There are too many new TTRPGs to list (but we’ll try anyway)

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[Music]
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hail and well met traveler Welcome to the tavern Did you know this is the place where more than half of the
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greatest adventures in history have begun but before those adventurers took their first steps they watched and
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calculated who would join their party Why look over there There's a mighty barbarian from the frozen lands Strong
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mighty full of honor and wisdom I happen to know that one They go by Matt
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Rossy And look over there to the right That woman working away on her mechanical dog She's cunning witty and
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I've seen her bounce more than her fair share of nerd wells out of here before I can even blink I happen to know that she
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goes by the name Liz Harper And me oh my name's Joe Perez and
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I'll be your tavern keep Welcome to Tavern Watch Hello
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everybody and welcome to your I hope favorite version of dungeon uh diving
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adjacent audio sensory input Uh welcome to Tavern Watch I am one of your humble
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tavern keepers uh Joe Perez and with me I have my wonderful co-owners of this
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establishment as always we have Liz Harper Hello We have Matt Rossy
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Greetings And our recent uh partner who's moving from silent to uh to one
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quarter owner of this I think at this point I think it's fair to say is Phil How you doing Phil good I'm I'm in the corner of the tavern I probably have a
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quest for you Classic strike Nobody ever goes up to that guy
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I'm going to have to rework the They've all outleveled it
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All right Well I guess we're going to start with the classics here because these are the three that I like to open up every show with because I think they
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make sense Uh and it's the three questions What are you reading what are you playing and what are you looking forward to and we'll just kind of go
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around the table We'll start with Liz Man I'm I'm having a lousy tabletop time
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right now because my uh the game I was playing has uh Dolmanwood has kind of
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fallen apart cuz one of the players backed out and and then everyone's busy It's that endless challenge of all games
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is that we're all adults with very busy schedules and if one thing falls apart then suddenly you're just you're just
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not playing any tabletop games Uh I am trying to read up on Masks which we're
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playing very soon It's still kind of a big question mark mystery in my head I don't I'm not I'm just not up on the
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system So but that is that is part of my reading Also Daggerheart just came out this week So I'm reading up on that Uh I
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like it but it's a it's a it's a very very large very thick book and I'm trying to read masks at the same time
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And I have a library book behind me that's due next week So it's where where
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do you find that read all of these things at once I That's my challenge That's probably all of our challenges It
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is definitely always the challenge Phil Uh let's see So I've been brushing up on masks again because it's been a long
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time since I ran it Uh but uh it it's like riding a bicycle It'll come back to you eventually Um my copy of Dagger
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Heart arrived but it's still sitting in the box because I also uh on a whim after watching an extremely effusive
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review of it ordered uh the two core books for Delta Green So I've
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been reading up on Delta Green recently Um that is that is a system that is uh a
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little bit the system itself is not bad like it's uh I mean it's pretty much uh Chaosium D100 basic role playing kind of
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get used to it but uh the setting is so well thought out and cool and I'm I'm
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having a lot of fun reading up on that It's one of their oldest settings too like it it's as old as Cthulhu for Yeah
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It it's wild seeing like the I guess modern reimagining where it's just like
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yeah the like the inciting incident for their whole history is the inmouth uh
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the you know the inmouth incident the deep ones etc And then it just weaves it forward through you know so much of uh
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modern history and it's very it's very cool to read I've actually almost enjoyed reading that part of the keeper guide more than like I like I skimmed
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the the players guide I was like "Yeah I get this." You know roll some stats pick some skill packages roll under I get
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it I was like "Now I'm going to read uh like a hundred or more pages of
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extremely in-depth settings uh stuff." So um and my um a Traveler game is on
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kind of a it's not a hiatus but it's like we only get to play about once a month because uh two of our players have
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kids and scheduling stuff with parents who have kids in the summer is uh difficult Um but I am in the midst of
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rolling up a character for a West Marches style online D&D 5e game Um in
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which I am playing a Tobaci rogue who is definitely not Puss and Boots The whole thing is kind of uh fairy tale inspired
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So that's what I'm up to Matt you're up next What are you What are you doing what are you reading well um in terms of
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what I'm reading I'm currently reading Mary Beard's uh history of Rome SPQR
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which is you know for this by the Senate and it stands for Senus Populas uh Qu
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Romani which is like you know literally for the Senate and people of Rome And
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it's still on the like if you go to Rome right now and you look at the the like
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sewer caps or whatever that's still there the the the the ci the civil
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government of Rome still uses SPQR Uh it's it dates back all the way to like
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the founding of Rome And the reason I'm reading it is is purely because I it's
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kind of funny that uh Phil mentioned the KCMD 100 system because they had a contest a while back and I entered it I
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knowing I wouldn't win because I did not have the ability to finish the idea I had But I did have an idea for a game a
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co you know a campaign setting for them and they that's what they wanted So I entered I only got about 20 pages
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written but ever since I've been tinkering with it for different systems and and so I was doing research on that
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Um in terms of stuff for gaming I basically I've been playing uh video
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game wise I've been playing Doom over and over again and going "Oh my my word I'm addicted to this." And and I've been
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I've just picked up the Exalted Essence book Uh I don't know if you guys remember like we we ran an essence an
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exalted game I think a year or so maybe two years ago now It was a while I think it's been longer than that I I think
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it's been much longer than that But yes I remember it Yeah I know The game itself predates me but I have read Essence It's it's interesting It's It is
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interesting because as I was talking to my wife about this cuz my wife and I when I first joined the the Kickstarter
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I don't join many Kickstarters because money but I joined the Kickstarter for for exalted third edition the book showed up and my wife was like "What is
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that?" like is is this a is this a coffee table what did you order and I opened it and it was the book And she's
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like "That is that's twice the size of any other book you have?" Like it is enormous So I thought the Essence
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edition would be smaller And it is smaller in much the same way that K2 is
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smaller than Mount Everest but is still huge This thing's 300 and something
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pages for their distilled easy to run version of Exalted And the worst part is
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that's apt It is distilled and easier to run than Exalted because Exalted is
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really complicated Um but I like it Uh I do like it But it's Yeah it's like it's
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making me really think about the whole concept of PBTA games and why I like
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that kind of you know Forged in the Dark or PTA or Lumen powered by Lumen Why do
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I like those systems i like those systems because I can just run a bloody game
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You know this thing is 300 pages before I could even think about it And this is
