Afterparty?" Moss, you nailed it. The answer is Discord's social media or email. I'm saying this because you figured it out, and also for everyone else to know out there. Anyway—
Brandon: If Connor is wearing normal clothes, they do not become invisible.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: That was the mistake/joke I made in an episode, I think this past episode, because when we were hiding and, like, waiting for the goo in a suit to, like—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —ring the doorbell, I was like, "Well, Connor could just walk up because he's invisible." And like, no, he's not. Even if he was naked, he's not invisible.
Julia: No. We would just see a lot of organs floating around.
Amanda: We did have a stray question about whether or not Chad is related to this goo in a suit, but that's for the spoilies.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Guys, Ooze is cool. I don't know what to tell you.
Amanda: Very cool.
Eric: Ooze is cool.
Amanda: Oh, Eric, sorry, that was— how did you know— because I do have just a quick question here, bursting in about the vinyl episode from Campaign Two that you can buy limited—
Brandon: What?
Amanda: —editions only at jointhepartypod.com/merch, from Miss Cali who said, "Val Vesuvio. I love you and miss you so much."
Julia: Same. Big same.
Eric: Val will not come back in Campaign Four, but you can buy the vinyl to listen to Val again. They're out now. They look incredible. You look at our socials for how beautiful the stuff is, the art is wonderful. The typesetting is wonderful. I mean, it sounds really good. I'm so glad that we were able to do it. But also, the vinyl itself is beautiful. It— Chad's just on, Chad's vinyl.
Amanda: It's Chad.
Brandon: I was gonna say, if you haven't looked at the— either on the Discord or on social, if you haven't looked at the vinyl itself, the neon green with swirls in it, it's so cool. You guys have to get one. It's so cool.
Julia: It's dope.
Amanda: It's so pretty. Mike at Certified Crucial, who are doing our merch fulfillment, went through every single one to make sure that the green was sufficiently vibrant, so nobody is getting the two or three that were insufficiently green, okay, people? We care about your experience.
Eric: If someone has a vine— we don't have them yet. You all got it before we do.
Julia: We haven't gotten them, no.
Eric: So if you want to take a video of the vinyl spinning, we would love that.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Please take that and send it to me on socials, or it'd be up wherever.
Amanda: Also, artist Shay helped artist Kevin make sure that the green of the Chad label that's in the middle of the actual vinyl matches the green of the physical disc. So folks—
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: —it's just— it's so much better than I could even imagine. Pick up the vinyl now.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: All right, folks, a few more questions for us before we slink on out of here. We're getting to the end of sixth period and you know what that means, lunch.
Julia: Lunchtime.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Oh, I was gonna say drugs, weed?
Julia: Well—
Brandon: I don't know.
Amanda: Well—
Julia: —some of us.
Amanda: Depends what your lunch is.
Eric: Weeb.
Amanda: Here's one from Hanna4breakfast, "How was Jupiter chosen as the name of the town?"
Eric: I just thought it was a sick name for a suburb.
Amanda: Nailed it.
Julia: I agree.
Brandon: It is a sick name for a suburb.
Amanda: From Soup Dumpling, "Eric, I love you role-playing caring and supportive adults, like in the flashback scene with Anita Tigre. It truly gives me so much joy and heals my teenage self." No question. Just a comment.
Eric: I'm glad you like it. Anita Tigre as Connor's aunt who finds him after the accident. I— you know she's caring, but I think, you know, she— because she thinks that, like, work equals success, and it worked out for her, and we'll see if-- how that works out for Connor.
Brandon: Is that not true, Eric? Does work not equal--
Eric: Well, it worked for her, so it must be true.
Brandon: But, like, in real life, I need to know for my friend, is what—
Eric: Well, for Anita, is for Anita, it worked out, so it's true.
Brandon: Okay, cool. So in fiction, it also remains in real life, if work— it's cool, it's all good?
Eric: I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's like she is— because she loves Connor dearly. She also has a very strong sense of what is right and wrong, and what works and what doesn't work. So, adults, man.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Adults.
Julia: Adults, man.
Amanda: Eric from No Hugs, Just Bugs, "If Rick Powers' power is to adapt to a given situation, why did his power think that he needed to shake Dr. Moonboot's hand with an octopus tentacle?"
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Rule of funny.
Eric: Yeah. There was some— there's a little— there's something a little bit venom about Rick's powers, which I think we'll get into more. But I like— I'm really emphasizing the fact that, like, Rick, the person and Powers, the powers are separate entities, almost.
