It’s time to build our second campaign! Where will we set it? WHEN will we set it? What genre are we going to play in? All this and more in the first of our four world-building pregame episodes.
Housekeeping
- Schedule: This pregame to our second campaign continues with weekly world-building episodes continue for the next three weeks. Then, on April 7, 2020, Episode 1 debuts.
- Patreon: Our Patreon is now monthly! Check out our new tiers and become a member at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. If you’re an existing Patron and haven’t switched your tier to one of the new monthly options, click here to make the switch and keep accessing your benefits.
Multitude
- NEXT STOP is our newest show! Listen to the trailer at nextstopshow.com or in your podcast app and follow us @NextStopShow on Twitter and Instagram for behind-the-scenes content leading up to the April premiere.
- Get your Join the Party enamel pins, Eric’s Labor Party modules, and new merch for all Multitude podcasts at jointhepartypod.com/merch! Our TeePublic (jointhepartypod.com/teepublic) will remain up through the spring.
Sponsors
- Brilliant, where you can sign up for free to take problem-solving courses at brilliant.org/jointheparty. The first 200 people to sign up will also get 20% off your annual Premium subscription!
- Lily CBD, where code jointheparty will get you 10% off.
- Twenty Sided Store, the best indie game store in Brooklyn. Pick up Masks using code JOINTHEPARTY for 20% off your online or in-store order.
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod
- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod
- facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod
- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod
- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com
- music: brandongrugle.bandcamp.com
- merch: jointhepartypod.com/merch
Cast & Crew
- Dungeon Master: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Creative Consultant: Connor McLoughlin
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast, powered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. That means a group of friends create a story together, chapter by chapter, that takes us beyond the tabletop to parts unknown. In the first campaign, we explored fantasy adventure, intrigue, magic, and drama. In the newest story, we tackle science, superpowers, a better future, and the responsibility to help others.
Every month, we sit down for the Afterparty, where we break down our game and answer your questions about how to play D&D and other roleplaying games at home. We also have segments at the beginning of each campaign to teach people how to play the game themselves. It’s a party, and you’re invited! Find out more at jointhepartypod.com.
Transcript
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello and welcome to the Pre-Game! That’s right. It’s a new thing. Welcome. Join the Party. Season 2. I feel like I’m starting a hip-hop album.
[all laugh]
Amanda: Cha!
Eric: Bam-bam-bam Desert Storm!
Julia: Oh no!
Amanda: [laughing] Oh no! What a bad beginning.
Eric: [chuckles] It’s one of my callouts.
Amanda: Julia, what would you- what would you call… [excitedly] OH, Julia’s here!
[all shouting and cheering]
Julia: Hey, what’s up? It’s me.
Amanda: Brandon’s also here.
Brandon: [emphatically] I’m BACK!
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: Oh jeez.
Amanda: Whoa.
Brandon: Like Space Jam!
Julia: Oh snap.
Brandon: Well, nearly.
Eric: No, explain that.
Brandon: Uh, Space Jam was a movie from a long time ago, in the ‘90s-
Eric: Good.
Brandon: And now it’s supposed to be coming back, but we’re not sure if it’s coming back, so just like my energy level, it’s hit or miss.
[all laugh]
Eric: Jesus Christ.
Amanda: Well, you may get the sense that this is the Join the Party you remember and love, but also with some new things because we’re starting a new campaign and we’re so excited about it. But just like how we try to teach folks how to play D&D, and how to make great podcasts as our broader kind of Multitude project, we wanted to document as much as we can the experience of starting a campaign.
What is it like to decide where you are going to play in, like, space, time, and fiction? How do you decide what you’re going to be? How do you put together a balanced party? So we are going to be recording all of those things and we’re calling it the Pre-Game.
Eric: It’s the Pre-Game. You ask your friends if your outfit looks good, you have like one drink but not too many, you all take a shot as you walk out the door, you play your chill playlist, but not your party playlist. So like, much less R&B. Or more R&B? I don't know what your pre-games look like.
Brandon: Eric, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be able to experience a thing I did not get to in college [laughs]
Amanda: There it is.
Julia: You’re not alone, Brandon, you’re not alone.
Amanda: Yeah, no. I was working.
Eric: Oh, yeah, I’m the weird one because I went to parties in college.
Amanda: Yeah, Eric.
Julia: Went to parties in college and now hosts D&D podcasts?
Eric: Yeah, like a cool kid.
Julia: Mhm.
Eric: Julia.
Julia: Mhm.
Eric: I don't like that Julia’s here. Can we find a new one?
Amanda: Oh no!
Julia: I’ll leave then.
Amanda: No!
Eric: While Julia leaves the studio, I’m gonna introduce what these Pre-Game episodes are going to look like. So this first one, we’re going to talk about the world and the characters. I have a sheet that I put together of initial ideas of kind of what the genre, what the setting, what the plot could look like. And we’re all gonna talk about it and really chew through it, and then figure out what the characters you're going to play - how they might fit in there, and how they will walk through the world.
Then in the second episode, we’re going to get into the D&D stuff. So the three players are each going to bring classes and subclasses that they might want to play as we put together the party construction of what we’re going to play together, and then I’m going to talk about what the podcast is going to look like.
We'll discuss together the release schedule, the format of the episodes, and really get into it. But I’m sure we have told you this information already. We’re recording this in December because we’re cool kids who like playing Dungeons & Dragons now, just so you know.
Brandon: It’s my holiday present from Eric.
Amanda: You’re presum?
Brandon: My presum!
Amanda: Aw!
Eric: But, we’re all gonna talk about it and we’re gonna start that here.
Amanda: So, Eric, this is not always how campaigns come together, right? Like sometimes you show up, and your DM Surprises you. Sometimes people show up with a character that they are burning to play, and then with their DM build a campaign around it.
For everybody here, how have the campaigns that you’ve been in started? Have you done this kind of progression where together you decide the world, then the kind of party, and then the characters specifically?
Julia: In my non-podcasting DM experience, I was given like, “This is what the world is going to be. This is the kind of campaign we’re going to be running,” and then I kind of created a character based on what I knew the structure of the campaign was going to be.
Amanda: Right.
Brandon: Yeah, mine have mostly been like, “Hey build a character and then come and we’ll have snacks and I’ll tell you about it.” For my DMing, my small amount of DMing that I’ve done, have all been for newbies I think, so I think I walked them through the character making process, which [strained] was a journey. And then I did like a prewritten campaign and just sort of walked them through it that way, and just sort of discovered the characters as we go.
Amanda: Yeah. And Eric, I’m sure on the DMing internet there’s tons of different approaches.