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the broken this is literally the Cliff's Notes version of the game And it's like
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yikes So yeah that's been me the past few days just just having that realization that like mentioning Chaos's
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basic role playing It's like that used to be considered one of the heaviest crunchiest systems out there Now it's
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like oh yeah just you roll percentile dice Great That's That's Yeah let's go
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That's That's nothing That's That's so easy compared to this thing like where
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Yeah Okay I don't even know how this system works boy So yeah I I That's been me That's been this whole week for me
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has just been between like real life stuff Uh I I guess what I'm looking forward to though I don't really have anything I'm looking forward to right
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now There's a lot of stuff that's in the If I had to say anything it would probably be Outgun superheroes which
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we're possibly going to talk about today Uh but otherwise I haven't really got anything on my radar just because most
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of it's already out Uh oh I've also been super excited about the mask game but I feel like people know that about me Yeah
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Uh and as far as my end is concerned uh reading I'm just going back through the masks book uh because I am looking
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forward to our Masks game which at the time of this recording we'll be doing the week after uh this recording So I'm
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excited for that It's been a very long time since I've played Masks Uh and the
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contrary to popular belief uh I had to go and reby the book I still haven't found the other book so I'm 90% sure I
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know what happened to it Um so that that mystery has been solved Uh and the
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playing thing I'm actually not in an active game right now And it's really weird to say that because it's been a
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long time since I've just not had a ongoing game And I don't know what I
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want to play long term to replace it or what I want to try to do I do know that
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I don't want to DM for a little bit because I'm I have the eternal DM syndrome And I'm multiple people here
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I'm sure absolutely know how that feels No one in this room understands it But it's one of those things where like
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every time we we go to sit down with a group of people it's always I'm the one that winds up having to run because nobody can uh you know make a decision
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or nobody wants to and everybody wants to be a player I'd like to be a player for a while uh just to have sort of that
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freedom and have sort of like don't get me wrong like I'm very much team collaborative storytelling Uh but it's
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different when you are just managing your own character and then having influence on the world versus running
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the world and inputting the influence from the characters Right So hopefully
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in the near future I will find a game to settle into Um I'm thinking I want it to be something more sci-fi related cuz
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it's been a long time since I've done a Cyberpunk or a Shadow Run or uh even
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like a Starfinderesque game Uh and I'd like to do more than a oneshot in that for a while because everybody's default
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is fantasy and it's hard to like and not that I don't like it but you get tired
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of it after a while and you want to try you want to go back to something a little bit different or or or you know pallet cleanser That's where I'm
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at Um I I feel you I'm I'm big on sci-fi over fantasy but as you say it's kind of
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the default in a lot of gaming worlds Yeah And I mean a lot of that has to to owe to like Dn D right like so D and D
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being the default is fantasy right so it's and a lot of people when they talk
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about tabletop role playing games they default to D and D And so there's this weird mentality that and I don't think
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it's a conscious choice but everybody sort of just defaults to fantasy But yeah it it is what it is and we'll we'll
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see what happens Uh but speaking of games that uh people are excited about
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or potentially is skewing towards the more fantastical Liz I and and you guys
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I'm going to let you loose on this one uh because Dagger Heart released and there are a lot of people who are
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extremely excited about it and I'd like to let them talk about it So why don't you go ahead i think what interests me
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most about Daggerheart and it's unfortunately the things that you aren't going to see we're planning on running a
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Daggerheart game uh after the masks game if we can get it all scheduled out and
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it's something you're not really going to see very much of in a oneshot is that Daggerheart is very much about
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collaborative world building you know you and I've already seen uh other games
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kind of well that's the wrong word but like I one of the things I really thought was interesting in Derart you
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start off you make your character and then you kind of go around the table and ask questions of the other characters to
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establish relationships And that was something really fun We did play Dagger Hart during the beta and that came out a
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lot of weird things about just Yeah I mean I think the thing about Daggerheart
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is this is kind of like a greatest hits of a lot of other games This is a lot of
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features that we like from other places pulled together So it's a lot of it's a
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lot of building the world There's a lot of world building like okay so you say h you you say your character came from a
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magical mountain full of dragons Okay well now the world has a magical mountain full of dragons And these are things that you can do in any game These
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are things that are maybe part of other game rules and encouraged by other games but it's really this feels like a tool
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book for creating worlds more than just a game It feels like I think possibly
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its weakest element is that it tries to build its own fantasy setting even though it's made by creators who are
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really good at that sort of thing But what what really interests me is the way
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it is pushed the push to making you build and create your own your own worlds and stories Uh and that's that's
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something I think you're going to see less of when we run it in a oneshot because you don't see Yeah You don't see
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the kind of character development the kind of world development that this book encourages And I I kind of wonder if
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you're going to see that in home games too because this this is this is
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something made for like big long-term storytelling And you know we're just sitting here talking about how hard it
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is to keep a game going particularly during the summer when people are busy So I mean I'm interested to see how this
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plays out I think it's a fun system but I feel like it's less of a game and more
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of like a toolbox for a game Does that make sense because yeah if you look at
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something like Masks Masks has a very clear concept and you could tell all sorts of stories with it but it's like
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okay we're talking about young superheroes We're telling this kind of story Or if you look at Blades in the
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Dark it's got its whole setting baked into it You're this criminal group and
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you're maybe this kind or that kind or that kind but it's baked in that this is the kind of story you're telling or uh
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Candala Obscura which is all Victorian creepiness or Call of Cthulhu which is
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Cthulhuish you know they kind of have the world and the game are kind of baked
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together This doesn't feel as much like that It feels like it it's a toolkit for
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building out your own favorite kind of fantasy world And uh when we run it uh
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I'd like to run it in It has several settings in the back of it that you can go through and pick out something maybe
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to inspire you And it has one called Motherboard which makes me think very much of Horizon Zero Dawn a world full
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of these ancient technological works that are people are using to build and create or live amongst even though they
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don't understand them or they may only understand them a little So I think we're going to be doing something in
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that vein when we were in the game Just have to think up a story cuz I asked when everyone could play it and
