Afterparty: 31-33. Legends of the Divine Labyrinth V & IV and Growing the Skill Tree IV

What else lurked in the Labyrinth? How does Cammie have so many spells? And was Gloria always destined to join the Hold? All that and more on the Afterparty!

Dive into our ship combat mechanics, classes from Mage Hand Press, the countries of Verda Stello, and other changes we’ve made for C3 HERE!

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Cast & Crew

- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver

- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle

- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer: Julia Schifini

- Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin

- Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here.

- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman

- Multitude: https://multitude.productions

About Us

Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.

Transcript

Amanda:  Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the Afterparty, folks. We made it out of the Divine Labyrinth, an episode later than we thought we would. And I don't know about you, but this was an action-packed three episodes of Join the Party. My God. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon (as Umbi): Amanda—

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon (as Umbi): —I need— I need water. I've been in the labyrinth for so long.

Eric:  Is 2023 the Divine Labyrinth? Is that what you mean? 

Julia:   Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah. That's right. 

Eric:  And the Harvester, much like the specter of death, was following us the entire time? 

Amanda:  Yep, that's exactly right.

Eric:  Now, Julia, did you like that? Was that good for you?

Julia:   Was the specter of death following you guys all through 2023, too?

Eric:  Yeah. 

Julia:   Weird.

Eric:  Oh, I thought you— I thought you could see mine.

Amanda:  What?

Julia:   Oh, no. I don't have Shinigami eyes like in Death Note, sorry.

Eric:  Oh, I do.

Brandon: My specter was like the specter of mediocrity, which is just like always right there, you know? 

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  What does that look like to you?

Julia:  That's because you're a white man, Brandon. 

Brandon:  Exactly. 

Eric:  What— what—

Brandon:  What does it look like?

Eric:  Yeah, what does it— what does your specter of mediocrity look like?

Brandon:  I mean, it just looks like me. It just looks like a ghost of me, honestly.

Julia:  It's a beige shadow that's Brandon-shaped.

Amanda:  It's mega Brandon, but beige. 

Brandon:  Yeah, exactly. 

Julia:  Makes sense.

Eric:  Hey, take this monster, it's a— have a spirit that hangs around, that looks like your PCs, but a—

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  —worse version, boring version of them and just give them tents.

Amanda:  That's really good.

Julia:   It's rude of you to steal stuff from the Deck of Many Things revised episodes we did for Party Planning. 

Amanda:  Rude. Rude.

Eric:  Julia, I'm not allowed to listen to those episodes anymore because then I'll get accused of stealing.

Julia:   I'm okay with that. You're allowed to steal stuff from me so long as you credit me—

Eric: That's right, I—

Julia:  —like Audrey the Rotten Queen.

Eric:  I just feel like I should do it in— when I'm directly in front of you. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  I feel weirder when like—

Amanda:  You need to look her in the eyes, yeah.

Eric:  Yeah, I need to look at you in the eyes while I physically, like, reach into your pocket and put it in my pocket.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  You gotta listen to your lawyer, Eric. Don't steal— don't say it, don't tell her. 

Eric:  Okay. Brandon, as my lawyer, am I about to steal this from Julia?

Amanda:  Eric, what specter haunted you in 2023?

Eric:  Oh, the specter of death.

Amanda:  Okay.

Julia:  Yeah of course, we talked about it. 

Eric:  Yeah, the re— which is the Harvester.

Brandon: The regular one.

Eric:  Everyone's like, "Oh, why did the Harvester have a seed as a head and not a pumpkin? Well, the— the specter of death that followed me had a pumpkin seed head, so— and was made out of roots. 

Julia:  Sure. Makes sense.

Eric:  So—

Amanda:  Nice. 

Eric:  It was— it was kind of— it was directly the same.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Love to hear it. Folks, folks, a lot to get to today, and I am stoked to start here with a multi-tiered question, like a layer cake from Melanie. Melanie says, "I have a Notes page saved for my Join the Party, Afterparty questions." Very smart, Melanie. "And this time it's mostly filled with my reactions like, "Havana, no! Havana, what the fuck? Eric, what the fuck?"

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  "Which leads me to my first question, was the bird Havana wanted to stay with, (Havana what the fuck), the bird Panorama was warning everyone about?"

Julia:   Had to be, right? Had to be. 

Brandon:  I assume. I mean, I assume there's mul— multiple birds that were like that— that— that sort of bird, but—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  —maybe not that specific bird, like that one, but— 

Julia:  Listen, it's a mystical labyrinth. Eric had to put in more than one monster, you know?

Eric:  Yeah. That's fair. 

Amanda:  Yeah, it was a real road-not-taken situation for us. That was such a fun scene. I almost forgot about it until I read Melanie's question. I'm like, "Oh, that's right. That happened too."

Eric:  Yeah. Well, you all li— well, you lit a dead forest on fire. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. Yeah.

Julia:   Well, hold on, let's not encompass me into that situation, because I did not. 

Eric:  Oh, no. I—  when I said you, I said Brandon, in my head.

Julia:  Oh I’m so sorry. no, it was— it was a dual effort of Brandon and Amanda.

Amanda:  That's good, yeah no.

Eric:  Oh, that's fair. That's a good— that's a very good plan.

Brandon:  That was a-- that was Bramanda's special. 

Amanda:  es, it was. 

Eric:  Yeah. 

Julia:   Uh-hmm. Peanut butter and jelly. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Well, the thing is I don't want to— I'm trying to decide what to sa— as I usually do on the Afterparty, I'm like, "Is the author dead?" And the author is me.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Eric:  Should I say things that I was thinking while this was happening?

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  Yes. First of all, I think— yeah, this was directly inspired by stuff that I said that Panorama— the— stuff that Panorama had said, was like, "Oh yeah, it's a weird amalgam of lots of stuff, and it's a bird, so watch out."

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  So I like that it did exist. In my head, it was like a Dark Souls boss.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  And I named it as such, calling it Grafted Flight, which I thought was really funny. I— you all assumed you were immediately going into initiative, and I'm like, "Nah, he's just kind of hanging out. He's just kind of doing the thing."

Julia:  I know.

Amanda:  Yeah. And he slaps us with initiative at the end of the episode where we least expected it.

Eric:  Right. Yeah.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Ka-cha.

Eric:  So I think that the thing I wanted to try to get across was, like, Grafted Flight was not actively eating Havana.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  And I think that that was kind of important. Havana was, like— felt safe? With the bird. And there was something there. There's a question later about like, is the Harvester an extension of the Planter itself, or its own thing? And the answer is both. So I think that was kind of part of it, like everything in the Harvester is the plant— everything in the labyrinth is the Planter, and the Planter is everything in this labyrinth. And—

Brandon: Oh, no. Did we set the Planter on fire. Oops.

Julia:   I'm okay with that.

Brandon:  Oopsie.

Amanda:  Yeah. I sort of assumed the Planter's consciousness like took over the Harvester in that moment.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Or, like, kind of, you know, poke out and act through the different—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —you know, physical things that we were being faced with. And the bird was another interesting example of a divinely touched, you know, creature within the labyrinth that was available for sort of, I don't know, takeover, like a puppet show.

Eric:  Right. Everything is a puppet show, I forgot.

Julia:   Everything's a puppet show.

Amanda:  It's what I always say.

Eric:   That's one of the main themes of Join the Party that people haven't talked about, is that everything's a puppet show.

Julia:  At least this campaign. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  We've been saying that this isn't anime, but this is definitely just a puppet show, a 100%.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  Yeah, it's like Mario 3 that everything's on stage.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:   I think all tabletop RPGs are actually puppet shows, now that I think about it. 

Eric:  That's pretty good, Julia. That's pretty good. I do like that.

Amanda:  Interesting. We— we are flush puppets when you think about it for, like—

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda: —ephemeral consciousness, you know, that sort of exists, like, in but not of us. You know what I mean? 

Brandon:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah .

Eric:  And that's the specter entity that's been following Amanda around this year.

Amanda:  Yeah.  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Or last year, sorry. Last year. 

Amanda:  Wow. 

Eric:   Oh, wow. Damn. Damn, dude.

Brandon:  Damn, dude, damn.

Eric:  So it's like I'm going to say yes, kinda. 

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  Because it's like there are a lot of things that you did— there are like a lot of things, but the way that the story— the way the story wound itself is like this is the stuff you all saw. So I guess the answer for the characters in their lived experience is yes.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  But, Eric, I want to know what stuff we didn't see.

Brandon:  Yeah, I was gonna ask you what other—

Julia:  Tell me.

Brandon:  —what kind of monsters were in there, like a minotaur or something?

Eric:  Oh, you know, whatever.

Julia:  Tell me. 

Brandon:  Alright.

Eric:  Don't worry— hey, don't worry about it.

Julia:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Well, if you didn't— if you didn't know, like, you can just make some up right— right quick, off the top of your head, you know?

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Yeah, there were— there were flower versions of all of you that were rooted to the ground that you could have run into.

Julia:  Cool.

Amanda:  That would be very scary.

Eric:  Yeah, but it was of— it was— it was of Julia, Brandon, and Amanda, that was— that was—

Julia:  Less scary now.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Guys, you could, like, sneeze on mine, it would fall over. Don't worry.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Amanda's is just like a dandelion, where it's like you cough and then everything scatters.

Amanda:  Uh-huh. That's exactly right. 

Eric:  Yeah. 

Brandon:  God. Can you imagine me and Amanda being allergic to ourselves?

Amanda:  We would be, Brandon. 

Eric:  Well, that's why Amanda got biohack, so she's no longer allergic to her flower version of herself. 

Julia:  That's true.

Amanda:  Actually, Eric, Melanie wanted to know, "Was there actually salt in Panorama's bags, or was it something specific to do with the birds?"

Eric:  Oh, who knows, man? Who knows?

Julia:  What was in the bag?

Eric:  Truly, who knows? 

Julia:  What was in the bag?

Brandon:  What was in the bag, Eric?

Eric:  Who— truly, who knows? The thing is— so this is what the— the— the tension of tabletop RPGs, especially the way that we played it. The fact that this— the navigation mechanic of the labyrinth meant, I didn't have to come up with stuff until you ran into it or you rolled on it, right?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  That's always the tension. So it's like I had ideas but I— then there are things that I came up with. Like, I knew that I wanted you to run into Grafted Flight by the end of this because Havana disappeared. But I didn't know it until you had these interactions, and I wanted to continue to build on it. 

Brandon:  Right, right.