Eric: Yeah, it’s funny that you say that, because I spend a lot of time lurking and researching on r/dnd the reddit - the subreddit for D&D, and whenever someone has a problem, it’s like, “This player is like putting all of this gross shit in my campaign!” or “My DM doesn't care about my character!” It's like hey have you guys like to talk to each other? And they're like, “No I forgot about that. Huh.”
[all chuckle]
Brandon: As in all of life, communication is the answer.
Eric: Just talk to each other! But there are a lot of questions being like, “Hey I don't really like what my DM is doing” and it’s like you guys should have done a Session Zero. Which is really what this Pre-Game is, is that you’re talking about the game, the game you want to play, so that everyone is on the same page.
Even just like, “Hey, how grim-dark do you want this to be? How silly do you want this to be? Do you want this to be puzzle-focused? Do you want it to be combat focused? Do you want monsters? What are things you don't want to talk about?” And just like getting that out of the way is important, but we’re taking that a step further, how this story’s going to be a little bit more collaborative.
When we did Season 1 of Join the Party, I was just like, “Okay, I’ll go come up with a world. Let’s have a podcast.” [laughs] And like I did talk to everybody about their characters to start with, but I wanted everyone’s buy-in.
And like, yeah, this is the idea which I’m excited about which you'll see in a second. And I did a lot of the preliminary work, but I do want everyone to like tell me what they want to do and what's good. And I think that we can figure that out together.
Amanda: I think it’s also important to realize, even though we’re going to talk about this in greater detail next episode, that we are making a D&D podcast, so deciding the world that we want to play it, it’s on the Join the Party theme. Unlike the first episode, this is a world and a feeling that people understand. So as we’re determining our world, like what is in all of our minds that makes a Join the Party campaign and Join the Party setting.
Eric: I think there being space for humor and fun definitely needs to be in there. I think regardless of what we were doing when we were doing quasi-fantasy stuff, I called it “pop-culture fantasy” it’s like yeah if you can figure out how to make it in fantasy world, like it can fit in Game of Thrones, do it, but I think that what we’re gonna do here, I think there will be some space for jokes. Actually, I think it’s going to be easier to make jokes about it.
Amanda: Mmm. It’s important to me that we do something in an existing genre but in a new way, where similarly, like you were saying, for some of the high fantasy, traditional, kind of like knight D&D setting, we did that but there were differences. Like there wasn't homophobia, and there were opportunities to have interesting pop-cultural things. People had all kinds of professions. It wasn't limited by the existence of like no electricity, or only magic to run stuff. And we could kind of play and pick and choose the parts that interested us the most.
So, as we kind of talk about a more contemporary setting, that is important to me, where it’s something where we all understand the genre, we’ve all read and watched and you know, played video games in all these different kinds of genres. And we can talk intelligently, not just kind of inherit from an existing genre all the things that people have done before, but to ask ourselves what parts do we want to keep? Which do we want to introduce new things about or change? And really ask ourselves why.
Eric: Well, Amanda did just say it, but yes, we are going to do a modern times campaign.
Julia: Aw!
Amanda: It was a little tease!
Eric: A tease! It’s like, “Oh wait, did she say contemporary?!”
Amanda: A little aperitif.
Brandon: Amazing!
Julia: Aw, man, we’re not doing a grim, dark, “Game of Thrones” fantasy where it takes like five days to travel from city to city?
Eric: Yeah just low magic, it’s all travel…
Amanda: Julia, you can be Name of the Wind anytime you need to.
Julia: Oh no please.
Eric: No food. You have to hunt for your own food. If you don't sleep more than eight hours a day you die, because -
[all laughing]
Julia: Survival check! Survival check! Survival check!
Amanda: It’s too much like real life, Eric! I can’t do it!
Eric: I’m taking all of my stats from the Mayo Clinic, but it doesn't make sense because it’s 1340.
[all snickering]
Brandon: I think for me, going off what both of you said, is a part of the combination of the two, like the foundation for JTP for me is about inclusivity and welcomeness and the fact that when you walk away from an episode, yes it may be emotional, but you walk away feeling good about what you listened to. There’s no… it can be challenging but challenging in a way that’s uplifting and ultimately a joyful experience for everyone involved, including listeners and players.
Julia: Kind of jumping off that, I think the important part is, you know, this is a campaign and we’re having fun as friends, and when we have fun as friends it’s also fun for the audience who is therefore listening. So I think when it comes down to it, inclusivity and you know, making sure that people are being introduced to a thing that they know and love, but seeing a different twist on it, those are all super important things, and that’s what makes playing D&D with your friends fun.
Eric: Sounds good, let’s do that.
Julia: Do it! Ooo typing!
Amanda: Eric’s typing. Very quickly. No spaces.
Eric: I was hacking into the mainframe I’m sorry. So I think the best way to talk about this is to talk about the genre and time setting. As we said, this is going to be a contemporary campaign, a modern campaign, a 2020s - something, I like to think that it starts somewhere in 2020, which is weird because it does sound like the future-
Julia: It does.
Eric: - which is wild.
Amanda: But it is, as this episode’s being released, 2020 baby.
Julia: Oof.
Eric: I do not like that.
Brandon: That just hit me really hard.
Amanda: Yep.
Eric: Hold on. Brandon needs to sit in a room and sing “Mad World” to himself for a second.
[Brandon laughs]
Julia: Oh no.
Eric: So, I definitely want to start there. The genre that I want to work in, I think I want to do something powered. Like not superhero necessarily, but I think that we’re kind of like in the post-MCU phase. Like we’re kind of getting all of that out of our system in the back half of 2019.
Amanda: By which you mean traditional kind of like superhero narratives?
Eric: Yes, and we can talk about other things that explore people who have superhuman abilities, but it does not necessarily mean that you need to put on tights. I think that’s really where I’m coming out of this.
Because D&D, in the game, your heroes that you level up means that you are better, like, physically, and spiritually, and powerfully better than common folk. Like if you have an NPC or just a dude, they're supposed to be level 0, and your - because of the fact that you have powers, that makes you different. And I think that is something that fits with the superhero genre.
I was talking about this before, and I was like, What if we did a modern campaign? What if we did something where you had to do the stuff that you are doing now? Because I think that the current climate in which we are creating art - TM, TM, TM - is -
Brandon: Did you just “TM,” art?
Eric: Yeah. I love praxis.
[all laugh]
Eric: - Is like let’s strip away some of the layers. We don't have to be that metaphorical. I think that we are changing our world because it is powered now, but existing in a city, exploring what it means to be in a contemporary society, is very interesting to me right now.
Amanda: Yeah, and that was something- just to kind of catch everybody up on where we’re coming into this conversation- as Brandon, Eric, and I were talking about closing out Season 1 of Join the Party, and thinking about what would happen after that, we raised the idea like, if we did a new campaign, where would we want to set it? What kind of campaign?