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everyone's gone for the earliest possible time so far So I'll have to see how that goes But it it feels like it
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feels like a tool kit more than a game I don't know how how the rest of you all
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think about it Phil you did run our game uh when we played it during play testing
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What do you think what do you think now that it's out yeah I mean it's uh so we have a word for what you're describing
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and it's fantasy heartbreaker and people have been writing them since the since the 70s Um it's Yeah I agree Like I it's
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I've the one thing that I will say about it is I've never seen a game so clearly
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wear its heart on its sleeve and say these are the parts of these other games that I really like like uh you know
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coming from the career critical role they like in-depth storytelling and so it's like we we have a large part of the
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book where you know the rules are going to kind of get out of your way and let you do collaborative storytelling but also we actually enjoy the crunchy
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combat part and but not as in-depth as something like a D&D and so it's like
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and we're going to have you know we're going to have the you know the crunchy combat and the defined abilities and the
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optional initiative order which I recommend everyone use if you're playing this game but then the card system like
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limits the total amount of actual options you have So even as characters you know if you play these characters
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for years um I ran a D and D 5e game where characters got up to 14th level
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and like sometimes they were just lost in the options they had available in combat except except for our fighter Um
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but like with this you still end up with a limited subset of abilities and you
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get kind of that you know the customization thing It's like oh what you know what cards am I bringing out for whatever session we're doing today
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etc But I said I I would like to see it more now that it's in its final form I
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want to see how it plays I'm looking forward to being on the other side of the screen for it cuz um I did have a lot of fun like just jotting up
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characters but uh obviously didn't actually get to play any of them Um but
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I yeah I don't know I'm I'm of two minds I think it's I think it's cool I don't know if it's going to be my go-to
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fantasy game of choice Um but I do uh applaud the effort to make something
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that takes the parts of a game that um obviously Matt Mercer and crew really
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like and make it into a comprehensive product Um also the art is really freaking
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pretty Holy cow it's so good It's a beautiful book It's beautiful Yeah that is that is one like between this and D&D
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5e we are in an era of extremely pretty fantasy games Um so I'm I'm I'm very
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happy about that Just as a minor aside So I like it because I'm pretty sure it's
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going to put more pressure on D and D and that's what I want Uh one of the things I love like right now I'm I'm a
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big Pathfinder Starfinder guy I am getting Starfinder as soon as I can Uh
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even though I don't I don't know how I'm going to pay for it but you know whatever Uh I I have blood I can sell it
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Uh in all sincerity like I I really want to run a Starfinder game but I've been
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looking at this and thinking to myself I could do Star Wars with this so easily
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Yeah And I Star Wars is it's a weird thing If you look at at fantasy versus
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science fictions versus whatever I I I did a convention back in 200 Uh one of
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the conversations we were having is what is science fiction versus what is
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fantasy and the first person who talked talked a lot about how science fiction is g is grounded in real physics And I
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said "No some science fiction is grounded in real physics." But all of it I have never
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seen science fiction that didn't cheat real physics somewhere And that that right now I'll tell you the Martian he
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cheats He doesn't cheat much He cheats as little as he can but he cheats
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because it's almost impossible Due to the way time flows it's almost
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impossible in fiction to constrain it the way real time goes You can't just sit there and wait for 12 hours and then
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pick the book up Well yes you could if you really wanted to but you can't really And for me what's really
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interesting about Dagger Heart as a setting is that it is it it that doesn't have a setting It has like five It's
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very Gerspsike in that way Like one of the things I loved about Gersps as a kid was the fact that I had literally have
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geez uh there's like 30 books up on my bookshelf of alternate gerp settings And
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are all of them good yes actually all of those books are good Um they're all very
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crunchy books that are all very much about specific things but they're all very useful and I still use them Even
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though I haven't run a Gersps campaign in 15 years I still use the books when I run other things Dagger Heart is a
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setting where I it's a game I keep saying setting but it's a game where I could really imagine just only
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homebrewing Like I would never run any of their settings I don't have to I
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would just homebrew which is what I used D and D for for years And I'm going to be let you guys in on a little secret
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It's excruciatingly painful to homebrew your D and D campaign I mean not that
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it's it's not excruciatingly painful because D and D is hostile to that sort of thing It's excruciatingly painful
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because nobody understands that's what you're doing And so they'll tell you "Oh well you can't do that with Hav Goblins
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because of this book." I'm like "I can do anything I want with Hobgoblins I can do anything I want with any of it." It
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in my campaign hobblins can be lawful good That's entirely up to me And it's
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always been the case for every game period But people don't get it for D and D because D and D has always been the
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800 pound gorilla and everybody thinks they know what it is even people who have never played it And Daggerheart
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doesn't have pre preconceptions yet The only preconceptions people are going to have is what Matt Mercer says And he's
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he's really seems like a nice guy I don't know him personally He seems like a nice guy He seems genuinely enthused
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and enthusiastic and interested in what he's saying But it's much easier to ignore one guy than it is to ignore
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everybody And that's what I really love about this is there's there's enough here I'm looking at the book right now
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cuz I just as we were talking I picked it up on on uh Drive-Through RPG cuz I had some money left in the account Uh
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and I love that I can go to the back and they have all like a breakdown like little card thing of each playable
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ancestry And I'm looking at them going "Okay I can easily say that this is some you
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know some Star Wars race." This would take me like 10 seconds The Tranx droids
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uh Dracon the whatever Bosque was dwarf short guy I mean it's it's it's not hard
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And there's not a lot of there's not a lot of real rules to a lot of stuff that you expect there to be a lot of rules
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about you know like if I wanted to do I've actually saw online once somebody has a joke was like "What if Anakin
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Skywalker's ship crashed in Game of Thrones?" And I was like "I could run that game I could straight up have Anakin Skywalker just stepping off his
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crash ship going "What is wrong with all you people?" and force pushing you know hobgoblins everywhere or whatever
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they're called the White Walkers So yeah that's what I'm looking forward to is the This is pretty effing flexible Now I
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I have been also looking in into it for flaws and I have found a few Um I'm not going to talk about them right now
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because I want to I'm actually sitting down and thinking about how to break it all down But I will also say one of the
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things it did that endeared me to it before we stop and move on to something else is that it has world maps and I can
