Are the cliffhangers intentional or are we hanging from the cliffs as well? What pushed Val towards a level of sorcerer? And what were our favorite character moments so far? All that and more on the Afterparty!
Sponsors
- BetterHelp, a secure online counseling service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty
- Blaseball, the internet’s favorite splort! Get into it at blaseball.com
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod
- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod
- facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod
- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod
- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com
- merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch
Cast & Crew
- Dungeon Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Milo Lane), Co-Producer, Editor, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Aggie O’Hare), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Co-Host (Val Vesuvio), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast, powered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. That means a group of friends create a story together, chapter by chapter, that takes us beyond the tabletop to parts unknown. In the first campaign, we explored fantasy adventure, intrigue, magic, and drama. In the newest story, we tackle science, superpowers, a better future, and the responsibility to help others.
Every month, we sit down for the Afterparty, where we break down our game and answer your questions about how to play D&D and other roleplaying games at home. We also have segments at the beginning of each campaign to teach people how to play the game themselves. It’s a party, and you’re invited! Find out more at jointhepartypod.com.
Transcript
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the Afterparty, where if we talked about kettles, we would do nothing else and answer no other questions. So suffice it to say, electric kettles are great. People in the U.S. consider getting one. They're cheap, they're really helpful and kettles are great. And that's all I have to say.
Brandon: Yes, I agree. Get a Bonavita one.
Eric: This is a clear time for all of us to go around and say that we have an electric kettle, so-
Julia: I don't have an electric kettle. I don't have the counter space for it. I use my stovetop kettle all the time. It's really great.
Amanda: That's fine. I forgive you, Julia. You do not have to buy an electric guitar.
Julia: When I have a house and more counter space and a bigger kitchen, I will buy an electric kettle, I promise.
Eric: I think the biggest problem is that you have five pasta presses, which is taking up all of your counter space.
Julia: It really is. It really needs to stop.
[Brandon laughs]
Eric: Jake has one that's just for rigatoni and it's different. It moves differently.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: What you what you switch, you switch is what is this Wal-Mart?
Julia: [Laughs] Oh boy. Amanda, do we have questions that are not pasta related?
[Eric and Brandon laughing]
Amanda: We do! I wanted to start, though, first by saying this is a very jam packed couple of episodes for all of us. And I know I have thoughts and feelings and reactions, but guys like what did you what do you think of these two episodes?
Julia: Good episodes.
Brandon: Yeah, it's the best kind of exposition where you don't realize is exposition. And then after you're done with it, you're like, [deep gasp] y'know it's the best kind.
Julia: Good job, Brandon.
Eric: Well, thank you. I like a gasp. I like that I make you guys gasp. That was my main complaint from campaign one was that I guess Brandon and Amanda were so dialed in that they're just like, "ah yes, of course I understand." But now you guys are like, "fuuuuck!!"
Brandon: I think it's also because of the fantasy versus reality setting. Like, things are more weird in the reality setting.
Eric: Yes, that's true.
Julia: I feel like we said that early on to that. Like that was the big difference was fantasy stuff. You're just expecting, you know, talking rabbits, that's fine. But when you meet a talking rabbit in the real world, in the supposed real world, you're like, what?
Amanda: And it's still a fantasy of a kind. Like this is not how you do public health. It's just enough outside, like just kind of comic booky enough that I don't know. I just I really enjoy playing in a space like this.
Eric: I think that this is something that I really wanted to get across with characterization of Dr. Morrow that, like, she's not an ethical scientist. It's super murky like cause she is the mayor and the main person in town, the individual, the capital I Individual and also a scientist at the same time who worked in both private and public ways. My favorite part of the episode was where we all started having an ethical debate about what we need to do to tell people about the mushrooms/truffles, the the one up truffles, as people have been calling them, which I saw, which I really like their more truffles than mushrooms, but they're interchangeable. They're fungi. You guys were having that conversation and I'm like, I want to establish that this is a hard choice and that there's it's not able to be easily decided. And I'm like, oh, they definitely already had this conversation. And that's when January pulled out the white board. I was trying not to say like like, no, I was like, yes, this is a big problem. You're 100 percent correct. And I think that your actions going forward and whatever happens with the truffles will kind of delineate that like Dr. Morrow is not going to be like, hey, guys, powered folk are real and also so are radioactive mushrooms, I've known about it for a very long time, like she's not going to do that. So that was my favorite part of that episode.
Brandon: Yeah, I like to I was trying to imagine, like because obviously, I mean, I don't know how you guys feel, but I feel that all drugs should be legal and regulated and for the health and safety and tax benefits for everyone. But this is not a drug where it's like simply gets you feeling good. This is like can you imagine the bum rush that would happen if we announce some substance that gave you actual superpowers?
Eric: Mm, yeah.
Brandon: Like that would be wild. So, yeah, I don't know what the ethical considerations of that is.
Amanda: Yeah. To me this is kind of the decision that we made early on in the campaign of like is this a very realistic universe where there sort of the threat of discovery at all times and you have to be really stealthy in these stealth checks constantly, you know, in order to not compromise your identity. Is this a fully superhero universe where everybody has super power or people have super powers? Everyone knows about it. You know, it's kind of very accepted or is it somewhere in the middle? And I like that we are one degree off from reality, one degree into fantasy. There is stuff that we kind of don't worry about too much, like people recognizing, you know, Aggie car as we're responding to things. And it's just the thing that we find fun. So I hope that people get that and vibe with that, too.
Eric: Yeah, I do like what you said, Brandon that these aren't drugs. There's something closer to like the conversation of steroids in baseball where it's like you can do whatever you want to your body, when that is your choice, whether or not you want to be like, I want to be big and strong and I will deal with those consequences. But then it becomes a conversation of like is the integrity of the game. Right? And it's like if you had a choice to get super powers and enhance herself, would you? And then it becomes like more of a moral question or an ethical question, we still don't know at this point in the story what the truffles, the one up truffles do to you, like, yeah, Val super wanted to take them and sort of the Knight of Mirrors, but like, who knows the consequences. Like, Val just felt like they were eating a ghost pepper, which isn't good for your body, but also capsaicin is good for your body. Again, it's this really complicated thing that we haven't played out yet. I like that this is set up like a comic book in that we have time to find it out as the issues go forward, which is kind of why I like real play podcasts in the in the whole thing. It's like the novel if you are reading a novel, it's like this exists as a brick and everything that we have done is in this brick. But like, we can figure it out and see how it affects things, whether from some research that I've been doing over an extended period of time.
Amanda: And speaking of enhancing abilities, Julia got a big enhancement. Tell us about Multiclassing! This was surprising. Brandon and I didn't know about this before the session. I love it. Tell me about how that idea came about.
Julia: I was looking back at our Slack messages because I wanted to know because I was like, I think I remember how this worked out, but I wanted to go back and double check. And it was right after I think Val got the volcano gauntlets. And my next level up I think was for Barbarian and was going to be I get like reckless attack. But when I use reckless attack, I also gain temporary HP. And I was talking to Eric. I was like, you know, it would be a really broken multiclass if Val took a couple of levels in Rogue and then just kept using reckless attack, which gives advantage, which adds on sneak attack bonuses and all of that. And then Eric was like, yeah, that would be super broken. Let's not do that.
Eric: I remember that. I said, don't do that. But it would be wild Val started expressing different powers. And I remember you said it's like, well, you know, in comics it's only happens when, like, you suffer tragedy or something really big happens to you. And I was like, yeah, that would be super bad.
[Everyone laughs]
Julia: And I've been waiting ever since we discussed that for something terrible happened to Val. Again, just increasing my anxiety every time we play.