And all of us were like, we’d be really excited to do something contemporary. Like that sounds really cool, it’s not something that we’ve heard a lot of, not something that we’ve played, so like yes, totally let’s do it. Someone was like, “I don't wanna do superheroes,” and we’re all like, “Yeah, true.” And we asked Julia and she was like, “Dope.” So here we all are, and that’s kind of the preliminary conversation we’ve had so far.
Eric: I would also say a modern campaign powered by Dungeons & Dragons.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Exactly, yeah. We considered talking about it, but we all like D&D. It’s a D&D podcast. We all like being able to teach folks how to play the game because we think it’s a really good start to playing RPGs and tabletop games more generally, so we wanted to stick with that. Also, I don't wanna learn more systems right now!
Julia: And I think there’s this certain kind of, like, empowering challenge to adapting classical fantasy D&D to a modern setting -
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Mhm.
Julia: - and figuring out how certain classes would work in a modern setting. And I just really like it.
Eric: [excitedly] That’s why we’re doing a whole episode about it!
Amanda: It’s so much fun!
Julia: Yay!
Eric: [high pitched, loud] Screeeeee! That’s my excited scree.
Amanda: Yeah, also if you play D&D in a modern setting, something has to be different. I mean, I guess you could use D&D mechanics to negotiate everyday life, but that sounds too much like what I do every day and don't wanna do it in fantasy.
Brandon: [laughs] Every time Amanda’s filling out a tax form, I see her rolling a d20. It’s very terrifying.
[all laugh]
Julia: And that determines what number she puts on all of the tax forms!
Amanda: Oh no. Don't tell anyone.
Eric: At the beginning of every day, she has a Blades in the Dark circle for getting things done and then another one for bullshit, and she has to fill in hers before she fills in the other one.
[Amanda laughing]
Julia: Checks out.
Eric: That is a deep cut just for me. So when we’re talking about genre, I said before that I was really inspired by Magic Realism because I personally love reading that stuff, I do have family from Argentina, so I’m very inspired by the Latin-American, South-American work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and all that stuff.
A really big story for me that I really like is, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” is a short story that is very, very popular from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s basically like an angel falls into a chicken coop and then like the town needs to deal with it. And then the way they deal with it is they turn him into a sideshow. But of course, they don't know if he’s an angel. He’s just an old man with wings. And I always liked the idea that something magical would drop in there.
Amanda: Yeah, it’s just such a perfect metaphor for magic realism as a genre. Like an incredible thing is suddenly right next to a completely ordinary thing, and then society as we know sort of has to deal with it.
Eric: And I think the moving forward of that, moving from that sort of South-American tradition into the larger like, everything that is powered and different sort of thing, is slipstream fiction, which Julia told me and I’m like, “Oh, this means everything that I want!”
Julia: Yes.
Eric: Basically, it's just like everything about sci-fi and fantasy, everything from “The Magicians,” by Lev Grossman, to like Karen Russell’s weird short stories, in “Swamplandia” there’s like everything in between, where something is strange or different. And I think it really encapsulates everything that we’re doing here, where you can reckon with the modern world, but there are different things happening here.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, it’s Jeff VanderMeer, it’s “The Subtle Knife.” There’s so many things that kind of fall in this genre. It’s my favorite.
Eric: Absolutely. Something that - inspiration points for me, the new “Watchmen'' series, oh my god! I watched - Amanda and I watched all of them in one day.
Amanda: Yup.
Eric: We watched six and then we watched Episode 7, which just came out. Other jumping off points, obviously “X-Men,” as the powered thing, and also about the difference between powered people and unpowered people really, as allegories for all -isms that exist. And it’s really interesting making a D&D podcast three years ago and now.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Because before, the only thing we had to compare it to was a not-finished Balance Campaign of “The Adventure Zone,'' and now we have so many other good contemporaries out there, like things to shoot for. So I felt very inspired by the Dimension 20 game “Unsleeping City.” That is very urban fantasy, so we’re - it’s not gonna be the same at all.
Julia: Not gonna have trolls and stuff…
Eric: We - not gonna have trolls, not gonna have Monster Santa.
Julia: Oh, but I liked Monster Santa.
Amanda: But what about the golem Willie who lives in Williamsburg?
Eric: He might appear, honestly. I thought that was very funny. Brennan Lee Mulligan, if you want to talk to me about your Jewish accent, we can talk about that, but other than that, very good.
Amanda: So, Eric, what about that do you kind of want to move beyond or like not include in this campaign?
Eric: I guess I’m trying to look at this through the prism of comics, because comics can move in so many different genre directions, so it’s like monsters can exist, and monsters can come from other dimensions, I guess, but they're like - they have their reasons and they have their own society in a different place.
But it’s like I don't want there to be like an underworld arcana that’s lurking under our city, like the magic needs to come - kind of like the way that Dr. Strange is magical, or like someone that can shoot fire out of their hands is magical. Like the power itself is like, “I can change time.” “I can shoot flames.” “I can be super strong.” But like the origin and the reason can be supernatural, it can be magical, it can be like from space.
Amanda: Biochemical.
Eric: Biochemical. Like you need your origin story accordingly, and I think we’re going to get into that is like why do our heroes have powers? Who has powers as compared to other people?
Amanda: Who knows about it?
Eric: Who knows about it? And also, we - I will have some jumping-off points about how your characters relate to their powers and who knows about it.
Julia: Amanda, I think we’re out of Doritos.
Amanda: Oh, shit. Okay, I have to go to the kitchen. One second.
[transition sound]
Eric: Hey, it’s Eric. Do you have a favorite pair of shoes? Whether it’s dress shoes that you only break out for special occasions or a pair of sneakers that you've worn every day for like two, three years, that almost has a hole in it but not yet? Or maybe, like me, you have a pair of boots that you bought with your first paycheck ever, and you only break out for real, really special occasions. Well think about the last time that you put them on. Remember how you felt. Remember how cool it sounded as you walked down a hallway. Remember how secure you were in your own steps. This is that moment, when you're confident that you can go anywhere. Welcome to the midroll. Your shoe is untied. Don’t trip.
Thank you to everyone who has joined our Patreon. Jayce, Emma, Thogi, Victoria, Christa, Lux, Felix, Fabian, Kelly, Alex, Rorie, Ella, Joshua, Megan, and Matthieu, you are just in time to try my famous buffalo chicken dip. It’s in the kitchen.