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easily strip mine them and use them for other things Every time your RPG has
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stuff like this in it that can be strip mined and used for other things I love you because it may running a game even a
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homebrew game it's a lot of time work You know there's a lot of time you have
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to spend on stuff Anything you can do to make that time easier Like the time I
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and I'm Joe I'm sorry I haven't brought this up in a while but I'm going to have to now like the time like my D and D
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campaign decided they weren't going to go to my floating magical city So I had to like pull a a pirate space a pirate
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ship out of my butt and I basically pulled it out of a spaceship from a really old uh dark matter book that I
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have over there Um so yeah I love it when games do that I like this game for
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doing it and doing it extremely beautifully As as Phil pointed out earlier I I do like the game I think it
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is it's not like it's not breaking my mind It's not like it's not really tremendously original when you get right
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down to it but I don't care Yeah And I'm the dissenting voice I don't like the game Right And the reason
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I don't like the game is for a lot of the reasons that you guys seem to enjoy the game Um it and these are just my
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thoughts and my opinions So please if you're listening at home don't come at me Um it doesn't do anything that any
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other game doesn't do and it doesn't do them better than those other games already And while the those are both
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true points by the way I'm not disagreeing with you in the slightest Thank you Um which if a game borrows
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from something else my general my my expectation is that it
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will iterate upon it or improve on it or do a spin on it in some way And I don't see that here Um the other thing is that
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the rules in what it wants to be seem to almost be at conflict with each other
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because it's trying to be a few different things Like the combat being crunchy versus the narrative being the
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focus And a lot of times those are at odds with each other just from a game design perspective I'm not saying that
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it can't work but those are generally two elements that uh usually at are odds with each other The other criticism that
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I have of it and again I'm not saying that this is a bad game or a bad set of rules or bad system or anything by any
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of those means is that this is very much streamer the game And I applaud the
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folks at Critical Role for making the game that they wanted to stream because that's what this is And the problem that
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I see already as a retailer is that people are picking up this book
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expecting to run critical role stuff and not realizing how much work they actually have to put into developing the
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world in collaborative storytelling And so there's an element of it where I've already had people buy this book and
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have already gone back to or have already gone back to Pathfinder because they've read it They thought it was
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going to be something it wasn't uh they thought it was going to be like I can again like and I'm going to throw this out there again that I can just play a
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critical role I don't want to do all this work And again I'm not saying that it's a bad system It's just not doing
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anything for me that I can't do with anything that I already own And it
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doesn't do it better than any of those And in fact some of it I think it does it worse just because of the nature of
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how things are set up So for those that are going to enjoy it I fully hope they
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do but it's just I I can't it's just not it Dagger Heart does not capture my
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heart right it doesn't it doesn't endear itself to me in any way shape or form
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aside from it being a very pretty and I hope I hope that it is successful because I do want more competition in
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the area and I do want people to enjoy it But yeah like every like you're saying that you can run Star Wars in it
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You can I can run Star Wars in Modifius I can run Star Wars in Essence I can run Star Wars in Power by the Apocalypse I
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can run Star Wars in uh the Universal Role playing game All of these things can also do the same thing Um you're
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talking about reskinning some of the cards to do specific things I don't have to do that in other games Other games
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just give you the framework and say "Here you go You don't have to You can apply whatever skin you want to it You
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don't have to rework something else to be something else Here's just the framework just call it whatever you and
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it's yeah it just it's not something that I I I wanted to be really excited about it and when we were doing the the
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play test I think I voiced a lot of similar concerns too Um I know Phil and I had talked about this offline where my
28:32
biggest gripe with combat at the time was like you you can't not have an initiative system or a framework to have
28:38
rules for it at least in my opinion Otherwise unless you have a table of very experienced players it's not going
28:46
to move And again because it's a game developed for people who know what they're doing and who are going to be
28:52
streaming and making content off of this they know what they're doing so they don't have to worry about that But the
28:58
average person who is just used to D and D or a person who's really new to tabletop role playing games and maybe
29:04
isn't necessarily in so deep to the role playing section is going to feel a wash
29:09
in that sometimes So those are my criticisms of it And again I'm not going to say that it's a bad game This is one
29:15
of those things where it's just like I just don't like and I'm happy for people that do See I will say this one thing
29:21
before I move on but I get why you're saying that about how I can do this with
29:26
other games The thing is is that for a lot of people this will be the first game they get that can do all that Sure
29:32
If they stay with and that can do it easily If they stay with it but I I will I really want to put this point in there
29:38
I like this because it isn't necessarily better at anything that it does You know
29:43
what to use the the best example I can think of World of Warcraft is actually worse at everything that it did than any
29:50
other game in the market at the time No that is incorrect It did We we this is a whole topic for another story I will
29:56
argue that it was better than EverQuest which is why it was so and I don't think it really was for people who played EverQuest But regardless the fact that
30:04
it does so much and I like I sat down and realized I could stop using six
30:10
different games because I had this one doesn't mean I will but I could And that I think is important Although I do think
30:17
you are spot on in a lot of your other criticisms Like I I think you're totally right about it being a system that that
30:24
kind of goes if you don't know what you're doing especially with initiative It it just opens it's open to abuse in
30:31
the initiative thing I think that's why Phil when Phil says it should you have to use the the optional you know initiative rules he's not wrong That
30:38
that is a big problem And I do get I don't want to I don't want to say that your criticisms are not valid because a
30:44
lot of them are things I'm thinking I just I think I have more enthusiasm for it than you do because you're more
30:51
focused on how it can go wrong and you have to be because you are selling this
30:57
to people Yeah Yeah And Yeah So I totally get that And I just I I wanted to say that whilst I don't agree with
31:03
the entirety of him I do think you have a lot of good points there and I do think my perspective is what works And I
31:09
do think my perspective would be different if I wasn't somebody who was a retailer literally selling this to people and and trying to explain it to
31:16
people and watching reaction in real time right like I think my pers my my I might be more in your camp if I was
31:23
didn't have that perspective So I agree with you I think it's very telling that some of us have picked up this book and
31:29
thought about this is what we could do with this book We aren't I think the book has a very poor just initial hook
31:37
if that makes sense Mhm I keep wanting to compare it to Blades of the Dark because there are a lot of gameplay
31:42
similarities And if you talk about you want to play Blades in the Dark well did you ever want to play Dishonored and be
31:47
part of a criminal syndicate in a magic infused world of darkness you're going
31:52
to hear that and you're going to be like "Yeah." And then if you go "Hey you want to play Dagger Hurt?" Well what's it about it's about whatever you want it to
31:59
be right exactly You're gonna you're have to come You're going to have to come with a better game pitch than that Yeah you're absolutely correct Exactly
32:06
So I mean a lot of games have that big hook right there Dagger Heart doesn't feel like it has that but I look at this
32:12
book and I see a toolkit for running all sorts of games And I think it's a really good book for just how to play tabletop
32:20
games particularly how to run tabletop games not necessarily even thinking about Daggerheart Has sections on how to
32:27
run a oneshot versus how to structure a campaign It has it has all of the these
32:32
just advice that is designed for Daggerheart but is really I think applicable for other games for DMing and
32:39
for playing So I I really love this book but I do see it as something of a
32:45
toolkit for building and for for learning because I I have been DMing games I haven't been doing it for very