Eric:  Right?

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:   So it's like— there are things I could have come up with if the roles went worse. Like, the fact that Julia ended up rolling so well, because of the— the bonuses— the bonuses that Cammie got, which is great. 

Julia:  And she's good at survival, man.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  It was good. So it's like the— the dice and the move told me what things we could come up with, right? 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Sure.

Eric:  So it's like— it's almost like you— I was reaching into an infinite— you— you reach into like the infinite dri— the infinite drive from Hitchhiker's Guide, right? It's like, everything's in there, which creates energy and only once the dice are rolled do we lock in on one thing? 

Amanda:  Hmm. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  You know?

Amanda:  That's really good.

Brandon:  It's like Marvel's What If…? Marvel presents, What If…?

Eric:  Where— it— it's like a multiverse where we're just iterating on the IP that's already been created.

Amanda:  Sure.

Eric:  That's what it is. So it's like we could have— I could have told you more. The thing that I did know in terms of monsters that were following you around, only the Harvester was following you around, and I was going to add another one, which was Gloria. There was not like another— there was not another chasing monster in there.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  But then you— if you had run into other stuff in different parts here in the Labyrinth, we would have done other things. 

Brandon:  Right.

Eric:  Right?

Amanda:  Okay, that's fair.

Julia:  Yeah. 

Eric:  And I feel like the payoff of Grafted Flight was talking to Panorama twice and then Havana getting yeeted, because Havana was being a real jerk in the— in the Grove.

Brandon: Eric, I hear what you're saying, but was there like a little guy with a big weapon in there? 

Eric:  Honestly—

Julia:   Was there a little guy with a big weapon?

Eric:  I— yeah. Yes, there was. There was totally— you could have come up with that.

Brandon:  Cool, cool, cool.

Eric:  Man, that would have been— yeah, honestly, like if you would've rolled another thing where you ran into a denizen of the labyrinth, there could have been like a little berry with a massive sword—

Julia:  Cool.

Eric:  —who just like swings at you as soon as you come close enough. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:   I love that. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Love it. Returning to Melanie's layer cake, second question, "Was the reason Gloria was attacked because you knew she wouldn't die?" Then Melanie follows up, this is the frosting between layers, you see?

Brandon:  Ooh.

Amanda:  "Well, actually, my quote, 'Eric, did you kill Gloria, so you wouldn't have to voice another NPC' suspicion turned into 'Did you slice her in half, because you knew she could regenerate?'" Eric, what were you thinking about Gloria re— being a worm?

Eric:  Well, I wanna throw this—

Julia:  Were you just— were you just— like you backtrack because you saw how upset I was after it happened and then I sliced—

Eric:  Yes, I would like to ask three of you first of what did you think what happened, and you were sitting there for a week waiting. Because there was a week recording time in between going into initiative—

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  —and then doing the—the boss battle episode.

Julia:   Right. You— you very clearly wanted to have that be the button of the episode, and I immediately was like, "I have a reaction spell that I want to use." It was like, "We can't end here."

Amanda:  Eric was like, "Write it down, write it down."

Julia:  "Write it down, I want to use it."

Amanda:  I— I highly suspected that Gloria would have some regenerative properties, just 'cause I knew about worms, man. 

Brandon:  Yeah. Worms— worms regenerate. 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Brandon:  I don't know. I thought you could have just given us a— a friend and then killed off in the same, you know, arc. That would have made sense.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  It almost happened to Smelly Haze. 

Brandon:  Exactly. 

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  And now I'm scarred for life.

Eric: Oh, shout-out to Smelly Haze.

Julia:   Smelly Haze.

Amanda:  But I do think it was important to give us some amount of stakes and— and, like, I— I see what you did it narratively, and it was exciting and important for us too where— you know, this is not— I don't know. I— I— we picked up two friends in the previous episode, and both of them were imperiled, and one of them was explicitly sliced in half, a thing that happened almost exactly to Havana. And he only was able to kill himself because he was, at that time at least, still on the path.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Yeah. I'm looking at my notes from Episode 31, and I wrote down, "Gloria, what is her deal now that she got out of the Grove?"

Julia:   Cool.

Eric:  And I wrote one, she got through the Cascade before it dried up. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Two, was she a blacksmith? Maybe she can make you new weapons.

Amanda:  Oh.

Julia:  Cool.

Eric:  And— and then there's the backstory stuff, and then she can regenerate. So finding a time, she gets cut in half, could be fun. 

Julia:  I love that.

Eric:  I did write it down. I wrote it down the whole time.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:   No amount of sway for the players or the listeners made Gloria come back to life. I knew it the whole time.

Amanda:  Yeah. EepyFella wondered, "If it was because of fan reactions?" But you know, Eepy, we played these months before—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  —y'all heard it, so—

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —it happened.

Brandon:  And the next episode is still like— yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric: Eepy, I'm just so sleepy, that like I can't— I can't— I'm so eepy myself that l just can't consider what the listeners are saying.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm. Too sleepy to read, that happens to me all the time, Eric.

Eric: Yeah. That's— that's my specter following me around. That's— the specter of death is me sleepy. It's just walk— it's just walking behind me, me wearing like athletic shorts and a tank top, trying to go to bed.

Amanda:  I could tell you, that's true. And then finally, Melanie's crowning question of this game is not so much a question, more of a thought. "The way Gloria was insisting that someone promised to bring her to the ship, maybe really worried about her and her intentions. But then she seemed like a great addition to the Hold with her forging skills, and now I don't know what to feel." Players, did you all have any suspicions, feelings, instincts about Gloria being like somebody get me the fuck out of here?"

Julia:   No, that insistence made me think that maybe she had been abandoned by fellow crew mates in the past. 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Brandon:  Yeah. I mean, she was kind of quasi-imprisoned, sort of.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  Hmm.

Julia:  She was cursed and made to be— put into a deep sleep. 

Amanda:  Yes.

Brandon:  So I think anyone— anyone would want to get out of there, so like whether or not they were bad, I would have been like, "Hell yeah, let's get you out here." You know?

Julia:   Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  It made be sympathetic for her, I was worried for her. You know, it made me sad. Definitely along Julia's lines that, you know, either someone had left her in the dust or she was worried about that happening this time.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  So, you know, I— I was not leaving without my pumpy and without Gloria. 

Eric:  Gloria good, I like her. 

Brandon:  Gloria good.

Julia:  I like her, too.

Eric:  I like her. In my head, she's just like a little bit wrinkly, you know? 

Brandon:  Yeah. 

Julia: Only a little bit. I think she's gorgeous.

Eric:  You know? Like, you know, you usually see worms when they're out in the wa— out in the rain, and they're, like, plumped. 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Eric:  But it's like, what if she's a worm at a different time? 

Amanda:  Yeah. Like an apple, just couple weeks past prime?

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Still good for applesauce. 

Eric:  That's true.

Amanda:  Still good for cider. 

Eric:  Yeah, that's fair.

Amanda:  That's what I always say.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Eric, Savedman97 wants to know, "It really felt like an anime flashback episode for the conversation with Gloria. It seemed like you were having a lot of fun with it. Did you enjoy asking the players questions? When they started rescuing Gloria, did you start to plan for that, or was it just the way the conversation went?"

Eric:  Yeah, no, that was really fun. I thought it was— I thought it was silly. Kind of where we're at in the story, it's just like, what— what's happening? Who are you? What— what are you doing? And hearing you explain it back to me was— is just very funny. I just like taking, like, silly— you know, you'd like spin the wheel on TV tropes and you see what happens. I just like taking TV Tropes and putting it in our actual play. It's just fun.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  It's good stuff.

Brandon: It's also just good for the listener to have like a little recap, you know?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  And for us to be like, "Yeah, this is sure is the world that we're playing and it's— it's always fun every time it happens."

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  That sure has happened.

Julia:  And also like, this is how we understand it to be, which is also kind of important to Eric, to like—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  —kind of check in with us to see where we're seeing the plot is.

Brandon:  Yeah. How we're wrong, where we've missed. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  How— how far afield we've gone. 

Eric:  Oh, come on. There's no field. You might be far at sea, but definitely not far afield. Hey, oh. Hey, oh.

Brandon:  Hey, oh, hey, hey, oh.

Eric:  Hey.

Amanda:  You know, no matter— no matter how lost you get on the sea, you always end up back where you started eventually.

Julia:  I don't know if that's true. I don't know.

Amanda: Uhhhh don’t worry about it.

Eric:  Yeah, I— like a— cosmically, I guess.

Amanda:  Alright. Here's a question from Moss, A Sentient Rock. "How'd you figure out that Havana would give up religion TM for the crew? Was it planned? Did you roll for it?"

Eric:  No. It was emotional as fuck and I liked it.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah. 

Eric:  Yeah. 'Cause Julia makes me cry on the inside, so—

Amanda and Julia: Yay!

Eric:  —after I do things to Julia, Julia does it back to me.

Julia:  Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda:  That's friendship. 

Julia:   Yep. It's making each other cry on the inside through emotional roleplay. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Yeah. There's like— the— the whole, like, religious theme here, and like the omnipresent, like creator god/ figure, I always find really interesting because in a— a lot of these stories, like, for example, when Abraham has staked Isaac to the top of a mountain and sacrificed him. Go—like there's always gods, like, do this, and then there's a lot of consternation. And then there's not really any resolution. It just kind of like, "Ah, whatever. It's fine." Yeah, you— you did good. The fact you were thinking about it, it's fine. And I think that's kind of what happened during this arc, was like— there was a lot of declarations and stuff that happened, and then eventually, it's like, "Oh, we all thought about it, it kinda— we— we just kind of mushed it at the end." Like that wasn't— the conclusion isn't the point. It's the fact that you had to reckon with the fact that this conflict was in front of you.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  It felt— it felt resonant to me. And the fact that you had to— you— you wrestled— you wrestled with it, was the good part.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:   Hell yeah.

Amanda:  Hell yeah, dude. Mixelle wants to know, "What mechanics, Eric, were you using for Julia in the Divine Labyrinth?" And I do see here a note from Eric, Best GM in Podcasting. Eric, what does that say?

Eric:  It says— it's mostly a note that says, "Bother Julia at most interesting times."

Julia:  Yep.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  That's kind of the plan for Join the Party as a business—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  —you know?

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah. Just bother me at interesting times. That makes sense.

Brandon: Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah, that checks out.

Eric:  Uh-hmm. Yeah, it's— it's— know—know your players, man. You give— give Amanda a puppy, bother Julia at interesting times, and lay enough clues so that Brandon on the third read  listen will start to pick it up.