It’s never been a better time to join the Patreon, because we are releasing more content than ever, which means it was time to switch over to a monthly Patreon instead of charging per episode. So, that means it’s easier than ever to sign up for a tier and know exactly what you’re getting, and how much you’re going to be charged and all that good stuff. So, you can join the Discord, get your name entered in the pool of possible NPC names, or get a physical box of fun RPG stuff, not to mention enjoy two and a half years’ worth of bonus content from the Party Campaign. Amanda and I went through all of the NPC stories from before, and I wrote some pretty fun ones! I think. There’s some PowerPoint slides! I like that! So, Join the Patron party now. See, get it? It’s a party, because we’re Join the Party. At patreon.com/jointhepartypod
And if all of that wasn’t enough Multitude for you, we have another show for you to listen to! Head Heart Gut is our weekly friendly debate show, where all your favorite Multitude people decide the best of three things. This month we are finally deciding once and for all the best Fast & Furious movie, and no it is not “Tokyo Drift.” I can’t wait to prove to Julia & Amanda that Fast 7 reigns supremely. And you can just tweet at me and tell me that I’m right already. So join for just $5/month at multicrew.club to get Head Heart Gut, a postcard from me, and a whole wide world of other stuff from Multitude.
Now, everyone knows that Dungeons & Dragons is all about storytelling. It’s all about feelings. But did you know that there’s also some math involved? It’s also about problem-solving and optimizing your stats. Playing this game teaches you skills, like how to solve new and unfamiliar problems with critical reasoning.
And our newest sponsor, Brilliant, is also there to give you a toolkit and a framework to work through novel problems. They offer a wide range of content, including interactive courses on topics from scientific thinking to math fundamentals, from programming with Python to machine learning, including probability courses involving dice! Just like Dungeons and Dragons! And they know, just like a good DM does, that you can develop skills and intuition by problem-solving. Effective learning is active learning, and Brilliant lets you master concepts by solving fun, interactive problems yourself. So flex your adventurer brain by going to brilliant.org/jointheparty, and sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people that go to that link will get 20% off the annual Premium subscription, so go now! That is brilliant - like the word that also means smart - dot org/jointheparty, and get 20% off the annual Premium subscription.
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Finally, we’re sponsored this week and every week by Twenty Sided Store. And I have been waiting for weeks to tell you how into Masks I am. For those of you who don’t know, Masks is a very good game. You play as a teenaged or young adult superhero, and it is probably the best way that the form of the game has followed the function, because it’s powered by the Apocalypse system, so you use playbooks. So you get things you can do, but your superpowers aren’t necessarily like actions. So you know in Dungeons & Dragons everything you do is an action, but like if you were a super strength hero, then throwing someone thirty feet across a park would not be an action, it’s just like a thing you can do. Also it focuses a lot more on the emotional toll of superhero stuff, which is my favorite part of superhero media, especially because you're a teenager or young adult and you have lots of that. In my game that I’m playing with Amanda and our friends from Tabletop Potluck, I’m playing a social media star named Wyvern who has dragon wings, and he’s famous for ripping off his personal from a fantasy series, and it’s very fun and I’m having a lot of fun. So, you can go get the Masks book or any other RPG book at 20 Sided Store in Brooklyn, NY. And you can also use jointheparty - all one word - for 20% off in store and online. So go, get Masks. It’s very good. And if you pick up your copy of Masks at Twenty Sided Store, use code jointheparty for 20% off in-store and online.
Alright, we are going to see you next week—yes! Just a week from now!—with the second of our four worldbuilding episodes. Then, on April 7, this new story begins with Episode 1. Ahhh, I can’t wait.
Alright, let’s get back to worldbuilding.
[transition sound]
Amanda: Julia, here are your Doritos!
Julia: Thank you!
Amanda: It’s a bowl with both Cool Ranch and the regular kind bisected by little dividers.
Brandon: Oh my god, that divider was so important. I was about to get very upset.
Amanda: Don’t worry, Brandon.
Julia: You cannot cross-contaminate them.
Amanda: I thought about saying divider first, but then I wanted to have that little moment of tension and then relieve your tension. Eric, can I DM now?
[all laugh]
Brandon: No.
Eric: Amanda, your D&D campaign would be like, “So your garden is looking a little overgrown”
[Julia gasps]
Julia: No, Amanda!
Amanda: It’s Stardew Valley basically. That’s my D&D campaign.
[all laugh]
Brandon: I would want to play that so bad.
Julia: I need to roll so many Nature checks.
Amanda: Yeah, don’t overwater it. That’s the only risk in this campaign.
[Brandon laughs]
Alright, back to the pregame.
Eric: Nice. Alright, let’s talk about the inciting incident and how people relate to their powers. So I have three different examples of how people can get powers. One is the X-Men route, is like it just happens and then - in your very small part of society - and then everyone else is just like, “Wow! Look at those people with powers! They are good!” or “They are bad!” so very small minority and then the majority makes judgements about them.
We can have the “My Hero Academia” route, because Julia and I are big ol’ anime nerds, is that everyone in the world knows a larger minority, or a majority, honestly, of people have powers and it’s just kind of like a thing and society works around it. Maybe there is a structure around superheroism as a job. or there is a structure about like the police force or the military force has these people it is integrated into society, and that has problems, but it is happening.
Or we have the Spider-Man route, the traditional superhero thing is that there was an inciting incident, some people have it, or some people have it for different reasons, some people know, most don't, but it is integrated into society as like a special thing. So I would say what interests you the most?
Julia: I’m always intrigued by what I will call the “Static Shock” option, which is the last one that you listed, where it’s like an inciting incident creates people in a certain area with superpowers and while people are aware of it, who’s actually affected either is or is not known. So I kind of like the idea of it being like a neighborhood that everyone in that neighborhood, or a decent population in that neighborhood got powers, and people know about that, but it’s not like a thing that is affecting everyone across the world, or across the country, or even across the entire city.
Amanda: Yeah, me too. I really love the idea of like being at the beginning of something, and seeing how the world reacts to a thing that is new to the world. And I definitely see a place for stuff where there is like an architecture of superheroism like, “My Hero Academia” is like a really interesting world to me, but I would rather be in a place where maybe we don't have to Spider-Man style, like roll Deception is if our babysitter believes that we are like going out to study and not to like save a school bus.
But I do want some kind of middle, where it’s not like an immediate threat where I must hide some Superman identity from my neighbors, but the world doesn't really know how to deal with this. Maybe the neighborhood's been dealing with it for a little bit and it’s not like a thing that’s day to day, but we aren't like seeing headlines, or we’re not seeing like legislation impacting this thing yet.
Eric: Also the difference in the X-Men route versus the Spider-Man route - most X-Men don't cover their face. I just realized that - that’s like not a thing. You have a codename, but you're not a secret identity. Spider-Man, when you might need to lie to somebody is when you have a secret identity. And that might be a function of superheroes and what we talk about. But maybe it’s like, do you cover your face? Does it matter? And why?
