Afterparty: Legends of the Past, Growing the Skill Tree I, and Legends of the Book Depository I

How did all the players settle on their backstories? Can we hit every single fruit on the skill tree? And will we forget Havana Tropicana like Alonzo? All that and much, much more on this supersized Afterparty!

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

Sponsors

- Twenty Sided Store, whose NEW LOCATION is open now at 280 Grand Street! Use code PIRATE for 20% off your first order in-store or online.

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Find Us Online

- website: jointhepartypod.com

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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, Editor: 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: 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 after party where I have like a really poignant and perhaps future plot-related anecdote to share with you guys about my childhood effects cool. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yes, please. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  I—it will come up in 30 episodes, that's fine.

Julia:  Interesting, interesting.

Amanda:  No, I'm so excited. We Have so much to talk about today and we have a super-sized Afterparty coming at you. 

Julia:  Weee!

Amanda:  Because there's just so dang much to cover.

Julia:  There is a lot. I feel like we have created so much in this world in just three episodes.

Brandon:  I gotta look up a joke real fast.

Julia:  Uh-oh.

Brandon:  Everyone—everyone fucking vamp—vamp.

Julia:  I'm gonna leave this all in just dead silence and all.

Brandon:  Dead silence, this is so supersized Morgan Spurlock, gonna do a dock on us later.

Eric:  Ohh.

Julia:  Wow…

Amanda:  Julia, how dare you make us all cry? Brandon, how dare you make us feel things? Troy Riptide, how dare you be a himbo. And Eric, how dare you save our wonderful poignant backstories till Episode 4 when you knew, you sneaky MF’er, that I love more than anyone else in the world, that we would already be invested in these characters. Can you take me through Eric, why you chose to structure Episode 4 this way, and why put our backstories in now then we'll get into each of those stories. And any questions that we players have for each other, because we didn't hear this shit until it came out.

Julia:  That's true. 

Brandon:  It is five years into this podcast. and now we're censoring ourselves for the children.

Amanda:  You know, I feel type of way about putting R-rated words in the first three minutes of the podcast. So I—I do kind of save myself. 

Eric: You still have Youtuber brain. 

Amanda:  Yeah, yeah. I need to—I need a clean 45 seconds. Yeah.

Eric:  Yeah. How are we going to turn on AdSense, if you don't have it, Brandon?

Amanda:  Alright Eric, where did this idea come from?

Eric:  I'm really committed to kicking this shit off as fast as possible. So that's why it's something I'm really committed to. And I—I really tested out in the campaign with the Steven reveal in that first episode. And I really wanted to like get down to what it was. I think that also these kinds of like smaller arcs has been fun to mess around with having 123 for Esca island, where it was really like learning what a pirate campaign looks like from us, both for me and from the players for sure. So then these episodes I feel like are leading to something else. For immediately trying to pull up people's heartstrings, five setting up this new game system, and then six, kicking off a new arcana in an interesting way. While also like trying to drop some exposition in there was what I was getting out.

Brandon:  Well you did it, goddamnit.

Julia:  You did, you done did it to us.

Eric:  I know.

Julia:  Fuck.

Eric:  I also—

Amanda:  There we go guys, we hit the three-minute mark.

Julia:  Fuck.

Amanda:  Very good.  I would say woo, that really backed up there. Woo.

Eric:  Yep. In terms of everyone listening to the episodes, Episode Four came out right after PAX East when we were all together for the first time since the pandemic started. Don't worry, we were all together—

Julia:  Not on our wedding.

Eric:  —during our wedding.

Amanda:  Our wedding photo was photoshopped. Yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Yeah, we photoshopped it, everybody. We were just— we were just in Atlanta at Marvel Studios. And so I was bugging Amanda and Julia the whole time to listen to the cut.

Amanda:  We're like Eric, we're exhausted. We've been at PAX East for 12 hours, we can't.

Eric:  Like no, you have to listen to it. So because I need to talk to you two about it,  Instead—

Brandon:  Youse guys!

Eric:  —Brandon just yelling at me, how dare you? Which I have many messages from Brandon of.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah. 

Amanda:  Alright. So let's get into it. Maybe let's go by the order in which you annihilated our hearts in Episode 4. Julia, and Eric, how did the communication between you all start about what scene you were going to talk about here in this episode?

Julia:  Oh, that's a great question. Hold on. Now I got to scroll and see what Eric sent me first. 

Brandon: Vamp! Vamp! Everyone vamp!

Eric:  Oh, I got it.

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  I got it, I have the screenshot. 

Julia:  Alright.

Eric:  So the year was 2022, and it was December 28. If you know something about me, I fucking hate the time between Christmas and New Year's because nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens especially as someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas. I increasingly just it frustrates me to no end. So I was kicking around, starting to prep the campaign, working on the stuff and Julie and I had kicked around stuff about the Open Fields. In general, that's where the whole naming convention came from.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  How that was tied to like—

Julia:  Virtues and stuff like that.

Eric:  Yeah, virtue—virtues and stuff. So I started thinking about it more and I thought that having something here's—okay, let me—now I can read the screenshot. This is 5:25 pm

Julia:  So I'm not at m—I'm fully not at my desk, it is the time between the holidays for me, I'm just chillin' and Eric goes—

Eric: Julia is still recovering from the Seven Fishes that she's been consuming.

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  It's been four days and yet still digesting.  

Eric:  We're still underneath the fishes.

Amanda:  Like a snake, there is one fish size bump in Julia’s abdomen.

Eric:  Yeah. Okay. Hey, hey,  I had a fun thought. Watch out if I message you this. So the Open Fields, I had said it was artistic in sort of a renaissance sort of way. And as this weird dichotomy between the religious and the strange, which makes me think about some capital S, scary capital C, Christian capital M monsters that exist. Or like monsters that are explicitly allegories. I think this is also around the time where in Spirits in the Wild Hunt.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Which is also why I was thinking about this. I didn't write that but that's the other context. So if you want to come up with the weird eldritch thing that teaches manners or the proper way to uphold contracts, let me know.

Julia:  Let me know.

Brandon:  If you just want a little light contract law on your break.

Amanda:  And um— and Julia digesting many fishes, how did you respond?

Julia:  I responded exactly an hour later. 

Eric:  It's so soggy.

Julia:  And I said okay, the first thing that came into my brain was Baba Rutabaga, who is like a Baba Yaga/ Love Bafana equivalent, who brings good Open Fields children's gifts, but also can turn bad children into basically nonsentient plants for harvesting.

Brandon:  Hey Julia, that's fucked up. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  There it is.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  Indeed, it is.

Eric:  It was awesome. If I fucked up, you'd be awesome, then yes.

Amanda:  Eric's like this week, it's worth it.

Eric:  It was good. And then we ended up talking about that, and we talked about it more when we were thinking about this thing. Julia, and I ended up getting into it and talking about some memes too.

Julia:  Yes.

Eric:  About Baba Rutabaga. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  But Julia, do you know I was gonna go the lottery on your ass?

Julia:  No, I didn't know you're gonna go the lottery on my ass.

Amanda:  Really?

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  I thought for sure, y'all talked about that and compare notes on like—

Brandon:  I did too.

Amanda:  —to give her in shit before you started?

Julia:  No, I really gave Eric kind of free rein on what to do in my scene. I just said specifically, I'm like, I want to explore the reason why Cammie left Open Fields.

Amanda:  Wow.

Julia:  And also if we get to it, how can we got blinded in the first place?

Eric:  Yo, shout out to that Nat 20 roll.

Julia:  At Nat 20, we wouldn't have gotten to Baba Rutabaga if I hadn't rolled that Nat 20.

Eric:  A 100%. 

Amanda:  So then, Eric, I think the question for you is how fucking dare you?

Julia:  I also have a question. I don't know if this is for Eric, or if it was for Brandon. Either. it was a like DM decision, or if it was a editing decision? Why did we put the saddest one first? 

Brandon:  That was Eric Silver's joy. 

Julia:  Alright, cool.

Eric:  I thought it was—it would be more interesting if we started out with making people really emotional. And then people look re—look down and realize that 60 minutes left. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I mean listen, we're living in a—in the post—postmodern era, even as it pertains to actual play podcast. When Dimension 20 does it, they kick you in the nuts, like at the end of the two-hour episode, and I want to do just to do something a little bit different.

Brandon:  Hey, when you're already emotional, things get like comedy as funnier. So—

Julia:  Yes, it's true.

Eric:  Yeah, for sure.

Amanda:  And I think that really informed how people were reading into the broader context of Umbi's see,  which we will totally get to. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah. 

Eric:  But yeah, no, I have these two things that I was weighing— are these three things I was weighing that I needed to flesh out? Was one, the Baba Rutabaga thing that Julia said. Two was the name change of Amity to Calamity to Cammie.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  Which was important? And then the third was I needed to establish this religion. Which I finally did, which I'm really— I'm really stoked about and I'm glad that I finally got to write it out. I talked to Moiya a little bit, and I started poking at some other stuff of like, making sure this wasn't a reskin of Catholicism. So I actually took a lot of stuff from I know that it's a little rudimentary, but like, go all the way back to—

Brandon:  Rutabagamentary

Eric:  —back to Rutabagamentary. 

Amanda:  There you go, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Where you go back to like world history class, and you learn about Buddhism and Jainism and Confucianism, for the first time, like, oh, this is different, there's no like, central deity that's interesting. And I kind of liked the fact that like, there really wasn't one that was retro-abusive. And I really liked this tallying points of reincarnation, you know, the guilt, I think of Christianity, but put onto a different sort of thing that's very like one in, one out. And that's why someone was so pissed at the children, it's like, if you talk to Baba Rutabaga, you are an idiot, and this is your fault. 

Julia:  Yeah, 

Eric:  That is— that's the line that we were really running here.

Julia:  Mm

Amanda:  Hmm. 

Brandon:  Good adults. Great, great adults. So I was going to ask you, Julia, actually.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon: Does this mean now with a new context of what I've just learned, does this mean that you didn't have any sort of sense of what your relationship with your parents was like? That was just sort of all in the moment.

Julia:  Yeah. I mean, like, I knew what Cammie's relationship with their parents was like before they left. And I think this turning point I wasn't expecting and that's I think, particularly why I asked Eric in the moment, like how are my parents reacting to this.

Amanda:  Yes. 

Julia:  Event. And I think that did like flavor one, how Cammie in the moment, and two how Cammie feels now about their parents, so.

Brandon:  Yeah. This is definitely not going to come back as a trauma and affects Cammie's decision-making at some point.

Julia:  No, probably not at all.

Brandon:  No, that's not what happened. 

Eric:  And I did make a really funny joke with that NPC of the Cresco, being a three-by-three square doctor.

Julia:  I'm like it's really—

Amanda:  It's so funny.

Julia:  — hard to be emotional, what I'm picturing just a sod. And you're like, yeah that's why I fucking did it, bitch.

Eric:  Yeah it's still—It was the looming sho—I was envisioning the moment.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  —where they— you got picked. And then just the shadow, the square shadow, looming over Cammie was the thing I had in my head.

Amanda:  The new Chad.

Eric:  No, we're not—no it's not.

Julia:  The Cresco is not the new Chad.

Eric:  I promise he's not,  I promise he's not. But yeah, I mean, listen, if you haven't read the lottery since high school, go back and read the lottery, that shit is fire.

Amanda:  So Eric, for non-English majors, what is the lottery?

Brandon:  Oh, I don't think I read that in High School. 

Eric:  Oh, you didn't? Oh—

Brandon:  No.

Eric:  Oh, this also might be for our younger listeners, maybe now that like education has moved towards short stories instead of novels a little bit, maybe you've done this. It's incredible, well you can get it for free because it was originally published in the New Yorker, it was written by Shirley Jackson, who you might know from The Haunting of Hill House.

Amanda:  I thought you're gonna say from horror.

Eric:  Yeah, from horror, exactly.

Julia:  Also from horror.

Eric:  And it's just like i—it's a short story, I don't want to spoil anything, but it's like—

Julia:  I mean we've just recreated it, so—

Eric:  A little bit, yeah.  A little bit, it's a little bit different. But the vibes I think of a community that allows i—, what I really liked was this dichotomy between how the incredibly high standards, Fruit in Hand holds itself after following this religion. And then also, the banality of this evil of set casting out a child because you think they bring bad luck, which is a major theme in the lottery. And also if you want to read Ursula K. Le Guin's Omelas, short story, very similar themes as well, which did— which is related to this. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  

Shirley Jackson's author photo on Wikipedia is the most epic cool thing I've ever seen in my life. 

Eric:  Shirley Jackson is fucking bad ass, man.

Amanda:  Every— every fact about her life, it's the most epic shit I ever heard.

Eric:  She's aw—she's really awesome. 

Amanda:  Yeah, I know, there's a very high price to pay for a bucolic existence. And that's a really lovely premise behind a lot, not lovely but a compelling premise behind a lot of—of horror.

Brandon:  That's what bucolic means is, it's all utopian until a child has to die.

Julia:  Were you guys surprised to learn how old Cammie actually is?