Amanda:  Damn, we are a—

Julia:  Damn. All roasted.

Amanda: Balanced party.

Julia:  All called out.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Absolutely read to film.

Eric:  It's a— say your— say my tropes back to me, it's fine.

Amanda:  Yeah, no.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  It's— it's funny, because often times when I watch movies that have, like, a mystery or whatever it is, within the first five minutes, I'd say, "That guy did it. And this would end this way." And I'm almost always right. And I can never get anything here. 

Amanda:  You suspend your disbelief for the arts.

Julia:   That's 'cause you're only an observer, Brandon, when you watch a movie. You're—

Brandon:  That's true.

Amanda:  You're in it.

Julia:   —you're involved in it. You're in it when we're playing a tabletop RPG. 

Brandon:  That's true. That's true. Thank you, Julia.

Eric:  Yeah. If you were one of the Knives Out, you would be really confused. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  That's true. Very true. 

Eric:  Yeah. Or if you were one of the Knives Out Two.

Julia:  The Glass Onion.

Eric: Yeah. If you were in Glass Onion,  you'd be really confused.

Amanda:  That's true.

Brandon:  That'd be tight if I was in Glass Onion. I'm like—

Julia:  If you were the Dave Batista, you'd be very confused. 

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  If you were one of the Glass Onions, it would have been like, "Wow, a lot is happening here." And Daniel Craig's here. That's crazy. 

Brandon:  One of Julia or Amanda would have me a Glass Onion on their shelf and show it to people as they come to their house. "Look at the Glass Onion I have."

Julia:  I would. Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah. I have pomegranate object, which is enough for me. 

Brandon:  Okay.

Julia:  It's about time for me to have the Glass Onion.

Amanda:  Which is how Janelle Monae is in this film, yeah. So Julia has to have the Glass Onion.

Eric:  This got— this got away from me, I'm sorry. I just— it's— it got— it slipped out of me too much. Oh, God. It's a little like in the last day of the year when we're recording this, we're just like, "I'm just out here." Oh, no, wait, it's in two days?

Eric:  What day is it? Fuck. I don't even know what the day it is.

Julia:  The 29th. We have two more days of the year. 

Brandon: Last work day, yeah.

Eric:  I thought it was the 30th, I'm confused.

Amanda:  Last work today.

Julia:  It's the last work day of the year.

Eric:  Okay. I just forgot Saturday existed. I thought we went— like my plans today went right into Sunday, and I'm like, "Oh, hell yeah, dawg." Just riding that wave into— into New Year's Eve, let's do it.

Amanda:  No. First, we have to go to a house party with 40 to 50 of my relatives. 

Eric:  Fo—

Julia:  Have fun.

Eric:  I— it's— I'm gonna be around a lot of McLoughlins tomorrow. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  40 to 50, what, feral Amanda's relatives.

Julia:  Wild hogs.

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  40 to 50 wild hogs and me.

Julia:  Wait, hold on, real quick. So I went to Florida for Christmas to see my parents this year, and my mom, you know, gives me the updates of their, like, weird retirement community. And she's like—

Eric:  Hell yeah.

Julia:  "—Yeah, you know, Stumpy, the alligator is around." And they're— they're having a problem with a herd of wild hogs and I was like, "30 to 50 wild hogs?"  She's like, "What? I was like, "Never— hmm, never mind."

Amanda:  I can't possibly begin to explain this.

Julia:  Then— uh-hmm. And then Jake was like, "What?" And I was like, okay, I have to explain it to you, bud.”

Amanda:  We referenced Binders full of women the other day. I think Eric brought it up and then— 

Eric:  No, I— I— I did not. No way.

Amanda:  No?

Eric:  No.

Brandon:  I bring that up constantly. I— I know what you're talking about. I don't think it was me, but I— I talked about that all the time.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  It's— it— it remains among the best references of all time.

Eric:  That one's not in my six shooter, unfortunately.

Amanda:  Okay. That's right. Your six shooter is filled with five 9/11 jokes and— and one reference to One Piece.

Julia:  You gotta break it down to at least three in 2024, my guy. At least three. Please, I'm begging you.

Eric:  I definitely— I definitely said that something didn't melt steel beams the other day. I definitely— that's a 100% true. 

Amanda: It went over great. It went over great.

Eric:  It went really well. I—

Amanda:  It really did. Alright, folks. Let's— let's get that ship back on course, and talk about Episode 32.

Eric:  Wait, this is relevant to Join the Party. Remember when I put a 9/11 joke in the trailer for Campaign Two?

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Same here.

Amanda:  We— we've deliberated over the pause. Brandon was like, "Is this pause enough? Is it too much?"

Eric:  How much of a pause?

Amanda:  "Give me your reaction." Yeah. Alright, folks. Let's get this ship back on course. We are going to talk about Episode 32, The Boss Battle. Here is a question from Amanda Mazzio. Another Amanda M., thank you. "First of all, loved this arc. Secondly, it seems like Cammie had endless spells. I don't think there were any long rests in this arc, so were some of those cantrips. In short, how was Cammie able to do so much? Maybe this is more of a mechanic's question, but I'd love to know how spell slots work if hexes use spell slots, and how many Cammie has?"

Julia:  Hexes don't use spell slots. That's the—

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  That's one of the key things, which probably made it feel like I was using my spell slots a lot. Hexes don't use spell slots, and I don't need to— I can basically use hexes like cantrips in— in the witch class. I was keeping track of my spells. We were dwindling at the end, but I'd saved that fourth-level spell for the polymorph for the entire arc. 

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric: Oh, my God.

Amanda:  So good.

Julia:  And I was really excited to break it out.

Brandon:  Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, we— I think we recapped at some point during that last episode— or during that episode, where we were. And—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  —frequently if we are, like, down to the wire on some of our spell slots or abilities, whatever, we'll— we'll call it out, but—

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  — we do keep track. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  Yeah. There's a— especially because, like, y'all were down— Umbi didn't have any potions left.

Brandon:  I didn't have any— yeah, reagents dice.

Eric:  Yeah. And Isizzle321 also wanted to know, "Why our sweet Prince Troy has so few arrows?"

Brandon:  Why so few arrows, Troy?

Julia:  Yeah, why does he have so few arrows?

Brandon: Why so few arrows?

Amanda: There are— I don't— we have to reach out to Mage Hand Mike, but I— I don't see— like I don't level up my arrows like I do my, you know, risk die. And so I wonder if we can just, you know, come up with something where, at a certain level, I, you know, up my ammunition, but—

Eric:  I can look into that. There's probably something there.

Amanda: Yeah, like a gun. Like, there's only so many bullets that come with the gun, and you know, when you would get a crossbow, you get five bolts.

Eric:  I think the thing you got to remember is like the gunslinger class is like more like a cowboy. 

Amanda: Yeah.

Eric:  But it's like with their six shooter, and like, that's why they have only so many bullets, and that's why Troy has so many arrows. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  But there has to be a mechanic for you to get more, I'm sure it's in there. 

Amanda:  Well, my— my sweet son also brought me two arrows, so that was exciting.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  That's why you have a puppy.

Brandon:  I love that like you had those packed, ready to go?

Amanda:  Yeah. Made me happy.

Eric:  Just like some real ancient weird arrows. Don't worry about it, just shoot them, it's fine. It's fine.

Amanda: Troy doesn't know how to worry. 

Eric:  True.

Amanda:  He simply moves forward with confidence. I don’t know what you mean.

Eric:  "Oh, nice. Cool arrows, bruv." 

Amanda:  Yeah, that's right.

Eric:  I love that. 

Amanda:  So, Julia, can you recap for us how many spell slots of each level you have?

Julia:  So with seventh-level, I had four first-level spells, three second-level spells, three third-level spells, and one fourth-level spells. So I think I— I— I— again, I don't have the— I—I have a little card where I X out the spells as I use them.

Eric:  Smart.

Julia:  So I don't have the one that I had for the Divine Labyrinth arc, but I believe I had, like, at the end of the arc, one second-level spell left and then that fourth level spell that I used on polymorph.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Hell yeah. At one point, I think when you guys were in the Grove, you were like— oh, I was like, "Oh, yeah, you can just like wait and chill as like the— as the stump." And you're like, "Oh, great. A long rest?" I'm like, "No."

Julia:  Yeah, specifically no.

Eric:  "No, it's not a long rest.

Amanda:  Certainly not.

Eric:  It’s certainly not. You're in the middle of a scary Labyrinth, that is not happening. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Mage Silverleaf wants to know, "Taking my cue from Julia and Brandon, is the mangrove woolly mammoth an extinct creature that used to live on Verda Stello, or is it something that lives today? If it's extinct, what made it extinct? And if it's a living population, where do they live?"

Julia:  Eric?

Eric:  Oh, I need to know?

Julia:  I don't know, it's up to you.

Eric:  I mean, you're the one who was like, "Hey, I'm a woolly mammoth now." Which first of all, did not see coming. Out of the few— out of the things I thought what happened, turning into a woolly mammoth and— and, like, Monster Truck rallying the Harvester—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —was not what I saw coming.

Julia:  Yeah, it was really between the giant ape, which is D&D's answer to King Kong, and—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  —a  mammoth. And I was like—

Eric:  No, you're right.

Julia:  —you know, flavor-wise, I think the Mammoth is a little more fun, plus, it had that— the like—

Eric:  The trample thing, yeah.

Julia:  The trample thing where I could— I could run and hit the— and like the whole thing with the Harvester as we know that he has terrible balance. So it's like—

Amanda:  Oh, yeah.

Julia:  —that's going to work better, actually.

Amanda:  So good.

Brandon:  I would watch Godzilla versus Mammoth. 

Julia:  That'd be good, right?

Brandon:  Yeah, that'd be great. 

Amanda:  That'd be really good.

Eric:  Godzilla versus King Kong versus Mammoth. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  But it's Ray Romano from Ice Age.

Julia:  Oh, no.

Amanda:  What if— what if the King Kong was sheepish Kevin James from the meme?

Eric:  Nooo!

Amanda:  That'd be good.

Eric:  No, I wouldn't like that.

Brandon:  I think it'd be great, yeah.

Julia:  Yeah, I really liked that, actually.

Brandon:  I just imagine— you hear Godzilla's, like, roar like, "Roar!" And then you hear King Kong's beating his chest, then you hear, "Noooo!"

Eric:  "Debra."  