Brandon: Yeah, I also think it’s interesting - I think this might be an idea of sort of like if it’s one generation removed, then the world has sort of had enough time -
Eric: Mmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: - not to forget about the incident, like the incident is still lingering, the effects of, but…
Amanda: It’s like new on a different timescale.
Brandon: Yeah, and I think there might be something interesting in what Julia was talking about in like some people have powers, and people know that some people have powers, but it’s enough of a washed away that like we’re not quite sure who has powers.
It’s also the complexities of humanity, like yeah there might be, Eric just said, a celebrity who is the best swimmer of all time because they decided to be public with their powers, some people hide their powers because they’re ashamed of them or don’t understand them, or whatever it is, but I think that also interfaces interestingly with the political realities of it with like maybe the government is interested in harnessing something like this, but it might be political suicide to actually like enact a draft to get everyone on board or whatever it is.
Eric: Right.
Brandon: So like really interfacing with the humanity of it is interesting to me.
Eric: Another thing we need to talk about, is like do we want there to be no powers and then there are powers, because like that is also a cool thing, is like do the people who get powers, do they grow up with it or is it thrust upon them? It also might be their parents had it thrust upon them and now they have to deal with that.
So, I think that’s very interesting as well. And so the inciting incident could have happened in 2018, or it could have happened in 1980.
Brandon: Yeah, I like that a lot, because it’s interesting to me that maybe as capitalism also evolves, they might take advantage of these powers as well, like you might see advertisements for like Superhero Charge Burgers at McDonalds, or something silly like that.
Amanda: Right.
Julia: I think I really dig the like second generation of people with powers, if that’s where we’re going to place our characters in.
Amanda: Yeah, an idea that I had as we were just kind of kicking around this contemporary setting is like wouldn't it be cool if something happened and it impacted just your apartment building or just your block?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And it happened when everybody was kids, and now we’re all 30 and, like, for some reason we are called back home, or we come back home, or like something happens where our identities are revealed or something along those lines. But it’s enough time that maybe you have - it has nothing to do with your life as an adult, and now you’re kind of forced to come back and be in touch with these people.
I’m thinking about how I want to play a character that’s like the opposite of Inara, and one of those things is like being really close to people who have known you for a long time. And so that was kind of like exactly what we were talking about, like there’s some amount of decades that have happened between the inciting incident and now, but I would be down to explore second generation powers as well because, man, my parents and I have different ideas about everything, and I can definitely see-
Eric: Pew, pew, pew!
Amanda: - if our parents or our parents’ generation dealt with something like this, like of course us tumblr kids would have a much different idea of what is appropriate, or right, or how to live with it, or how to be open about it, maybe.
Brandon: Yeah, the relationship dynamic between the parents and the kids would be very different because for us, the generation, it’s like, well this is just everyday life.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: But for them, it was like a massive trauma. I do think, Eric, I mean it’s up to you, sort of, but I think for plot reasons, or for moving around the idea of sort of like an inciting incident that brings us back together is interesting. Sort of like, for a horrible example, “It 2,” you know.
Julia: Oh no. No clowns in this campaign.
Brandon: Yeah, no clowns, please… Uh oh.
Julia: I don’t like the look that just happened in your eyes there.
Eric: [singing “Mad World”] All around me are familiar faces…
Julia: I hate this.
Eric: So I guess this is where I wanna lay out some ideas that I came up with, and I want to hear y’all react to it. So let's talk about the inciting incident. We did talk about - let’s talk about the generational one. Let’s say it’s like 1981. Lots of people go from like New York City to a very small upstate town. Amanda and I just went to Lake Placid, so let’s talk about something in that area of the Adirondacks, 4, 5, 6 hours north of New York City, north of Albany.
And that’s important because Albany, for all of you who don't know, the capital of New York State. The whole point is that Albany was supposed to be like a smaller city and New York City was not the capital of New York State for reasons.
So let’s say that you go summering in this town that’s like 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people max, right? Maybe all of your families do this together and that’s how you all know each other - friends as kids - again, this can change. Just an idea for how maybe your characters relate to each other.
So you all go summering together, right? As you are all in your respective cabins and it’s this kind of small neighborhood where people rent summer homes, maybe it’s around a lake, whatever. In one of the cabins, there is a mad scientist.
Julia: Of course, obviously.
Eric: But people don’t know he’s a mad scientist. He is messing around with something in his basement. Don’t worry, I do have Wikipedia pages open of “Water Supply Terrorism” and “List of Food Contamination Incidents.”
Amanda: Oh no.
Eric: Because whatever he’s messing around with gets into the water supply, the food supply, maybe the lake honestly. And the adults and the children play in that lake, they eat the food. But I think that also the effects of what happens when there’s a mass, like food poisoning and maybe they get - it’s radiation we can make up gamma rays or whatever the fuck we want to call it.
Julia: Tachyons - that’s a thing, right?
Eric: I love - tachyons is my shit!
Amanda: And yet darker, there are lots of examples of like war crimes and also industrial pollution where it affects children because, developmentally, it just impacts you more than the adults that are living there.
Eric: Right.
Amanda: So that can just be more of the lever we can adjust on how much -
Eric: Oh, I like that.
Amanda: Maybe the adults are just really healthy and live for a long time, you know?
Eric: Oh, that’s so good!
Amanda: And the kids are the ones that develop something that we would think of as superpowers.
Eric: [gasps] Oh, fuck! Your parents are just like super healthy and they assume that everyone is just super healthy, but then instead you have superpowers? That’s fucking insane!
Brandon: Wait, but then that would mean that the powers are secret?
Eric: This is still 1981, so the thing happens, and the energy, whatever the poisoning is, but the other thing that -
Brandon: But then within that next year, they feel really super healthy?
Eric: Yeah-
Amanda: Or within the next decades, so like everyone is just really healthy. It doesn't occur to anyone to question it, because what you see around you is just what life is just like. I guess we’re just lucky.
Eric: Also through the ‘80s too, so we could move this, and it could be like late ‘80s, early ‘90s.
Julia: Well you're also looking generationally too, like the teenagers might get powers before like the 3- and 4-year-olds, you know what I mean?
Eric: Yeah, but people - you can definitely have older siblings and whatever, so keep that open mind.
Brandon: I do like having the parents have some form of power though, to give the world a stepping off block, to be like oh this exists.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Even if it’s like minor stuff, like enhanced agility, or stuff like that.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Right. Oh for sure.
Amanda: Or memory.
Julia: Yeah, and then meanwhile their kids are like shooting fireballs.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, I like that. That’s good.