Amanda:  I was Julia, and that is a question that both Deepspace2121 and I had for you, which was "did you know exactly how old Cammie was? And did you intend to reveal that?"

Brandon: Wait, how old is Cammie? Did I—did I just go over my head?

Amanda:  They are 60 years old.

Julia:  Yeah, they're around 63 I think,  62 maybe?

Brandon:  Oh, I guess it completely went over my head when I edited it. Well, I—missed this.

Julia:  Yeah. because the scene that Eric and I did took place three years after the Cascade dried up. Yeah.

Brandon:  I just didn't do the math. Okay, cool. 

Amanda:  Yep.

Brandon:  Cammie looks great.

Julia:  I know. That wasn't something that I had originally planned on. I wasn't sure how old Cammie was when I was playing her at the beginning. And then as we played more, and we started to, like, make some jokes and stuff like that. And also, I think during an AP in particular, we were talking about, like the different societal reactions to what would happen when the Cascade dried up. And like if they were blaming outside forces and stuff like that. And that kind of inspired the idea in my brain to be like, well, maybe Cammie was around during that period where they were starting to blame people in their communities for this huge ecological event.

Brandon:  Love that.

Eric:  Yep. I also want to say the name because I've— I'm looking at my notes for sure. The path of cultivation, I wrote real words and real names and I was really he—. It was really helpful with that.

Julia:  Oh, speaking of names, Fruit in Hand is a play on a town in Pennsylvania called Bird in Hand. 

Amanda:  Yay.

Brandon:  That’s cute.

Eric:  Yes, this was related to the Amish a little bit how—

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  We've talked about distribution like Open Fields does the produce farming because they can deal with looking at— looking at other plants. So it's very similar to what I've seen a lot of Amish at farmer's markets. And like, they'll sell you stuff, but they don't like you at all because of it. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  And that was the episode, doing something like that was really important. They're not listening to this podcast it’s fine.

Amanda:  That’s true, that’s true.

Julia:  The Amish are not listening to this podcast—

Eric:  Any Luddites are—

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  —getting—you're reading the transcripts and having them act it out. Please email us. Oh, no, please e—regular mail us.

Amanda:  Regular mail us.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I would love that if we just got fan mail from an Amish listener who was just snail-mailing us,  that would be great.

Amanda:  But also a lot of really interesting writing and memoirs in— in recent decades from folks raised Amish about you know, kind of insular society about casting out, about you know, what counts when you're in group and out group and kind of the price of peace. So I think a lot of lovely lines to draw there. Juliet Mage Silverleaf wanted to know. "how did Cammie get her birthday teapot after they left?" 

Julia:  I think that's probably the first item that can be bought, once Cammie's like got some money. And I—I feel—

Brandon:  You mean stole, right?

Julia:  —feel— what's that?

Brandon:  You mean stole some money? 

Julia:  No, no.

Brandon: High-rated?

Julia:  No. Oh, I like I actually know very specifically how Cammie became a pirate. And I don't want to spoil it in case it's like another flashback we do in the future or something like that. But yeah, Cammie was a very good plan, and I think the teapot was probably the first like purchase that she made upon leaving Open Fields. 

Amanda:  Nice.

Eric:  That's so funny, the headcanon I had was actually different. I think about Cammie's parents that they were like, you know, I think we got from Cammie's parents and from learning from the lottery that like, they're just so complacent, and they're so— I guess sniveling is fair—

Julia:  Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

Eric:  —when someone's gotta do that to their child. I felt like Cammie was like 24 hours out of town, and then a messenger dropped off a box and the tea set was in it. 

Julia:  Ohh, interesting.

Eric:  But I think either— either way, it works, for sure. 

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  And also, it's your choice. This is just my—my headcanon.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  When—when I saw that question come in.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  It's a box with a teapot and the dead head of a carrot next to it.

Amanda:  God damn it.

Eric:  I mean, honestly, it's like—it's like never come home, love mom and dad.  

Amanda: Oh boy, oh boy.

Julia:  Shit. Damn. 

Eric:  I also want to say, Baba Rutabaga is my favorite. She's my favorite NPC.

Julia: Yeah!

Eric:  I fucking love her.

Brandon:  She has to come back somehow, Eric. 

Eric:  Oh, I was gonna do fucking nothing with it, Brandon.

Julia:  Eric, I'm super glad we were able to like mind meld and create this character together. It makes me very happy.

Eric:  It's like having her on her porch, just straight-up hating kids. We have a meme, I can't use the meme yet, because we haven't really explored Baba Rutabaga too much. 

Julia  Yeah, we have a relationship.

Eric:  But I have such a full idea of who she is in my head. 

Julia  Yeah.

Eric:  That like the fact that I— we get to play that scene out was fucking wonderful. And I'm so glad that we were able to do that. 

Amanda:  Hell yeah.

Julia  Yeah, same, same same. 

Amanda:  Well, as we all pause the podcast to blow our noses and dry our tears, and in my case, burst home from the grocery store, drop my bags and say, Eric, how dare you?

Julia: I did warn you all that Eric made me cry in my recording—

Brandon:  You did, yeah.

Julia  —Immediately after we finish.

Amanda:  Julia to be fair, that's not that unusual.

Julia  Hey!

Eric:  Julia, the high--

Brandon:  Wow!

Eric:  The high points of my DMing career happens when you cry, so.

Amanda:  It's a joke.

Julia: But if it happened every episode Eric, it wouldn't be special.

Eric:  I—I agree. I just talk about it all the time. 

Amanda:  Yes. So Brandon. Eric, tell me about how you decided what Umbi's backstory scene would focus on.

Brandon:  How did we do that? I think you just at some point Eric, I was like hey.

Julia  Vamp, vamp, vamp. Memento disease, memento disease.

Brandon:  Yeah. I think at some point, Eric was just like, hey, you want to do Star Wars Senate? Star Wars Galactic Senate?

Eric:  Oh, here's— here's the thing, and I don't want to put Brandon on blast. 

Brandon:  Put me on blast. 

Eric:  This is how our creative stuff goes. I say, Brandon, have you thought about this question? And he says no. And I asked you a specific question, and you give me one detail. and then I say, okay, I got it. 

Brandon:  Yeah. 100%

Eric:  And then we just go from there. I've also want to say I am so much— man, the last, the new movies really fucked me up. I'm really annoyed at JJ Abrams for really turning me off to the Star Wars universe. And how the thing that I love the most is when worldbuilding fits in with action form follows function, which you might remember me saying all the time in Monster of the Week. And like, after watching Andor, I was so into the Galactic Federation, as it fits in with the Empire. And looking at that from a leftist perspective, which An—Andor did, I was really galvanized by that. And I loved a lot of all the stuff about the Senate. I thought that was really similar to how we were envisioning the government collection at Skyreach and this thing. So it's like, alright, Umbi is the oldest, he would be the most adult because I also knew that what Cammie was going to happen was—and I didn't want them to be too close, because they were both early on after the cascade dried up. But I wanted to make sure it's like Umbi as an adult is going to go to government, and we're going to do it like that.

Brandon:  I do just want to pause it. Cammie's 60-something, maybe Umbi's like 55, who knows.

Amanda:  No Brandon, Umbis older than God.

Eric:  Umbi is the oldest man ever created.

Julia: We'll never know how old Umbi is.

Eric:  Methuselah, Umbi Methu—that's what Umbi short-form, Methuselah.

Julia  I mean, wildly he seemed the same age 50 years ago, and that’s cool and exciting.

Eric:  Someone said at some point is Umbi, Bernie Sanders? And I'm like, in some ways, yes.

Julia  In many ways, yes.

Brandon:  Obviously yeah, not a bad comparison. 

Eric:  Very similar, very similar. So yeah, I just wanted—I want an adult to go into adult situations, dealing with the cascade drying up. And then a lot of this we just kind of found out along the way. Brandon, my notes for Brandon were the most—definitely the most like sparse. But I think that once we started establishing that like Umbi has to walk to Skyreach, then I feel like we figured—I started to figure out what was going on.

Amanda:  Man, I love that detail so much.

Brandon:  Thanks. I thought that was fun.

Amanda:  It was very cool.

Eric:  Yeah. I know God, you go to the jackfruit place was so funny.

Brandon:  I honestly didn't expect people to react like they did, and like a sort of like a set. I guess—I mean, I guess people react in all kinds of different ways to climate change and impending inevitability of our ultimate fiery demise as a human species.

Julia  Yeah, yeah.

Brandon:  But umm, yeah, I was a crafting sort of like sad. I was— if anything, it would be like anger, right or like frustration. I guess that's sort of all one of the same thing, but.

Julia  I was gonna say, I felt that way, too. 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia  Yeah.

Eric:  I guess I didn't put as much—I agree With Brandon, I didn't put as much of a fine point on the climate change stuff until looking back on it. Because I was using the California lawns thing as an—as an example to demonstrate just the city of Skyreach, but then I'm like, oh, it's exactly the same.

Julia  Yes, it’s very similar.

Eric:  It's literally about the water. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah. 

Eric:  And then everything just kind of came together. Yeah, the stuff that I read, the stuff that I wrote out, specifically, I really—and I thought I wanted to amuse Brandon about this in the galactic senate, they turn off because there's so many of them, they have like a little stand and they have a light that's on if they're paying attention, I want to do something like that. And then climbing up and down the vines was something explicitly that I wrote out. 

Julia  Yeah, I really liked that. 

Eric:  Yeah. And then everything else was just like, hey, what do I think they fucking do with the House of Representatives, nothing, right? We just—and then we just that went from there.

Amanda:  How do I show nothing on the podcast?

Julia  Interesting. 

Amanda:  Brandon, my question for you about the scene is, what do you think Umbi does right afterward?

Brandon:  Um, well, I think I touched on the ending that like he starts hatching a plan to sort of do some protest along the lines of the rules, like you know, like, you know. The first step he tries to like follow the path or procedure and in the most defiant way possible. So I think he's gonna go back to Skyreach and you know, start organizing people and then start going to the other communities, to organize their people, sort of get a minor or what you would call it, I guess petition?

Eric:  Yeah. He's gonna—Umbi's gonna filibuster until they figure it out, till they actually do something.

Brandon:  Yeah. But I think like literally immediately after he's definitely just gonna take a long walk and think—think through everything. Because at some point, you know, he's got a break with—with the rules and decided like this life isn't for him, but I don't know exactly what that is, honestly. So we'll figure it out later. 

Julia  Yeah, that was gonna be my question, like, what was the last straw for Umbi in terms of like, you know, actually resigning and then heading out onto the Great Salt Sea? But if you don't know yet, like, let's explore it in play. That's—that's really cool question. I also have a secondary— I guess, world-building question that I was left unanswered after listening to yours. And it's is Jack the— was Jack a tulip, or—

Eric:  He was a bouquet—

Brandon: Bouquet?

Eric:  —I think of orchids.

Julia  Ahh, yes. He was a bouquet of beautiful flowers is what I remember.

Eric: Yeah.

Julia: I just remember he was very hot. 

Brandon:  Yeah. 

Julia  Where is does he—does he make his—grow his own jackfruit? Because then the question is like, is Open Fields, the only people who are growing produce, is—just the jackfruit come from like a jackfruit cow or like jackfruit pigs or something? I'm just very curious as to like if Overstock is importing, are they not growing any produce at all? Does that make sense?

Amanda:  I assume Julia from our—from our world building that it was imported, already picked and harvested from Open Fields, where you know, like, you know, folks who don't want to think about animals being butchered, can buy something that's like sanitized and packaged in the supermarket and not really think about its origins. 

Julia  Right.

Brandon:  I think that is true unless Eric tells me differently. But I say that because yeah, Overstock is full of a merchant class as well, and I think they sort of like save the best deals for the people at Overstock. So the merchants there have like the sort of advantage of the total supply of jackfruit and also can get a higher profit from it. 

Eric:  Just imagine Qi Razzmatazz's order—ordering just a ship full of produce? 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia  That makes sense. 

Amanda:  Brandon, anything else you want to add about your— your section?

Brandon:  I just want to lastly say that my favorite thing was the—was she a bee? The queen bee? What was she?

Eric:  Yeah. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  She was a bee, the Chancellor bee.

Brandon:  The Chancellor, she's so very good.

Amanda:  I cheered.

Eric:  I know. I— listened we love bees here and on this podcast.

Amanda:  We do.

Eric:  But I did mean to make the stuffy Chancellor, Nancy Pelosi if you will. I did need to make her a bee.  I don't know what I'm—in my head, it was like a it was a Beedrill.

Amanda:  Yeah, gotcha.

Eric:  She was a Breedrill, like a hot lady Beedrill wrapped in clothing.

Julia: I assume she was the other hot bee Pokemon. 

Eric:  Oh, she's definitely, yeah.

Amanda:  Vespiquen? Yes.

Eric:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  Julia, they're all hot, you're right, you're right.

Julia  Alright, alright, I see my mistake now.

Amanda:  Brandon, Staccy wanted to know what was the process like of editing Episode Four. How did it feel to hear things that were new to you on tape?