Julia:  "Debra." Doofus.

Eric:  Wouldn't that be sick? That would be sick.

Brandon:  I'd watch it.

Julia:  Incredible.

Eric:  It was good. Yeah. I— I— I like the idea if they— if they were extinct and then you brought it back just for the polymorph, that feels really good.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  If they were extinct, what kind of plant-based thing killed them off from space? Is it like a— like a tumbleweed from space that hit Verda Stello?

Eric:  Well, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if it's like a— like an asteroid thing. I think maybe they're just like— things got smaller, so being a big dude didn't really help— didn't really work.

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  So it just kind of like— it just kind of faded out. And then there's a photo of like, you know, a bunch of people— a bunch of people from the Hothouse, like, with a kajillion mangrove woolly mammoth skulls, like with the buffalo.

Julia:  Whoa.

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  You know Teddy Roosevelt is from Open Fields, you know it.

Eric: Teddy Roosevelt?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Wow.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Exactly. Right.

Eric:  Wow. He was a rough rider because of all the thorns.

Brandon:  Was he the one that said, "Speak softly, but have thorns on your side."?

Eric:  He did say that.

Amanda: Exactly right, Brandon.

Eric:  Carry a big stick with thorns.

Julia:  Exactly right.

Eric:  Yeah, you're right.

Amanda:  That's why he's on the 20 amber piece.

Julia:  Nailed it.

Eric: No, he's on the 20 doubloom. 

Amanda:  Oh, yeah.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  Let's talk, though, about the Harvester surprising, I'll say, all of us in turning into a whole ass ship. Eric, where the hell did this come from? And it was very cool and also scary. Comment. 

Julia:  Thoughts.

Eric:  I can't find the exact message, but at one point, a week later, Brandon messaged the Join the Party Slack and said, "Oh shit, this was a second phase boss battle." And I'm like, "Yeah, it was. Yes it was."

Julia:  Hmm. Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yay.

Brandon:  Got a— got a second health bar.

Julia:  Got a whole new sidebar, yeah.

Eric:  Yeah, I wanted to— I wanted to pull a new— a new health bar up, because I think—  something that happened that I wasn't anticipating, was you all making the Harvester look silly a bunch of times in a row. 

Julia:  Sorry, my bad. 

Eric:  No, it's fine. It happens. And I think it happened— that was like something I wanted to give you as a bonus for bringing Gloria.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  Because it's like you decided to take her out, you— you took the curse off of her, that was all really smart. And then you set up the situation where the Harvester is beating down the door is right outside, and Gloria is like, "Oh, yeah, I got it." That was just kind of like a— that came to me in the moment, and I gave it to you that he has terrible bal— that the Harvester has terrible balance, right? So It's like you spent so much time making the Harvester look like a goofus that I had to reaffirm that the Harvester was, in fact, deadly—

Amanda:  Powerful.

Eric:  —and powerful, and like the minotaur of this maze.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  So that was why Gloria needed to be sliced in half, and that's why the Harvester needed a second phase.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  I think the other thing is like when you make a boss battle, especially in Dungeons and Dragons, because this doesn't come up in other types of combat, like with Powered by the Apocalypse. It's like you need to have multiple ways of succeeding, especially— you— you should probably have one that's not kill the thing, because it doesn't make any sense. Like almost— never should your goal be bring this— this HP down to zero, because there's— there's almost always something else going on. Like, recover the artifact, escape, protect, there's always going to be a different verb. And I think that the thing was you want to escape. So if the Harvester is trying to keeping you from escaping, what are you going to do? Are you going to go through them? Are you going to go around? Are you going to figure that out? And you went around, which is kind of what I assumed, because they wrote that into the thing at the beginning of the arc, that like you could permeate the outside of the labyrinth if you were aware and were able to do that. And then I was just really excited, it's like, "Oh, you're back on the Boiling Reef, so let's do a fucking— let's do some wa— some ship combat."

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Because that would be exciting again to— the Boiling Reef almost felt like— like a little a— like a prefix to this whole arc in the first place, so I wanted to bring it back.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Hell yeah. 

Julia:  Cool.

Amanda:  Speaking of Gloria, Laura.a.don says, with the utmost respect, "Did you ever hear what happened to Gloria's severed bottom?"

Julia: It got left behind, I imagine.

Amanda:  Now, is it a myth or is it true—

Julia:  I don't think we touched both—

Amanda:  —that worms can regrow from both halves?

Brandon:  They can regrow, but I— I think it's a myth that they have, like, a brain on both sides.

Amanda: Yes.

Eric:  Hmm.

Amanda:  That's something.

Brandon:  So, yeah, that— that guy is just like sort of—

Amanda:  Alright.

Brandon:  —dead somewhere, I think.

Amanda:  So she's— she's composted into the—into the labyrinth, you know? 

Eric:  And Brandon, with the—

Julia:  Also, it's a glow worm, right? She's a glow worm, not an earthworm? 

Eric:  She's a glow worm, yeah.

Brandon:  True. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Which is like different too, so I don't know. 

Eric:  And, Brandon, respectfully, what flight did you learn that on?

Brandon:  That was like— like a cheap United flight where, like, they really didn't have anything other than, like, docs about worms, you know?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. Real cheap. Basically, free to license.

Brandon:  Yeah, exactly.

Amanda:  You know?

Eric:  Brandon, you should start a program that's like Skillshare, but it's just you telling people to watch stuff on Flex. Like, you can only access it when you're 10,000 feet in the air.

Brandon:  Hell yeah.

Amanda:  The worlds' most exclusive streaming channel. 

Eric:  Yeah, you could— it's like— it's an edutainment site— 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Eric:  —for kids who--

Brandon:  Hey, they have podcasts on— on some Delta flight, so they did. So maybe we can get on there, you know?

Eric:  Oh, yeah.

Julia:  Yeah, maybe.

Amanda:  Anyone who works at Delta, hit us up. And finally, before I— I nip into the kitchen to refill these appetizers, platters of spinach and feta puffs—

Brandon:  Ooh.

Amanda:  —The Question Surgeon, Michelle Spurgeon wants to know is, "How does Cammie feel about the Planter saying their hardships were the path all along?"

Julia:  Well, I will answer this question with a statement, which is Cammie then punted them off of the boat. 

Amanda: That was great.

Julia:  Hmm. Interesting.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I don't— you guys didn't hear it, because it was in the original draft of the episode, but we had to take it out for legal reasons, but it did have R.E.M.'s Losing Our Religion underneath it, that's what happens, so—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Hmm. Yeah, we really— we tried to license it, but then Michael Stipe was like, "Who are you?" 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, he was like—

Julia:   Fair.

Brandon:  "—Do you have more than $10?" And they were like, "No."

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  And he was like, "Okay. Then no."

Eric:  No. So—

Julia:  So the answer's no.

Eric:  Yeah. I think that was also your reward for doing a really good job— for doing a really good job on the ship combat and, like, getting— pulling the Harvester— pulling the Harvester on the boat, that was kind of like your reward for doing— for doing good combat, was having that conversation. And I think that that's what the Har— I mean, I believe that that's what the Planter would say to all of you, is like, "You sea little— you— well, human— Greenfolk, you're always kind of squabbling and doing little stuff." And it's like, "Don't worry about it, it's fine." Like— and if you mess with stuff, it's gonna bite back, but like that's what you— that's what happens, so there you go. And I can— that's deeply unsatisfying to— to people hearing that from— hearing that from someone on high. And I was just like, "Yeah, yeah. That's what you're gonna have to deal with." But it was fun, like having you talk to an aspect— actually, talked to the aspect of the Planter—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —as you were messing around in there and the Planter put a hit out on Cammie.

Julia:  That was cool. We loved that. 

Eric:  Love that— love that for Cammie.

Julia:  Love that for us.

Eric:  Yeah. I like also the Planter knows about Baba Rutabaga, that was something— that was I thought was fun.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Well, obviously.

Brandon:  And is the Planter— yeah. Is the Planter omniscient?

Eric:  In so— in so many ways, yeah. Or at least, like, knows enough. I feel like Baba Rutabaga has been messing around for long enough that, like, he got back to— to the Planter's desk.

Amanda:  Yeah, it felt to me like everybody— you know, everybody over a certain age, you know, in certain professional circles knows of each other even if they don't know each other. 

Eric:  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And even that for— for Umbi and Troy as well, it's like— y'all have done some— you— you've done some wild shit and the Planter knows about it. It's like— you know, that's what happens. It— it's just what happens. I— it's gonna be deeply unsatisfying to you to talk to me, because I don't care about this, because I'm the Planter. So it just— it is what it is, I guess.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  I think about this a lot that, like, if I was talking to any god— and all— from all of my understanding of— of gods both as like— you know, deities and fantasy in, like, talking to the god creature in fantasy worlds or in the— like the Hades, Percy Jackson talking to modern versions of Greek gods sort of way. And also we talked about this a little bit in Campaign Two, is like— it always feels like you're talking to a philosophy major in college—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —and you have $5 for food that weekend. It's like—

Amanda:  Hmm. Philosophical for them, yeah.

Eric:  like I— I— I don't want to talk about phil— philosophy. I don't want to talk about the everything of everything. I'm trying to figure out what my— what my lunch is going to be in two days— 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —is that's how I just— how I feel about it all the time.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  And I was trying to hit you all with that, especially because the three of you have all struggled with, like, real interpersonal conflict throughout your character's life, both before the campaign and during the campaign. And the Planter is like, "Hey, man, whatever. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, did— that did happen to you. That's what happens when you set up, like, millions of crea— millions of creatures that create societies together and they bump into each other, like they're —yeah, you're right, that is what happens.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. Yeah.

Eric:  You know?

Amanda:  Very well put.

Brandon:  Rude. Rude.

Amanda:  Well, I'm gonna think that over while I put another batch of these spinach and cheese puffs in the oven. Guys, don't worry, I'll be right back.