32:51
long So I look at this book and I say "Oh wow This is some really good advice." And it may have come from other places It almost certainly did This book
32:58
takes inspiration from all over the place but I think it's a useful book I I
33:03
agree with everyone that it's maybe it's it doesn't have a hook But that's I think part of the problem though too
33:10
right is it's not being sold as a game toolkit It's not being advertised as a
33:15
game toolkit All of the advertising is the new game from the makers of Critical Role right it's being sold as a complete
33:22
game out of the box and and to a lot of it is but I think that is why some people are are picking it up and and
33:29
maybe being disappointed because you're I think you're more right than it being
33:34
a game in of its own is that it is a very useful toolkit for folks that are you know branching out or maybe that
33:40
haven't had that experience or don't own you know 18,000 bookshelves full of RPG books like the rest of us do Um I'm not
33:48
looking forward to moving those Uh but I had to move them uh from California to
33:55
Canada That was the worst experience I've ever had with a moving company I
34:00
mean yeah these these are hefty box sets I don't look forward to Joe getting a shipment of these at the store even if it's only like four or five Yeah And
34:07
like and like and and don't get me wrong we've we've sold out all of our we've sold out all the copies that we got in
34:12
But it's one of those things where like the number of people that put it back down after I explained it exactly as Liz
34:17
did and went and picked up Pathfinder or something else is not insignificant Which is funny because
34:23
Pathfinder is exactly the same No it isn't
34:29
It is It is in that any any you pick up a TG a tabletop barling game of any kind
34:37
any kind even Blades in the Dark even like you name a Powered by the Apocalypse one ultimately you could do a
34:45
lot of the same stuff with it like you just pointed out but they have a hook and they have a hook sometimes
34:51
um like Pathfinder's hook is you like fantasy we have fantasy it's in fact the
34:57
same problem I have with D and D is that D and D's hook is just we do fantasy stuff I agree And it it's enough for
35:04
people Dagger Hart doesn't have that hook only because they're trying something the part of the fact is
35:11
they'll always have the campaign marketing based around the Critical Role
35:16
connection Yes Because Critical Role has gone from being a game that streamed you know uh you know once a week for a while
35:23
into a phenomenon that I don't think even its creators understand and they've admitted that they don't like when you
35:30
see them on a video going I I didn't think this was going to happen When they decided oh we'll we'll do a we'll do a
35:36
Kickstarter for our our animated series And then they're like what happened you don't get the they're on the back of the
35:43
tiger and they have no idea what they're doing which is true But the the difference the difference with games like D and D though and and and I don't
35:49
I want to move on from this after this but like the thing that Pathfinder has the thing that you know D and D has the
35:55
thing that a lot of the big names in the the industry have is a world that already exists So a person who wants to
36:02
run a game and isn't maybe necessarily comfortable building a world from scratch if it says oh they already have
36:09
a system of deities they already have towns They already have maps they already have adventures I can run Okay this makes it easier for me I'm going to
36:16
go ahead and grab that versus I have to sit down at a table and everybody builds the world What we have to build this
36:22
from scratch It's It reminds me a lot of um and I I don't know if I'm the only
36:28
person who ever bought these books Uh I'm pretty sure Matt may have one thing I have the the the Dresen Files role
36:34
playing and Oh no I hate I hate the Dresen Files with a fiery passion I'll never read it No I don't own those books
36:39
So I own the I own the books for the the tabletop game but it's Fate And it's the whole purpose of Fate is colle
36:46
collective worldbuing The books don't let you really make a character You make a city And your city is the character
36:53
And it failed because of that in a lot of regards because people don't necessarily feel comfortable doing that
37:00
unless they're more experienced And I think that's where the gray area You have a lot of people who are newbies or
37:07
newish to the game systems or to tabletop role playing in general that potentially get put off by too much
37:13
freedom And Liz and I had this conversation way long ago when I first started talking about powered by the
37:19
apocalypse on the the website right it's scary to people with how much freedom
37:25
you and can be a turnoff to people because there's not a set of rigid rules to follow So it's a it's a balancing act
37:31
And again it I wish Daggerheart success I hope that it does change or become a
37:38
disruptive pebble in the pool of of the tabletop role playing space that inspires others to you know look
37:45
elsewhere or see what else is out there So but everybody's points are valid I do Go ahead I do want to make one
37:51
clarification here which is that the book does have six different campaign settings in the book which are laid out
37:57
It just so there are it's not that there's no setting at all and you have to do everything There are settings and
38:04
story hooks and ideas but I I think it does expect you to build on them more than say if you had bought a D and D
38:10
adventure You know if you want to play Critical Role the game you should probably go buy the D and D book call of the nether deep which few years old by
38:17
now because that is an adventure that puts everything together and in front of you This has worlds that you can build
38:24
in Yeah But I think we move on from there Uh thank you very much for your your thoughts on Daggerheart I
38:29
appreciate the uh other insights because man I feel like a negative
38:35
Nancy Uh so I guess we're going to move on Uh so did you know that Pathfinder
38:41
has a dating sim card game coming out i only knew that because I've read your article Yep
38:47
I read the link I opened the link when this showed up in our show notes and I'm still baffled by its existence I am too
38:55
Uh I only found it randomly cuz like I have a a bunch of like news scrapers
39:00
that go and look for tabletop stuff and this popped up and I'm just like wait what uh so apparently in October in
39:10
theory we'll be able to pre-order this Uh but it's a card game a card uh
39:15
building game or deck building game where you're dating monsters oozes dragons vampires Uh as soon as I saw
39:23
this you know what I did what's that i I really thought about my experience playing both Kingmaker and Wrath of the
39:30
Righteous on the video when Alcat made these CCRPGs Yeah And I'm like no I just
39:35
got done spending a lot of money buying these games and playing these games that are essentially dating sims Yeah
39:43
and and you can date various kinds of monsters in them especially Wrath of the Righteous where you can hook up with
39:49
demons the undead cursed half monster people and the scariest monster of all
39:57
the completely half elvin nothing weird about her homicidal serial killer that
40:02
just can be in your group Um so yeah this doesn't surprise me It's just it
40:07
surprised me when they went so for it I'm like "Yeah no that's pretty much my
40:13
experience with those games." Yeah I I guess I I don't I didn't see it coming but I really should have It reminds me a
40:20
lot of It reminds me a lot of Monster Prom like Pathfinder Monster Prom That's what it reminds for God's sake you know
40:28
Oh I don't think there's going to be anywhere near that much drama This pretty much just looks like a card game about courting monsters
40:35
The fact that this may plays in about 30 minutes Yeah it's definitely not monster arts but it's still it's still
40:40
interesting to me Yeah I wonder if in order to pre-order a copy to uh steal a turn of phrase from fellow staff writer
40:47
Chris Chzno I wonder if you're going to need to print out your monster uh lover uh license in order to pre-order a copy
40:54
A good good phrase modification there Thank you
41:00
Uh yeah this is this is a bizarre little product I mean don't get me wrong this
41:06
is something I'm probably going to buy Uh but like it is it is bizarre It came out of nowhere but I'm all for it Keep
41:12
it up Piso I'm Yeah I'll take any game that's not expensive and plays in 30 minutes
41:18
Honestly this is the kind of thing you take to a game night and go "Hey who wants to play a game about romancing vampires?" Yep And dragons/ oozes And I
41:26
think whatever you're into man whatever you're into And I think that's a huge selling point for it though too right
41:31
like it's it's a a game that plays quickly It play like it plays in 30 minutes and it can play what uh two to
41:37
six players right or three to six play So like two to six to six on the girl Yeah Yeah It strikes me as the game you
41:43
break out uh while you're waiting on the last few people to arrive to the to the game Yeah Exactly Uh and for that alone
41:51
I'm going to love it Uh from there I think we'll just move on real quick to
41:56
uh Outgun which I think Matt added so I'll let him uh let him chat about it Yeah I don't know if you guys know about
42:01
Outgunned It's already out Uh Free League Publishing does it It's kind of the it as a game It is the game of hey
42:08
you saw people do crazy things in a movie Now you can do that in your game Um if you played Fengui you'd recognize
42:15
a lot of this It doesn't rule-wise it doesn't play like Fengui but you get the feeling It's like how the way Fengui was
42:22
for like Hong Kong action RP you know action role playing game types feelings in the 90s and 2000s this game is now
42:30
for when you go to a movie and you're like Vin Diesel could not possibly hold on to that car with his fingernails like this That's not But we're going with it
42:37
We're going with Vin Diesel shooting his car into another building to escape a title wave where that's what we're doing
42:43
It it's pretty much that game And they have re they have noticed the same thing that everybody has noticed that there's
42:49
a lot of superhero movies Um and as a result we've got Outgunned Superheroes coming out which is it's both an
42:56
expansion for Outgunned and it is its own game Like you don't have to buy Outgun to play this Uh you just buy this
43:04
I I had not thought it was going to be something that I really worried about
43:10
too much Basically they put out a backer kit saying "Hey can we just need to
43:15
think we just need like €10,000 to get this made?" and it's already beyond €300,000 Mhm And got like a month to go
43:24
And it's one of those situations where I'm like well hello I I was not expecting that The thing is is that I
43:30
think a superhero RPG is kind of always dicey And I say this as a guy who loves
43:36
superhero RPGs and superheroes in general but people they don't
43:41
necessarily know what to do with any game that takes it in a direction that we haven't already seen Like I don't
43:47
know if either if of anyone here remembers Brave New World which was the superhero RPG made by the guys who at
43:52
the time were also making Deadlands and then later on they sold it because it
43:58
they were like does anyone want this we can't get anyone to buy these because it was so weird and different and so nobody