Brandon:  The only thing that's different. And the funny thing that I always think about when I edit these kinds of episodes where I'm not in them, is that it's frustrating because I can't go fast enough. 

Julia  Yeah, that's fair.

Brandon:  So it's like, I want to get to the story, but I'm so hampered by the fact that I have to cut stuff and you know, listen and do retakes and stuff, but I can't. So it like, imagine listening to the podcast on point 25 speed, and that'll be the experience of editing it.

Amanda:  Hey, that's not bad.

Julia  Damn. That sucks.

Eric:  Brandon, it is worst to listen at 2x speed or point 25 speed?

Brandon:  Umm.

Julia  Both are bad.

Brandon:  Both are bad, so just don't anymore, just stop. 

Eric:  Okay, got it. Got it.

Julia  Stop listening to the podcast, Brandon Grugle. 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  All podcasts are bad, Eric Silver. Julia, you and I need to really work on our—on our epithets here.

Julia  Fair enough. Fair enough. 

Amanda:  There's no ethical consumption under capitalism would be mine, I guess?

Brandon:  There's no ethical podcast under Capitalism.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  I was-- Brandon I was just gonna say that. 

Amanda:  Alright, so let's get to the least deeply felt section of this episode. Real ended on a himbo note with Troy Riptide. Eric, as I recall, you said to me, hey, what do you want to do? And I said, I don't know, hang up my bruvs, and you said no problem.

Eric:  You were the one who had the most fully formed idea of what you wanted to do. I think I did the least like plotting for you. You knew you were like Troy as a king's guard, I want to see it. I—he has bruvs. I really— I saw a Full Metal Jacket a bunch when I was a kid. 

Amanda:  Yep.

Eric:  We're going to do this. And I'm like, alright.

Amanda:  There you go. 

Julia  Amanda, that's wild to me.

Amanda:  Right?

Julia: There are so many other movies you could have been watching as a child—

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia  – instead you watched. Honestly one of the most scarring war movies possible.

Amanda:  That's right. I think my dad more wanted his four kids under six years old to do the this is my— this is my gun, there are other guns like it, but this one is mine monologue. Which he did—

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —about—

Julia  Wild.

Amanda:  —shovels, wheelbarrows you know? Ketchup bottles in the supermarket. I didn't— to his credit, I didn't see the full movie until I was only slightly too young for it. 

Julia  Well, that's good.

Amanda:  But no, I just—I love a montage and I love a training sequence. And one of the pleasures of playing Troy is that he's so unlike me, and I would never get myself into a situation where I need to do push-ups on command. So I just found it really interesting and I wanted to explore that time in his life.

Brandon:  Is saving Pineapple Ryan anything?

Eric:  Yes, it is.

Julia  Holy shit.

Eric:  Yes it is, Brandon.

Amanda:  Brandon, Brandon, that's the best fucking thing you've ever said.

Julia  Fuck. Damn, it. 

Eric:  Are we gonna take us like it for Julia to steam?

Amanda:  It's good. It's good.

Julia  Shit.

Brandon:  Shit.

Amanda:  Eric, do you have to say as much as I had a picture of what the premise of the scene was going to be, I was so charmed by broccoli Rob and three lips.

Eric:  Threelips!

Brandon:  Every character in your scene Amanda was an absolute banger of a character.

Amanda:  I know. But I have to say the thing I did not expect was to get some amount of real challenge and to like roll a die at the end of my scene. So Eric, how did you think about a sort of breaching of the walls and then like test of us as essentially Kingsguard in training?

Eric:  Yeah, I think the thing that—this was actually from you when you said that it was Hyperion but the Tired? Hyperion the Sleepy?

Julia:  Haggard, you said.

Eric:  Ohh, Hyperion the Haggard.

Brandon:  Hyperion the tired, come on Eric.

Eric:  Hyperion the sleepy boy.

Julia  The sleepy man. 

Amanda: The sleepy, sleepy tired man.

Eric:  The sleepy king. And I was like, Oh, no one's taking This seriously. Hyperion dude got installed by his house as like the oldest son, So he has to be king. The only person who was telling you to take him seriously was Lord Commander Cavendish. Lord Commander Cavendish Heart, but he sucks. Because—because he's a drill sergeant. And I think that was kind of the point is like everybody on the king's guard other than the leader was were fresh meat. So I think that this was been a perfect opportunity to immediately set assassinate Hyperion. And I think that Troy needed to realize that this was actually a really big deal. That you're not just like—

Amanda:  Bonding with your bros.

Eric:  You're not just bonding with your bros. I mean, listen, shout out to Game of Thrones, and iterating on that, That was great. I really like iterating on the kings guard stuff from like season one and season two. Coming up with a castle was really fun, I did not think we were going to do that. The fact that it was all—all the way up against the edge of the world was fucking awesome. 

Brandon:  Yeah. 

Eric:  I don't know if you saw from the image that I ma—that I made for this episode, but like finding a castle, and it was like, oh, the Crags really is Game of Thrones, I really like this.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  It was really fun. But yeah, I think that was based off-of you saying Hyperion the Haggard, and that rolling from there. I did want there to be something and I found that having like, like a sleeper cell group of termites was just funny.

Amanda:  Yes, it was.

Julia: That is very funny. 

Eric:  And I wanted to demonstrate that like Troy wasn't taking it seriously, but Troy is talented. So then that's kind of what I wanted to flesh out. And then you're the one— you're the one who said bros, were together forever. And I'm like, okay.

Amanda:  Yeah. Well, that is an element of my background as a mariner that I sort of like the idea is like, you really bond with like, your previous company and you actually carry like a, you know, a flag of a fallen soldier and like a memento from your labs. And I wanted to make sure that we, you know, we saw that element where, you know, Troy, unlike the others in the party has been driven to, you know, seek more for himself, nothing wrong With his life before. He—he wanted more, you know. And he wanted to elevate it. And so I think it was really interesting to get to see, you know, what that life could have looked like, where there's certainly nice things, but there's also a lot shit that doesn't make sense. And I know a lot in my life, I've like walked into workplaces where it's like, oh, we do things this way because the previous person did this way. Or like somebody had this job for 10 years and then retired. and now we all have to like, figure out how to do all these systems from scratch. And I was just really taken by the idea of a castle that's done that for 300 years. And there are all kinds of like rooms and caches and, you know, storage areas filled with various shit that people thought they would need, and then they like, got thrown out in a coup, and sort of what's left.

Brandon:  I hate it when that happens.

Amanda:  I know—

Brandon:  Thrown out in a coup.

Amanda:  —Troy just don't want to be. Just like fired from a job he likes in three years by beheading when someone else comes in to, to take over.

Brandon:  I can think of a few CEOs, I would like that though. 

Julia: Brandy, you really got to watch those hostile takeovers, they will behead you if there's too much overhead.

Amanda:  Barbarians at the gate, am I right?  That's a joke about Nabisco, baby.

Eric:  Brandon, you gotta check your lease to make sure you are getting out.

Brandon:  That was actually going to be my question for you, Amanda. was that, do you think of this episode, like in the sense of the—not like the literal JTP episode, that sense of an episode was the turning point? Or is this sort of the start of the turning points to make Troy leave his bros?

Amanda:  I think this is actually near the end of his decision-making process. Were earlier on, you know, we're I think, Eric, we said, like five or six months into the reign of Hyperion, the haggard. 

Eric: Yes.

Amanda:  And, you know, Troy has been in the equivalent of like, basic training and is starting to take over shifts and kind of get into the speed of things. And this is really, you know crystallizing for him, you know, turning away and attacker which should be sort of like the highlight, you know of his job is what he's here to do. I think that experience was like yep, nope, don't want to do this for the rest of my life and maybe die you know, in one of them one day. And in you know, asking poor Rob and Three Lips about you know, do you dream of bigger guys, like, do you want to see what's out there? And they're like, Nah, you know, really, you know, Troy is like, oh, you sweet lads, I will carry you in my heart, but you know, I'm—I'm going to do more in different.

Brandon:  Do you think that Troy then has like a co— I don't— sorry, if I'm taking this question from someone. But do you think Troy has like sort of a guilt complex about the fact that Troy left for bigger things means that Broccoli Rob and Three Lips are now more vulnerable?

Amanda:  I think that's absolutely true. And how much that's in the like, forefront of his mind. He probably tries to keep it down. Like, you know, Troy is a real, no thoughts, just vibes kind of character, but that is undeniable. And I think probably, if he, you know, stays still for too long and thinks about what he left behind for too long, he would ask himself if what he's doing and the glory he is trying to pursue for the Crags is ultimately worth it. And when he's going to return to when he’s returned home. Because there is a real risk, again, he's from the Crags. They're known for their sort of mercenary-like changing of ruling families, maybe he gets back Hyperion the Haggard is a footnote and somebody else has you know, taken over in that time. Maybe Rob and Three lips are still there, you know, with— with new guys under them, and maybe they're not like it's—it's real.

Eric:  Yeah, that's something I wanted to pull from, specifically about Robi and Three Lips like Cavendish Heart is still there because he's served under like 20 kings and queens and Royals, you know.

Amanda:  Eric, can I talk about like the chief White House Butler or porter, right, where like, there’s some staff that stays, and then you bring in your own policy people, but the like groundskeepers, you know, had been there for 25 years.

Eric:  Right. 

Brandon:  Well that— that banana fungus hasn't hit the Crags yet, so the cabin is still there.

Eric:  So theoretically, Brandon, great joke. The—no, you're right. No, you're right. Cavendish is the only one who's there that was postponed, that's why he's the only one who survived. Yeah, I think that like if Ro— only if Rob and Three Lips start to prove themselves, will they still be there? And I think that they were leaning on Troy's skill. You know, like I mean, this is very good well, hunting, right? Is like this one guy is really good, and he props up all of us that we can still being our Casey Affleck bullshit selves, and just keep going. So only unless Rob and Three Lips step the fuck up, will they actually survive, which I think is also part of Troy's conflict.

Julia:  I think you kind of answered my question, but I'll ask it anyway. And you can tell me because I think I know the answer. Does Troy ever hear from Rob and Three lips, like are they exchanging letters and stuff like on the Great Salt Sea?

Amanda:  I don't think he's heard from them since he left. We're pretty fresh into Troy's journey as a pirate when the campaign begins. But if we ever went into an opportunity to get word back to the Crags or to meet another Crag-ish citizen out on the Great Salt Sea, I bet Troy would have some questions for them. 

Julia  Yeah, hell yeah.

Brandon:  Eric question for you along those lines. When Threelips signs a letter does he just kiss it three times?

Eric:  Depends how much he is embrace this particular nickname. It is real like full metal jacket, some guy gave it to me and now everyone calls it and that to me and I don't know if I like it or if it's bullying. It's like I just have three pedals, guys, guys.

Brandon:  Can you tell me that Brando was bullied, Eric?

Julia  Damn.

Eric:  Your—you said your gym teacher called you Brando too.

Brandon:  Yeah that's— yeah, I think they did. Yeah, you're right. 

Amanda:  I quote Brandon from three years ago. Anything other than my name, I like better than my name John. it's real.

Brandon:  God, fucking preach.

Julia:  Damn.

Brandon:  It's real.

Eric:  If— they're saying let's go, Brando, it's different. They're really—everyone is a Join the Party listener.

Brandon:  Cool.

Amanda:  Alright folks, a couple questions to finish up episode four. Malignant Sloth says I thought Rob's name would be Rob because he's broccoli, Rob. But him being easy to Ro is funny too.

Eric:  It's both.

Julia:  That's what I thought the joke was.

Eric:  It's both, it's both.

Julia: Okay. 

Brandon:  It’s both.

Amanda:  I thought, oh his was named Robert. Great.

Eric:  Yeah, it's both.

Amanda:  And Z3brim wants to know, do you expect any of the people we met in these flashbacks coming back in the future as they to look for the salmon?

Eric:  No, that sounds stupid and bad.

Julia:  I agree. I don't think you should do that, Eric.

Brandon:  Eric, if we flashed back on Troy thing, would we see Broccolini Rob?

Julia:  Ohh.

Eric:  True.

Julia:  Little baby broccoli.

Eric:  In my head even actually, that's a very good point, in my head, all of Rob's family were different parts of Brassica. So I think they like he has a cauliflower sister and a Brussels sprouts little Brother and stuff. So yes, so the answer Brandon is yes.

Brandon:  That's cute.

Amanda:  Today's video about how when broccoli like you— you pick broccoli obviously before it's fully ripe because when it ripens, all the little—all the little buds turn into flowers.

Julia  [sings] All the little buds. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Everyone: [sings] All the little buds.

Eric:  [sings] And the sky is—

Julia  [sings] Flowers now.

Eric:  [sings] —and the sky is greeeey.  

Amanda:  [sings] And bees really like it, bees really like it.

Eric:  [sings] I went for a walk. 

Amanda:  Alright you crazy kids. 

Eric:  Sorry, I couldn't change the backing track. I just had one stem, I'm sorry.