Amanda: But now it did. And you're fine. And, you know!
Eric: Let's talk about this. This was in your head the entire time, which is why the ride on Sky Tram to your mom was extra anxiety inducing. I'm like, I know that Aunt Min can threaten Val by doing so many different things. Doesn't have to touch anyone they love. They can they can pull it apart. But I also knew that Julia was fucking worried that Val's mom was going to die. So, like, I could really pull back on it because this pay-out was going to happen eventually.
Julia: To be quite honest, I was not worried as much that my mother was going to die because I was going to my mother. But when Hitomi called and was like, there's trouble at the sweet tooth, I was like, someone needs to go get Hitomi because Hitomi is almost certainly going to die now.
Amanda: I really tried. I really tried. Got laid up.
Julia: It's okay. It's okay. I appreciate it.
Eric: That's okay. Listen, I wouldn't have buried gays or fridged your girlfriend, so that was on one side. I wasn't going to do that. But I did appreciate the true danger of what was happening. Like I wasn't going to do it in the first place. But you did worry I was going to do it.
Brandon: The only thing that died was Val illusion of safety.
Julia: Yeah, that was it.
Eric: I really loved the moment where this happened because I think that this is actually the conclusion of the mob story for this arc was Vulcani deciding fuck the mob. I hate that they're involved. I hate that people use them for safety or whatever, you know, mob reasons. They're like keep a dying and or not so great Little Italy going, remember, all the way back in our world building the docks. That was the main thing in Little Italy, moving people in and out, moving stuff in and out. And for the mob, moving illegal stuff in and out got reduced greatly when people in Weston wanted to make it less good to save the mountain lobster population. So Little Italy is struggling right now. And I think that that was also something that got expressed when Salimony was shaking down the woman from the Italian restaurant that El Poppo. So I love that you stepped in to be like, hey, I'm Daredevil now. Just, you know, and then the fact that you did it at like an Italian street fair was incredible. I had such like sense memories of San Gennaro Feast in New York City we know it's in September. But it's something that we kind of like wrapped up into this. And I just I loved the moment and I and the baby face turn that you did against bullshit. Muah muah.
Brandon: I just want to say real quick, the sound design, the like environment for the festival I was looking for, like I just searched for like festival in my library and San Gennaro Festival popped up. So that's actual audio from a San Gennaro.
Amanda: Woooaaah! Oh my God, that's amazing. It was really cool. I also Eric just love to the the "my girlfriends call me bullshit" or whatever the specific line was. I was just like aw fuck yeah, dude.
Julia: Yeah, I think that for me, this was the culmination of Val being influenced by the painting as well, because we talked about this and other Afterparty if Aunt Min had said the thing that would have triggered Val to join the mob, that would have been a whole different storyline. But I felt like I needed to kind of have a payout for Val's experience with the painting. So this was kind of the I'm going to protect Little Italy. This is going to be my town, my place. I'm going to protect it.
Eric: Mmhmm. Incredible. And then you just fucking destroyed this guy, which was wonderful. And then both of you-
Julia: That I destroyed as well.
Amanda: It's a very good touch.
Eric: That's so funny. I love that.
Brandon: And there's no more guns in little Italy.
Julia: That's not true. We got to deal with that.
Eric: It was it was more of a ceremonial throwing guns on fire than an actual one.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, true. And Brandon, how did you feel about your character scene in in the entanglements?
Brandon: I mean, I loved it as a character. I loved it as Milo, I think it's a little nerve wracking to have his dad somehow, whether tangentially or not involved in poor Nate Nemitz, his death, although he seemed fine when I met him in the first couple of episodes. So I don't know if it's poor or not. [Laughs]
Amanda: More like a puzzling afterlife.
Brandon: Yeah, but yeah, I think it was satisfying to Milo. I think it made sense to him. I don't know if Eric lying to me, but it seems like that was truthful in terms of how fucking awkward it be to ask one of your parents exes about their -
Eric: Lovers, Brandon the term is lovers.
Brandon: So I get like why that wouldn't have been shared and it makes sense to me. So, yeah, I don't know. I think it made Milo sort of just Dr. Morrow or like rebuild the trust that was broken when he found the like, photo and stuff.
Eric: You asked some really devastating questions to this person, to Dr. Morrow things that there is no reason she would ever tell you, like some of her deepest secrets, that in order to be as transparent as possible, it's like I can't lie to this person who's asking me about my relationship with their dad and then lie about this ghost they saw that was involved in one of my experiments, like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So as truthful as possible, the only thing that was up for debate, I think, is I really love insight checks, because when you mess with it, the insight is not a lie detector. It is "Do I feel satisfied by the thing that another person says to me, are they lying to me or not?" And that's like a personal issue. Like, do I have enough clarity into this person's psyche that I understand what they're saying?
Brandon: Right.
Eric: And that role being ambiguous was like, you have no reason to believe that she's lying, but she might be lying to you. Brandon like Milo thinks she's not lying. But Brandon I'm telling you that you don't. And I cannot tell you for certain if she's lying or not. So like it is putting more a certain amount of cloudiness in your own brain, which is I think is a really fun way to play with insight in that role.
Brandon: Yeah. Like, I think Milo wouldn't be surprised if, like, Dr. Morrow suddenly revealed to be an unethical scientist at this point, you know, but like -
Amanda: Spoiler, I think she is.
Brandon: But I think if her and my dad came forward and we're like, we're getting married now, he'd be pretty pissed because he was lied to. But I think the biggest reveal and I want to hear your thoughts on this, too, was the Monty reveal.
Julia: Yes!
Amanda: I don't know if it was the most consequential, but it was the best for me because that was kind of the first, like, whiff of mystery we got in this campaign.
Julia: It felt like a good payout for sure.
Eric: So I think it's pretty clear that that's where Monty was coming from. Do you want to hear, like, my entire thinking on this? Because I've been thinking about this since those first episodes where you guys were breaking in into the the Rude Boys boathouse,
Amanda: Please!
Eric: The rude cousins and friends boathouse. So-
Brandon: The RBCB.
Julia: Don't forget, the nephews. It's the nephews.
Eric: I know it's the nephews, as I was calling them the rude boys.
Julia: I just don't want any of our listeners to be like, "who are the rude boys? I don't remember the rude boys?"
Eric: Yeah, they were from episode twelve. You guys don't remember the rude boys?
Amanda: Oh no, check the transcripts.
Eric: Yes, the nephews. So yeah, I think that Dr. Morrow at sometime in the 90's, once Moral Corp got up and running and like the city started going and diaphragm started being used to, like the growth actually started I think Morrowcorp was like, okay, let's figure out some stuff here, because there was kind of like the study and analysis of the people who were living in Laketon and seeing the effect of Delta radiation. So I think they Dr. Morrow did experiment on some mountain lobsters to see what's up. And this mountain lobster got super big and then the mountain lobster escaped, got into the water way, lives in the waterway, and that is Monty. What people assume to be Monty, I think, is seeing glimpses of this giant-
Amanda: Immortal.
Eric: A giant immortal mountain lobster.
Brandon: Yes. I want to know, like how he became the mascot. Like if he was in a lab and then only escaped once we broke him out of the garage, basically, like, what were the circumstances in which people saw him enough? And
Amanda: Oh, I see.
Brandon: "I want this guy to be the mascot of this entire town." Or was it a PR campaign from Dr. Morrow?
Eric: Oh, no, he escaped earlier. He escaped in the 90'sand the nephews got their hands on.
Brandon: Gotcha! Okay, yeah.
Amanda: And then we liberated him back to nature where he belongs.