Amanda: And I really love this idea of like your parents telling you what is proper, and again we may be verging for individuals about what happens in our own lives, but this idea of just like a morality of like, this is how you use this thing. Like maybe you're not supposed to put your abilities to use for personal gain, because it’s just like a lucky thing we all have. And so if somebody decides to like go be a champion runner and everyone in their hometown knows it’s because they’re a Child of the Lake or whatever, and their parents are not super into that.
Brandon: Can I pitch you a very similar idea?
Eric: Yeah, gimme. Hit me.
Brandon: So there was a rocket scientist named Jack Parsons. Has anyone read or heard about his story?
Julia: Yeah, he - there’s’ a great biography about him, called like, “Sex Rocketships” or something else.
Amanda: Oh.
Brandon: Yes, I’m in the middle of that right now.
Eric: Brandon, why didn’t you lead with “Sex Rocketships.”
[Amanda laughs]
Brandon: I don’t think it’s - it’s… what is it called? Anyway…
Eric: It’s called “Sex Rocketships.” [laughing] No, Julia! Don’t look it up!
Julia: I want to!
Eric: It’s called “Sex Rocketships!”
Julia: No it’s like sex, comma, rocketships, comma, and another thing.
Amanda: Like sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?
Julia: Yeah, basically.
Eric: Sex, drugs, and rocketships.
[all burst out laughing]
Julia: Listen, that’s pretty close to what it is.
Amanda: That’s my wedding theme.
Brandon: Um, so the story of Jack Parsons is really interesting - so he was a rocket - back before rockets were actually a thing, people were like, “Rockets are never going to work. It’s like science fiction.”... what is Julia?
Julia: It’s literally called “Sex and Rockets.”
[Amanda and Eric cheering]
Eric: Sex rockets!
Julia: “The occult world of Jack Parsons”
Brandon: Oh, I’m reading “Strange Angel,” that’s why-
Julia: Oh, okay. I’m reading the cool one.
Amanda: Brandon’s like, “There’s no sex rockets in this book!”
Eric: Also known as Strangle. [laughs]
[Julia giggles]
Brandon: So Jack Parsons was this rocket engineer before rockets were a thing. No one really thought that rockets were going to be a thing, it was sort of sci-fi. So he was literally in his backyard in a shack essentially in Pasadena, and he was working on rocket fuels and his jack exploded, and that’s how he died essentially.
Amanda: Oh jeez.
Brandon: But I like this idea that, yeah a mad scientist, but something slightly more grounded where someone is working on a rocket, or military technology that may be exploded into the air, and maybe the children were swimming in the lake at the time so they got washed off, but the parents were at a picnic or something, so the debris sort of fell within them.
Amanda: Oh that’s interesting.
Eric: Interesting.
Brandon: Instead of like polluting something, because I don't want to destroy the world in our campaign.
Eric: Well it’s not - this is what I’m talking about, because I had to say “mad scientist” I think this is related to what you're talking about rockets is that he’s trying to make energy, the way that tesseract also is like a perpetual motion machine, I think it’s also related to that. Because I do think that there needs to be some sort of pollution here, and that-
Amanda: Or a contamination, not a pollution.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Maybe it’s like expended solar cells and he’s like -
Eric: It is contamination.
Amanda: - throwing them on the bonfire that all the adults are around because the kids are in bed, and then there’s like particulates or a radiation wave or something.
Brandon: I like that a lot.
Eric: So here’s what happens is that he actually did it. He figured out a cleaner, newer energy source. Because as for people who are reading or know about “Watchmen,” Dr. Manhattan pushed this alternate United States into this new scientific age, because the energy that he created- whatever his radiation thing- like, powered watches.
And that was my favorite thing in the new “Watchmen” was that you could see the blue watches that he made, so I like that. So now the tiny town grows because they have the energy. It then grows to a city, and that city then takes the seat of power of New York State from Albany and it becomes the new city, because New York State is pushing into the future.
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: And of course, like, now we can build a city from scratch.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: What does it look like when you start a city in 1985?
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And I’m super excited about all of that. We can also like make it like the quiet year, the way that we establish that stuff. We can just do a whole city building day, if we really want to. The only thing that I really want to keep… [laughing to self] You know in New York City when you're walking through- I think the East Village is the closest thing- and you see those townhouses that are only like two feet tall? I’ve so fallen in love with that because it’s a relic of New York City that New York City has decided to keep and is historical, so what if like the neighborhood that you all live in of just the cabins is, like, in Central Park and it’s the Historical District-
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: I love it.
Eric: And like the people who lived there as like reparations for EPA pollution contamination, whatever, has a preserved neighborhood and everyone who went there and got hurt can still live there if they want to.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I love that.
Julia: I really, really like that.
Eric: And I also love having a neighborhood inside of - and this is how I feel about Greenpoint - having a neighborhood inside of the city.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, and I think there’s also again interesting themes we can play with. Like I see a lot of motivations for NPCs we might meet, like what is proper? What is defending our life? What is embracing modernity? What does it mean to live in the city in 2020 as opposed to what it did in 1980?
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I also love that we’re setting our inciting incident in the ‘80s because my college thesis was on environmental apocalypticism during the ‘80s.
Eric: Mmm.
Julia: And so this is just like everything coming to its peak, and like the different religious movements that kind of came out of it, as like we have to be the earth’s keeper because God entrusted us to - God entrusted it to us.
Brandon: That’s interesting.
Amanda: We’re not the Oneida Silver Company but we’re not not the Oneida Silver Company. In terms of a city profiting from a cover story. Oh, do you know what this is, Brandon?
Julia: Oh! Can I?
Amanda: Oh, please, Julia.
Julia: Basically Oneida was a cult that was formed in Oneida, New York, which is an upstate area and is named after the Native Americans that lived in the area. And it was started as a cult basically to create Heaven on Earth.
Amanda: As so many do.
Julia: And they were going to do that by basically creating a system that he based off of like reading Genesis, where like he created marriages and only certain people could have sex and -
Amanda: Basically eugenics.
Julia: It’s super eugenics, yeah.
Brandon: Oh, super bad.
Amanda: Yeah. He could have sex with whatever people he wanted at whatever age.
Brandon: Of course.
Julia: Of course.
Eric: Isn’t that the benefits of the 60s?
Amanda: Oh no.
Julia: But one of the things that they would do in order to make money for the cult, because they are a cult and they need money in order to survive, because no one can have real jobs, is they created a Silver Company, so like silverware, plates and mugs and whatnot - and it still exists to this day, because when he died, his son was like, “I don't know about this cult stuff, but the silver’s great!” and they still make silver!