Amanda:  I'm gonna pop into the kitchen and get us—

Brandon:  Wait, no. Amanda, you got to finish your thought, what are you gonna say? 

Amanda:  Oh no, that bees really like it. Bees really like—

Julia  Oh okay.

Amanda:  Bees likes really flowered broccoli.

Julia:  You saying the conclusion, so we thought he was just part of the goof. 

Amanda:  Yeah. Ironically, I did get us a tray of broccoli and cauliflower with some ranch in the kitchen. So just don't think about it too hard. Shh. Shh.

Julia:  I'm fine with it.

Eric:  This broccoli is winking.

Julia:  No it's fine, don't worry about it.

Amanda:  Be right back.

Julia:  Bees have a nose. 

[theme]

Amanda:  Hey, it's Amanda. One thing I did not say during our discussion of Julia's portion, Cammie's portion of the Episode 4, was that I was listening to it while food shopping, and I did get teary-eyed while ordering a pound and a half of honey Turkey from the deli. So this mid-roll is brought to you by moving moments in the sort of most unexpected places. Thank you so much to our newest patron Janine, you picked a wonderful time to come on board because you can enjoy party planning our bi-weekly podcast aka fortnightly for the non-US listeners out there, including the one from April 14 where we played to all those I've heard. One page RPG about YouTubers making absurd apologies and it's incredibly good. Now party planning is both an audio and video podcast at the $10 level, you can watch the video of us using props and framing and all kinds of absurd glasses to really bring our YouTuber apologies to life, it was incredibly fun. And I gotta say doing the video podcast and doing streaming which by the way we do on Twitch,  twitch.tv/jtpsidequests at 3 pm Eastern every Thursday has really made us be better like visual players. We make a lot more jokes for each other while recording in Google Meet than we ever did before, and it's incredibly wonderful. So if you want to enjoy the goodness and the visual puns, join the Patreon at the $10 level you get that as well as add free episodes and bloopers and so much more. Go to patreon.com/jointhepartypod. This week at Multitude, If you've ever wondered what life would be like on a different planet from our own, like say Verda Stello a Bialy-shaped world like we're living on now. Or how writers like Eric make your favorite fictional worlds, you can wonder no more because Eric went on the wonderful podcast here at Multitude Exolore. Where astrophysicist/folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier explores fictional worlds by building them with a panel of expert guests interviewing professional world builders, like our one GM, Eric, and reviewing the merits of worlds that have already been built. Eric did an fabulous episode all about Verda Stello, so you should really go and check it out. Every episode of Exolore will teach you something, will make you laugh, and make you also gain an appreciation of how special our planet really is. So search for Exolore in your podcast app, or go to exolorepod.com. We are sponsored today by Twenty Sided Store. This is our friendly local game store that can also be yours by the power of shipping. Not like where you have two relationships, you know that like you think you're really good and fictional stuff but— but the male, you know what I mean. Eric and I just stopped by the store this past weekend, and oh my god, they Have some amazing stuff. Now remember, their old space has now turned into an event space where they're having all kinds of incredible live events. And they have a brand new storefront just a block and a half away at 280 Grand Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where you can see all of the fabulous stuff they've set up. It truly feels like sort of an evolution of the Twenty-Sided Store that if you visited you come to know and love. It is big and clean and has a beautiful window, lovely lighting, and we found so many very, very cool items that we didn't expect to see. Eric pointed out to me I'd never seen before the like card packs that you can add to the game Fiasco to play out some of like the scenarios that they have made. They've incredible dice, of course, but I was so surprised to see how many Ziens they had. They had one that was like a bar crawl of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, which is the neighborhood we live in. And it was so incredible. I love Zine so much. and also a physical version of a Quiet Year, which I had never seen before. I didn't even know they made a physical version. I thought it was just the– the digital edition that I had played before. Oh,  Twenty Sided trust—of course, you're teaching me and showing me brand new stuff. So listen, whether you visit them in person, or buy and ship to your house online, use the code PIRATE for 20% off your order. If you're there in person, you can just mention Join the Party, but if you're online use code PIRATE for 20% off your order at twentysidedstore.com. Spell out the word Twenty, twentysidedstore.com. This show is also sponsored by BetterHelp. And I am constantly learning stuff about myself. Often I gotta tell you in therapy, I— you know, have all kinds of times in my life when I've like realized that I enjoy a new food or it's something I used to like wasn't you know, bringing me as much pleasure anymore. Or you know, I try something different, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I actually really love this, and I'm really glad I know this about myself. But therapy is the place where I really go to, you know, with someone who I know and trust and who is trained to kind of help me think through these things, figuring out how I can make my life more fun for me to live really. And what in my past may have led to some of the like challenges or thoughts that I have now, and how I can kind of work with and not against myself to accomplish what I want to accomplish and to show up for my friends and loved ones and do better at work and all that kind of stuff. And if you're looking for an easier way to start therapy, I would really consider BetterHelp. I used it when I couldn't find a therapist near me and it is convenient and entirely online. You can discover your potential with BetterHelp. visit betterhelp.com/jointheparty today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterHELP.com/jointheparty. And now let's get back to the after-party.

[theme]

Amanda:  Alright, folks, we are back. And believe it or not, we have two more episodes of this dang podcast to talk about, so—

Julia:  Let's fucking go. 

Amanda:  Let's get into the skill tree baby. And Eric from early on, you cited Cult of the Lamb as one of the inspirations for this campaign, which all of us thought, huh, pirate story, how's that going to work? But base building was a huge part of what we talked about in our inspiration for the world. And of course, our base-building episode. So getting to actually spend some time on our base and build it out and think about this fabulous skill tree, the image of which you have created and tweeted and you can find as well on our website. Gosh, I'm so excited. So how did this stack up to the inspo and the hopes that you had before the campaign began?

Julia:  Yeah, Eric how?

Brandon:  I shall say real quick, Eric that before we start I'm so excited to get to the part of the campaign where our base is so large and built out that we start chugging and we lose frames. It's gonna be so fun.

Amanda:  It's gonna be great.

Eric:  I— listen, we got some really good questions based on this, which I'm very excited to point out, but Brandon, me too. Ah, so I'm just—

[Brandon pretends to be buffering]

Amanda:  You know I love—

Eric:  Umbi blow—blows up his workshop and it happens like in over 30 seconds because he only got one frame at a time.  It's like, oh, I gotta get a new switch, this one was one of the originals.

Julia:  We wait until we get enough Amber that we can put big head mode on Umbi.

Amanda:  Maybe some rainbow sunglasses?

Julia:  You like that one, buddy?

Eric:  I forgot about the cheat code route of the skill tree, yeah. 

Amanda: Yeah, up down up down left right.

Julia:  There's a bunch of question marks on that tree I’m sure--

Amanda:  That's true.

Julia:  Once we unlock it, one of them will be Umbi Big Head mode. 

Eric:  Yeah. And then you can play as Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

Amanda:  Oh no.

Brandon:  Unlimited Blitz.

Eric:  Yeah, just put—you can actually you can just enter in Rosebud into the command line and you get a bunch of doublooms. That's—that's just the same. What was the original question?

Amanda:  The original question was, how was the process of turning the idea inspo and hope to put base building as part of this campaign into an actual skill tree?

Eric:  Yeah, I mean, we've been kicking this around for a little bit. We did this with entanglements. I kind of like this randomization, I want to encourage everyone to listen to our downtime episodes, because they're good and interesting. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I really like having downtime episodes. It might be something that was put into me by the first season of the Adventure Zone because the lunar episodes were always really fun to me when they got new items and leveled up and everything. I just really like it, and I don't want to give it up. I hope that people are listening to them, and I tried to make the skill tree a little bit interesting and kind of introducing some new NPCs that we've only kind of like, roughly talked about. It's also a good time to just like fuck around and then set up the next episode, which we were able to do with Aurelo, which I was really, really enjoying playing him because he's my favorite NPC.

Amanda:  Listen, Eric, if someone didn't listen to the downtime episode, they'll be very fucking confused who Havana Tropicana is so they got.

Eric:  True, fucking true.

Julia:  My favorite character.

Brandon:  I think they are— I think the stats say they are, right? I think everyone's listen.

Eric:  I know, it's just like a fee—I don't know it's this feeling that I have. I don't know if it's actually true, but it's sure. I don't know—

Amanda:  You know were like fewer questions a little bit less engagement on that episode, and so my— I was like, oh, maybe they're like waiting or thinking that it's because it's downtime, they want to like wait for a new work? I don't know.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  Or maybe Eric just did such a great job explaining the system that they didn't have any question. 

Brandon:  Yeah. It's like when there's like less fanfiction for a thing, that means you sort of like, you know, build out the relationships in a decent and satisfying way, so that's one situation. 

Eric:  Got it. Yeah, Brandon, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. 

Julia:  Aww.

Eric:  So yeah, I mean, I'm fe—I'm really happy with the skill tree. It was fun taking a video game concept and turning into tabletop RPG stuff. It was fun balancing the two. I thought like, I really liked Cult of the Lamb, but I thought that the balance between the farming aspect and the fighting aspect was out of whack, and I really wanted to fix that problem for what we were doing here. And again, taking shit off, I wanted to do this as fast as possible. So episode four and five were bangers so people can get into this show as fast as possible. But no, it was really fun, and I hope you all enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun to make, it was a lot of fun do to graphic design. I want to give a shout out as always to Mischa for me running this stuff by them. And of course my friend Peter over-- who I know from Rifftrax, who I hit up on Discord sometimes. And I'm like, hey, Peter, you do game stuff all the time, can you look at this? And they actually encouraged me to do the— I had something else in place of the island like control one. 

Amanda:  Oh, yeah. 

Julia:  Oh cool.

Eric:  And it was a valuable edit.

Amanda:  Now that's great. I was really intrigued by that option. So so cool, and I respect Eric, that you're telling us about all the folks who help you come up with all these ideas, because it's your baby, but you have some fun advisors.

Brandon:  You have some good nannies that help you along the way.

Amanda:  Exactly.

Julia:  I love a nanny.

Eric:  Some nannies?

Julia:  Yeah. 

Brandon:  Yeah, they help you raise the babe, you know.

Eric:  Ohh, they're helping me raise the baby. Yes, I'm like, am I— I'm five?

Brandon:  No, no, you're the parent.

Julia:  Goo goo gah gah, here’s my base building,

Amanda:  You know, your—your infant knows to count in German because you have an au pair. 

Eric:  Yeah, I mean, something I've been— I mean, this has been a thing going around a lot that like people think that Dimension 20 is scripted. And I'm like, that's not true. That's the— you— you need to go meet some new and some very talented and improvers and see it.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  And none of you think this, none of your listeners, but it's out there in their fandom. But at the same time, it's like, you know, these really big shows who live in LA, you know they have writers, they have creative consultants whose job it is to help the dungeon masters do this stuff. And I don't, it is just the four of us working on this. And through the wonder of their hearts, I hit Mischa up at two in the morning, my time because I need to think about something or I'm able to ask one of my friends. So like, I can't ask the three of you what you want necessarily because of the reveal needs to come out good on microphone. You know, I'm still trying to impress the three of you. And there's only a limited number of people who I can do, who I don't feel like I'm spoiling a piece of art for them. So it's just like it's really important and I'm really trying to put a lot of time and effort into it. It's like, you know, I don't have writers and I can't just like bust out a speech like that, unless I write it out like I did with Dr. Radish Radish. But like, you know, I'm really trying to do my best and you know this is— I think what makes Join the Party stand out is like, this is a game we are using— I think because it is what tabletop RPGs are set up for, using games to create a story, but also everyone has fun because that's what games are for.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Totally. 

Amanda:  Hell yeah. 

Brandon:  Hey Eric, you're doing a great job. 

Eric:  Thanks, bud.

Julia:  Hey, Eric—

Brandon: Great jorb.

Julia:  —you rock.

Eric:  Thanks. This doesn't happen till later, but Julia did say that I put my whole Eric Silver-ussy to something and I—that was—that was actually the nicest thing someone ever said about me. 

Julia:  I don't know if that made it onto microphone, but yeah.

Eric:  No, you said it after we stopped recording but it really—

Julia:  Okay good.

Eric:  It really made me feel good.

Amanda:  Well, now it’s canon.

Brandon:  I thought you were gonna say you put your whole Eric Silver ass into something.

Julia:  Yeah.  

Amanda:  Let's figure— Ussy or the ass?

Eric:  I don’t know, it depends. On the internet it's -ussy.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  It depends on the person, really.

Amanda:  One literally, one spiritually, you know it happens. So we had a really insightful question from Savedman97.

Eric:  Yes, this is an incredible question. 

Amanda:  Yeah, really, really good. You are paying attention, sir/ma'am/mx, thank you very much. So they said listening to the discussion on the skill tree, it seems pretty free as far as what some of the skills do after they get unlocked, versus very rigid mechanics in most skill trees. Is this more so that the players have more freedom? Or was this done more to allow for fluidity in the narrative? And then in parentheses, they have (also loved the old-school console descriptions to go with it all.) What an insightful and great question.