Eric: Yeah. So like, if if like Champ or the Loch Ness Monster was real and they saw them in, that is like this is truly the looking at that. Sorry I had to tell it to get the FBI off my back. We all know that Nessie is real and -
Julia: I was going to say what do you mean they were.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah exactly. So I think that the confluence of what Julia originally did in that world building episode was like, we're having a mountain lobster pie. Plus Monty equals mountain lobsters everywhere. Yeah, like the food. Plus the legend is we're a mountain lobster town. Yeah, it's great. But no, that was really fun. I've been sitting on that for such a long time. I've been sitting I told you so much of my of my notes. And that's not just because of the natural 20'sd that y'all have been rolling lately. Amanda.
Amanda: You're sitting right next to me. You know that they're there.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I'm just sayin' it's happening.
Amanda: Listen, the Chad dice came out of the bag, funky, fresh.
Julia: They really they're feisty dice.
Eric: They are so feisty. It's very funny. I know that the Chad Dice are sold out, but this is the first time that we got to roll the chad dice. So now you are all seeing our rolls on it a little later and hopefully the dice will [voice gets high pitched and fades out]
Amanda: Well, we're working on it, working at Eric and I mean, before we transition into audience questions of which we have many lovely ones also as just the end of this arc, I mean, Brandon Guttenberg, incredible. Would that see? I just like I guess when I came out of the session, like, what the fuck?
Brandon: I think it was first time you actually did get an audible. Like, what the actual fuck for me.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah.
Eric: Oh I 100% did. I cherish it. I keep it under my pillow, I wear it on a locket around my neck when I walk around. Yes. It was incredibly vindicating for me.
Julia: My favorite part was we ended the session. I said, fuckin' Brett. And you're like, I knew exactly where Brett was this entire arc.
Brandon: Yeah!
Julia: But it's Brett.
Amanda: There you go.
Eric: Well, here's a wild thing about this and why I love playing Dungeons and Dragons. And you are all making some really strong choices, which I love. You all decided to let the idiot, youtubers do their own thing and focus just on the mob stuff. And I think that really changed the arc of this story. You didn't engage with them. You didn't go shake them down. You didn't try to beat them up. You didn't like go threaten Councilman Burdock. You didn't kind of look into that stuff, which is totally fine. The stuff you ended up doing was Danny O'Hare, Knight of Mirrors, Aunt Min, Salimony and like branching passman. So when Dr. Morrow was like, I'm going to help all of you, what I'm going to do is kidnap you tumor's and hold them hostage so that we can figure out what to do. Because like you didn't like that they were bad, they were mean and bad, remember? And I think that that was kind of very funny for me, that, like, I tied up this this is what happens when you don't tie up loose and someone else tries to tie up your loose end. So we didn't get a chance necessarily to explore what their deal was or see what Brett was doing/guttenberg As I've said before, Slade from Teen Titans has been a real big inspiration for Gutenberg for me. And I wanted him to be ever present. I wanted him to be able to stand next to you and then realize he was there the entire time. And Gutenberg has been threatening and hates Dr. Morrow and hates you guys because as we learned, Dr. Morrow is not as good as he wants them to be, which I think is this really interesting sort of thing that's happening here, this antagonistic relationship that they have. And I really wanted Gutenberg to step out and demonstrate that he has powers. He can hurt you. And he is he's the big bad in so many ways. He's lurking in around. And I think there are a lot of really interesting superhero comics where you can't punch the big bad, but they're there. And it's also been very fun over the last few arcs to fill in maybe the rogues gallery a little bit. But like, you know, imagine you see a comic book panel and there's like or like a full page of a comic book. And you see all of the rogues gallery who you fought. You've seen Ma and the Nephews and painkiller Larssen and Big Daddy, Big Jeff, the Emperor. You see all of them. But then you see, like Gutenberg, this guy just kind of like looming over all of that and that kind of like how I envision the villains in the world right now, the villains in Lake Town City.
Brandon: Yeah, I thought it was super interesting. Like what? The way you decided to have Borat speak there at the end, because my impression was like, what is Brett's motivation? The worst kind of villain is a villain that has no motivation other than like you're not good enough for me, you know what I mean? Like, that's more terrifying than like, I want to burn the city down, you know?
Eric: Yeah. I think I really have been trying to forge this relationship between Gutenberg and Dr. Morrow and like, just because Dr. Morrow doesn't remember it, which is like she's fucking Doc Brown. Of course, she doesn't remember this one person she might have slighted, but like Gutenberg is fucking burning about it and hates Dr. Morrow and by extension now you and wants to ruin her things. And I think that that is becoming a lot of fun. And being able to reveal that to Val and then throw a bunch of dragon drones at them was very satisfying. And then the display more of his powers that he can just like, oh, I don't know, conjured a door like Scott Pilgrim and walk through it. His ability to just create things. It has been very fun to slowly seed into the campaign as well. So I'm glad I got to just show that to you in in a scene. Also, I didn't mean to dump all the stuff on Val. We just we cut out a roll that justified it. It was going to be either Val or Aggie, but I guess Val had like a higher intimidation check to see what was going on with the YouTube's. And that's why I gave you that scene.
Amanda: Speaking of episode structuring, Aristo on discord wants to know how intentional was the cliffhanger on the Milo Dr. Morrow scene, something you plan in advance, or is the timing just very good to be like, okay, let's close the episode with something else now.
Eric: [Laughs] Yeah, man, I didn't know this was fuckin' comin! No, the answer's no!
Amanda: Well, he did a very good job on the fly then.
Brandon: Yeah, I think I think there was an intention were so practiced at this point that we sort of have a natural inclination towards when the episode is going to be over, you know, or like nearing some sort of nice cliffhanger conclusion thing. So I think it was sort of evident that we were going to move and end with that conversation and something with the other two. But, yeah, I didn't know what to say. So I just said that.
Julia: We never know what Milo is going to say either, Brandon.
Eric: Yeah, we had had a conversation that you wanted to talk to Dr. Morrow about a bunch of stuff. So I'm like, okay, Brandon is going to do this eventually. And I think that there was an interesting stopping point, a chance to Dr. Morrow Dr. Morrow alone. But I'm like, oh, I need to do this Gutenberg thing, like I need to do it. So it was very funny that we ended up having a double decker cliffhanger in this moment and then but that's not where it ended. It ended with the Faraday cage, with shutting down the unhackable phones. So like it wasn't even like we cut away from Milo saying, you fucked my dad. He was like he was this other level of other people not being able to hear it. And I don't know where we would have went if I needed Val and Aggie to hear that conversation. Like we were able to go into an entanglement style episode. Later, when the cherry blossoms and the theme song to the anime changes, we were able to do that because there was another consequence on top of it, which is Milo is truly alone with Dr. Morrow, which was very lovely.
Brandon: Is it a consequence if Milo is just very, very silly in thinking that these phones are unhackable?
Amanda: I don't know. But AthenaVine in Discord would like to know, did Dr. Morrow detect uncheckable burner phone with capital letters or did her Arkana stuff just kind of disable anything within range like that? You know, Milo was hiding a bug?
Eric: No, the letter she did not know. She just knew that she had it out. A very private conversation and through on the anti electrical thing.
Julia: In true scientist form.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I have to have a private conversation. Let me turn on this mechanical monstrosity.
Eric: So it was so funny. I loved it a lot.
Amanda: Well, I use my VPN in similar ways where I'm just like if anybody anywhere possibly could track my IP address and I don't want that, then okay, let's, let's do the the VPN. Like if I am signing up for a mailing list and I don't want them to, you know, track cookies like I will put on my VPN, I just - all purpose VPN.