Brandon: Well, also, because Rick was a little bit of distance away, so he needed more length, and he doesn't have stretchy powers, necessarily. He has—
Julia: He could, though.
Brandon: But he could, but, you know, he needed more length.
Eric: He could have stretched his arm out, like stretchy powers, but I thought that the Powers would think it was funnier— because they're both teenage boys, both Rick and the Powers. They thought it would be funnier to turn into an octopus hand.
Amanda: Well, also, I mean, what's—
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: —what's more effective at shaking a hand that's across the room, a long hand or a long octopus tentacle?
Eric: It's a great point.
Amanda: I see it.
Eric: It's a good point.
Amanda: Soup Dumpling wants to know, Brandon, "Was Connor hoping to plan to catch Yogi, the bear in villain form? Because you did specifically request for a villain we could catch in a basket."
Brandon: Yeah, I saw this, thank you, Soup. Yes.
Julia: Okay. End of statement.
Amanda: Excellent.
Julia: Got it, cool.
Amanda: Julia, that's gonna be an easy edit for you on this Afterparty.
Julia: Love that.
Amanda: Cut it off right there. olivia_marie, "Both Shelley and Rowan seem to have superhero names. What's Connor's?" I don't think he has one.
Julia: I do want to clarify, Craft also does not have one.
Brandon: Also, yeah, Shelley does not have one.
Julia: Going by your last name is not a superhero name.
Amanda: I mean—
Brandon: It's a football name, yeah.
Eric: I guess if you're born within the structure of heroes and villains, I guess your name is what it is.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Well, Connor intentionally doesn't have one, because he doesn't want to put a barrier between him and the people he's trying to talk out of things, so—
Julia: That's awesome.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —like— you know?
Eric: It's worth pointing out that in Masks, explicitly, there's only one playbook that is about having a secret identity.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —I— which I think is kind of interesting. I think there's something about, like, the fact that you are playing teens, but you're like in the fourth generation of superheroes in your city, which is what Masks really is trying to push with that. That, like, the teens don't— unless you explicitly want to. It's— we're almost like in a post-secret identity world, because everyone's supposed to have superpowers. So it's just kind of interesting that it's less emphasized in this than in, like, other types of superhero storytelling.
Amanda: Yeah
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: And Rowan is really leaning on Gravitas, like you hear me correct myself in some of the episodes, in a way that I'm really glad Brandon kept in the edit, because for Rowan, it's trying to kind of separate the, you know, "I'm just Rowan, a regular person who can also crush a heartbeat with kind of a blink." And her acting on those powers as Gravitas, so we'll see if that holds.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: There is also something— I don't remember if we discussed this, but I think it's so funny, since we're at school, like, imagine you have to come up with your code name at 14.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Oh, girl, I would have been nine.
Eric: Which is, like, so funny.
Julia: That's how you get Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
Eric: Exactly.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So it's like Gravitas is such a name for someone who has absolutely no confidence.
Amanda: There's also a very entertaining digression on a— whether or not there is a Real Housewives of Lake Town City, and what those characters would be like. So I'll just leave that to— for folks to explore in the Discord, because it was incredible.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Amanda: Shout out Aidan and crew. But that brings us class to our final segment. It's not the do now, it's the last bit. We can't spoil the plank. We're not pirates. This is the—
Brandon: No.
Amanda: —In-school Spoiler Spention.
Eric: Nice.
Brandon: Love it. Love it. In-school Spoiler-ention.
Eric: It's ISS because we're bad hosts.
Brandon: ISS.
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: We're in space.
Amanda: And we are, again, training students participating in a carceral state.
Eric: Oh, my God.
Amanda: All right, folks, here we are. Brae wants to know, "Does it return to the LTC Metropolitan Area mean we'll be getting any more SLaM One Shots in the future?" Eye emoji, eye emoji, eye emoji.
Eric: Hero Forge, give us a bunch of money.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: To do Slam.
Amanda: You know who has been sponsoring us recently, is Mage Hand Press. Talk to Mage Hand.
Brandon: That's true. That's true.
Amanda: That could be fun. That could be fun.
Brandon: I would— I regret not playing Arnold Palmer as a character for my PC.
Eric: Oh my god.
Julia: Damn.
Eric: Arnold Palmer, Harvey Withers handshake meme.
Amanda: Uh-huh.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Really, honestly, yes.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: From LibraryChick, "Are we going to get a peek behind the curtain of making the new theme song? Loved it so much." Hey, LibraryChick, you're psychic, because we just posted that on Friday. Brandon and Eric did a deep dive into the theme song for all of our paying patrons.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda: So go and sign up at patreon.com/jointhepartypod.