Eric:  The answer is, yes, you nailed it. That's how we— how we change something from video games skill tree to tabletop RPG skill tree it's opening. Brandon identified it immediately by saying we got to dig some shit up. Because that's— that's what that was for. Some of these things were mechanical, like the monster wrangler section, some of it were more open-ended, like the backstory unlocked or the—the dig and roll section. And then yeah, that's yes, that's the answer. And I want—I need to make it fun enough for all of you to make it seem like you might want to do something, even if it's not mechanically fun, but there has to be a mechanical element to it. I think a really interesting thing that I learned from Cult of the Lamb is like you add cultist, is kind of the main thing. And because it's an island, and I've also been playing Dredge lately, which is a wonderful indie game that you should all check out which is about like, spooky fishing. It's on PC and Switch for like $25 it's really good. 

Brandon:  Oh, it's on Switch?

Eric:  Yes, it's on Switch.  

Brandon:  Oh, I'm going to get—

Eric:  You should play it, Brandon.

Amanda:  You should definitely play it.

Eric:  It's— it gets difficult at the end, but like it's— it mechanic— it's story reasons, it makes a lot of sense.

Amanda:  Cool.

Eric:  And it's like, you know, you have to go to these islands to meet new people. And I thought they were like, well, you got to recruit people to the Hold to make sure that happened, which was like the whole thing of the Magnolia network. And with—with Havana, he had to wash up on sho—they had to wash up on shore. And that's like a very important part of what we're doing here. So yeah, that was—that was the—that's exactly what I was— I was reaching for– for sure.

Brandon:  I just want to let the audience know that I did have to cut me just yelling the word dig about 100 times in the episode.

Julia:  Dig.

Eric:  True.

Julia:  Dig.

Brandon:  Though,  yeah, it was really annoying even to me editing it, so I made sure to cut it all.

Amanda:  Yeah, and we can see here in the— in the Google Meet that Julia's in my eyes got the widest they've ever been when Eric mentioned giant crab.

Julia:  Crab, crab.

Amanda:  And mell118 agrees with us, less of a question more of a comment. They say I just think you guys should befriend the giant crib.

Julia:  I want to try.

Amanda:  I want to try too.

Julia:  My question I guess for Eric and it could be a who can say in the future. Are we going to have more opportunities to get more Amber's permission in the future? Because like, my favorite part about a skilled tree is like saving up and then it's like, alright, I'm gonna bang out 1234 of this particular branch so that I now the master of big crab or whatever. 

Eric:  That's a very good question. And I think it's actually someone asked something similar.

Amanda:  Yes. 

Julia:  Ohh, great.

Amanda:  Julia, you are totally on the same page of Sebolicious, who wanted to know like, “How do you kind of balance the amber to skill tree like size and redemption ratio? How much Amber will we get through the campaign? Is it just one per Arc? Can we unlock the whole skill tree? Is that even possible throughout the course of the campaign?”

Julia:  That's a good question. I want to—I'm a completionist, Eric.

Amanda:  Me too.

Julia:  I want to unlock the whole skill tree.

Brandon:  Eric, we will not stop playing this game until we unlock the entire skill tree.

Amanda:  We will not turn this car around. 

Julia:  We're just going to grind for like 10 episodes after the finale that you planned because I'm like, I still haven't unlocked all of Aubergine’s background.

Eric:  There—there gets to a point where that pop-up comes up is like you're about to go to the end game and you're like no we're doing side quests.

Amanda:  No, no, no, no. Cancel. Cancel. 

Julia:  No, 10 more episodes just as side quests!

Eric:  Here—here is my response. If there's a longer arc I will give you two points of XP. However, re Amber, you can go find it, it is the pirate currency. I'm sure everyone has it.

Julia:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Time to do some personal robbing. 

Amanda:  It's true.

Eric:  I mean, listen the—the– the cultists on Esca island had an amber currency creator, which probably is why they gave themselves over to the cult in the first place.

Julia:  We fucked up guys, we should have taken the giant sea monster with us on the ship so we can have infinite cheat code.

Amanda:  Yeah, Amber behind us. Yeah, 

Eric:  Well, you could have, you totally could have.

Brandon:  There's no reason we can't go back to Esca island with a larger complement of chips and people and take their shit.

Julia: I don't worry—

Eric:  You can, you totally can. That is— that's also why I wanted you to come back to the island because it's about you going away and you coming back and then making that decision.

Amanda:  Yeah. The question surgeon Michel Spurgeon wanted to know, “how often do you expect there to be downtime episodes? And will they always be on the home island, on the Hold.?" 

Eric:  They have to be on the home island. However, the arcs—it's whenever an arc is finished, and that is up to you play.

Julia:  Could be two episodes, could be six episodes. 

Eric:  A 100%, yeah.

Julia:  We don't know. 

Eric: But like, but you have to like, do a whole arc to get an XP, you know what I mean? 

Julia:  Hell yeah. 

Eric:  But you can always go back and do that stuff, but you need to return to the Hold to do it.

Julia:  I think we should just absolutely rob Qi Razzmatazz at the end of—

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  —the Legi Island one, because apparently, she's got mad Amber.

Brandon:  But—okay.

Julia:  Sorry that I'm saying we should rob your girlfriend, Umbi, but—

Eric:  I'm su—listen, I'm sure that— that deep promise that you made to—made to her probably won't [mumbles]

Brandon:  Yeah, it's no problem.

Amanda: I’m sure it’ll be fine. 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  It was just their marriage ceremony, I don't know what you know what you're talking about.

Eric:  No, it was—no it wasn't. But yeah, I mean, that's why—yeah, that's the video game mechanic and porting it over to tabletop RPG, yeah. But yeah, I want you to remember, this is— this is pirate currency. If you're not walking around with Amber, how are you supposed to get things done in pirate world?

Amanda:  It’s true.

Brandon:  Some pirate, kills my dog. I'm gonna get so much Amber.

Amanda:  It's over for you, host.

Julia:  Here you go, real John Wick.

Eric:  Umbi pu—Umbi goes all the way down where the ghost in the ship is and pulls out a—pulls a chest—

Eric:  Sledgehammer, yeah. pulls out a chest filled with Amber.

Amanda:  Alright guys. Julia, I'm gonna lay this responsibility at your feet—

Julia:  Oh, okay.

Amanda:  Because Katy Morris said “that entire interaction with Rudy was unhinged in the best way possible. What happened? And Eric were you expecting the party to act like quote “such nutballs" toward your new NPC? 

Brandon:  Such nutballs? 

Amanda:  Yes.

Brandon:  That's very good.

Julia:  So here's the thing. A lot of the motivation that I use to kind of propel Cammie forward is very much just unhinged kindness.

Eric:  Sure.

Julia:  Is how I try to approach everything that she does, right? So one, saving this poor, poor teenager from the crab, step number one. Step number two, you live here now congratulations. Step number three, Rudy doesn't seem like a pirate name. Now, you're Havana, Tropicana. I want you to fit in as much as possible. 

Amanda:  Oh yeah.

Julia:  So that was kind of the arc through line of my thinking. And also, I had come up with the name of Havana Tropicana, like weeks ago, and I was waiting for another citrus character to be introduced, and I was like, wait a second. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I think it was a week prior, Julia.

Julia:  Might have been.

Eric:  That's how long it is. That's how long she had to sit with it. It felt like years.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  It felt like years Brandon, and you don't understand it was bursting out of me.

Eric:  Can I tell you something? I truly had no idea what this NPC was going to be, because like what's the point of me prepping something on a skill tree like this, but I did end up making that NPC generator and make sure I didn't just do fruits I know.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  So that the—the generator did that, I rolled a D4 and a D10 and it gave me—gave us blood orange slice. And I just thought it would be really funny, if Rudy got thrown into the sea by his friend.

Brandon:  I think honestly like I— you may not have done this on purpose, or you may just do it inherently because you're good at your job. But I think that the personality type slotted perfectly into the tree of our complement.

Amanda:  Yes.

Brandon:  So yeah, I think it was a really useful, worthwhile and fun thing to add to our little crew.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Oh yeah.

Julia:  We adopted him immediately.

Amanda:  And I'll fully admit guys, I thought the no men are doctors thing was something—

Eric:  Fuck. I cannot believe—

Amanda:  —we—

Eric:  —that—

Amanda:  —I thought there was something we established in world-building, and I just forgot about. Cause Julia put her whole Julia-ssy into that joke. And it— it just man, gosh, it's good.

Julia:  Wait, no, I don't think I was the one that started it.

Brandon:  It was me.

Julia:  It was Brandon and then I yes anded, and then the rest of us just yes anded really hard.

Amanda:  Brandon seeded the idea, he offered—he offered the niblet and then we turned it into a full meal.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  This is—this is what happens after we've streamed for a year or whatever. 

Amanda:  Yes!

Brandon:  Like, it feels like we edited to make it like smoother, like to make us like feel like one person.

Amanda:  No!

Brandon:  No, no.

Amanda:  This—this—no.

Brandon:  I just say a thing, and then ever— it blooms.

Amanda:  Especially because the more beleaguered Eric looks, the more we're like, doubling down. Yes, it worked. It's like when kids learn a bad word, and they say it and their parents are like, I don't want to reinforce this, so I'm just not gonna react without saying anything. And then the kid knows anyway. 

Eric:  Well, what am I supposed to do when the three of you start establishing. I'm like, yeah, that's what it is.

Julia:  Yeah, that's the world now. Yep.

Eric:  That's the world.

Brandon:  Catch us on Twitch every Thursday at 3 PM Eastern.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  Come late. We usually take a while to ramp up.

Eric:  No, come early—

Amanda:  No, no, no, come early.

Eric:  — that's the good part. Come early, stay late out back.

Amanda:  Do stay out back. But Eric, Malignant Sloth wanted to know, “speaking of your NPC table, how did you come up with it? And what kinds of categories do you roll for?”

Eric:  Oh, I mean, just—I divided the four different types of Greenfolk and I looked up cool things that I wouldn't have thought of, especially for flowers. I really— and greenery, I wanted to make sure that I got a good enough version of all that stuff.

Julia:  Eric, I have been pondering a question for a while.

Eric:  Please.

Julia:  And like, I want you to tell me because this is your world, you can tell me. What category would a pine cone be under?

Eric:  A Greenery, but I don't know if— but like it would be an extension of the like a pine tree-tree, so it'd be greenery.

Julia:  Okay.

Brandon:  Yeah, Pine trees, just corpse, you know?

Julia:  Brandon, that's the opposite of what a pine cone is. 

Eric:  I would—

Julia:  They specifically bring new life. They're not a corpse, they're seed.

Eric:  I wouldn't necessarily do the seed, I think. I don't even know if I'd necessarily do that because I'd rather just do the pine tree. 

Julia:  Yeah, that's fair.

Eric:  You know what I mean? Okay. but a—anything that's not decidedly produce, a bug or a flower is greenery.

Julia:  Gotcha. Cool. 

Amanda:  Nice. Our friend Garrett also wants to know more about Harold, who we spent a little time with in Episode Five and every episode. And wants to know how we created and developed Harold?

Brandon:  Is there a specific person from Drag Race that you're emulating?

Julia:  We can tell that it's someone from Drag Race. 

Amanda:  It's a vestige, it's general.

Eric:  Does a vestige of some of my favorite drag queens.

Amanda:  It's a real top a nod of seasons, you know, like today.

Eric:  Yeah. I—listen, I just needed—I just really wanted to make sure that Harold was there from the jump in the first arc. So I'm like, okay, Harold's gonna be like, listen, we're gonna do it. And just making sure to establish the difference between Aurelo being a fop and Harold being a drag queen. Well, I just wanted to make those two established. But no, I just thought it was fun. I just thought it was fun.

Julia  Damn, right.

Brandon:  I think these are two of the most, I guess to find, but like definitely, like most like, fleshed out versions of like, you know, NPC stereotype things that you've done so far. They're really fun. 

Eric:  Hell yeah, dude. I love Harold. Ha—Harold's great, especially when you started sailing, and Harold was doing everything. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  I just thought that was—I thought it was really, really wonderful, and we're gonna use  Harold more often.

Julia:  We're just terrible pirates and it's all Harold. 

Amanda:  Yeah, no I—

Brandon:  Yeah, a 100% Julia.

Amanda:  I'm really excited about the concept of the little Harold spin-off, tracking Aurelo for us I love that for him

Brandon:  Harold spinning off.

Julia  Oh yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Oh right. Little Harold—

Julia:  The Rolly, yeah.

Eric:  —so funny.

Brandon:  What was that, Ollie?

Julia:  We went Harry and then we went Rolly.

Brandon: Rolly, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Yeah, little Rolly.

Julia:  Harold.

Amanda:  And Venus Moon 314, who I can tell is a stream viewer and I'll tell you why.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Wants to know—

Brandon:  Every Thursday at 3 pm Eastern. 

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah, exactly. On twitch.tv/jtpsidequests. Indeed. Asked, if Harold had a little hat, what would it look like and where would it go?