[theme]

Amanda:  Hey, everybody, it's Amanda, and thank you so very much to those who joined our Patreon in the last few days of the year, Anne, Iron Wolf, Kendall, Jeff, The Happy Fun Ball, And Wolfie, two wolves isn't that cute? We can only make the show with all of the time and love and energy that we do pour into it and do the exciting stuff that we have coming up in January, more about that at the end of this episode, because of your support. For just five bucks a month, you can know you're making the show possible and get all kinds of good stuff. Access to our patron-only Discord and additional bi-weekly podcast from us. If you'd like that conversation pit that we showed you last week, you're gonna have more of those and all kinds of other incredible stuff, like ad-free episodes, and more. Join us today at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. This week at Multitude, there is so much going on. And I am always thinking of the sun this time of year. I look forward every year to the winter solstice, after which point it starts getting brighter every day, again, instead of darker. And most of the things I know of that space, I learned from Pale Blue Pod. This is, of course, our astronomy podcast for people who are kind of overwhelmed by the universe but really want to be its friend, which I just loved. Because Dr. Moiya McTier, the astrophysicist and her friend and mine, the comedian Corinne Caputo demystify space, one topic at a time. The show comes out every single week, it starts your Monday off, right, and you should go and subscribe. Listen to Pale Blue Pod now. We are sponsored this week by Chaotic Great Games, and their brand-new trading card game, Gudnak. This is an expandable tactical card game for two to four players, where you can build a deck of 20 fighters and tactics, and place it on top of your stronghold. You get to maneuver cards across the battlefield to try and siege your opponent's stronghold before they siege you. There are such beautiful art on these cards, and very unique fantasy factions, and tons of exclusives for Kickstarter backers, including alternate art and guest art. You can go check out the project now, click the link in the description. And there are all kinds of stretch goals that you can go ahead and look at their videos about how to play. There is honestly such a beautiful reward. You're absolutely gonna love it. They're shipping estimates, of course, and the stretch goals are really where it's at, folks. You can unlock things like the lowlifes of low country, miscreants, who are shady, they're basically assassins, and they're very, very cool. There are siege engines, a whole sub-theme to their wrought-born expansion, extremely cool, the Fang Coast, a custom box insert, which can put every single— like when you get the physical box, you can get every single card in there. It's beautiful. They put a ton of time and effort and love into making this happen. So you should go and check it out now, go to chaoticgreat.games and check out the Gudnak Kickstarter. Link in the description or search for Chaotic Great Games on kickstarter.com. We are also sponsored this week by BetterHelp. And I know that by the time New Year's rolls around, part of me is feeling really relieved that the year is behind me. Part of me is feeling very glad that I won't have to buy gifts for another few months, or make them, or, you know, arrange quality time in a way that I'm worried about being judged, if I'm giving enough quality time, et cetera. It can be really, really stressful. And I definitely know that I would not be able to have fun, or focus, or relax through the holiday and gift-giving season without one of the gifts I give myself, which is time in therapy. And if this is something you're thinking about, maybe you want to try it for the new year, maybe you want to go back, maybe you have not been in therapy for a while, or maybe you just always been curious and you want to give it a try. BetterHelp is a really useful tool to know about, because it's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule where all you have to do to start therapy is fill out a brief questionnaire before you get matched with a licensed therapist. Best of all, in my opinion, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. In this season of giving, give yourself what you need with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/jointheparty today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, .com/jointheparty. And now, let's get back to the show.

[theme]

Eric:  Amanda, you missed the ball drop. I'm sorry. You put— you put those cheese puffs in at 11:58, and you weren't looking at the clock. I was yelling for you, but it was so loud.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  And it's now 12:02. I'm so sorry. 

Amanda:  Well, I always want a chaser with the champagne sip, you know what I mean? You need to just, like, pop a little— a little amuse-bouche in there afterwards, so at least I'll be able to give that to everybody. 

Eric: That's fair.

Brandon:  Can I put a spinach puff in my champagne? Is that weird?

Julia:  No, I think it sounds delicious. Go for it.

Brandon: Great. Thanks.

Julia:  Did you know that there's a cheese in France that is like designed? Like, it has a little bowl on the top of it and then you pour champagne into it, and soaks into the cheese. It's called Langres.

Amanda:  No way. I did not know.

Brandon:  That's fascinating.

Julia:   It's delicious.

Brandon:  Fucking French, man.

Eric:  That's what happens when you have a specific region for this thing.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Like that's also why we have like the KFC double down.

Amanda:  That's our version. 

Eric:  That's our version.

Julia:  It's the same thing.

Brandon:  What is the region for the KFC double down, Eric?

Eric:  Kentucky.

Brandon:  Kentucky? Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. It's like bourbon. Yeah. Or whatever.

Eric:  Yeah, it's because like bourbon, you can only ge— you can only get it in there. Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah. 

Julia:   Right. It's got an AOC next to it, so that you know that it's from that region.

Amanda:  I don't— I don't often get extremely excited about America, but recently, a— like a queer Japanese American-owned sake distillery in Brooklyn had a, like, KFC and sake Christmas Eve thing for all the non-Christians who were still in town, and I was like—

Julia:  Hell yeah.

Amanda:  —"I— I love America. This is great."

Brandon:  That's great. Well, KFC is a— is what they do in Japan, so I wonder if they were sort of playing off of that."

Amanda: They were like— they grew up with that tradition and so they did it. They partnered with the lesbian bar next door and, like, did a joint event.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  It was incredible. It was great. 

Brandon:  That's awesome, I love that.

Amanda:  It was great.

Julia:  I love Brooklyn.

Amanda:  I love Brooklyn. 

Eric:  Pretty good. 

Amanda:  I also love puppet shows, which we can probably go to one tonight, Eric, if we wanted to. It is the Friday before New Year's Eve, but we do live in Brooklyn, and you know, it's full of weird shit.

Julia:  I'm sure there's a puppet show somewhere.

Amanda:  I'm sure there's a puppet show.

Brandon:  I gotta Google real fast if there's one.

Julia:  Yeah, it's like—

Eric:  Remember when I made the puppet show on May 1st in Ver— in Laketown City—

Amanda: Yeah.

Eric:  —for— for Midsommar, and Julia and Brandon were horrified. 

Amanda: Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah, it sucked.

Julia:  And I stand by it.

Brandon:  I thought it was so funny.

Amanda:  We amplify your creations back to you in a horror. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Oh, God. 

Amanda:  I'm sure there was, at some point, a puppet show of Alonzo in Campaign One. So this is— this is the throughline in addition to salmon from Eric's campaigns.

Julia:  Why did we not do a puppet show at the campaign, though?

Amanda:  I know. We should have had it a Camp Die.

Eric:  You did a—

Julia: Camp Die.

Eric:  You did a—the musical.

Amanda:  Kind of— yeah.

Eric: You did the Die Hard musical.

Julia:  Die Hard musical.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  We had—

Julia:  But it wasn't a puppet show. There was no puppets of the Die Hard Musical.

Amanda: There might have been, like, background actor puppets being, like, thrown down—

Julia:  Maybe.

Amanda:  —the skyscraper. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah. 

Amanda:  And Director Z kind of puppet the— the moose, so— anyway.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  So many questions about the puppet show, but first of all— 

Eric:  Assistant Director Z.

Amanda:  Okay. Thank you, thank you.

Eric:  He's going— during the— during the not summer months, he's getting his master's in earl— in summer early education. 

Amanda:  That's so good. 

Eric:  I have a question for the three of you. How much did you think you were pranking me?

Julia:  I don't think we felt like we were pranking you. We just went into this with a game plan, and we just didn't tell you about it ahead of time.

Brandon:  Yeah. Less pranking, more scamming you for Amber. That was the deal.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  The— the plan was to kind of scam you for more amber, because we were unsatisfied with the number that we had going into the episode. 

Amanda:  Yeah. I— I do just have to give full credit where credit is due. On Friday, November 10th, directly after we finished the session, nine minutes, in— in fact, Brandon messaged me and Julia and said, "What if we put on a puppet show of our adventures and charge admission?"

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  So the idea came fully formed from the head of Kranos or whatever, Brandon over here, and it was incredible. Julia promptly said, "Yes. It must be a special benefit, though, because art should be free." And I said—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  —"We can ask businesses for sponsorships. It'll be great."

Julia:  That's why I kept saying suggested donation throughout the episode.

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  Like, "Art should be free, but suggested donation."

Amanda:  Exactly.

Brandon:  And what I didn't say back to you was, is this puppet show art?

Julia:  Yes.

Eric:  No, it's art, it's art.

Julia:  Yeah, performance—

Eric:   Or at least— at least it's news. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  I think— I think that Umbi's pyrotechnics and Nonny's music and score—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  —really elevated it to full art.

Julia:  Yeah. 

Brandon: A 100%, yeah.

Eric:  You know what this reminded me of? This reminded me of that— my— one of my favorite episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the— it's the— when they're out on summer—they're out on vacation or—

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  —or they're hiding out in the Fire Nation, and they go to the recreation of the Avatar story, and it's worse. 

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric: That was what that entire episode felt to me. It's like, "You're gonna put on—"

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  "—a show about your own—you're making your own propaganda—"

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  "—that you're selling."

Amanda:  Uh-huh.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  And you're gonna see— and you're gonna see what happens, and I thought that was really funny.

Amanda:  That's exactly right.

Brandon:  Hell yeah.

Amanda:  And I— I loved the addition, even though it complicated stuff for us, of the audience having their own expectations. Like, of— of course, they're going to be there thinking about, you know, whether or not we're telling them the truth. And the— oh, my God, the pamphlets were so interesting, so let's get into it. A through Z wants to know, "Why didn't the crew know about the pamphlets if they were there all day, and, like, blanketing the island?"

Julia:  Eric explained this to us after the fact—

Eric:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  —because I asked the same question. He was like, "You guys just jumped the gun to soon. Like, if you had just, like, let me do my thing with you arriving, you would've probably seen one of those pamphlets." And I was like, "Dang it."

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  "We came into hot with our plan."

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  There's— Brandon and I were talking about this, we were talking about Baldur's Gate 3 in the most— in the upcoming Party Planning where I'm going to talk about my favorite games of— of 2023.

Amanda:  Ooh.

Eric:  Which you should definitely listen to. It's really good. And— 

Amanda:  patreon.com/jointhepartypod?

Eric:  Yes, that's it. And I was— something that— someone had brought up about Baldur's Gate 3 that I hadn't considered before because I'm not— I didn't play it because I'm deeply uninterested in playing in the Forgotten Realms. It was like, the video game can do one thing that a tabletop RPG can't do, which is that it can load in interesting stuff that isn't being pointed to by a narrator. So when you walk into a hall, and there's like a bunch of goblins in there, you can look around and be like, "Oh, I'm gonna make the chandelier fall." But you only realize that on your own by seeing that there was a chandelier being loaded in. I didn't have to describe, "Okay, you go into this grand hall, it's very large. The goblins have ransacked all of it. There's mud everywhere." But you notice that the chandelier is still burning. And then you'd be like, "Oh, there's a chandelier." Even if I do this trick where I tried to make it seem like it's just landscape detail, you're gonna hit on the details that feel very resonant, because I have to describe it. Or you're gonna have to roll a Perception Check, and then it's like on you to look around. Now, I'd like that, because I think that looking— paying attention and looking around is something that humans have to do. It's like understanding your surroundings. That's why Robert Downey, Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes was always in slow motion, because he was always looking around, right? So I think that it is on the players to ask more questions if they don't know something. But you would also be very excited to execute a plan and do something, because your motivation was get Amber immediately, not to go around.