Eric: We talk about the theme song and we talk about the video that I made related to the theme song. We're also going to release a video version for all patrons. So all patrons at the $5 level are going to get both the video and the audio version, because there's a lot of visual stuff that we're going to be doing.
Julia: Relevant to that, I would say, was a question from No Hugs, Just Bugs, which was about me recognizing, quote-unquote, "the Jaguar warrior woman" at the end of episode three. And if— it sounded like I recognized that character, it is because we discussed a similar character in a Party Planning.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: So if you missed the Party Planning, you're missing out on some good, good content that might be relevant for future episodes.
Eric: Yeah, we did a— I'll just say what it is. I mean, they saw the sample. We did a creative exercise where everyone just threw names of superhero stuff at the wall, and then I collected them, and then I immediately started putting them in, in episode three.
Amanda: Which is why you hear Julia go, "Really?"
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I thought for a second, until this very moment, I thought Julia was just, like, referencing some, like, cryptid or some mythology thing from Spirits.
Amanda: No.
Julia: No.
Amanda: Corpuscular.
Brandon: Corpuscular.
Amanda: From a young pilgrim, "Calling it now, Powers is going to become a super villain?"
Brandon: No, he would never.
Julia: What? No.
Brandon: He's so good.
Amanda: From Dominique, "I gotta know what happened to Dr Mo in that flashback1?!?1
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, I do, too.
Amanda: Same.
Eric: Can I tell you all the references that I put into Dr. Mohinder Ram?
Julia: Hit me with it.
Amanda: Oh, my God, yes.
Eric: Can I tell you? So Mohinder was the doctor from Heroes, so that's where—
Julia: Oh.
Eric: —I got that name from.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: Of course, Moonboot is related to the James Bond movie, Dr. No, where I think he has a moon base, if I remember correctly.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: And—
Amanda: Is Ram from anything in particular?
Eric: No, it was just a very popular Indian name, Indian last name. So I wanted to make that work, yeah.
Amanda: Shut out.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: And finally, folks, from LibraryChick, is there anything else in Lake Town City that we are going to see again with fresh eyes in Campaign Four?
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Who can say?
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: I mean, there's got to be an internship program.
Brandon: Yeah, it's going to be really weird when all the PCs and NPCs finally, you know, go to the internship of Milo, and then, from a fresh perspective, see how, like, hot he is, and, like, attractive. And they're going to be like, "We're all going to have to be like, 'Yo, this guy's so hot." And then I'm gonna have to play, like, Connor and a really hot guy, so it's gonna be so weird.
Julia: Remember when Dr. Mo didn't know who Milo was?
Amanda: We have the nugs in there for people who did listen to Campaign Two, and if you haven't or you haven't yet, you're good.
Eric: It's gonna be weird when I'm gonna have to control five NPCs, and each of you work, and we're gonna be like, "Hey, did you notice Milo has a dump truck ass? Can we objectify someone leading our internship? Is that bad? Is that woke?"
Julia: "Whoa. That guy has, like, the biggest ass I've ever seen."
Eric: "I heard that's where they keep his ghost powers."
Brandon: He's gonna fuck up Rowan's gravity powers, because it has so much of gravity of its own.
Eric: Wow.
Julia: It has its own gravitational pull.
Amanda: I’ve never dealt with this before. Oh, my God. What do I do? How is space time bending a little bit toward his ass? I love this campaign.
Julia: We gotta go.
Eric: Every time you do Rowan, I'm like, "Why is Amanda playing a 55-year-old man from like a Martin Scorsese movie?" Every time.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: "I'm a 17-year-old with tattoos. I belong in the movie. I don't know what you mean." All right, folks, enjoying this campaign so much. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your incredible questions. If you want to hear us play clones of ourselves in our characters from Campaign Two, go to jointhepartypod.com/merch to pick up that vinyl now. Every single purchase comes with an mp3, so whether or not you have a record player, you can listen to it. And also, we're not making more, okay? We have a 100, that's it. So if you want them, you got to go buy it now.
Brandon: Do it.
Eric: Do it.
Amanda: All right, everybody, as we say at the end of every school day.
Brandon: Bye.
Julia: Later.
Eric: Make good choices.
Brandon: Have a great summer.
Amanda: Have a great summer. Bye.
Eric: Hags. Hey, all you super friends. You want to get good together? You want to skip math together? You want to punch bad guys together? It's not that I haven't used my words, it's that nobody listens to me and I can shoot fire. 1, 2, 3, 4.