Julia:  On the butt, on the butt. Didn't go to hat college.

Eric:  I didn't fucking go to hat college, I don't know. How I'm supposed to know? 

Brandon:  Is Harold an algae? I didn't go to algae college, it is what it is?

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  I think Harold would have a little bowler hat with a cute feather on the butt.

Eric:  Hell yeah.

Brandon:  That just makes me think of Peaky Blinders and I think Harold would fit very nice, if Harold would've have joined Peaky Blinders.

Eric:  Harold would enjoy.

Julia:  I think it's just a blonde wig.

Amanda:  Also good, like He-man. 

Eric:  Yeah. To answer Garrett's original question, this one's just based off the world-building choice that Brandon made in on the Sea Whip during—when we were figuring that out, and Brandon's like alright, it looks like garbage. And I'm like, okay, great.

Julia:  Harold is trash

Eric:  Harold is trash and Harold is my friend. Yeah.

Brandon:  I think for me Harold was wearing you know the Chips Ahoy hat that they're wearing in Stranger Things at the ice shop— at the ice cream shop. 

Amanda:  No.

Brandon:  It's like a nautical

Julia:  It’s a nautical hat.

Eric:  Oh yeah, like a three-corner nautical hat. Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah, this has a holy on it. 

Amanda:  Yeah, sure.

Eric:  Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Amanda:  And that of course folks brings us to Episode Six the beginning of our newest arc at the Book Depository and Legi Island. You don't even know all the wonders that are in store in Legi Island yet, we do because we have played it. But we have some questions already about the beginning of this arc. So Sarah purple people eater wants to know, “did the players get to hear the intro to Dr. Radish Radishes' book or was it just recorded for the listeners?” Just for you guys. 

Brandon:  Should we reveal the—the thing Eric, or should we not?

Eric:  Sure. Would you— go ahead. 

Brandon:  Well, the reality is that when we were recording, I had a doctor's appointment that I had to run to, so we had in recording kind of quickly. And so when I edited it, we were like 6,7,8 minutes short of an hour, which is what we try to aim for if we can. And so I was like, Eric, we either need a very long mid-roll, or let's add some stuff. 

Eric:  Yes, that's exactly what happened.

Julia:  I like my answer, where it's like, we made something special just for you guys. Yo.

Amanda:  Well, I like—I like this behind the curtain because the— the thing was, you know, it's like 8 o'clock, on a Saturday or something here and it's like, alright, I got to work for a little while, goes into the library at home. And 25 minutes later has— has busted out this beautiful monologue, no edits.

Brandon:  Of course. Necessity breeds invention or whatever, you know.

Eric:  That—it's truly, I feel pretty good about that. Do you want to know where that came from? 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Eric:  I was inspired by the intro to Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance. 

Julia:  Wow. Okay.

Eric:  JD Vance, current Senator, giant douchebag wrote this. He was like—so the whole point of hillbilly—

Brandon:  That’s what it says on his nameplate–

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I fucking wish, yeah.

Brandon: Giant douchebag.

Eric:  So the whole thing about JD Vance is like he was 31, and he wrote this memoir, Hillbilly Elegy because he was like working in DC, doing like libertarian stuff. But then he was like, I can speak to like poor rural America. And he wrote a memoir when he was 31, which was ridiculous. And that was the what the intro was about, how— you might be asking why I'm writing this, and it's because I've seen some stuff. And I thought that was really interesting thing, especially this were us going to a Book Depository, and I thought that was an interesting jumping-off point to show this. And I think that was very similar to Dr. Radish Radish, trying to write a self-help book right after the Cascade started. And then we kind of spiraled out from there. That also story happened to me. 

Brandon:  What?

Eric:  That the story in Dr. Radish Radishes that he wrote—

Amanda:  Wait, what?!

Eric:  —that happened to me. My mom and my dad were divorced when I was 10, but they lived in like, condos that were— my brother and I could walk between.

Julia:  Oh, okay.

Brandon:  Hey, man, my parents said that too, before they gave up that.

Eric:  Yeah, my dad gave up on that a little— a little while after that and—

Brandon: Yatatatata, broken families.

Amanda:  As broken families breed creativity.

Eric:  Yeah, right. And then in the summer, I guess it was the summer, but like my mom had custody of us during the weekdays. But my—we hung out with my dad on the weekends. And I guess it must have been the summer because I wanted to go to a card shop because I was— I'm really into basketball cards, and I was at the time. And while I was going with my neighbors and I told my stepmom who was over my dad's condo, and she was like taking a nap or something. And I'm like, hey, I'm going with the neighbors to go get a cards, I'll be back later. And this was pre-cellphones, or like, I didn't have a cell phone at that time, yeah.

Amanda:  Pre- IPhone, post-911, baby. PIPNE

Eric:  Yeah. So we ended—we ended up going to the card store, and then they were like, hey, we're going to our church, and we have to sell roses because we're doing some sort of fundraising thing. And I'm like, okay, fine. And then I sold a bunch of roses, and then it took longer. And then when I came back, my stepmom was like, your mom's really mad. And I'm like, why? And she's like, I don't know where you were, and I'm like, what? And then my mom came back and she was fucking pissed at me because she's—and then she told me similar thing.

Brandon:  Rita!

Eric:  She—my mom gets very mad very fast. So—and I'm like, I told her, it's not my fault that she's—that she is not—and I'm like, oh, some adults aren't trustworthy. And that's kind of where they came. That's kind of where they came from, and I thought and applied.

Brandon:  Well, I think you absolutely fucking nailed the sort of like, late 19th century, early 20th-century method of writing, and I was like in awe of that. That was really impressive, like American style, at least.

Eric:  Yes. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. That's what I was going for.

Julia:  Nice. 

Amanda:  Good shit, man. 

Eric:  Yeah. Did you two listen to—Julia, did you and Amanda listen to it? 

Julia  Yeah. Of course.

Eric:  Okay.

Julia:  I listened to every episode, man.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  I was just asking. I was just asking. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I don't because I hate the sound of my own voice, and I can't do it. 

Brandon:  Julia has to do the transcripts too.

Julia:  So I also had to—I listened to it twice. I listened to it once just for funsies and then I listened to it a second time to do the transcripts. 

Amanda:  Yeah. No, I—I thought it round out the episode so nicely and you know again, necessity breeds innovation. I couldn't imagine the episode without it, it's lovely. 

Julia:  Hell yeah. 

Amanda:  Treybieee says, “Nice Narnia reference with the dusk shredder.” Do you want to know Trey, how many times we said Dawn Treader while recording that episode?

Eric:  It was a lot.

Amanda: A lot. 

Eric:  It was a lot.

Amanda:  A lot. It's true.

Brandon:  At some point, Eric was like, fuck, I should just call it Dawn Treader.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  And “Tattooed N Tall wants to know, was there a discussion about Lake Ark Encounter beforehand? Or was Brandon just on the same wavelength as Eric with an unspoken joke?”

Brandon:  Guys, here's the thing that I think maybe our audience doesn't realize about me because I'm not—I don't— I can't put this part of me into content, is I fucking love conspiracy people and terrible, horrible religious shit, that's bullshit. I—it's—

Julia:  Okay.

Brandon:  —my mission in life to be like yo, the fucking dinosaurs didn't exist with the humans' guys. And so of course I already fucking knew about Ken Ham and the Ark Encounter and all that bullshit. I've watched the Ken Ham-Bill Nye debate not late, eight years ago.

Eric:  Incredible.

Julia:  Wow.

Eric:  I explicitly asked Brandon about it because I knew he would tell me.

Brandon:  Yeah, Eric asked a very vague question that was like what's the thing of like that like one weird you know, architect whatever is like, Oh, this thing that you're talking about?

Julia:  Sends link.

Eric:  There's a bunch of stuff like this, there was like, again, I think there was a reference some— the McElroy is another reference because they grew up in West Virginia and like quasi fundamentalist way, so they have referenced this before. But there's like Bible land, and theme parks that I was—I was reaching for in this—that in this particular reference, and I couldn't remember it, and then Brandon told me about the ark, and I thought that was really interesting.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  But Eric does, again, try to maintain some mystery and surprises. So as I recall, he, you know, asked in Slack, just like one random day that we weren't recording, like, oh, Brandon what was this thing? And Brandon's like, oh, I know what it is. And like, gave a link right away. And then, you know, two weeks later, while recording, Brandon goes, Oh, that's why you asked me that question about this thing. And you know, we go into the world.

Brandon:  I did. I did say that in the episode, and I did cut it because I don't want at least when you're in the fiction, I don't want you to like, have a mental picture of an exact actual thing. I want you to think of the world that Eric created.

Julia:  Right. 

Brandon:  So like, it would have been more obvious that like, it's something that we knew and referencing if I had kept that in, but I didn't want you to like just think of Ken Hams Bible trick, you know? 

Eric:  Yeah. And we haven't been there yet, so we don't even know what it looks like, necessarily. 

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah. But now we've had some time to live with the Epi, that's why we get into it in the after-party, baby.

Julia:  Woo!

Eric:  I really want you guys to go there, but we'll see.

Julia:  We'll see. Maybe you teased this cool little Six Flags thing, and we're like, no, no.

Eric:  I know. I want to clarify, this is like a Disney World, California Adventure situation where you can go to either, but you have to pay the toll. And that's the situation so they— so there's still always an opportunity for you all to go to Lake Encounter, even when you're on Legi Island, that's like part of being inside of the toll. That's why I kept making a big deal of them validating your parking.

Julia:  Right.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  I think it's very similar to like Park hopping at like Disneyworld—

Eric:  Exactly.

Julia:  —or Disneyland or something. Like that's what you paid for is the park Hopper pass.

Eric:  Yeah, I say yes, exactly. 

Julia:  Gotcha. 

Brandon:  Now, you're only allowed to park hopped once a day, and it's only after 1 pm. It's fucking bullshit, Julia.

Julia:  I think they changed it. You can— you can park hopped unlimited now after 1 pm. But I agree it is bullshit.

Eric:  The mouse is to get it to fucking together. 

Brandon:  I know.

Julia:  God damn mouse.

Amanda:  Alright, folks, we have a ton of great questions about the game and our world, and making the podcast as well. So let's get into it because there's so much more of the Book Depository to find out. But you'll get that in the next couple episodes, maybe? 

Julia:  Woo!

Brandon:  Weee!

Eric:  Wahoo!

Julia:  That was my tribute team name this week, Eric was Chris Pratt says Wahoo.

Eric:  That's great.

Julia:  They got to the Mario Wahoo too.

Eric:  Very good.

Amanda:  Alright. Here is another good question from Sebelicious. I don't know if I want to ask, but my brain did ask me. What other jobs besides Doctor in Verda Stello are only women? Are there any typically male jobs? You know in Verda Stello, men are just particularly caring and emotional, and like can't necessarily be trusted with leadership. So it's not a coincidence that a woman is leading the fucking Senate now, is it?

Eric:  Here's the thing actually, in Hot House, the majority of builders are nonbinary because being on one side of the continuum is seen as weak when you're in the gladiator game.

Julia: Balance, bitch. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Exactly.

Amanda:  Yeah. Yes.

Brandon:  That's funny. 

Julia:  Yeah. Umbi's really an odd duck in the Senate because he is a dude, so—

Amanda:  Like, wait, you're a man. Are you sure your— is your brain big enough for this? 

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I might be old enough that he’s agender at this point. 

Julia:  Yeah. It's true.

Brandon: The gender has just aged out of him. 

Amanda: Like yeah, it’s not important to me. 

Eric:  Fair, fair, fair.

Brandon:  The doublooms gap in Verda Stello that is very large

Amanda:  It is. It is, serious problem. Amnotagoldfish says if stone or seeds equal heart and Pawpaws have an average of 120 seeds, does that explain Umbi's longevity? Is he like a cat squared where he loses a seed but doesn't die if he has any seeds left?

Brandon:  Unfortunately, what's this—what's the user's name?

Amanda:  This is am not a goldfish? 

Brandon:  Am not a goldfish, I think you might be confusing pawpaw fruit for a papaya. Because a pawpaw fruit has like six seeds.

Amanda:  So, Umbi's only halfway through his life on, he got three left.

Brandon:  Yeah. But a papaya or some other—okay, when you Google pawpaw fruit, some stuff comes up that I don't think as the pawpaw, so—

Eric:  Sure.

Brandon:  I don't have that many seeds. But the other points still same.

Amanda:  Yeah. Is there some seed-to-longevity situation where like a cat nine lives you know, Umbi can like lose some seeds but still be chugging.

Brandon:  Maybe I'm like a ruminant, I have four seeds to eat my food with.

Amanda:  I—I mentioned before we started recording that I went to an heirloom tomato seed workshop last night at an Italian restaurant. 

Eric:  My wife loves me.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  My life—

Eric:  That's why I'm a wife guy, because Amanda goes to—goes to a tomato plant.

Amanda:  It was great. No and one of the first things that the guy who described himself as a tomatoholic said at the beginning of the workshop.

Julia:  Was it just Eric in a mustache? 