[Eric cracking up]
Amanda: Yeah, it’s like you can buy Oneida Silver. It’s a company.
Eric: That is amazing.
Julia: Like we talked about on “Head, Heart, Gut.” All these fuckin’ frivolous forks out here, the forks in class consciousness…
[all laughing]
Amanda: Yeah, no, exactly.
Brandon: No I love that. There would definitely be some sort of environmental cult in the city.
Eric: Has to be.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Ooo.
Julia: Heck yes.
Brandon: I think that maybe they dig a canal and the lake becomes a port city, because it’s that important or something.
Amanda: Those Great Lakes ports.
Eric: I think that is interesting, especially if like depending on how big the lake is and then it becomes the push and pull of historical things, but if you improve upon the historical thing, do you still hold that - I do like putting a fucking - like it becomes a canal all the way to the Hudson River.
Julia: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.
Eric: To make it define the fact that it’s a city.
Amanda: Or Lake Champlain. Yeah and then you like to make a river - you extend the Champlain River down the Vermont-New York-Massachusetts border.
Eric: Hell yeah! I’m just writing a canal in big [laughing...] I’m gonna do a bunch of research into the Erie Canal, it’s gonna be sick.
Julia: Oh, Amanda’s favorite thing.
Amanda: I really love canals. And my thesis was on Agricultural Reactionism, like people after the recession quitting their - or losing their jobs and then deciding to become farmers when they were not generationally agricultural producers. And I think there’s a real kind of, again, reaction against things that you disagree with in the world and trying to like find meaning and purpose in connecting with the land somehow.
So I see a lot of ways in which, depending on the, if it’s energy, if it’s clean like whatever else, the technology was, there may be a real sense of Utopia and this is the way forward, and like we are a model city, but there may well be issues under the surface that people aren't seeing in the like capital-D Discourse about the city.
Eric: I like that.
Brandon: Yeah, I like that too.
Eric: Just for nitpicking sake, I think we might need to move this towards the ‘90s so that everyone can be like 30, just because I think that’s interesting and being Millennial, like right in the target of Millennial is interesting for all the things we’re talking about, but I do want to use everything, Julia, that you’re talking about and just like move it forward like six years.
Julia: Heck yeah. Let’s do it up.
Brandon: There can also be something if you do wanna do the ‘80s, there can be something where like the only tell of a power is that you age slightly slower than everyone else.
[“Mmm”s from everyone]
So by the time you’re 40, you look 35. So it’s not really a tell, but by the time you’re 80, you're like, “Oh that person definitely had powers.”
Julia: That’s my superpower. Everyone tells me I look 17!
Amanda: Yeah, I guess that would be very noticeable for the parents’ generation.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Versus, there’s not much difference between a 30-year-old that looks 30 versus like 25.
Eric: I kind of love the idea that your parents are 60 and look 35, and you are 29 and you look 27.
[all laugh]
Because you have other powers that went into a different way -
Amanda: Yeah look like your sister, oh god.
Julia: Yeah, “Mom!”
Eric: So that becomes a whole thing. I also like the ‘90s more and I have more cultural understanding of the ‘90s than I do the ‘80s.
Julia: Sure.
Brandon: Some of the other fun things I was thinking about were just like I think the wealth gap would be huge in that town.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: And then something just thinking about my childhood, like the historic district might become one of those things where teens, like young teens or preteens maybe like oh do you wanna go like explore the haunted area? Like the legend of the town, you know?
Amanda: Oh that’s cool!
Brandon: So like annoying teens are always trying to break into your house or something [laughs]
Amanda: Yeah, or maybe it becomes a kind of like Gramercy Park enclave, and I’m sorry for those who don't live in New York, but that’s where we all are, but it’s like a park that’s literally fenced off and you only have a key to it if you live in some of the multi-million dollar brownstones that like ring the park.
Brandon: I love that.
Amanda: So I think it’s kind of everything from like oh this is a colonial village that it’s kind of preserved and people can walk around, and it’s like a public resource even though that used to be my home, or all the way to like maybe it’s literally fenced off, or cordoned off, or a park or a canal around it from the rest of the city. And it’s some kind of like, this is an area that people only who live there have a right to be, and so it picks up a mythos.
Julia: They have one model house. The rest of them are occupied, but they get the one model for school tours and stuff.
Amanda: Yeah, maybe.
Eric: That’s very funny.
Brandon: There was a mansion that burned down in my hometown that -
Amanda: Very good.
Brandon: Yeah, and it was a weird - a really weird, reclusive family, and so when it burned down, they sort of had like a small graveyard they built, and it’s out in the middle of nowhere. It’s Texas so it’s like -
Julia: Oh no.
Brandon: It’s really weird but then they built - later they built a college down the block, so kids would go and try to like explore the cemetery, but it’s on the college campus so it’s like, “Hey can y’all not?” like “We’re trying to study math!”
Eric: I do love that, that there's an NYU in this city and it’s just like - it’s like one of the Welcome Week activities is like let’s go explore the Historic District! So a bunch of 18-year-olds are just like walking by your parents’ house.
Brandon: Yeah, exactly.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I also think it’s interesting to think about the small government town -
Amanda: Right.
Brandon: - And how they are going to be suddenly thrust into the global spotlight.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I don't know what that is there, but I think that’s interesting.
Eric: Also, I did want to move the seat of state power to there because we’re going from Albany there, so there's the mayor - I don't even know anything about the mayor of Albany, but I always think that it’s interesting…
State politics is so interesting to me, especially as New York City as we relate to the rest of the state, and I’m sure that any one of everyone else out there who live in an urban center that is not the capital of your state, how everyone talks about your city everywhere else in the state, and like the distribution of budget and all that. So I find that all really interesting, especially as they push and pull of- is this the Gotham to New York City’s Metropolis? Because Gotham is just like Newark.
[all laugh]
So that’s interesting because what if they were also 6 hours away? But it matters less when you have powers? I don't know, I find that super interesting.
Brandon: I do too. Like how would the mayor of New York City treat this newfangled guy from the backwater, you know?
Amanda: Probably with distaste and hostility, Brandon.
[Eric bursts out laughing]
If the world has anything to go by.
[all laugh]
Eric: Oh man.
Amanda: I think that’s a fun part of kind of traditional superheroes and comics, is the sort of idea that we are like a city of the future, and to try to figure out what a version of that would look like now is really fascinating to me.
Like there would definitely be wealth inequality, and top look at a city and say hey you have a precious gift and resource and how are you going to use it to enrich everybody and not just the few who kind of own the property, literally, or intellectually of it. Like do you embrace that? Do you truly become a socialist and equal city? Or do you kind of repeat some of the mistakes of the past?
Brandon: Love that.