44:04
wanted to play it And they were like that we thought people would love it cuz you know we do Deadlands the game that mixes up cowboys and monsters So we
44:11
thought people would be totally on board with magical superheroes that you know fought the Nazis but are now in a
44:17
dystopian you know hellscape but no So I I I wasn't expecting to see but the
44:23
support I've seen for it especially in the amount of time I've seen for it was so wild that I went and looked it up And
44:29
it I think it's just it's got a chance of of making it cuz it just straight up embraces superhero comics and superhero
44:36
movies Yeah And especially superhero movies It just embraces that Everything that's weird about superhero movies it's
44:42
like yes yes we want more of that Aliens show up for no not really wellestablished reason Cool Uh
44:49
superheroes brawl in the middle of a small town and blow things up Cool Um
44:54
emotional angst and and anxiety between a bunch of people who aren't really superheroes but find themselves in a
45:00
super team Yeah cool We more of that Batman Yes Uh if you've seen in the
45:07
Batman movie we want you to help you do that even if it doesn't make any sense Even if you have Robert Patson that is Batman we don't care By the way the
45:13
Robert Patson and Batman is surprising Um but yeah so that's the game I liked it Uh looking at what they were were
45:19
offering what they're going to be doing I think it has the possibility to to work I don't think it's going to become
45:25
a household name because I mean really Outgunned is not that big a game This is just the the the nature of the beast
45:31
This is a niche market that supporters love it enough to give them tons of money It it will I mean I think if
45:37
you've never played Outgunned and I don't think we've talked about Outgunned in general on this podcast it's a really
45:43
cool system Uh yeah it's like I said I didn't I didn't mention Fengui cuz I didn't like it Fengui is one of my
45:49
favorite games of all time I absolutely The fact that Outgunn is even close to it Yeah Yeah No it's it's actually a lot
45:54
of fun But I I want to I just want to call it out because it uses a system called the director's cut Um and the director's cut system is basically using
46:01
small pools of six-sided dice and you determine the outcome of your hero's actions but you're not rolling for like
46:07
the highest or lowest possible number You're rolling for sets of numbers almost like yatsi and like that
46:14
determines what happens And the idea that there was game was initially kicked off with and I believe they called out
46:20
like games like James or movies like James Bond Atomic Bond Kingsman Oceans 11 Hot Fuzz John Wick Die Hard True Lies
46:28
Like John Wick is actually a really good example too I think John Wick is one of the the best ones for what this game
46:33
this system is like And the other interesting thing about it though too is this is one of those few games that
46:39
works really really really well with one game runner in one player because of the
46:46
very nature of it But the fact that they're doing the superhero stuff I actually didn't know they were doing that until Matt put it in here Uh like
46:54
this might be me breaking my Kickstarter rule and I might have to back this
47:00
See I've seen this I've seen it I've seen ads for this Kickstarter everywhere but I had never heard of Outgunned before this happened Um and then and
47:07
then and then after that I started seeing lots of reviews popping up for their previous expansion slashgame
47:15
Outgun Adventure Out is really good if you like the Pulse Yeah Which is like your your mummy or your uh Indiana Jones
47:21
So um really cool This sounds fun I don't think I'm going to I don't know if I'm going to back it but um I do want to
47:28
play it sometime uh when Matt inevitably backs it or if I can find the money or I will be
47:35
absolutely uh uh doing that as well Yeah The the other thing that I think is cool is like they also have these things
47:40
called the action flick books um which is essentially they make movie themes that
47:47
you can go through So like the first one I think was like Star Raiders which was you know maybe Star Wars Rising Dragon
47:55
which you know maybe is the last dragon cloak and dagger great powers which is
48:00
their original superpower one which was very very popular was in the first action flick book uh which then led to
48:06
this apparent uh weirder things gee sound familiar uh kind of magic killing
48:12
aliens ghost hunters midnight wars neon noir like all these things are like you
48:17
know what they are when you see them and they're based off of movies and genres that you very likely know and they just
48:24
give you here's what you need to run it here's what you need to do it Like I'm I am really interested in this cuz I love
48:30
cinematic games but I just think it's really and I'm going to let Liz weigh in if she has any opinions I I'm afraid I
48:36
do not have any unique opinions I think y'all have y'all have talked this one out Yeah So I think we'll go ahead and
48:42
move on uh to Well we don't have a whole lot of time but uh I think that this one
48:48
is really interesting Barnes & Noble's uh Barnes and Noble I always want to put an extra S on there Barnes & Noble uh
48:55
actually leaked two new uh books from Piso uh one for Pathfinder and one for
49:01
Starfinder which I think is interesting And it was only noticed because they went up for pre-order on their website
49:07
Uh which was the Draconic Index for uh Pathfinder and the Alien Core 2 book for
49:16
Starfinder Uh so just a little bit of tidbit So we're getting more books for those settings which I don't think is a
49:23
surprise for anybody Uh but I think it was a surprise to Piso that it got outed that quick Yeah especially since I don't
49:28
think um Starfinder Second Edition is actually up for sale yet No not yet No
49:33
So it is surprised to see Alien Core 2 being leaked They haven't even had Alien Core 1 yet guys But it makes me it makes
49:41
me think that it's going to be we're going to see Starfinder 2 sooner than later right definitely feels like they're ready to they they're basically
49:47
waiting for I think a show Like my my guess is either Gen Con or Origins I don't know if Origins has already been
49:52
missed right they already happened Uh I thought Origins was usually in June but I haven't Yeah then it's likely either
49:58
Origins or um Gen Cons in June June 18th to and Gen Con's July end of July and
50:07
one of those two I think we're going to get Yeah it's coming out in like two weeks So it might even like oh it's
50:12
available that day Yeah Right Yeah it's on the floor Yeah No absolutely They they could do that And I wouldn't be
50:19
surprised Um quite frankly I feel like Starfinder's been ready for a while it
50:24
the play test document that we got it was lacking a lot of stuff like it didn't have the ship rules yet but it
50:30
was and they did go ahead they did a second round of play testing with uh some additional classes as well later I
50:36
mean they've done a few rounds of play testing since we play tested it which was really fun by the way Matt I love
50:41
that game I I think it's if I known we were as close as we are I would have suggested doing another Starfinder role
50:48
playing and I still might because I do think it's a fun game like it's it's really well realized
50:54
I think we should revisit it when it comes out and we have the final rules for sure Yeah absolutely I'm obviously
50:59
in favor of that since I missed the first one I'd like to I'd like to see this one Yeah All right I don't have
51:05
much to say about the Dragon Codeex is literally all we know about it is it's a Pathfinder book about dragons And it's like I don't want to be crass and say
51:12
it's the it's the Draconomicon for Piso Uh but that's basically what it is It's
51:17
the book of dragons It's more dragon stuff which is good I don't mind that But it's not as there's not much to say
51:23
about it We don't know what they're going to do with it I just know that they're going to do it All right I think we're going to move on to a little D and
51:29
D news because I actually am excited about this and I think that some other folks here might be as well Uh so we
51:35
know we're getting another D and D book uh for the new uh Eternal whatever they're calling it now fifth edition
51:41
eternal or D and D forever Uh but it's the Eberon Forge of the Fiser Go ahead
51:48
It's it's Dn D It's D and D 5e It's still D&D 5e It's no matter no matter
51:53
what they say we're all going to call it 5 forever
51:58
Um but yeah so it's a new Ebron book Forge of the Artifiser And from what we know about it it's going to have uh four
52:05
artifi four revised artificer subasses with one new subclass the ctographer
52:10
which I think is interesting Five revised species 17 backgrounds 28 feats
52:16
mostly relating to dragon marks new spells bastions and magic items Uh three
52:22
distinct distinct uh campaign templates for building fantasy noir political
52:28
thriller and pulp adventure campaigns in the world of Eberon which if you listen to our Murder on the Eberon Express this
52:33
c this setting this world is ripe for it Uh and then we get uh 20 new monsters
52:39
each inspired by a campaign model I'm actually really excited about that I don't know about you guys I didn't know
52:45
it was coming Yeah Liz I knew Liz was going to say that Go ahead Liz I love them Um well it's coming out in August
52:52
So uh we we have a few months and actually there are five subasses with one one of them is new The cgrapher is
52:59
new but there are five in total And I am just so excited Which of you was going to run a game where I can play an
53:05
artificer that's my question That's the most important question Every every single time I will run a game for you to
53:10
play an artificer I know you love artificer That's why it's in the opening of this podcast
53:16
I I'm very excited to see what the cgrapher artificer does That's Yep Yep I
53:21
love that I love that whole concept just from the name alone This This also flows into the next news item you have on here
53:28
Joe about which I'm very excited about an earth arcana
53:34
has an unear arcana with new horror subasses And I opened this up because I
53:39
am I love me some weird subasses And the first one on the list is an artificer
53:44
subass called reanimator Yeah In which you get a little buddy You reassemble
53:51
corpses to raise the dead Yeah With that artificer style You you I am into this
53:58
also You're you're Frankenstein your uh reanimator your your uh your Herbert uh
54:05
like it fits into that Like it's really really cool I I love horror themes in
54:11
role playing games I know Matt generally doesn't or at least his I just my problem is my problem with a with doing
54:17
horror themes in an in an adventure style game is boiled down to the problem with like if you take an HP Lovecraft
54:24
story and let Roberty Howard write it Yeah The second that you have like a
54:29
15th level barbarian involved he does not care how scary you are It's like having Doom Guy show up If Doom Guy
54:36
shows up the demon is I am a terrifying skinw wearing monstrosity Yeah I'm just going to hit you until I figure out what
54:43
kills you Yeah which is fair But afraid at all so you know that's my thing on that But I do still love having gore and
54:49
horror stuff in my games I just like watching them get killed which is fair Uh I do say I will say that the
54:55