Amanda:  It might be Eric in 30 years if he owned a pizzeria in Brooklyn, but lives in Southampton. Which Eric, I want that for you.

Brandon:  Hey, that could be it.

Eric:  That could be it.

Julia:  This is what happens when you like just smoosh Eric and Jake together.

Eric:  Jake and I do the Dragonball Z fusion?

Amanda:  Yes, that's your Digi evolution.

Brandon:  Do you get Luigi when you do that?

Julia:  It's Jeric.

Brandon:  Jeric.

Amanda:  But the first thing he said was like, alright, well if you want to save seeds, if you have like a particularly delicious, you know, like fruit or vegetable or you have a great tomato and you want to save the seeds and try to grow them, you have to ferment the seeds, because the seeds have a coating around them. And then he said a phrase that I’ve-- that left me sleepless last night, which was, that's why seeds don't germinate inside the fruit. Because they have like a coating around them that prevents them from growing. And I was like, oh man. Oh no. This is like the urban legend where if you eat a watermelon, you'll get a watermelon plant growing inside you. I fucking hate this.

Julia:  Oh, Amanda that's the--

Brandon:  It's like an alien but for plants. 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Julia:  That's what I was thinking, Brandon. Where it's like, it's a baby that's gonna burst out of me like a fucking chest-burster.

Eric:  I'm sorry, I've been thinking about me and Jake doing like the Charleston and then us combining—

Julia:  Steven Universe.

Eric:  Yeah, Steven Universe, where we go darat dat, darat da. And then we’re one-- and then we become one guy.

Julia:  But you're like eight feet tall? 

Eric:  Yeah, exactly. 

Amanda:  Yeah, what color is your jam? Like a nice heirloom tomato, like red with an orange stripe?

Eric:  Yeah, for sure. 

Julia:  Yeah, you guys are one of those watermelon tourmalines.  That's what it is.

Eric:  True, yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Anyway, that's what's in my brain right now. Moving on.

Eric:  Use a sword gun.

Julia:  That’s cool shit. 

Eric:  Sorry, sorry, it's a gun sort. I'm sorry, Final Fantasy fans, please back off, back off.

Julia:  Excuse me, Kingdom Hearts fans, but alright.

Eric:  Yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  Um, Jessica Jarrett wants to know if the Cascade was the main source of water in Verda Stello, does that mean that it doesn't rain much in the world? Or is it precipitation that not made of water, but something else? 

Brandon:  Ohh.

Julia:  No, I think that there is still like precipitation, but even if it rain a normal amount, you're not going to have enough water to like not have drought-like conditions, you know.

Brandon:  Right.

Julia:  Like the cycle of precipitation, especially with a great Salt Sea silicon to exist, but it's definitely not the amount of water that people had while the Cascade was active, right?

Eric:  A 100%. And also there's—the Cascade comes out of the sky. So we don't even know what the mouth of it or if it comes directly from the sky. Like it's not exactly the same because of the fantasy. It's a good point, but I think you just got to imagine and I explained this to Dr. Moiya McTier on Exolore, with a graphic. Is like you'd have to imagine that the mouth of every single river in Verda Stello comes from the Cascade. And like, so regardless of precipitation, it's still tha— like that's how rivers work in our world, right?

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  So what Julia said is exactly correct.

Brandon:  Guys, what if the origin point of the waterfall is just the open mouth of the planter?

Eric:  I'm sure people—

Amanda:  I hate that.

Eric:  —Brandon, I'm sure people believe that. 

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  Some people definitely believe that.

Amanda:  Totally. 

Eric:  Or it's directly out of the planters watering bucket.

Brandon:  Oh, that's fun, I like that. 

Amanda:  That's cute.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Mine was gross, yours was cool.

Eric:  It's the same, it's depending on what sect you talk to.

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Julia:  One is spit. The other is cute.

Amanda and Eric: Yeah. 

Amanda:  Robert McDaniel asks if we're able to share any more about how the nations of Verda Stello relate to each other. So of course, Open Fields gross produce, and then exports it, but can we share any more about how the nations interact as countries rather than within their own individual zones?

Eric:  Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I wanted to have a world that existed outside of the Great Salt Sea and we will flesh it out, as it makes sense, as necessary. But I thought it was kind of fun that we're leaving a lot of this ambiguous. I mean, in my head, Open Fields is the breadbasket. But that is not to say that other parts of the country also grows food, but they're more skeeved out by it, so they do it less. However, in Overstock, they especially don't, because they don't want to think about it, and they're thinking about spiritual stuff. So that specifically, they don't grow stuff, but maybe they do raise cattle. I was thinking of a Jew cattle the whole time. It's possible, it's totally possible. I think that the— the merchant classes coming, a very strong merchant class coming from there in a very like old school like Silk Road sort of way is what I envisioned for Overstock. There's a lot of information and construction—and construction materials that comes out of Hot House. And then the Crags, lots of stuff comes out of the Crags, you know? And I think that there are weird relationships. I mean, these four countries are very distinct and have created their own societies so much. But you can see this in Europe. How like, you know, France is nothing like Italy, which is nothing like Germany, which is nothing like Montenegro, or the Eastern European countries, you know. And I think it's like—it's like that, and they have to work together if they're in situations. Whether they work together on the cascade, I mean, we'll see. But maybe we'll see some scenes, I've already been starting to kick around, because of this question. I've been kicking around, like, join the paper-style episodes we could do.

Julia:  Hell yeah.

Eric:  If we wanted to do that. So we could definitely do that, but you know, we have to do the Great Salt Sea stuff before we can zoom out. But I am thinking about that, that's totally true.

Julia:  In my mind, the system of the different like countries felt very much like the Greek city-state.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  In like ancient Greece. So that's how I've been picturing it in my brain as we go where there's individual governments, and they get along, but sometimes they go to war with each other and like, eh.

Eric:  Yeah, I mean, that's—that's all the way call back from campaign one. I love that shit.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  So that's—

Julia:  Hell yeah.

Eric:  — certainly very true.

Brandon:  Join the Parchment?

Eric:  Yeah. Could be—could be if there's a letter.

Brandon:  Join the Treasure Map.

Eric:  I keep thinking of like different games. I'm thinking about— I'm gonna say this now, because I want to come back to it. But I was thinking about doing an episode, where everyone, all four of us represented one representative from each country, and it doesn't have to be your players country, we could figure it out. But I wanted to do this like a game, where I opened up like the—we—did any of you do Model UN or something like that?

Brandon:  I know of it. 

Amanda:  No, Eric, I wasn't hot enough for Model UN.

Eric:  Okay.

Julia:  Shit.

Eric:  I did Model UN, I was going to say before Amanda said that. 

Julia:  Alright, hottie, brag.

Eric:  But there was a whole thing about like opening up what we're going to talk about, I'm sure there's a leak, there's—what—what's the word?

Amanda:  Like a Parliamentary Debate thing, or whatever.

Eric:  Or like when you open up you know— what— when they talk at the UN and they open up—when they open the docket? 

Amanda:  Ohh.

Julia:  Right.

Eric:  And I thought about like, if we were going to play that, I was going to open up the docket 24 hours, I'll record it, to make you guys pull it on things we had to talk about at this meeting.

Brandon:  That's fun.

Eric:  And I could have like a non—I don't know if there's like a “UN” quote-unquote. We did that in campaign one with the speaker, but I didn't want to redo that, but there probably is some sort of like, parliamentary person in this way. Yeah, I wanted to open up the docket and we only talk about what's on the docket. And if you don't talk about what's on the docket, people were like, you're an asshole. So I wanted to see, I kind of wanted to see what would happen.

Amanda:  I love that idea.

Julia:  Could be fun. 

Amanda:  And frankly, choosing the nation for my background, for my character was the hardest part of character creation for me. I—I so badly want it to be from every nation, or between I thought that'd be really interesting to, so I would love that.

Brandon:  Umbi's between nations right now.

Amanda:  What was it called, the— 

Eric:  The un—the unmoored. Right.

Amanda:  Unmoored.

Brandon:  Yeah, no, no, I just like the idea.

Julia:  I wonder if there is like eventually going to be like a pirate unmoored representative in that government, who just shows up be like no one elected me, but it seems like someone should say something here.

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  Eric's writing it down.

Eric:  Good idea.

Brandon:  Eric, make sure to write down, Havana Tropicana.

Eric:  Havana--

Amanda:  Havana Tropicana.

Julia:  Yeah, it ends up being Havana Tropicana. 

Amanda:  No men are doctors.

Julia:  No men are doctors. Also, no men should be representatives. Weird that they sent Havana Tropicana.

Eric:  Yeah, that's true.

Amanda:  Alright, couple more here.

Julia:  Shit.

Amanda:  Mags.the.catastorphe.ocelot. Great name. 

Julia:  Good name.

Amanda:  Wants to know, can you remind me of PC's pronouns?

Julia:  She/They for Cammie. 

Brandon:  He/Him for Umbi.

Julia:  And—

Eric:  But Umbi's so old, he's losing gender by the minute.

Amanda: Yeah, he’s like, whatever.

Julia:  We're all turning it out, Agendered, baby. That's how we roll.

Amanda:  And Troy's cool with He/ They, he’s like, yeah whatevs. We're all bros here.

Eric:  I'm Troy. Troy, Troy, Troy's pronouns are Troy/Troy.

Brandon:  Troy, Troy, Troy.

Amanda:  Exactly. And speaking of Troy, Dr. Spurgeon would like to know, does Troy resent having clipped wings? And Malignant Sloth wants to know more about how Troy cares for his wings. Does he have to unroll and air them out every so often? Or does he kind of leave them alone since when he rolled them up?

Brandon:  I just imagined Troy like the ShamWow commercial like squeegeeing his wings out.  

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  That's like—that's like a western comedy that's like—was that at a thousand  1000 and one ways to die in the West?

Amanda:  Yeah, but I am—I think that much like you know shampooing your hair like once a week you know or every so often or— or other like tasks that you don't do all the time. Every few days when he is like truly you know at rest or have some time off, or you know, feel safe unrolling and airing out his wings and you know, taking care of them and sleeping you know with unbound for a while. This is his life and it—having clipped wings made sense for his life back on the Crags, and because everybody does he— he doesn't even like you know, we don't have flying creatures in Verda Stello, and that was a choice we made for PCs for a game mechanics reasons. So I don't think it's the thing that really crosses his mind often, and again, you'll— you'll note that Troy doesn't think about a lot very often. But if someone gave him reason to maybe he would. But for now he's like, no man, Troy Riptide, that's how it is, and bigger the target the more you can get hit, you know what I mean? 

Julia:  No man, Troy Riptide.

Amanda:  Troy Riptide.

Brandon:  Every single time Troy unfurls his wings, Umbi goes

Brandon (as Umbi): Ohh, that's beautiful.

Julia (as Cammie): Majestic. 

Amanda:  Thanks, guys. 

Eric:  You better wooork, says Harold. 

Amanda:  Yeah. 

Julia:  Love it. 

Amanda:  Annabelle F asked, are there carnivorous Plant, Greenfolk in Verda Stello? And if so, how do they function? what do they eat? would you consider making an NPC who is one?

Eric:  I got to think about this, I got to think about this. If it's going— if I'm going to talk about it, there's going to be an NPC. But—

Amanda:  Fascinating.

Eric:  I'm not sure. I don't— I'm not sure yet. It could be Lycanthropy, the equivalent of like Anthropy, but it's like a curse you always have. It could be something you have to repress. The difference between a Greenfolk and a plant, maybe they don't do that. They could just have sharp teeth, and then that's it if they were like a piranha plant. I know– pftt.

Julia:  Yeah Piranha plant.

Eric:  Yeah, Piranha plant.

Julia:  Those real things in nature.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I can plant those in my garden.

Eric:  Yeah. That's just like Mario.  So I don't know. I'll have to think about that.

Julia:  Alright. So here's my backup character in case Cammie gets— gets got–

Eric:  Cammie beefs it, yeah.

Julia:  —during this campaign. It is going to be a venus flytrap necromancer. 

Eric:  Hell yeah.

Julia:  Shoutout to Valdas, which has a necromancer class.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  That's pretty good.

Julia:  That's true.

Brandon:  Pretty good.

Eric:  That's good.

Amanda:  Let's—Julia, actually transition from there into some podcasting and IRL questions. And Paul actually asked us, how would our previous characters fit into Verda Stello. What kind of food or insect do we think they would be? Maybe what nation fits their vibe?

Brandon:  Milo was a worm.

Julia:  Okay. Great. From where Brandon?

Brandon:  I don't know, man. Whatever, whatever, man.

Julia:  I was gonna say Val would be a fire aunt from the Crags.

Eric:  True.

Amanda:  Yes—yes, they would. I'm thinking probably Aggie would be from Hot House, I think that's the equivalent of the civil service exam that she took to start working in the museum. And I can picture her as like a maybe like a rosebush or some kind of like perennial plant, hearty good stock, and oak tree. Maybe something, you know, common, but has a lot of heft behind it. Maybe a maple tree.