Eric: Something again what I loved about, I love about dungeons and dragons and I think all of you have made really strong choices lately which I love and throw me off and is the most fun thing to do. Dungeon mastering is when you all make choices that impressed me. Is that like when you guys have intention and things you want to do and I have intention, the things that I want to do, then they get molded together in a layer cake, like it's like, you know, the platelets of the world coming together. And like sometimes they make mountains and other times they make oceans. Like, that's what happens. And I think that we were able to layer this really interesting story because Milo wanted to do something Dr. Morrow didn't want to do it, but also Guttenberg wanted to do something. And I think that we were since we were able to layer all that, it made it really interesting and created really like dynamic fiction storytelling.
Amanda: I thought it was also I did, too. I felt similarly about moving into the Entanglements episode in Aggie trip to New York, where I felt right away when you asked what we wanted to do in the Entanglements episode, as I usually do before we get into the sort of combat conflict part. I was like going to New York, like going to New York on New York. It seems like that that nat 20 was pretty consequential. How did you think that scene would go going into it?
Eric: Oh, my God. Hey, I don't know if you guys knew, but Danny does not like being vulnerable and telling everyone about that.
Julia: So you weren't planning on having him cry into his borsht?
Eric: Oh, no. I want to say absolutely not. You all saw when you roll that, that twenty Amanda. I was stunned and I had to, like, take effect and I'm just like, yeah, well Danny is going to be like, yeah, he's going to crack he in especially in front of his older sister who is telling him to cut the bullshit and just tell her what's up. He's like, oh he's not gonna be able to deal with that. He's he's still a younger sibling. And you are coming down hard playing older sister card. And I'm like, oh, no, he's going to cry and tell her everything, which I also love, which I got to tell you all my notes. So it all kind of worked out and I got to cry into borsht.
Brandon: Your dream.
Julia: Every dungeon master's dream.
Eric: I mean kinda a little bit.
Amanda: The question Surgeon Michelle Spurgeon has a couple follow up questions about the scene. One, are all of Danny's paintings prophetic? Is he like an oracle of sorts or. It is my editorializing. Is it more like this is the thing that I think we'll arrive at eventually? Not that it's like foretold because he painted it. He's just painting things that are foretold.
Eric: Yeah, I think that this is the the universe doesn't care about. Well, the universe continues to go forward, and if you meld that with the multiverse theory, that's in a lot of comics, it's like things will happen and you can't control it. So it's like Danny almost like like I was saying, there's like a whirlpool. And then Danny took like a photo of one square of the whirlpool and like, whether or not that comes to fruition and exactly the thing that he painted it because it now exists in the world, it now has gravity. So things are pulled towards the inevitability of this one square on this painting. So like, whether or not it is true, because we have introduced it into the universe, now, it is more true than any other multiverse version that could be there. I understand it's complicated, but welcome to goddamn comics.
Amanda: I like that. That's a really good explanation.
Eric: Thank you.
Amanda: Secondly, if the truffle at the restaurant had been graded on the pasta, would it have had any impact on the eater?
Eric: I can't remember. Did we determine that the truffle was a one up truffle or just a truffle?
Julia: Yeah, you rolled for it and it was a one up truffle.
Eric: Okay.
Julia: That's why Aggie stole it.
Eric: Right. That's right. I did like making it ambiguous to see if Aggie would just like steal a truffle from a restaurant.
Amanda: I did. I did that.
Eric: You did! Yeah. You did it without knowing whether or not it was definitively a one up I that's more of a question to you. Like, what did you think was going to happen?
Amanda: I think Aggie wanted one as kind of a evidence, anything that she could test and see how far this had spread, like if it was the same truffle and distributed in the same manner like that. So that's useful evidence to have to be able to track this down and kind of keep an eye on it. And then secondly, I think Aggie assumes that it has some kind of effect on the eater, maybe not obviously the way it affects powered individuals. But, you know, maybe you feel a little better, maybe cause your hangover, maybe you have no digestive issues from a bunch of, like, chicken Alfredo. So all the sound great to me as a person, but I think she wanted it not in civilian hands and also in her own possession to test.
Eric: Yeah, I don't know if we'll necessarily know. I think that was more displayed to be like, oh, these truffles already out there. Yeah, they're not. And they're not just in Lake Town City, they're in New York City as well, which means it could go farther. As I was prepping for this, I remember there was that the mob truffle book that I read that has been like a really big inspiration for me, knowing that, like, rich foods are important. But I kind of wanted to be more than just like this is a rare thing, and people necessarily say it's it's super rare, like the way that we commodify things in our world. We say that it's exclusive and therefore it is exclusive. Like, I actually wanted to give it some power. So that's kind of like becoming distribution. The mob is trying to make money off of it because it's not necessarily legal. I think this is somewhere in between, like like I said, steroids in baseball and like illegal puffer fish or that or that bird you eat all in one in one bite. You guys know about this?
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: No.
Eric: Oh Brandon. This is like entirely your shit.
Brandon: Not not pollute like a real bird?
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: It's called ortolan. Yeah. And you cover your head with a napkin and then you eat this tiny bird all in one bite.
Brandon: What the fuck. Why.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Like bones and all.
Eric: Yeah. It's like a rich person like delicacy sort of thing.
Julia: You're supposed to cover your head because it's like such an indulgent thing I suppose.
Amanda: Well also you look buck wild eating a full bird in one bite.
Julia: But like the thing is like could fit in your palm of your hand, I feel like.
Amanda: Oh I guess I haven't ever seen it and I never want to. But Ortolan are now protected species in the EU, though France took twenty years to act on that ban in 79.
Julia: Feels right.
Eric: There it is.
Amanda: So yeah.
Brandon: Jesus.
Amanda: Oh and that book, by the way, is The Truffle Underground by Ryan Jacob's
Eric: Incredible book. All of you should read it. It is. It is truly Buckwild.
Amanda: So we've Ortolan follow up or should I ask Michelle's final question?
Brandon: My follow up is what the fuck?
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, my dad told me about that when he read about it in a newspaper article when I was like 10. It's like it's like a distinct memory I have of him being like, oh, yes, in France. I read about this in France you cover, you have the napkin and eat a bird on one bite. And I was like, what?!
Brandon: Look, eating a bird is not weird, right? But like eating a napkin on your head and then eating in one bite is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of a human being.
Eric: Yeah. It's like so ritualistic. And like, you just get to do it if you're super rich. I remember they they did it in succession. And I was like, this is so funny that I actually got to see someone like act this out. It was just very wonderful. So yeah, that idea of of like the exclusivity and what this thing could do, I think, like I said, from what Dr. Morrow had to do, it was like if you gave this to a normal person and enhances their best ability. So like, imagine someone goes to an Italian restaurant, gets whatever pasta and then gets truffle that one up, truffles grated on it, they eat it. Then they go and deliver the best speech of their life at like the Guggenheim or wherever. So that's kind of like what I was envisioning. Like, people are using this as a pick me up and maybe it is to get rid of a hangover like you need your constitution raised or like you're a big party person and like this is now your thing. So I think that, however, you might see this fitting into like the wild lifestyles of very rich people or people who want to get their hands on an exclusive piece of food or nutritional supplement is kind of like how I'm envisioning it going out to the larger populous. I've been thinking about this a lot, guys. I've been thinking about this from the first episode. I introduced this during the worldbuilding. That's why it's on the the poster is that they're the marches always had mushrooms, truffles.
Amanda: I know when I saw that after the mushrooms came up as a plot point and I was like, motherfucker. It's on the poster.