Brandon:  Right. Yeah.

Eric:  So if you wanted to look— or if you wanted to make a Perception Check, you might have seen the pamphlets, which I was prepared to do the entire time, but you just didn't, and that's okay. I— I don't— I don't think there's— I don't have anything— there's nothing wrong with that, because then I was able to express it in a different way through the thing that you all wanted to do.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon: Right. It'd be so funny if the answer to that was, like, every DM was like, "Alright, you walk into your bedroom. The floor is a little bit dusty. There's a scratch on the bedpost."

Eric:  Right.

Brandon:  "There's a ceiling tile that's gray." And, like, you just spent 40 minutes describing every little thing in every room.

Amanda:  But I— I agree that I— I like the TTRPG approach to things and that's why Open Worlds video games make me feel overwhelmed, because as a person, like we are all definitionally, you know, the narrator's and the first person point of view of our own story. Like, we are walking into a room and we are, you know, sweeping it, looking for something or confirming a narrative we already have, or just not noticing things that are different, because we expect it to be the same.

Eric:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Like, it's— it's never not filtered through a perspective of something we are looking for, or paying attention to, or not paying attention to. And that was hard for me to get over at first as a new player because I was like, "What if I miss something? Like, what's important? Like, show me the glowing outline of the object in the video game, tell me what to click."

Eric:  Yeah. Right. That's what I'm saying about the Infinite Creation machine. It's like that's why the dice like— is like you roll— you spin a wheel, and then the dice tells it where to stop. Now, I can write things down or you can, like, ask me— that's why I always ask you to ask— ask you to ask me a question—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —is like, "What do you want to know?" Because even if I don't have it written down, I can iterate both on— it's like the X-axis is the thing you want in the room, and the Y-axis is how detailed I'm going into it.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  It's our— it's like battleship, right?

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah.

Eric:  It's like where I'm going to put it. So that's why I need those two pieces of information, too. It's like making a pun. You gotta mush two things together. I can— instead of just, like, trying to figure out what you want, or just trying to figure out what the proper amount of detail is. Yeah.

Amanda:  Quick straw poll, do you think Troy would be delighted by puns or infuriated by them?

Brandon:  Oh, infuriated.

Julia:  Infuriated. From the reaction that he has to homophones, yeah.

Eric:  It was so funny. 

Julia: Ugh.

Eric:  Well, here— Amanda, here are some flowers. Good job. 

Amanda:  Oh, thank you, thank you.

Eric: That was very funny. There you go.

Amanda:  What a pleasure playing Troy. It's like a vacation for my brain. So good. Some more excellent questions about the Hold and Episode 33. Savedman97 wants to know, "Eric, is Gloria a vehicle for you to mock all the crazy shit that the players come up with at the Hold, as she is like, 'What the hell is happening?'"

Eric:  No. She's just very sweet, and I love her.

Julia:  We're wonderful. She loves us.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  I know, I love her too. Saved also wants to know, "Is Aubergine really the big bad? Has he been faking it so he can spy on everyone? Is he part of the resistance—" 

Eric:  Oh, my God. That is so funny.

Amanda:  "—and they want to get the keys to give them credibility for the separatist movement in the Crags?"

Brandon: I mean, I think this is a little bit of a who can say for sure. But I will say when you started trying to get the key information from me, I was like, "What the f— is Au— is Aubergine sort of like some— doing something nefarious?”

Eric:  Aubergine is a nosy bitch.

Julia:  It also would have made sense if we knew about the pamphlet. 

Amanda:  I know. 

Eric:  That was so funny. That whole thing was so funny, and I kind of wanted to pay off the fact that Brandon said, "Oh, by the way, I've been best friends with Aubergine the entire time."

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  While Julia is the one who had scenes with Aubergine only. So I really wanted to pay that off, that like Aubergine was very good friends with both of you and was playing you off each other. 

Amanda:  Very good. 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  We have another theory, though, because A through Z asks, "Is Edie going to be the ultimate villain? Is she working with Audrey and the zombies?"

Julia:  I don't know. Ok— listen, Cammie doesn't like Edie. I don't know what Edie did in this episode to inspire that question. 

Amanda:  Yeah. Just general vibe.

Eric:  Just remembering Edie is there. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah. I— I think— for—for my part, for my seat, Edie is you know, self-interested like all pirates and all NPCs. And, you know, if we can line up our incentives to use her to our advantage, great. But I'm never not going to sort of have my suspicions up and have my, you know, sort of like critical lens on.

Brandon:  I don't think any character with that cool of knife hair is gonna be a bad guy. That's just too cool, you know, Eric?

Amanda:  God. Don’t you wish you could—

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —grasp a knife with your hair sometimes?

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Now, I need Edie to have knife hair, because needy— Edie has knife hand, but now she needs to have knife hair. Maybe she needs to level up.

Brandon:  Well, isn't it like not the sprouts of the carrots?

Amanda:  Yeah, her— the carrot greens.

Eric:  No, it's on her— it's on her ar— her— one of her arms is— is carrot—

Amanda:  Oh.

Eric:  —is the carrot greens that has the knife attached to it. 

Brandon:  Yeah, I was thinking carrot greens, and carrot greens is like— yeah, yeah.

Eric:  But she has carrot greens hair, but she also has carrot green arm. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah.

Eric: But now she needs to have a carrot green knife hair, like she's a Mortal Kombat character. 

Brandon:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Cool. Now— now, I'm gonna have to give that to her. That's—

Brandon:  Great.

Eric:  That'd be tight. The— the— to answer the question about Gloria in reverse, it works really well to have NPCs like wandering around the— it's really fun to introducing and— you could make NPCs has— whatever personality they want, and sometimes those personalities are good at underlining or delivering exposition. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  True.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  So having a character that's like, "What's happening?" is really helpful, and Edie who just loves, loves telling you all the things you don't know, is— is super helpful. 

Julia:  Sometimes you can have a character who's obnoxious, but not evil. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Yes. 

Julia:  And that's just what real life is like.

Amanda:  Very true.

Eric:   Yeah, Edie is incredibly obnoxious, and it's been really fun to lean into that as someone who, like, knows it and uses that as her main personality trait, as like a— as a weapon to move forward. Either like you are in re— either you fall for her charisma or you just like, "Go away, I will give you exactly what you want because you're so annoying." And also like, you know, to her own detriment, like if I was— if she was a smarter person, maybe I wouldn't have told all of you that, like, they want to buy your key for so much Amber.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  It's like, "Oh, yeah, someone— someone was saying they wanted to give you a 100 Amber for your key." Like, "Oh, oops. Uh-oh. Uh-oh."

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  "That—"

Brandon:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  "Uh-oh. That's an interesting piece of information.”

Julia:  Truly, what is stopping us from going back to the maze, getting another key, and then selling that for a 100 Amber, and breaking Eric's system for level-ups?

Eric:  You can do whatever you want, dawg. I put it in there. That's certainly an option. You could sell the key. Yeah, do whatever you want. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Hmm, interesting.

Amanda:  I don't think we're quite that chaotic. 

Brandon:  I have a—I have—

Julia:  It could be.

Brandon:  —a suspicion that maybe the labyrinth, which is a god thing, would not let us back in at this point. 

Julia:  Hmm.

Amanda:  It's possible.

Julia:  Maybe.

Brandon:  He yeeted into the sea.

Amanda:  I mean, I think if we revisit the labyrinth, there's a— there's 100% chance Troy returns with more puppies, so—you know?

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  I'm just saying you—you can do whatever you want.

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  I know that we talked about how like a campaign is like— is— sometimes is more like one of those rides at Disney World where you shoot something while you're on a track. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Buzz Lightyear.

Eric:  Well, like those— thank you, the Buzz Lightyear. You're right. Or it's like being a part of a AAA video game where you express yourself through play, and then the— some of the story beats happen to you. But honestly, you have control over what your ship does. You can do whatever you want. The map is open— the map is open to you.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  So if you wanted to sell the key, do it. I would just love if you could communicate that to me a little early so I can think about it a little bit.

Julia:  No, I don't think I have.

Eric:   But I have some thoughts, I have thoughts about all the options you could do. I do, I do. So could do whatever you want.

Brandon:  Oh, Eric, take off your headphones for a second.

Eric:  Okay.

Brandon:  Just don't listen. You don't— you didn't actually have to do that.

Julia:  No, like—

Brandon:  I was just gonna say, "Let's make a fake key and sell it."

Julia:  Well, listen, we have the mold, we could make a secondary like—

Brandon: Yeah.

Julia:  —key of that.

Amanda:  Not that bad.

Julia:  And that's not one that regenerates.

Amanda:  Not a bad one. 

Brandon: Yeah.

Julia:  Hmm. Interesting.

Brandon:  Alright.

Julia:  Anyway—

Brandon:  And then I said, "That's not my corn key!”

Amanda:  And then I—

Julia:  Oh, boy.

Amanda:  —said, "A dung beetle? You mean my sister-in-law? "

Julia:  Damn. Damn.

Amanda:  Anyway—

Eric:  "Take my wife, she's a— she's a flower. She's a corpse flower. She smells."

Amanda:  "She's stinky. It only comes around once in every 10 years."

Eric:   That sounds like my wife. 

Amanda:  Alright. Kendyll wants to know, "Eric, did you have a plan for some sort of weapon-gaining branch of the Skill Tree, or was that bespoke for Gloria?"

Eric:   No. When you brought— I had to add something for Gloria, if you were gonna bring her back to the Hold.

Amanda:  Gloria. Yay!

Eric:  Yeah, a 100%.

Amanda:  Gloria.

Brandon:  I didn't expect you to do that.

Eric:  Yeah, I totally get it.

Brandon:  I— I didn't expect Gloria to be a part of the Skill Tree. I just thought, you know, we'd have a new fun NPC, but I'm glad that you did.

Amanda:  Yeah, that was such an exciting reveal. 