reanimator is a perfect artificer idea Yes But I think the cgrapher is more
55:00
interesting because I keep thinking about like do they do they map out an area and gain special magical powers
55:07
from that can they alter the area can they like by drawing a map and then adding in a land feature that's not
55:13
there can they make a hill shoot up like how is this going to work i am I am down for the ctographer I want to see more
55:21
Like I want to see a a summoner who's something like the naturalist Imagine that if you like a you're you're out
55:27
there taking like detailed sketches of animals in your book and then later on you can just open the book and throw
55:34
like a whole flock of stures at someone Like that would be really cool and something you could do with the with the
55:39
the artificer has a lot of room to go I've always liked that about it And it's not the only one right like so
55:46
go ahead Liz Yeah the artificer in general is a new class to D and D I mean
55:52
it's not a new class but it's newer than the other classes and it it always had
55:58
fewer subasses than most of the rest So I I am so excited to see new options
56:03
here I'm just going to keep saying that Carry on Joe No no go right ahead And I'm excited for it too And there's other
56:09
ones here as well that I think add some new subasses to some that I think need a little more variety as well Uh one is
56:16
like the bard gets the college of spirits I love the bard class in concept
56:22
but I feel like a lot of its subasses were very skewed a very specific way And
56:27
something like this I think is really really cool Um including like it's just the idea of summoning a spirit and then
56:34
based off of your BIC inspiration uh die type it's what type of spirit it can be
56:40
uh which I think is really really um there's the grave domain which is an old favorite for clerics It's coming back
56:47
They've reworked it here which is nice to actually see it come back uh because and I I think Balders's Gate 3 has a lot
56:54
to do with this uh because that's one of the things that you can be in Balders's
56:59
Gate and a lot of people will respec Shadow Heart into it Uh the ranger gets the hollow warden which is uh basically
57:07
being a hunter of undead which we had before but this is like a reworking of it Um think of it sort of like very
57:15
close to like your Simon Belmonts of of D and D So you get a little bit of that The rogue gets the phantom which of
57:21
course makes perfect sense You become the knight Uh sorcerers get shadow
57:26
sorcery Uh warlocks get undead patron Uh and I think that's it And I don't think
57:31
wizards get anything Uh but it's just a lot of Go ahead It's a lot of reworks
57:37
It's the artificer one stood out to me Not just because I love artificers
57:42
though I do It was you know that one's I don't think we've seen that one before and some of these others we've seen
57:48
ideas of them or previous unearthed arcana or things like that that they're drawing from or improving on Uh I'll say
57:55
the hex blade is vastly improved both because it's previously like hex blade was one of those ones where you really
58:01
had to kind of do your own interpretation because they were tied to one specific patron Um whereas now
58:08
they've kind of been freed of that and since a lot of their base features were baked into packed the blade where they
58:13
should have been to begin with Um that kind of gave them the room to actually like make the hex blade its own thing as
58:19
opposed to the thing paladins took one level in as a multiclass So they only had to concentrate on one stat Um I like
58:27
what they did with that uh too Uh yeah Warlock's got two patrons Wizards did not get the necromancer much to my
58:32
surprise but I think necromancer might have been one of the four that was in the core book I think it is Yeah Yeah Um
58:38
I will correct you about one thing though This is the hollow warden is completely new now They don't have anything to do with undead anymore
58:43
They're just like spooky forest dudes who transform when they cast Hunter Mark since the class is entirely around
58:50
Hunter Mark like they grow like you know they grow like bark armor and unnerve
58:55
people and um they can hit people and drain life They're they're like spooky
59:01
forest monsters now Even better Yeah it's it's a cool one It's like if you wanted to play a ranger but like a weird
59:08
ranger here you go
59:14
So I think we'll move on Uh the next one Astro Arcanum I think this was another Matt one so I'll I'll let him talk about
59:20
it Yeah Um I I was looking at stuff completely unrelated to it just because
59:25
I was browsing Backer Kit and Kickstarter and uh I I don't know if you
59:30
guys know uh Mati's creations Uh in Canada it's pronounced Mati I don't know
59:36
in Turkey though They're installable so I don't know how they pronounce Mati there One's constant But regardless but
59:43
um h nobody's business but the Turks man Um but the thing about it that caught my
59:49
eyes they've done a bunch of 5e D and D books called Something Arcanum like Hidden Arcanum or whatever So I saw this
59:55
and I thought it was going to be a a D and D game but it isn't It's like I It's
1:00:00
very It's obviously science fantasy It's very space opera It's very 40k It is
1:00:08
very 40k coded It It feels like 40k's like ambitious younger brother But
1:00:13
regardless of that the thing I found interesting was first off that that they they also have a thing on their website
1:00:18
about how they they'll basically make your game for you Like if you have an idea for a game and you want to pay them
1:00:25
they'll do all the work and and then give there's your game They haven't none
1:00:31
of the stuff they're selling on their site is that like it's all their stuff But they also have this thing on where
1:00:36
they're kind of like a pay you know remember they used to have like pay for publishing type setups before the internet happened and everyone just
1:00:43
outsourced it to Amazon Uh it's not too different from that but which I thought was interesting and not something I'd
1:00:49
want to avail myself of But the stuff that they put out under their own egis it's all like four or five star and it
1:00:56
all almost always funds at like a,000% of what they asked for or more
1:01:03
They their gold award-winning any studio aren't they like Yeah for their for their um hidden arcanum type stuff They
1:01:10
put out some really good 5D like supplemental products Uh but this is their first that I can tell their first
1:01:16
unique independent RPG It it kind of felt a little bit like do you remember
1:01:21
like um Castle Falconstein yeah Yeah If you took Castle Falconstein and some 40k
1:01:28
and some like Fallout too here cuz it's got the target It's got like the vets and type stuff It if that's the other
1:01:34
thing is like it felt like Liz you have that fan that Fallout RPG you mentioned us running and I said I signed up Well
1:01:41
no You mentioned it and then I said I could run that Um I mentioned it Yes Yeah I have the rules It's it's a better
1:01:48
VATS than the VATS in Fall I was just going to say that it does the thing that I was just talking about at the beginning of this which is it takes that
1:01:54
system that they put in tabletop and makes it better It iterates on it in a way that makes it much more like you
1:02:00
understand this is assisted targeting This is something that helps you hit
1:02:05
things It's really good Yeah it's it's really good Uh so yeah I wanted to
1:02:10
mention it just because um I saw this and thought I don't want this to sink
1:02:17
and then of course I looked at how much money it's made and I'm like okay never mind It it's okay It's yeah it it's only
1:02:24
been up for a few days and it's already like $200,000 at like against their target of $40,000 So yeah that's
1:02:31
Canadian money I don't know the actual American but regardless it's it's well and truly funded with a month to go Any
1:02:38
money they get now is just gravy They're going to be making this But it it just it is really it it it's a different
1:02:46
feeling than than what I've seen from a lot of stuff It has a very I don't want
1:02:51
to call it doesn't feel grim like you know it doesn't feel like you know grim and gritty or you know gore punk or whatever you want to call it but it does
1:02:57
feel like it's very it it's very much about taking an idea to the extreme like
1:03:02
what if you have unfettered capitalism what if you have unfettered body modification what if you've had it for hundreds of years what if you have magic
1:03:10
you know and and so it's got a lot of the feel of a lot of games I've really loved like Shadow Run or Cyberpunk or
1:03:15
again 40k and then yet it still kind of feels like it's own weird little thing like it almost feels like Elizabeth in
1:03:22
fiction So yeah I I'm HG Wells could have written some of this or Jules Vern
1:03:28
and that's the weirdest little taste and and that's why I I really thought it was cool So yeah I I put it in there because
1:03:34
partially just cuz I'm I'm impressed with Mati Creations just just track record on Kickstarter Like seriously
1:03:40
like with our last thing funded 15 you know 1,500% of of what they asked for and
1:03:47
that's they've all done at least a thousand That's like yikes That's that's something So yeah I I put that in there
1:03:54
I I hoped we would talk about it and we did So yeah there we go Uh couple other things I do want to call out real quick
1:04:00
and then I'll I'll let you all talk about anything that you want to to round us out Uh but we did talk about Blades
1:04:06
in the Dark earlier We brought that up when we were talking about Dagger Heart Uh there is a new uh book up on it.io
1:04:13
uh which is Blades in the Dark Deep Cuts Uh it's a setting and system expansion for the Blades in the Dark game Uh there
1:04:20
is an ability to get the full bundle of both the original Blades in the Dark and the Deep Cuts bundle uh for reduced
1:04:27
price Otherwise the new book is going for looks like 12 bucks Um and there's looks like there is going to be a
1:04:33
physical print run of it at some point uh in the near future Uh but it's going to be 27 factions 100 heritage and
1:04:40
background packages to flush out characters 13 new innovations and technology to reflect on going the ongoing industrial age of the game
1:04:47
itself Um giving it a more flexible and impactful harm harm and trauma rule
1:04:53
which I think is really neat A modified advancement system so you can customize the rate at which characters progress
1:04:58
because one of the things that is interesting about blades is failure breeds learning like most power by the
1:05:05
apocalypse games Uh but people learn at relatively different rates because of
1:05:11
the rates of failure So you can have one person who had much more XP than another And it looks like they're trying to do
1:05:17
what some of the other game systems like Avatar and some of the others have been doing which is adjust that so that it
1:05:22
makes a little more sense Um diceless downtime now instead of just regular
1:05:28
like rolling for it which I think is really really good um a system for debt
1:05:33
modified modifying the load system and a new action system which overhauls and streamlines the action resolution
1:05:39
mechanics to make combat and things of that nature easier and more streamlined
1:05:45
I'm all for all of this Uh and I love Blades in the Dark So yes this is an instant purchase for me Uh I think I'm
1:05:52
going to kick it over to Phil because I know Phil has opinions about Blade Yeah I I so I I had the digital version of