Eric: I'll include the article about fungi and micro-micor mediation. I hope I pronounced right from Scientific American in the episode description as well.
Brandon: It's a very good article. Y'all should read it.
Eric: Honestly, the fact that it came from Scientific American and was able to explain this to me where I'm like, yes, I am going to put this in my dungeons and dragons, like, thank you. Thank you. Science communication. I'm going to take Moya anyway. Like, thank you Moya.
Amanda: Brae would like to know Eric what the inspiration was mechanically and narratively to bring one up mushrooms into the campaign. Like in this particular form.
Eric: I think everything that I was saying was like I wanted this to be tied into the larger conversation about ecology, which I think was kind of the themes we were touching on when we first did. The world building would be like there has to be an effect from discovering diaphragm and the delta radiation. And I'm like, I need this to be tangible and I want it to be something that people then want. And it might get into the general populace. Like how does this affect the different generations of people in Laketon/Lake Town City? And then how does this affect people at large? I felt was really important, especially why I really liked putting the truffle in New York City to demonstrate that this has effects outside of Lake Town City.
Amanda: Speaking of which, Cocoa Nuggets -
[Brandon laughs]
Amanda: Would love to know when we think of powers and the effects of radiation, mushrooms, etc., where does Dr. Morrow fall in that. If she like Aggie parents and Val's mom who have that sort of initial bump.
Eric: Yeah, I actually didn't think about this until - Cocoa Nuggets, shout out to Cocoa Nuggets. I get all my best information from Cocoa Nuggets. I actually didn't think about this until I saw this question, but the answer is yeah, Dr. Morrow was enhanced. She was there for the for the explosion. Of course she was. And like the other thing I realized that I had posited this a little bit was like, there is no proof saying that Dr. Morrow did anything of Remarque before 1985. She was just a scientist who lived in the woods and working out of her house. So like, did this improve? She did one thing and her brain is bigger. And now she invented Sky Tram and she was able to do so much for Lake Town City and push all this stuff forward. She must have been she must have been just like all of your parents.
Julia: I mean, you've also implied that several times in the canon as well in terms of just her appearance, because you've said she looks exactly the same as she did in the nineties, which is very similar to how we've described our parents as well.
Amanda: Totally.
Julia: I didn't even realize I was doing that. I got really stuck on like a Doc Brown thing. Doc Brown looks exactly the same. That's like a Christopher Lloyd thing, which with that Christopher Lloyd is look the same for forty years. But you're right, it's totally backfilling that and I have been doing that to myself. So the answer to that is, yeah, she, she totally got she totally got hit. And I've been reading this and implying this, even though I didn't even know what.
Amanda: What a tasty reveal? Speaking of which, I'm getting a little famished. I'm going to run to the kitchen for some more snacks.
Brandon: Don't eat the mushrooms!!!
Julia: No stuffed mushrooms, please and thank you.
Eric: Give me a tasty reveal from the kitchen.
Amanda: Be right back.
[Transition note]
Eric: Hey, it's Eric, I don't know what's happening in your neck of the woods, but here in the Northeast, flowers are starting to crawl out of the ground on our walk to work, there are these like public patches, just kind of dirt and stuff. And we're starting to see, like, little violets coming out of the ground and like, they're not more than a few inches tall and it's barely a flower. But remember, spring is coming and you are blooming as well. Welcome to the Midroll. I got you this. I didn't pick it, but like, imagine it's an imaginary flower that I didn't pick because it wasn't ready to grow. But I got you something else that is like a flower that is also symbolic of spring. You get it.
We are so grateful to everyone who makes it a priority each month to support creators like us, not just us, because we're talking about us, because it's the Midroll, but we really appreciate you. We cannot make the show without your support. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to the new beautiful people who have joined our patron over the last week, Lily, Danika, Tamara, Nancy, Blake, Harrin, and Shelly. And thank you so much to Brae, who upped their pledge. If you want to be a part of our Patreon family, we're always looking for more people to come on in. You get our discord, you get NPC stories, the one I wrote and these new playlist ones that I'm doing and all the other stuff that's been there for four years of Patreon this exclusive audio, there's an exclusive audio story playing a different game. It is incredible. So if you are able, please join us for as little as five dollars a month at Patreon dot com slash join the party pod. And hey, we don't ask for this every so often, but we think that it's be a perfect time for you to recommend join the party to anyone. We're wrapping up this arc. People can get on board marathon all campaign one and then get on into the new episodes. Remember, we teach people how to play Dungeons and Dragons. So, like, you don't even need to tell someone who's a big d&d nerd to like the show. Just text someone the link of join the party podcast, start to someone you love today or maybe someone you like or some you want to get to know better or someone you want to date. Whatever! Podcast. Great ice breaker. This is the best thing you can do to keep the show going and growing. Text your friends, put it in the group chat, put an end discord, put it on Reddit because we don't really understand Reddit, so you put it on there. Just share it out. Remember that link. Join the party pod dot com slash start. Tell us about it and I'll like tweet to you and make you feel really good about it. I promise. I'm definitely going to. You can pause the podcast right now and do it. I'll wait, it's fine. Oh, you came back. Okay, we'll keep going.
We are sponsored this week by baseball. We love baseball. We were one of the sponsors of the new baseball series for those of you who don't understand what it is. Listen, it is somewhere in between fantasy baseball, Dungeons and Dragons and like magic eldritch incantations that you do accidentally, and then Kondor a demon into your world and then you spend like two hours movie runtime trying to put it back. I have something from the commissioner here that I would like to read. Baseball is baseball, but it is at your mercy. It is baseball perfected. The players are inhuman day and night, rain and shine. They never grow sick. They never tire. Each week you, the fans, vote to remake the league in your own image. Everything from rules to rosters are in your hands. This is a free game that I think you're really going to enjoy. The fate of the league is on you shout out to the commissioner who's doing a great job, rejoice and play ball at blaseball dot com that it's baseball but an L after the first B blaseball dotcom.
And this podcast is sponsored as it usually is, by Better Help a secure online counseling service. You imagine I'm turning in a chair. Hi, I'm Eric Silver DM of Join the Party and creator of The Bone, which we've had a lot of fun here today, talking about how the bone, which can tell your fate and how the bone, which doesn't want you to go to therapy and instead wants you to do whatever weird bones that they found, like, I don't know, fried chicken bones. So it's the bones are fried, you know, like chicken fried steak, fried like chicken. But it's not actually that. So she's frying chicken bones. It's fried like fried chicken, not bones from fried chicken. The point is, we've had a lot of fun here today with the bone, witch but I would like to tell you about how important it is to go to therapy if you need to go to therapy. And Better Health is connecting you with licensed counselors through their app, making it as easy as possible for you to access therapy. It can be either through live phone or video sessions. You can text them in between sessions if you're thinking about something and you're having trouble, Better Help is there for you because they want you to get the best therapeutic match possible and the best experience. It's also more affordable than traditional counseling. And like ordinarily, I would say that the bone which is willing to take your firstborn or your blood are your tears instead of financial compensation. But I'm not going to because we're talking about real money here. They can offer you financial aid if you actually need it. And it's really, really affordable. Do not feel like going into a place or spending money is keeping you from doing therapy once more. This podcast is sponsored by Better Help and Not by the Bone Witch and join the party listeners get ten percent off their first month at better help dot come slash join the party that is better h e l p Dot com slash join the party for 10 percent off your first month. Don't worry, next time I do this I'll probably get attacked by the Bone Witch again. But I had to just look right in the camera with my chair backwards and look at you. Just straight talk with your kid. Alright, back to the show.