Julia:  Yeah, exactly. Again, this is like what we were talking about where it's like in a, like, Japanese RPG game where you can recruit people, and then you go back to your base, and then you're like, "Oh, that person set up a shop and now I can have access to this thing." It's so cool.

Amanda:  I—

Eric:  Exactly. 

Amanda:  I fully thought that Gloria just wanted to live at ground floor for, like, access reasons or because the warmth—

Julia:  Hmm.

Amanda:   —would help her arthritis, and then I was like, "Oh, of course. Great."

Eric:  The three of you asking so few questions of Gloria, just like letting her fucking vibe, because she's like—

Julia:  Whatever she wants to do, man.

Eric:  You have endured trauma, do your thing, do whatever you want. 

Amanda:  Exactly. Exactly.

Eric:  It's just like her giving only was like— only after a while giving you the only detail you need to know. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  I— it's just— has been so funny to play her over the last few episodes. 

Amanda:  Listen, who— who you were before you came out on the Great Salt Sea, less relevant to me than who you are now, you know?

Eric:  Fair.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  J_ powers_ asks, "Was there a hidden message about Workers' Rights within the play?"

Brandon:  Yes. 

Julia: Yes, always.

Brandon:  Always. 

Amanda:  Yeah. Agree. I think—

Julia:  We're putting it on?

Amanda:  Yes. I think the— the Book Depository and the employees revolted, took over, and now run it as a socialist enterprise. 

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Interesting. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:   In our version of—

Eric:  In your version, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Amanda:   —reality.

Brandon:  I mean, pirates are— are inherently sort of communists, so you know, it's just—

Amanda:   We did it.

Brandon: —it's just inherent in the story.

Eric:  It's pretty good. 

Julia:  Yeah. 

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. From each according to their abilities, and to each according to the booty.

Eric: Yar. 

Julia:  Avast.

Eric:  Yar.

Amanda:  Let's get into some questions about the world and Verda Stello and our characters. Eric, here's a throwback question from NIN-sko-loss, "Do Jewish Greenfolk not believe in the water and the Harvester? That's what Chaz, the bartender in the Crimson Exchange said, quote, 'We believe in the Planter, but we don't believe in the disciples of the Planter.'"

Brandon: Now I know this was a joke, but I do—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  —want you to have to explain it in your world now. 

Amanda:   It was good.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Well, notice— is the answer just yes? 

Eric:  Funny, good joke. 

Julia:  Good joke, indeed.

Eric:  Good— good question, good joke, good job. Good job— good job. Good job to Ninscholos.

Amanda:  Fair enough. We have an excellent list of questions from Moss, A Sentient Rock brought to us by their cross-Europe train trip, which seems to be very practical and, you know, proliferate.

Eric:  Now, last time because Moss wrote so many, should I— do we just want to, like, read them aloud and just, like, sync in, like, the audio bath of it, or do we actually—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —want to answer the questions?

Brandon:  I think if one of us feels the power within—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Or like the— the urge within us to answer, we can. But otherwise, let's just bathe, baby.

Julia:  Yeah. 

Amanda:  Okay.

Julia:  Just let it happen.

Amanda:  Eric, up to you.

Eric:  Yeah. Okay, let me— yeah, I read it last time, right? If the characters took a BuzzFeed quiz to determine what type of potato they were, what result would they get? 

Amanda:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Hmm.

Julia:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  Which character has unironically said, "Hi, girly pops." before?

Brandon:  Hmm.

Amanda:  I think we pranked Umbi into doing so. 

Julia:  Cammie. It's Cammie. 

Eric: Yeah, Camm—

Julia: No sorry, the answer is Cammie.

Amanda:  No, you're right, you’re right.

Eric:  —"Gi—girly pops."

Julia:  "Hey, girly pops!"

Amanda:  Yay.

Eric:  I'm thinking I wanna make that my ringtone. Great, great. What state of water is each of the character?

Julia:  Hmm, hmm. Hmm, yes. 

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah, man.

Julia:  Hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  As we've just stopped in the evil city of Frankfurt, which is just banks--

Amanda:  Oh.

Eric:  What is the city that's avoided by all Greenfolk, and why do they hate it? Also, sorry, to anyone who lives in Frankfurt.

Amanda:  Good. It's good.

Eric:  Good.

Brandon:  Yeah, it's good. It's good.

Amanda:  Interesting. 

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  There's some more emotional questions after this, which I think that we've expressed on— in the podcast of what are the— what is the thing— what are the things the characters are most scared of? When do they feel the most loved, and what is the most embarrassed they felt? I think we've— we've hit on a bunch of those. 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  A lot of Cammie's happened on the same day.

Eric:  Wooo!

Julia:  Weee!

Brandon:  That's efficiency.

Amanda:  Amazing. Thank you— thank you, Narrator Eric, and thank you, Moss.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  And finally, we got a couple questions about the mechanic of rolling a D100 to see if Umbi died. I think I'm mistaken. I think I said it on the show, but I— I probably didn't. So let's— let's get into it.

Julia:  I think it might have happened on a side quest stream.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Or was it like a— it might have been after we stopped recording and we were just like chatting for a second. I can't remember now. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  We were making a joke about how old Umbi was, and they were like, "We should just like randomize whether or not Umbi dies in his sleep."

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:   And then we said that on— on the podcast.

Amanda:  That does sound like a thing we'd say on twitch.tv/jtpsidequests.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah. If you go to YouTube, and watch the VOD channel, and— and figure out which episode that is from, let us know.

Amanda:  That's true. That's true.

Eric:  We definitely said it. 

Julia:  Someone—

Eric:  I know we said it— 

Amanda:  We talked about it, yeah. 

Eric:  —because like—

Julia:  No, I know we did.

Eric:  —people thought that we got it from, like, Critical Role or something else. I don't think any of us watch Critical Role.

Julia:  None of us watch Critical Role. 

Eric:  No.

Brandon:  No, we don't.

Julia: None of us watch Critical Role.

Eric:  We're too— we're too busy.

Julia:  Yeah. We don't have the time.

Eric:  Yeah, we don't have time.

Amanda:  Also, like a D100 maps against the, you know, lifespan that we can all hope for in a human life. So I— I think it makes sense that like Edison and many people who are not named Edison, we came to the idea of a light bulb at the same time.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Eric:  Right.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Eric:  It's pretty funny. It's a pretty funny joke.

Julia:  It's okay, Amanda, you can say Nikola Tesla's name. 

Amanda:  Thank you.

Eric:  It's definitely— I'm not even saying it's original, I think it's just fun. I think it's something that, like, someone made a— a Tumblr post, they got a few thousand notes, and then someone made a TikTok of it. They got, like, a kajillion likes.

Julia:  Three million views.

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Eric:  You know?  And it's like— it's all parallel thinking. That's just one of the funny things you do when you play Dungeons and Dragons.

Amanda:  Indeed.

Brandon: Yeah. Everyone knows—

Julia:  Makes sense.

Brandon:  —that when you play Dungeons and Dragons long enough, like monkeys with typewriters—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  — you in— you converge— it's convergent evolution upon the fact that you roll a D120— D100, and see if you— if you live or not.

Amanda:  That's right. Yeah.

Eric:  And— and an NPC that the DM was not expecting became the little baby of the party and his name was Boblin the mob— Boblin the Goblin.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Like that happens to every single party.

Brandon:  Everything, everyone. Yeah.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  I was— I ran a— a One-Shot on— on one of my— on one of my favorite podcasts the other day, that's gonna come out soon, and I'm very excited about it. And, like—

Brandon:  Ooh!

Eric:  —they were so— a lot— for a lot— for— all of them, they have not played any Dungeons and Dragons in the last, like, 10— 5th edition. One of them had played 3.5 at one point. But, like, they're all comedians and I'm like, "Yeah, you guys are gonna be fun— just like do it and make jokes with each other." It's so funny how each one of them fell into, like, the classic new player molds and they didn't even know they were doing it. Like—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —one of the players got really into, like, doing a character voice and, like, doing like fantasy stuff. The other one of the character was really into, like, seducing NPCs. And the third one—

Amanda:  Sure.

Eric:  —was just like himself, but in a cool situation. And I'm like—

Amanda:  Hell yeah.

Eric: — that's all fine and good. You all did a great job. But it's—

Brandon:  UH-hmm.

Eric:  It's like— it all— people express themselves in similar ways. That's why there's—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —only like five stories out there, you know?

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  So I just always thought— I just thought that was so funny.

Amanda:  Tropes are gonna trope.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Tropes gonna trope.

Julia:  Tropes gonna trope.

Eric:  Because this is our last recording of 2023, which is— it— two days before at the end of the year, which I was wrong about. I just want to talk about what it felt like making Join the Party this year, because in previous years, you know, like— like when we started Campaign Two, it was funny how we started working on it in late 2019, and then it became so different as 2020 went on. And I feel like our campaigns have really rattled that and, of course, has rattled, like, how people feel about the game Dungeons and Dragons and actual play, and just tabletop—tabletop RPGs in general. So I just wanted to talk about how we felt making the show this year. If we remember, Campaign Three started in— the first real episode was February 28th. I think we were definitely—

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  —working on the— the shanty before then. And then the pregame—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —episodes started January 31st, and the One-Shot Der—

Amanda:  Yeah, and we did One-Shot Derby, yeah.

Eric:  And the One-Shot Derby was all through January.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Shoutout to the One-Shot Derby. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I love the One-Shot Derby. It was so much fun. 

Brandon:  It was a blast, yeah.

Amanda:  I felt really proud. It— you know, we were talking with some folks recently and the— the nuance and size of the TTRPG community and the actual play space as a thing that was not just, you know, a trend you could point to of, like, two or three popular podcasts, but a, like, actual cottage industry and, you know, evolving scene is so much fun and so interesting. It makes me really proud of the sort of, like, original impulse of making Join the Party where, you know, me, Eric, and Brandon were sitting on a whiteboard, and Eric's like, "I've listened 85 pilots of D&D podcasts. It's late 2016, I have a lot of thoughts." And, you know, our original founding principles of like, you know, don't make it too long, like, make it possible for people to listen to it, make it edited, make it— do— do a heightened reality of what it feels like to play a TTRPG. Not just, you know, plug a microphone down and, like, give the— the unedited truth, teach— teach a person like me who never played before how to do it and, you know, make sure there are not a bunch of jokes that make it inaccessible to people without a very specific set of, like, identities and pop culture diets.