Eric: Mhm. I think I have a lot to work on, and I think this is great. I do, as long as we have some time here, I want to talk about the relationships of your characters. You don't have to say anything about yourself. You can if you want, but I think that the reason you all know each other is that you are childhood friends.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Or you're family friends in this way. It depends how the inciting incident goes. If you want this to happen in the ‘80s when the adults are in their 20s, and like they're all friends from college, and then alter they have children, and they're the ones who have powers- So that might be the difference, so it’s like either you knew each other and were like kids below ten when the incident happened, or you're family friends because your parents are bonded in this way.
Julia: Right.
Brandon: I think there might be something interesting also relating to the world in like if you were born in this center, that’s why you get to live in this Historic District.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yes, but I think there is a government act that has put the Historic District together and has distributed, safely, the energy created by the rocket scientist, mad scientist.
Brandon: Yeah, but then if you are a child that then moves to Minneapolis and has a child, you're giving up your birthright, which is interesting.
Eric: Yes, one hundred percent.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I like the idea, personally, of our parents being good friends and us as children - you know how when your children you're sort of being forced together.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Because that gives us some little push and pull of, oh yeah I do remember you from childhood but they might have a reason for why we didn't really keep super connected throughout our lives.
Julia: I like the idea of like, in particular, just from my personal experiences, of when your like family are friends and then they have an older sibling, and that older sibling just does not want to talk to you because you’re four years younger than them and oh my god how embarrassing.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: That’s very good.
Amanda: Yeah, me too. And I think that gives us a lot of kind of agency with our individual characters as well. I think we can kind of decide what we want it to be- like maybe it is either you are in or out, and someone might have chosen to leave and then come back and thighs are a lot different and the thing that they thought they gave up is a lot more valuable than they realized.
Or maybe it’s like, hey everyone who owned this property, or this timeshare, or was here this summer counts, and then you can kind of come back and decide to pick up that legacy or not. But you can kind of - if someone wanted to totally embrace, if they wanted to be a townie, or if they wanted to go away and not, I want all of us to be able to make that decision for ourselves.
I like the idea that some of us have stayed, and some of us have tried to leave, but something like pulls us back. It’s a good kind of inciting incident.
Eric: One hundred percent.
Julia: I really like that.
Eric: I think that's really cool. I do like no we can make this in the ‘80s and we can use that stuff. If the parents like, three of them were college friends, and they all had their partners, and they all summered together in this place - I also love the idea if they were in their 20s, and they were all living together in New York City in the ‘80s, and now they’re forced to move their fucking lives because they have like infected. It started out as a quarantine and now it’s a Historic District.
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: Like one of your fucking parents needs to be a sculptor.
[all laugh]
Just choose one of you, I’m making it happen. And like they had to leave their shit in New York City, and they had to come to this town that became a burgeoning city, and like lost their dreams, and now they're like a government worker.
Brandon: I love that, because now you have the push and pull of like, well I’m only here because this was the only option, but then the child wants to embrace their legacy or not. That’s interesting.
Eric: Right.
Julia: Ooh.
Eric: I will say as we wrap this thing up, I am making sports teams in this city. I hope that one of you engages with it please. Just so you know [laughing]
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: I wanna buy the merch!
Julia: I will make you a jersey of whatever team you play-
Eric: [excitedly] Oh please! Please, I didn’t even think of that! We’re gonna have a basketball team and a hockey team, so pick which one!
Julia: You’re gonna get a basketball jersey.
Eric: Hell fucking yes!
Amanda: Yay!
Julia: I’ll get a hockey jersey and we can match.
Eric: Yes! Yes! Yes! It’s the only reason why I’m doing this. But yeah, please. I will tell you everything you need to know. Amanda, you’re into hockey now.
Amanda: I am!
Eric: Can you be into hockey?
Amanda: I saw one Predators game, and their mascot’s a catfish, and now -
[Brandon cracking up]
Now I just - I love everything. It’s wonderful.
Julia: Wait, I’m sorry, the Predators’ mascot is a catfish?
Eric: It’s a -
Amanda: It’s unofficial.
Julia: Oh, okay.
Eric: It’s a sabre-tooth tiger, but they have a thing -
Amanda: - who is very cute.
Eric: They have a thing where they throw catfish when they score.
Amanda: Don’t worry about it.
Eric: Similar to how the Red Wings throw Octopuses.
[everyone talking at once]
Amanda: Do you know how I found this out?
Brandon: Actual octopuses?
Eric: That is a tradition.
Amanda: There’s-
Brandon: Like actual octopuses?
Eric: In Detroit, they throw octopuses on-
Brandon: Like raw?
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: That is such a waste of food. That sucks.
Julia: Also hard to get in Detroit.
Brandon: Also expensive.
Amanda: Also hard to get off the ice. And hard to sneak through security. Like did someone freeze it, stick it under their shirt with duct tape and then bring it to the arena to throw? Yes, they did.
Eric: That happened recently, and that one was in Nashville, and it was a catfish.
Amanda: I learned this because whenever the Preds score, there is a video of Tim McGraw throwing a stuffed catfish into the audience, and I’m like what’s happening.
Eric: And singing, “I like it. I love it. I want some more of it.”
Amanda: Yeah, incredible.
Eric: It’s amazing. Hockey is very good.
Brandon: Eric, to make my world better, I do want poutine.
Eric: That’s fine.
Brandon: That will just make me joyful.
Eric: Yeah, I think - that’ll be really close… Oh, that’s an interesting thing. It’s going to be very close to some Canadian cities. It’s going to be the biggest city other than Toronto in that area.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: So that’s actually very interesting.
Julia: Very cool.
Amanda: Currently, if you're in the Adirondacks, you drive to Plattsburg for the mall-
[Julia gasps]
So that’s what we’re dealing with here.
Eric: Alright, we’re gonna get into the D&D stuff next. But we’re still Pregaming guys, so keep the R&B or not R&B one because we’re not going to the party yet.
Brandon: Pass the Cheeto puffs!
Amanda: Eat something!
Julia: Get the Fireball out!
Amanda: Eat something!
Eric: One shot of Fireball! We’re excited!
Julia: Woo!
Amanda: No! Have dinner first!
Eric: Okay, we’re all gonna have dinner, then we’re gonna take a shot, and then we’re gonna chill, and then we’re gonna talk about D&D.
Amanda: Yay!
Brandon: Can we eat octopus?
Eric: I mean if you want. That’s up to you. Bye!
Julia: Bye!
Brandon: Goodbye!
Eric: You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Well actually stay here because it’s a party.
Amanda: Stay here because we’re pregaming.
Eric: We’re pregaming, exactly.
Amanda: And then we’re gonna go. Alright. Okay. Bye.