[Transition note]
Amanda: Okay, I came back, don't worry, I'm sorry we ran out of the lake, dehydrated mushroom chips snacks but Julia, I'm going to make sure I get more for next time.
Julia: Cool. Thank you.
Amanda: We got some fun gaming character questions now I love and folks ask us questions like this. Thank you very much. Sachi Desh on Instagram asks, How much does Val mom know about their powers and secret identity? I was thinking about that the whole time, like really just riding a line and Julia. I'm so curious how you think about that relationship.
Julia: I mean, Val mom knows about their superpowers of rage and vibration are hard things to hide from a parent, I feel like and also if someone like Dom 5 kind of knows about it, Val is mom almost definitely knows about it. I don't know if Val has said out loud, oh yeah, I'm Vulcani to their mom, but I think Rose is smart enough that she can put two and two together.
Brandon: I think she's the smartest person in this campaign. She's certainly the most well-rounded and stable.
Eric: I'm now thinking of like seven year old Val beating up like five neighborhood boys.
Julia: Listen, we did that flashback.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, that's true. That's exactly what happened. You're totally right. No, I was functioning from the same way. Is that like, you know, knowing my child, Val is probably out there beating up bad guys. So if they're involved with Aunt Min, if something's happening here, although you didn't put on the mask and say I'm Vulcani, yeah, I think that there is some implication there as well.
Amanda: AbSaw13 on Insta says I truly must know if Hank can see Tuna. It's been bugging me since the Milo told Hank.
Brandon: Yeah, I think he can write because he touched. How did that work. He touched something. He touched me. He touched the cat?
Amanda: Well, it seemed to me that when you when you told him about Tuna, then then he's in the circle of people who can see and touch and talk to Tuna.
Brandon: Yes. Because he knows about it. But the reason that he can see them is because I touched Val and Val could see Tuna.
Julia: Yeah, it's a touch Milo see cat senario.
Brandon: Yeah. So I think you know Milo it's Hank all the time, but now Tuna is no longer hiding.
Eric: Yeah. Whatever works for the podcast guys. I couldn't keep track of it. That's why I had Dr. Morrow throw flower on Tuna somebody episodes ago. Like it just it's hard to follow. Yeah. I think that Hank and see his long lost cat now.
Brandon: Milo has definitely been telling Tuna to not show themselves to Hank because there's a lot of questions that Milo does not want to have to answer at that time.
Eric: Yeah, it's weird that your ghost cat is around. I don't know, I can't tell you about it.
Amanda: And I think narratively to like Tuna has agency and can, you know, to a certain extent decide when they are and are invisible. So I think it makes sense that even if, you know, like all your friends that you've hugged before, it could theoretically see Tuna. But if you want it to be, you know, stealth or Tuna, want to be stealth or whatever, like you can still do that.
Brandon: Still cat, that's true.
Eric: That's still very much a cat. I think that this is very interesting that these these two questions are very close together is like if you're not looking for ghosts or you're not looking for, oh, this person has superpowers, I don't think you would see it. I keep thinking about the Clark Kent thing and how simple that disguises for Superman that like you put glasses and gelled hair on a person and like you're not waiting for them to pick up a building or use laser eyes or fly. Then you're like, no, this is just some built dude I know.
Amanda: Well, Eric, you know that social engineering is the greatest hack of all.
Eric: Exactly. Thank you. So I think if you're not looking for it, you wouldn't necessarily see it. And I think that was the other implication was like Salimony and Aunt Min knew something was going on with Val and that's why they were able to look out for it, because they were tailing they were tailing Val for the entire blizzard.
Brandon: I do think it's a function of level of fame, though. Like, I do not believe that Clark Kent would be able to hide as Superman because of Superman's level of fame, like he's a global force. So someone would go on the Internet, try to figure out who he is, right?
Eric: I don't know, man. I mean, Dolly Parton lost to a Dolly Parton contest. So the Robert Downey Jr., like even Superman, Christopher Reeve used to walk in and no one recognized who he was unless he was wearing the Superman costume when he was like filming Superman.
Brandon: Yeah, but they don't. But he doesn't actually exist in real life, like.
Julia: No, but like they didn't recognize the actor when he wasn't in the Superman costume. I know. But like, the impetus of having a superpower being on your planet would be so massive. Right? Like if you had Superman alive, it would be on everyone's conscious all the time. It would be a thing that a lot of Internet sleuths would try to track down.
Julia: Sure. But then they would have like no actual proof. That's true for sure.
Amanda: And we are like a regional baseball team of superheroes. So I think for us and our identities, it's a little bit lower stakes.
Brandon: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's what is benefiting us right now for sure.
Amanda: And Ellen Page asked several months ago, our favorite character moments from the campaign so far. But it had just been the beginning of this arc, so I wanted to save it until the arc was over. So what are your favorite character moments from the campaign so far?
Brandon: I personally love everything with Lucas and Milo. I think it's a nice relationship. Favorite joke that I ever told in this fucking podcast is Lucas called Milo, and it's like "and time!" So funny.
Amanda: I liked Aggie initial interactions with Quinn like that first phone call. And then when Quinn showed up because it was so surprising and I felt like, you know, Aggie is close to me as a as a person personality in a lot of ways. But I just felt like I was just fully channeling Aggie like I was fully in the moment. I was fully responding. It was it was great. It was extremely funny. And I have since, like, coached my siblings through minor house tasks on FaceTime. And now I think of it as like an Aggie moment instead of like my my own life.
Julia: I think mine is like every Val and Aunt Min interaction so far, but also specifically the Instagram apology for the YouTubers.
Eric: Again, and that 20 was fucking caught me by surprise.
Julia: Perfect roll.
Amanda: And I just want to throw in to the sort of the first moment that, like Dez, January, Dr. Morrow and the three of us were like in the lab talking and hashing stuff out. It just felt like such a kind of fun environment and fully realized in a way that, like, I just really appreciate that.
Brandon: Oh, my favorite moment is meeting January. That's bar none.
Eric: Yeah. I guess my thing is this is something I've been thinking about now that we're coming to the end of this arc, I think are all of your choices that surprise me. You're all doing things that are really interesting, that are pushing me to to plan less, which I think is really interesting so that we can have a really flexible and fungible story, the hooks that I give you and whether or not and if you take them and do something else. One of my favorite moments was Salimony telling Val to get in the car and going to El Pulpo because I'm like, you could have just blown them off you 100 percent could have blown them off. But like, you were more interested to see what he was going to do. And I'm glad that I was able to tempt you with that hook there. And I feel similarly about the initial ghost in the machine and for Dr. Morrow. And now that we're finally getting a wrap on that, which ended with an emotional conversation, even though you started with "why you do, my dad and not tell?" And then, of course, like Building Stake's into all of your characters and giving you all people to love has been really important for me for doing a superhero campaign and doing things where you are powered and you have to defend people who may or may not be. I think finding more and more of Aggie siblings has been really, really, really fun for me and deciding when I want to bring them in or not. Like the difference between Quinn and Danny are so different, but like you are all related to each other, like you all went and hung out and went to Christmas and like had this childhood together. And I find that really satisfying in terms of like your character growth and your responsibility for other people and things and how that's related to Laketon and all that other stuff.
Amanda: Why, thanks.
Eric: I've also been thinking a lot about this stuff because of a thing we're going to release eventually. So I've been thinking a lot about the world and the general existence of Laketon and Lake Town City lately. So it's wild to think that, like, just some stuff that I wrote down has grown to something that is so lush and real. And I think I'm really enjoying that, listening to the end of this arc and then recording the next arc that's coming up.