Eric:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  And I think that's even more necessary than ever now. And I— I love that the— the question we always ask ourselves at our, you know, meetings about Join the Party is like, is this still fun for us, and are people enjoying it? And I think that making stuff that is fun for us will always result in things that people enjoy.

Brandon:  Yeah, I agree. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I'm just—

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah, I'm just grateful that— I agree with everything Amanda said and I'm just grateful that— you know, what is it, five— five years in?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Six years in? Something like that. That we can still make a show that people enjoy listen to and, you know, we haven't, like, dipped in listenership or anything, you know?

Eric:  Hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  That's true.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I think it's six now, because I think we started in 2017, so six, which is wild.

Julia:  Dang.

Amanda:  We're coming up on seven, folks. Seven in May or June.

Brandon:  Too many years, too many years.

Eric:  That's— that's so many years.

Amanda:  That's a lot.

Eric:  Yeah, I agree with everything you said about, like, making— before it was really a thing, we decided to start this thing. And we've been running it in the way that we wanted to see it for a long time. That makes me happy. 

Amanda:  Thank God, somewhere—

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —around here knows how to play D&D, and we have Julia now.

Julia:  Hello. I was gonna say I'm really proud of creating— not creating a character, but being able to utilize magic in a way that I think is both fun to listen to, and also fun mechanically, and also solves problems in the podcast. As well as creates problems, but mostly, it solves problems. And I— I, like, look at the two previous characters that I played in, like, full campaigns if we're including the— the Camp-Paign. And I'm proud of how varied and different and interesting those characters have been to play, and hopefully to listen to. So that's— that's kind of where I'm left at, you know, in retrospective.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  And, like, Isn't it amazing that people have named themselves after our characters, and gotten tattoos of our logo—

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —and crocheted whole ass Nonnys and cross stitch a whole ass portraits, and made an amber and tokens, and sent us just like incredible artworks. Like, it— I don't know.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Inspiring someone to make something is, I think, the highest compliment of all and sort of—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  —the point of human existence for me.

Brandon:  I agree, definitely.

Julia:  A 100%.

Eric:  Uh-hmm. The point of human existence is amassing as much money as possible for me, but that's just like my thing, that's my personal thing. But—

Julia:  Sure.

Eric:  I mean, but— no, but like the creative thing, that— that one's good too, though.

Julia: Sure Eric.

Amanda:  Eric, what do you think?  Like you— you've also hit some professional milestones this year. You got to, you know, do this show live at conventions and perhaps other situations soon, went on your favorite podcast, running D&D. How do you feel especially taking a stand, you know, about— hey, we are decoupling ourselves and our— our love for D&D, the game from D&D, the— you know, Wizards, the company. It feels like a lot of people are kind of catching up and agreeing, and, you know, doing similar things now a year later. 

Eric:  Yeah. I mean, it was a feeling that I had for a very long time, and it felt like just— I'm realizing, like, all the things that I used to point to, like four years ago, it just felt like minority groups like trying— yelling and saying, "Hey, stop disrespecting us." And then a big company being like, "Ah, shut up. We'll do some DEI stuff, whatever." And now, like, openly, it's pretty obvious that, like, there is no steward of this game anymore, and that really came to the fore in 2023. Yeah. And also like the in— the actual play industry, like, popping up around it, and chasing the success of things that— that just kind of threw it out there. Just— they just threw it out there because they wanted to see it exist and then trying to recreate the form of that. It's all just been really interesting that I haven't been aware of. Like, seeing Dungeons and Dragons influencers for the first time, and seeing them respond to this stuff has been like, "Huh." Oh, I—that there are— there are— there's like a machine that's pushing back just for on my opinions and realizing it's an actual stand and stuff, which is what happened with the OGL stuff at the beginning of this year. 

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda: Yeah.

Eric:  But, you know, this— this— the show, Join the Party, has always been like in a create— a piece of creative expression for me, both of, you know, playing and doing the stuff, but also like of writing stuff, and making games, and game design. Like, coming up with the— with the rock, paper, scissors battle mechanics and, like, really, using a lo— Power By the Apocalypse stuff to help make Dungeons and Dragons be good, has been really interesting. And I— I've really— I've really enjoyed it and really been fun leaning into stuff that came from Valda's as well.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah, been partnering with people who— you know, like Mage Hand Mike and Mage Hand Press just like so— the— the compatriots that we meet and who are like, "Oh, yeah. No, I see this, too." It's like, "Oh, thank God." And, you know, partnering with those folks, and working with more people who, you know, are— like, ended up in the community in the new year is something that I'm also very excited about. Because it is, like when— you know, when there is like a big— a big corporate, you know, monster coming to, like, claim our creativity for their own economic gain, or say that, you know, our contributions aren't important or aren't real. Those of us who band together and say, "No, actually, this is really special because of what we do." That's, like, never been more valuable. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Speaking of Worker's Rights, am I right?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric: And most importantly, this is the year that people recognized I was the Best DM in Podcasting, and I think that that was really important.

Brandon:  Right. Yeah.

Amanda:  Just, like, independently completely, just like kind of out of the blue. Purely an evolution.

Julia:  Right. No one ever said it to them, they just knew.

Eric:  No, they just like thought it, and I'm like, "Oh, I've— oh, I've thought this, but I'm glad you think this too." It's really great.

Brandon:  Did you get the— the, like, plaque that came from YouTube?

Eric:  No, it must've gotten lost in the mail. I didn't see it.

Julia:  Damn. Damn.

Amanda:  I have to contact them.

Eric:  Yeah. Can you contact Hank Green and ask him where my plaque is? Speaking of collaboration, expanding the form and keeping everybody interested, us and the listeners, we're doing some interesting stuff next month. We are doing— what— what would you say? Maybe some One-Shots that are outside of what we usually do?

Amanda:  What?

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  Some stuff throughout Verda Stello, but doesn't have to do with Cammie, Umbi, and Troy, and Aubergine. 

Amanda:  What?

Julia:  But what are we gonna do—

Brandon:  What?

Julia:  —without Cammie, Umbi, Troy, and Aubergine for some reason? 

Amanda:  Will we be there?

Eric:  I'll be there, and you—

Amanda: Will I be there?

Eric:  You'll be there. 

Amanda:  Okay.

Eric:  And Julia will be there, and Brandon will be there.

Julia:  Okay, good.

Eric:  But also, we're having six other people—

Julia:  What?

Eric:  —coming on, and guesting, and doing some Join the Party stuff.

Julia:  Wow.

Amanda:  What?

Brandon:  Eric, we only have two days 'till January, we should record this.

Eric:  We should— yeah. Yeah, I'm rushing. I'm rushing to do them.

Julia:  Ooh, a little concerned. That's not enough time for Brandon and I to edit. 

Eric:  Oh, God. We— we have—we're gonna do some One-Shots with guests for the ne— for the month of January, and I'm so, so excited. They're so great. The people that we had to come on are so wonderful. And you're gonna see, we're gonna— we're gonna talk a little bit more about it as the— in the run up to next Tuesday. So, get ready, folks. It's— we're— we're kicking this off in style.

Amanda:  Every episode—

Julia:  Wee!

Amanda:  —has one of the three of us in it, so you will have familiar players and new to you players. Maybe people that you love already in other podcasts, I'm not really sure. And I will say this, all of them, listening to all of the edit drafts has made me take notes for what our crew needs to do when we get, you know, back into our POV after these three One-Shots are done. Because there is some stuff in here, people, that impacts our world and impacts the bigger plot, and God, I'm excited.

Julia:  You guys had—

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  —stuff that impact— effects with bigger plot?

Eric:  If you wanted to recommend Join the Party to someone in January 2024, use these episodes. They are One-Shots, they are set in the world of Verda Stello, where I was going to make— and I have some clips that I've cut from them that you can share tho— share those as well. This is going to be the time. If you want to get your friends into Join the Party in 2024, you can use this stuff. 

Amanda:  Yes. So our—

Brandon:  Hell yeah.

Amanda:  —next three episodes are three in-world One-Shots with one of us three and two new guests per episode. We're going to do an Afterparty on January 30th, all about those episodes and the implications that the events have for the bigger world. God, I can't wait. And then we are back with the next episode with the crew of the Sea Whip on February 6th. Stay tuned, folks.

Julia:  Woo.

Amanda:  It's gonna be awesome.

Eric:  Wow. Wow.

Brandon:  Umbi's gonna be in a tanning bed for the month of January— 

Amanda:  Nice.

Julia:  Same.

Brandon:  —so when we get back in February, he's gonna look golden brown and delicious. 

Julia:  Well, he is the golden bachelor, Brandon.

Amanda:  That's true.

Julia:  So it makes sense. 

Amanda:  That's true.

Eric:  He's a fried Umbi.

Amanda:  Incredible. 

Julia:  Wonder how fried pawpaw would taste?

Brandon:  I bet it would be delicious.

Amanda:  Probably good, yeah. 

Eric:  You know, we have a second— we have a second reality show creature, by the way, is that, yeah, Troy is now on Survivor.

Julia:  Yeah, Troy is now on Survivor.

Brandon:  Hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah, I screamed.

Eric:  I'm waiting to see what—

Amanda:  So good.

Eric:  —Cammie's is gonna be. I'm excited.

Julia:  Great British Bake Off, that's my take slash guess.

Eric:  Oh, that's a good one, I didn't even think of that.

Amanda:  That is good.

Eric:  I was li— I was like Flavor of Love.

Amanda:  Alright. Listen, maybe in her downtime, Cammie and Gloria, like, hang out a bunch, and then Cammie goes on Forged in Fire. 

Eric:  Oh, yes!

Brandon:  That would be tight as hell.

Julia:  Could be possible.

Amanda:  Could be good.

Julia:  I love that. Sure.

Eric: Well— well, consider on Forged in Fire, the pairings are, like, two guys who are exactly the same, son and man who are— look exactly the same but separated by 20 years and, like, two people who have no business being there together, that's Umbi, tha— that's Cammie and Gloria.

Julia:  A 100%, yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  They do. Alright, folks. That is all for this edition of the Afterparty. Can't wait to have a— a whole another year of no bad Tuesdays, of excellent TTRPG content, and hopefully, pushing where this form can go. 

Eric:  Wow.

Amanda:  Alright.

Julia:  Wow.

Amanda:  Say goodbye, players.

Brandon:  Goodbye!

Julia:  Goodbye, players.

Eric:  Goodbye, players.

Amanda:  May your rolls trend ever upward.

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