1:05:59
this I haven't picked up or back to the physical version but if I find it in a store I will almost certainly get it Um
1:06:05
I've heard John Harper describe this book as essentially the game he wished he'd written Yeah Or almost like a
1:06:12
Blades in the Dark uh like an actual full second edition with deep with deep cuts Um I think this So my my unfettered
1:06:21
opinion of Blades is I think it is a really good game and I think it is a game that is really bad at teaching you
1:06:27
how to run it Yes Um I I really think yeah it's like if you want to learn to
1:06:32
play Blades in the Dark go pick up Scum and Villain instead because they did a much better uh job telling you how to
1:06:38
run a fortune in the Dark game But with Deep Cuts I feel like Blade this makes Blades a lot more approachable And the
1:06:45
the extra rule system Joe mentioned to the end are also modular which is cool So like if you want to use like the
1:06:51
modified advancement system so everybody kind of advances at the same rate but you still want to have dice rolling and downtime because sometimes that can be a
1:06:57
cool way to like cause like a cliffhanger or some trouble that pulls in the next thing for your crew Like you
1:07:02
could they're modular rule systems You can pull in the parts you want and keep them Um and keep the ones you don't or
1:07:09
you know what I mean keep keep the ones you like and use the ones that you think are better out of deep Um I really like
1:07:15
the increased number of heritage and background packages because previously if I remember there were about eight Uh
1:07:22
so um it's interesting to see characters get fleshed out a little more because one of the things that I've um heard
1:07:28
people uh complain about Blades of the Dark is characters don't feel really distinctive Um because you're not making
1:07:35
a lot of actual choices at character creation Um so this kind of gives you another one to kind of tweak your character and make somebody that you're
1:07:42
excited to play Um it's it's interesting I I really enjoy Deep Cuts I'm really glad it's coming out in physical form
1:07:48
because I really do like having these books in physical form Um but uh yeah so it is on Kickstarter for a physical
1:07:55
print run Um but it will no doubt show up in stores because uh Evil Hat is really good at keeping physical copies
1:08:02
of their books on storeshelves Yeah And I can vouch for that Like they will they will work with whatever store they can
1:08:07
to get you those books as quickly as they can Like even if they do a Kickstarter where they don't have a um
1:08:14
for some reason they don't have a retailer tier if you reach out to them they will make one for you on the back
1:08:20
end So like they're I'm really happy with them and I can guarantee you that I will have many copies of this physical
1:08:26
in my store Uh I will so it is actually I I
1:08:32
will correct myself It is actually on backer kit right now Uh 20 26 days left It has reached
1:08:38
$129,000 out of the original goal of 30,000 Uh love for a reason Yeah there's
1:08:46
a lot Uh there's a really cool looking limited edition There's big maps of Duskvall It's just uh Oh and there is a
1:08:53
there is an actual set of just just playing cards with blade blades in the dark themed fronts and backs which is
1:08:59
just kind of a cool thing Uh we also I'm just moving on real quick and and I just wanted to mention this
1:09:05
cuz I thought this was really funny Do you like Montipython would you like to play a Montipython tabletop role playing
1:09:11
game because you can Uh apparently uh we are going to be getting a MontiPython
1:09:17
tabletop role playing game that is based off the silliness that was their humor Uh and it's not just the Holy Grail
1:09:24
although that is uh something that is referenced in there but it's Monty Python's uh co-curricular medieval
1:09:31
reenactment program Uh well while most of it does focus on uh the Holy Grail it
1:09:36
actually covers parts of the BBC TV series live performances albums uh other
1:09:42
movies like The Life of Brian Uh so it's it's really really interesting And uh
1:09:49
it's from it They're Exalted Funeral is doing the physical print run stuff for it Uh so it's going to be pretty like
1:09:57
there's already like a leatherbound tome like they call the public school edition that looks like the old public school books that you used to get And 100% I'm
1:10:04
getting my hands on this So I appreciate that the regular one is called the sensible middle class edition by
1:10:09
comparison And and the uh the other one comes with 6.2% more spam
1:10:17
This sure is a thing It is a thing And I I think that's why can be pretty nasty Uh but I'll turn it over to you guys Uh
1:10:23
what do you want to finish like we have a bunch of other stuff that we could have gotten to but we're just running out of time Anything that you guys want
1:10:29
to highlight or or talk about i'll kick it over to Liz first We've talked about
1:10:34
artificers Does anyone want to keep talking about artificers there's there's a lot going I
1:10:39
we we hit the things I'm excited about So though now I am reading up more on
1:10:44
Blades in the Dark in another browser tab Yes Matt Um this one is one of like
1:10:51
I found it on a site that I I like reading but that I am aware has a really strong left bias And I keep in mind I
1:10:58
have a strong left bias Uh I freely admit this but apparently Goodman Games is still working with Judges Guild after
1:11:05
they got known to a lot of trouble for working with Judges Guild because the
1:11:10
the person who owns Judge's Guild is is very I I don't know how to say this He
1:11:18
has made what would appear to most people to be extremely racist extremely anti-Semitic
1:11:24
statements Um he's made the statements you can decide what they mean but that's certainly the take most people seem to
1:11:30
have on it And they had basically been like "Okay we're not going to work with somebody who says things like this." And
1:11:36
then they continued to work with somebody who said things like this So that's that's a problem You know you're
1:11:42
seeing it on the End forums You're seeing it on Wava Rocket People are talking about it The fact that they went
1:11:48
back cuz they just had to publish more City State of the Invincible Overlord stuff I'm going to be upfront Is anybody
1:11:54
younger than me that into City States of the Invincible Overlord that they they
1:11:59
think you should go ahead and risk it like how much of an audience do you think you have for this game i mean I
1:12:05
barely remember City Face of the Invincible Overlord And I'm older than Dungeons and Dragons Like I I am 53
1:12:12
going to be 54 this year D and D just turned 50 I was a small child but I remember 1980 when the city state
1:12:18
originally came out I was playing D and D It was 76 was it when the first first stuff came out for D and D or for City
1:12:26
State for City i don't think City State came out I think they had the Invincible Overlord stuff coming out before but I
1:12:31
think the actual published Mega Adventure City State of the Invincible Overlord was in the 80s but I could be
1:12:36
wrong Uh but my point just being I I can't imagine most people buying D and D
1:12:41
game stuff now even remember it And yet they're going to town like "Yeah we're
1:12:47
going to publish more stuff with this guy and please ignore the anti-semitic things he says." Yeah it it's an
1:12:53
interesting choice but part of me also wonders how much of it is they already had a contract in place they couldn't drop or get out of Maybe you know like I
1:13:00
said I just find it it's one of those things where I saw it Apparently part of it is just so this
1:13:07
thing has been reprinted over and over from 76 Uh the most recent attempt was in 2014 when Judge's Guild actually ran
1:13:13
a failed Kickstarter for it Um and that's part of the current thing is
1:13:18
Goodman Games wants to try to make this available to people again which I've
1:13:24
I've read through City State the Invincible Overlord I do not understand the obsession with this module Um other than that it's old and it was good in 76
1:13:32
Um well basically it's one of those times The thing is they Yeah So after
1:13:38
Bob Blitzaw Jr the head maybe only guy of Judges Guild back in 2020 made his
1:13:44
extremely anti-semitic comments um Goodman Games swore working with him and any and would not work any products of
1:13:51
Judg's Guild that they were still selling they donated the uh the money to
1:13:57
charity apparently Um apparently what they're planning to do with this one is to give zero money to Judges Guild again
1:14:04
but they're going to instead use this to refund the people who backed it on Kickstarter in 2014 because they never
1:14:12
got a refund But the big problem is some people are saying that this could technically open the door for Judges
1:14:17
Guild to regain access to Kickstarter which they don't have Um and then
1:14:22
there's some other stuff that's come up about Bloodsol like posted a big screed
1:14:27
which was why is there you know which amounted to why is there politics in games anyway here's my politics and also
1:14:33
they've been working with us all along which Bledsaw apparently has he has a tendency to stretch the truth and
1:14:40
apparently a lot of the info in his gigantic now deleted screed is in fact
1:14:46
false but I don't know I mean good on Goodman games for wanting to pay back
1:14:51
people who got you know um their money taken by a racist in 2014 for nothing
1:14:57
But like no just don't No no module is worth doing this No no I I disagree with
1:15:05
what's going on here And that's where I'll leave it Yeah I think we're all in the same camp at least there Um and then
1:15:12
I guess I'll I'll I'll ask Phil then since we've we've covered that Is there anything you would like to talk about
1:15:17
call it good Uh not that I can think of Um look
1:15:23
forward to our next uh Tavern Watch plays Yeah it'll be good I'm excited for
1:15:29
it as uh and yeah so if we've covered everything I don't think I have ever anything that I haven't cuz I got to
1:15:34
talk about all the things I wanted to cuz I was running the joint Um so I think we'll just call it there But I do
1:15:39
friends I do want to thank you for joining us Uh again Blizzard Watch Tavern Watch and all of our imprints are made possible due to generous
1:15:45
contributions at patreon.com/bizzardwatch Uh your continued support allows us to continue
1:15:51
to grow and do shows like this and other content Uh if you have questions for
1:15:56
this or any of our podcast uh be sure to send those in You can hit us up to podcastwatch.com specify the show that
1:16:04
it is for uh as well as any special pronunciation of your name You can also hit us up on Discord We have the Q and
1:16:09
podcast questions channel which is open for everybody We also have the Patreon Q and podcast questions channel where we
1:16:15
uh tend to look there first as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on And then if you do subscribe to Patreon you can send us messages or
1:16:22
topics through Patreon And not only do you get that but all of our content you get it ads free Like how cool is that
1:16:28
you also get it earlier than everybody else How cool is that like it's really neat You should support us We like
1:16:34
making stuff Uh but yeah I think that's it friends Until next time And may all of your hits be crits
1:16:41
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