Amanda: Absolutely. And so I think before Spoiler Corner, we had a couple of really interesting questions about like playing D&D and DMing. So I would like to start with JJ Pearn on Insta saying the emperor came back as the main dish with the side of beasts. What's your inspiration for Funky Villains?
Brandon: Well done!
Eric: I was getting self-conscious that you guys didn't have a rogues gallery. This wasn't the Spider-Man video game started popping off. And then like I started reading a bunch of Batman comics, like the long Halloween. I was like, man, Batman is so many villains and they're all so wild. And like, Spider-Man also has a ton of villains and they're also wild. And then, like, I've been watching all those Teen Titans and seeing just like goofier and goofier, your people getting introduced. And I really wanted to give you all people to latch onto who are not necessarily the big bad, but like people you have relationships with. And I think the emperor being like your long time villain, has been really, really fun for me. This guy who objectively sucks and it's not even that good at the thing that he does other than having like a terracotta army, I think like just doing funny things and doing silly things that I think would amuse you. Like that was just Painkiller. Larson was like, oh, this guy, he rides on a bear and he's really into MLMs and like defrauding people. And like that is is just been so much fun for me. And now, like, he lives in a stagecoach, he shows up in places allowed Lake Town City you don't beat them up. You have to fight him with rules. And like that has just been such a fun interaction and really building out the world for all of you. And the entanglements have been like my main way of giving you more people to play with.
Brandon: Do you just like have like a couple of columns of, like power sidekick and like extra thing and you like pick between them or like is Painkiller LArson just come to your brain whole cloth.
Eric: Oh. In terms of the characters?
Brandon: Yeah. The villains specifically. Yeah. No I they come full cloth. I think it's like I think of the fun thing and then I, and then I try to backfill it like the one that I never that I referenced before was Permsin, the twelve year old who can make tons and tons of versions of themselves. And I'm like it would be really funny if you had to fight a twelve year old. And I'm like, what would the funniest power for a 12 year old be? It's like, oh, if there were tons of 12 year olds. And then it's just like and then just kind of building out from there.
Brandon: Oh to be in your brain for like an hour.
Eric: No, it's all my that's why you need to keep me around. You can't come in.
Amanda: Ruth on Insta is talking about doing drama for their GCSEs and just kind of asks about like improvising with like in character and with characters because it is really hard and they say we seem to have a good flow and make jokes in the world which is a kind thing to say.
Eric: I think just giving yourself what I like literally what Brandon just said, like give yourself one specific quality that you're going is like the defining thing of your character and then going from there, like remembering that they're are real person and you need to like inhabit their spirit and their body as you're going to do that. Something I realized because like, I'm not an improv person and like there are so many improv people who live in Brooklyn. And like people who are come from the improv community who have come into Dungeons and Dragons is like, remember, this is a game. And like the game, it's a game of escalating stakes. So, like, you just want to keep pushing it and remember that, like, you want to give other people something to play with. So, like, once you understand your character and it is clear to other people what the thing is you're doing so that they can raise the stakes and do stuff to you is the way that you do it. I mean, that's how you do it for comedy. But that's also my idea for everything is just like make jokes. It definitely helps.
Julia: Yeah, I think that the character sheets, the like motivation section and everything like that, I don't think they're particularly useful. But when I think about Val, I think where does their loyalties lie? What motivates them? And like how would they respond with those in mind? So I think that's that's a big one for me, just kind of being like, well, at the end of the day, if I was to boil this down between, like a black or white decision, what would that decision be?
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. And both in and out of D and I think motivation is really important. Like what is the the background between the characters that you're talking to? Like for us, we all got to know each other on microphone, which is helpful because you know, that kind of banter like just doesn't come out of nowhere. Like you develop it over time. And we all know each other's people, you know, outside of having these new characters. So I think it's totally okay if it's if it's hard at first, but outside of, like, important decisions too, like I think is one thing to think, what would my character do when it's like important life defining moment, but also in a given minute, like, don't worry too much about what is consistent, like go go with the feeling, you know, like Aggie doesn't tell us what it is. That's not the thing that I decided in advance. It just it felt right to the character. And I don't just reacting to other people and not worrying about like originating the joke to me is the most helpful thing in a setting like this.
Brandon: Totally. Yeah. One of the most important thing is establishing the rules of how you're going to play. So before all this, one of our rules was we only make jokes in the world and then for season two, we sort of loosen that a little bit. But we did so intentionally. So make sure like, you know, there are rules for improv, but also like make sure there are you're playing by the same rules with people you're playing with pick. One of two tactics that I like to do is like one of the longest improv rules is like don't think, which is what Amanda was just saying, like just say like whatever comes to your brain and don't think about it. Or the other one I like to do sometimes just like don't do the first thing that comes to mind. The second thing so like instead of like just cross out a go to be. But that assumes you have a little bit of time to think what your options are.
Eric: Have you considered and I don't know if you can do this, but what if you turned your voice into a robot voice? Would that help?
Brandon: Hmm. I'm going to yes, and that's a great idea. I'm going to do it forever. Yeah.
Eric: High voices. People also really like high voices do high voices. Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. My my advice is forget your character voice and then make it just a little bit, a little bit lower than your own because last time I was a little higher. Okay, Jacob in an email says I played with my friends every Friday, but I don't like it as much virtually as we did in person. And I was wondering if you had any tips to make it more fun online. We always also take turns being the DM and I can't usually think of stories and tend to pass on my turn. Any suggestions?
Brandon: I mean, for the story thing like just take one shots or something wrong with that. Like find someone shots online. There's some really great ones, like tweak them if you want to, but they're always fun.
Eric: The thing that I do when I run one shots is like I try not to run too far in one direction because like if it is just coming up with a story, like, then just build a house. Like there's the tactic of making the five room dungeon, which is like dungeons are great because they don't have any windows and you have to go in the door and then eventually leave. So it's like if you think about you're building a house in terms of your story and like people can go in different directions, but like you want to lead them in. So I think they're making it a little simpler on yourself to just run a one shot. Also, like you could also play a different game, like D&D is made for campaigns and for long running stories like playing a different game, whether it's a one pager or like something, there's a little more fleshed out or something like a little bit more specific to your genre, like if you like MEXT or sci fi or slice of life games or Friday Night Lights, there are games that will facilitate that in terms of doing something remotely. Ugh, I don't know. I mean, we kind of got used to it. I think maybe like just doing voice chat or what and what we do, like we don't have any visual aids because it's a podcast. So we want to make sure that we are only focused on what we say. Like I find the visual aids are distracting and like take me out of the of the moment because I'm too busy playing a game. So like maybe don't worry about roll 20 and just like throw up a Google meet and then just do it.
Amanda: Well, Julia you've been playing remote D&D for a long time. What helps you kind of get in the in the moment and build that mood?
Julia: Yeah, I've I've been playing remote D&D for about two years because most of the people in my campaign are in L.A. We didn't use Roll20 until like recently, I suppose, but we always had like a Discord channel in which we could post, like, art and stuff like that to kind of set the mood. I'm trying to think of, like, good advice here, but like, basically it's like I haven't had the alternative to play in person, you know. So it's what I'm used to. I will say that as long as you stay like engaged, I find that looking at the other people's faces and being able to like, you know, react to other people's reactions is extremely helpful. I don't personally think I would be able to just do like just text or just voice for a campaign, because I need, like, that kind of reaction and timing and stuff like that personally. So if you're just doing one of those, I recommend a visual element in the sense that, like, make sure you're seeing your other players and stuff.
Brandon: Yeah, I agree with that.
Eric: Yeah. The only visual thing should be like seeing other people. Like, I just think Roll 20 is very complicated.
Amanda: It's like the visual can be each other instead of a map or a dungeon.
Eric: The visuals are just instead of you like don't use a map, just look at other people. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah. For me it's been really helpful. It's hard to like, say out loud, like, hey, this thing is extra difficult because we're remote. So like please, you know, make sure you've gone to the bathroom beforehand. Please make sure you've eaten or.
Eric: Oh yeah.
Brandon: Whatever it is like do all that like actively ask your players to, to buy in and focus on the game because it's more hard when you're, I don't know, waiting someone to go heat up their slice of pizza or whatever, you know, like it's just kind of annoying.
Eric: Wow. Brandon I just because I'm gonna go heat up a slice of pizza right now, you really just need to bring that up.
Amanda: Oh, I thought you were going to be like you should never reheat pizza, always eat it cold.
Eric: Oh yeah. Well that too. Yeah. That's also true.
Brandon: I had my friend Nichole did one shot for for me and Lauren the other day and I was the asshole who was hitting up his chicken sandwich and it really broke the flow.
Amanda: Yeah. Plan breaks. I don't know, I kind of like getting into a routine. So like if you have shoes or T-shirt or a special pencil and notebook, you know that you like a candle that you light only when you're playing D&D. You know, we get to come to this specific studio room with our dice and our notebooks and like, you know, have the screen set up in a certain way. And like, it's it's time to play D&D. So maybe your environment or everybody, you know, everyone can, like, get the same colorful pen that you write in, like some kind of unity between all of you all remotely, or you have a little recipe club or everybody, you know, makes it makes mix hummus, you know, for that life in their respective homes could be kind of fun.
Brandon: That's cute. I love that.
Eric: That is good. I was say shorter sessions, video chat sucks like the universe has conspired to make us look at each other on screens. We shout out to capitalism. So, like, don't play for more than like an hour and a half, two hours. And like what Brandon said, if you're- you guys, like, hang out for half an hour, play straight through for like ninety - a hundred minutes and then you're done, like, maybe that will alleviate the stress of like looking at looking at a screen for three hours in a row.
Brandon: Definitely. I don't think I could do any more than two hours. And I'm I'm pretty tapped at an hour and a half on a video chat.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: And of course finally spoiler corner. So we're just we're going to like, sprinkle like like rice at a wedding or pedals on an aisle just a little bit little "hey, Eric, what the fuck's" just like all over the place. Just just sprinkled lightly like like chefs who like dash their salt with an open hand into the pasta water.
Eric: Yeah. You're just your salt bae-ing me with what the fucks?
Amanda: Yes, I am. So that's there. It is a blessed compliment.
Eric: Thank you for all of you for your what the fuck's.
Amanda: Lovefern, is the family going to be mad at Vulcani for their proclamation of protection?
Julia: Who can say you can say?
Eric: Hey, notoriously mobs love it when other people move in on their turf. So I think it should be fine.
Julia: No one moved in. Vulcani was already there.
[Eric and Brandon laugh]
Eric: They also love it when plucky individuals who were under their thumb then decide that they don't want to be under their thumb. Fucking love that-
Julia: Never was under anyone's thumb.
Amanda: Owen McCleod says, is Ma coming back or did she run off to Ontario to open another ice cream shop?
Everyone: Who can say, who can say!
Brandon: Who can say Eric.
Julia: Ontario. Well known for their ice cream.
Amanda: All mighty on Insta, says doesDr. Morrow know the man that Val met in the kind of time stop moment at the train station?
Julia: Ooo. Who can say,
Eric: Oh, who is that guy?
Amanda: Who can say!
Eric: Who is that guy who called everyone Youngblood? Who was that dude?
Amanda: LauraAmyDW on Insta says, did Milo's Dad and Dr. Morrow and things amicably. Are they okay? Are they still on again? Off again.
Julia: Who can say?
Brandon: Oh man who could say?
Eric: Get ready for Dr. Morrow to take Milo inside and say Milo. I know this is weird, but I would like to start dating your father.
Amanda: Oh no, I hate it..
Brandon: And then Milo jumps out of a window to escape.
Amanda: Sincerely Z on insta, Would Dr. Morrow approve of calling hypotheses science head canons's. I don't know, but I'm intrigued!
Eric: Truly who could say? Truly. I cannot even say.
Amanda: CDAdorable says what the fuck is going on with Aunt Min? Good question. Who can say?
Eric: Just like generally or like. Well what's up?
Amanda: Really existentially in the moment. Whatever you want.
Eric: She's probably look for looking for like a tumeric supplier.
Amanda: Michelle's Spurgon was Gutenberg's steering the YouTubers towards weird stuff the whole time?
Brandon: Who can say?
Amanda: Good question.
Eric: Well, the players decided not to engage with that story, so you're gonna have to ask them about that one.
Amanda: Dice obsession, can Danny's kids see the future as well, or are they more like normal plus, would two powered people have even more powerful kids?
Brandon: My impression is that they were just normal plus.
Julia: I don't know yet.
Amanda: I don't know yet.
Eric: Get ready for young L3 where everyone's kids. That takes over the roles in twenty years.
Julia: My favorite spin off.
Amanda: And CRS on Insta says something that is knowable actually, as someone who only started listening from campaign two who is Chad and why are they dice?
[Everyone laughs]
Amanda: Say, who can say, but we're not going to. Chad is everyone's favorite human and I don't know why people keep asking that. As an NPC from campaign one, he is a six foot tall, gelatinous cube. He's someone's favorite human being. Yeah, like I don't-
Eric: So yeah. You'll meet him. You'll meet him. Yeah. Chad is a human who is a human fighter and just loves love.
Amanda: Oh, Chad, what a sweetheart, and he's dice because he turned in today, what time he turned to the dice.
Amanda: We're like, hey, the shape of this merch item is the same as our favorite friend, Chad.
Eric: Who's a human. Who looks like a human.
Brandon: Human shaped dice.
Amanda: Incredible.
Eric: I don't like human shaped dice. I'm now thinking of actual human shaped dice. And I'm like, where would the where would the twenty go?
Julia: Body horror, I'm not a big fan of.
Amanda: Not not a fan unless everyone was a different body part, like a foot and a hand.
[Brandon laughing]
Amanda: No? Okay, well, I better show myself out. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us for this Afterparty.
Eric: So what's the one and what's the 20?
Brandon: Bye, guys.
Julia: Bye.
Eric: I need to know!
Amanda: May your rolls trend ever upward.
Eric: The 20s, the butt.
Julia: And I'm out.
[Theme music]
Amanda: I wonder if you can hear that hallway noise.
Eric: I would love to just go out and be like, hey, guys, we're recording, can you stop?[Laughs] I think exactly like that.
Brandon: You should get a guard dog, it just barks at people when they talk in the hallway.
Julia: That'll - that'll make recording way better.
Eric: No, no, Julia, you don't understand. This dog is well-trained and only barks when - only barks when we say not uh- it would be wild to bring an untrained loud dog into an office environment.
Julia: It would be, it really would be.
Eric: It'd be so weird. I would never do that. And I cannot believe that humanity would bend its arc towards all of society, bends its arc towards all through animal husbandry, economics, capitalism, the idea of offices. All of that arc is bent towards bringing an unruly dog into an office space. I cannot believe that is where society ends up.
Brandon: Eric double down and then triple down and quadruple down. It's like I'm making a Subway sandwich. You got to double down on the meat, baby.
[Brandon laughing]
Eric: Alright, so now we have enough for the bloops and we can go forward.
[Eric laughing]
Amanda: Can I start the-
Eric: Yes.