Julia:  I was gonna say creeping Ivy for Aggie but—

Amanda:  Oh, yeah.

Julia:  —But it's really good. 

Brandon: That's fun.

Julia:  Especially time change, Aggie.

Amanda:  Yes. Stretchy Aggie. Eric, do you have an idea for any of the–the NPCs of previous campaigns? 

Eric:  Oh, yeah. Tracy is a robotic piranha plant from Hot House.

Amanda:  It's good. 

Julia: Cool. 

Eric:  Built by—and built by a builder, I think would be really interesting.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  That's kind of cool. 

Amanda:  Very cool. And then, of course, my apologies for not addressing This in the last after-party. But Ralts does ask an important question. Is every NPC in Verda Stello, all canonically Jewish?

Eric:  Yeah, like they're like the Mandalorian, they're all canonically Jewish. Yeah.

Amanda:  Great. And again, a little peek behind the curtain, folks. So Eric tends to compile the after-party questions and organize them, and then I'm the one who shares the after-party episodes. And I do just see here a note that I don't really understand, which is Hello oozes and Bunny story, and then a sub-bullet, Jlbar10: describe the nipples. So uh—

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  What's up?!

Amanda:  Eric, what—

Julia  Hey, what's this?

Eric:  Okay, so a lot of times when you ask questions, we forget what we say because we have podcaster brain which we—

Brandon:  I didn't forget that, I know exactly what you're reffering, buddy.

Eric:  I did not rem—I did not remember but he say it into—you– it to a microphone and you forget it. So for example, when JLBars12 said that I'm like, excuse me, this is an Arby's and she was like, you know when Brandon said what are Greenfolk nipples and I said, we're not talking about that. But sometimes—

Amanda:  And we refuse to.

Eric:  And we refuse to talk about it. We will not talk about it. But here's a really interesting example. Someone messaged the Join the Party Instagram, which I run our socials. And this is Joe's a monster who is our friend Holly’s sister.

Amanda:  Oh, tight. Nice. Holly on the One to Grow on pod about agriculture. 

Eric:  Yup. And here— I'm just gonna read the message, okay? Holly said I should tell you all this, laughing crying emoji. My whole friend group has adopted the phrase oozes and bunnies. We greet each other with, hello oozes and bunnies. Our greeting oozes and bunnies and we all categorize ourselves during the day. I'm having a lot of work to do, but I'm in Ooze today, so we'll be done ooze speed are accusing someone else of stealing all the bunnies from the group and leaving everyone as an ooze, tongue-emoji. Okay. 

Brandon and Julia: This is so cute.

Brandon:  That's really funny. 

Eric:  So I thought I said, lol, it's incredible. Can I ask where we said that? I have podcaster brain, and I forgot when we say it immediately. 

Brandon:  You don't remember where that was? It's every week, Eric.

Amanda:  Well, Eric doesn't listen to it. We just do the party planning preview. That's where it'sf from right?

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Oh, it's from the party planning preview. 

Amanda:  Yes.

Brandon:  Yes.

Eric:  I wrote that so long ago and I haven't thought about it in forever. Because we had a whole conversation about how we never said it. And then Joe's went and looked at all of our transcripts and couldn't find it.

Brandon:  Oh my god, guys. Yeah, it's—it's

Amanda:  No, it's the party planning preview, every other Friday.

Eric:  Right, it's from the party Planning preview. Oh my god, I couldn't remember that. 

Brandon:  It's—it's from JPC, because JPC always does his hey, blank and blank.

Eric:  I described that to them, and then she was like, I don't listen to Hey Riddle Riddle.

Julia:  That's fair.

Amanda:  So you go can go back to her, and tell her that she must listen like a good listener to the Party Planning previews. 

Eric:  She listen to the Party Planning previews—

Brandon:  Yes.

Eric:  —that's what it's from see? That's why I'm broke, because I have podcaster brain. I don't remember what I said.

Julia:  I get the reference it's to Chad and January but—

Eric:  Of course, yes.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Ohh, I thought it was that video game that came out a long time ago that was like a fuck, what do you call that kind of game that's a—

Julia:  What's that?

Brandon:  —like sort of like a base defending style game were—

Eric:  Like Lemmings?

Brandon:  It was there—there was a Mario— x x forum or something like that. XCom, XCom.

Eric:  Is that from that? I know about XCom, but that's I don't know.

Brandon:  Aren't that oozes and bunnies? 

Eric:  No.

Amanda:  No, it's Chad and January. Yeah. I

Eric:  Yeah, I said it’s cause of Chad and January

Brandon:  Oh, well, I was—

Eric:  No.

Brandon:  — I was mistaken.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Wow.

Eric:  I— yeah, I get it, because we were aping what do—what they do on their previews, and I totally forgot that I did it. And I guess lit this woman, I'm sorry.

Amanda:  You did not know you were doing it. We'll get back to Joe and let her know. 

Eric:  Yes. So I'm glad we shared this.

Amanda:  There you go. Describe the nipples. 

Eric:  No, we're not describing the nipples.

Brandon:  Mario and Rabbids, that's what I was thinking. 

Eric:  Oh, sure. 

Brandon:  Because I think that game just came out at the time that we did that, so I was thinking, 

Eric:  Oh, no, I did it because I did that. That's interesting.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  So two final questions here before we spoil the plank, of course, our new moniker for spoily corner. 

Julia:  Avast.

Amanda:  Cat owl dolls wants to know, is every island going to be named in Esperanto? And players, are you going to learn the language?

Julia:  I Googled it.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  I Googled it. Also, can I—can I ask a question real quick before we actually answered these, Eric?

Eric:  Sure. Yeah.

Julia:  You guys were very tickled by me going, Avast ye!

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  In the first Legi Island episode.

Amanda:  It was perfect. 

Julia:  And alright. I'm just— I was like, did I— I didn't do it to be funny, just to be cute. but you guys laughed every time I did it. So I was like, I guess it was funny.

Amanda:  It’s just very sweet and charming and a different character voice compared to Val and I love it. 

Julia:  Okay, good.

Brandon:  It's just so funny to think about, like, every time you've ever heard the word Avast. it's always like, Avast, you know like a pirate. 

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Avast. 

Brandon:  Avast.

Amanda:  It's so good. 

Julia:  Alright. Back to the question about Esperanto and island names. Eric. 

Amanda:  So are you drawing inspo from Esperanto for all your island needs?

Eric:  I'm not sure, I might be. I think Esperanto is really interesting as an existence. it's also— I've said this before, but it's a joke, I tell them myself. I don't know if you do too. I say this to Amanda all the time, but I don't know if Brandon and Julia know this. That like the podcast company Gimlet. So they spent a bunch of money for them trying to come up with a name Gimlet.

Julia:  Right.

Eric:  They like hired a business people and they spend 1000s of dollars on it because before Alex Bloomberg, the guy who founded Gimlet tried to call it a Aurelo which means here in Esperanto. 

Julia:  Right.

Eric:  And everyone thought it was fucking stupid and made fun of him on startup con. It was like a running joke for a few episodes. So a joke to myself is also always using Esperanto, but there's also stuff involved. I mean, it's called Verda Stello that's the fla—Esperanto flag. Esperanto is a language created to unite everyone in the same language, pulling from romantic the— as many people would it—would be no romantic languages and be able to use it which is why I got to put it together. So I don't know. I think it is metaphorical but also a joke for myself. We don't necessarily need to, I just thought it was fun.

Amanda:  That's a good reason to do something on a podcast.

Eric:  Yeah. 

Julia:  Hell yeah. We're two out two so far, it's up to you.

Eric:  Esca is not a— it's not from Esperanto.

Amanda:  It's just the anglerfish.

Julia:  Ohh, ohh, I thought it was.

Eric:  No it's the dangly bit of the Anglerfish. 

Julia:  Sorry. Then man, we're two out of three, alright.

Amanda:  And finally, Michael Rowlett wants to know as a DM sometimes I make plans for my encounters, whether they're puzzles, jokey things, plot points, etc. And then I like a player solution to the puzzle better, or like their plot idea better than my own. I then pretend like that was my plan all along, making my players think I'm smart and clever. Does Eric ever do This? If so, when? 

Julia:  Yes.

Brandon:  Yes.

Julia:  I know you do.

Eric:  Yeah of course I do. 

Julia:  I know you do.

Eric:  I set it explicitly. A really good example is from campaign two, when you guys thought the V code to like the cousins, underground lair, you put in boobies, and I thought I was so funny that I just say yes.

Amanda:  You can hear his voice and he goes, you know what, yeah.

Julia:  Yeah, yeah.

Brandon:  But, that's not a bad thing. I mean, that's— that's the part of the collaborative play. Like it's not like a GM is outside of the collaboration, so—

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  Honestly, if you're going to create a puzzle like this when you're creating a dungeon, this is a quick DM tip. If you're creating a dungeon with a puzzle, regardless of it's like a real puzzle, like a riddle, or some sort of like machination, like, you got to turn this thing and the light needs to point blah, blah,  don't come up with a solution, don't. Then you will be waiting for two hours for them to get the exact thing you want, and no one will be happy. But it's all about them putting the pieces together like that makes you a good DM, that doesn't make you a bad DM. 

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I've also gotten two memes sent to me saying I don't prep. So—and I keep saying, 

Julia: Whoops, uh oh. 

Eric:  It's a conspiracy created by all of you, it's whatever you say I'm— whatever is more impressive to you is what I do.

Brandon:  Eric, we didn't say it at all in this episode. So—

Amanda:  It's true.

Julia:  That's on you, you brought that up.

Eric:  No, that's called being gaslit. That's what that is.

Amanda:  I think it is extremely impressive to prep enough to give yourself the tools and to throw yourself over to figuring something out in the moment. And I think do a really great job of giving yourself the tools you might need and also following us where we lead you. That's just my thought.

Eric: Hey thanks.

Amanda: Hey, you're welcome.

Brandon:  [sings] If you lead, I will follow.

Eric:  [sings] Anywhere.

Brandon:  [sings] That you tell me to, that's in the episode the spoily corner. 

Amanda:  Spoil the plank, arrgh.

Eric:  Yargh.

Amanda:  Avasty.

Eric:  Avasty.

Amanda:  KZ three kobolds in a trench coat says, has any character gone back to their past, or are there plans to revisit past homes in the future campaign?

Eric:  No, sounds fucking stupid and boring. No, never doing that.

Julia:  No, sounds bad. Sounds really bad.

Amanda:  I'd love to see how the characters homes have changed, especially Umbi. Mm-hmm. Kz also asks, we know everyone's wondering what a salmon is, but are there any theories on who or what discovered the salmon first and left those dried carvings behind? Does this mean that the water has dried up before? 

Brandon: Oh, great question.

Julia:  Who's to say?

Eric:  Yeah, we had a—there was a long conversation about that in our Discord. Interesting question.

Amanda:  And also I got out of a meeting one day to come back to like 50 notifications about whether or not Troy was hot. So you guys are doing great, you great are doing great. I love you. And if you're not a Patreon, patreon.com/jointhepartypod, you gotta get in that Discord baby.

Brandon:  Stop asking about Troy's nipples.

Julia:  Stop it.

Amanda:  Listen, speculate on your own time.

Eric:  Write fanfic that's what it's there for.

Amanda:  That's what it's there for, baby. Doctor Spurgeon. Are there going to be more flashback episodes or the–will the reveals be in game about our characters? backstories?Who can say?

Julia:  [sings] Who can say.

Brandon:  [sings] Where the flashbacks go?

Eric:  It's less clunky in anime, that I think that flashbacks are in like American television. I'm thinking about like flashbacks episodes and like dramas or sitcoms, where like, the actors need to play 10 years younger, you know?

Amanda:  And this just like, someone put petroleum jelly on the lens just like shh, don't worry about this.

Eric:  Yeah, like someone's wearing a wig, you know? So I don't know. I'm feeling inspired by One Piece of course. So it definitely felt—it feels a lot less clunky. Being able to just like go and do an episode somewhere else. 

Julia:  Yeah, but there's famously no flashbacks on One Piece, Eric, right?

Eric:  No, never. Never, ever.

Julia:  It's all in the present.

Eric:  Yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  Crow in a human suit asks, will Havana be the new Alonso who you keep forgetting when talking about or moving the crew?

Brandon:  Never.

Julia:  Here's the thing, Havana does not have as much importance to the plot as Alonso.

Brandon:  I will never forget Havana. Havana is my number-one priority on this ship right now.

Julia:  Mm-hmm. 

Amanda:  Mm-hmm. See how long that lasts. 

Brandon:  Don't look at me like that, Eric.

Eric:  Let's talk about this in  a month, yeah?

Amanda:  Yeah. Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah, let's talk about this a month.

Amanda:  Malignant sloth also wants to know, does Havana and then parentheses (Rudy) Tropicana have a family—

Julia: That’s not his name.

Amanda: —have a family or friends that will come for him? I don't know.

Julia: No.

Amanda: Who can say?

Brandon: He’s a man, I don't think anyone cares, you know?

Julia:  Yeah, he's a man that left med school. Like they all expected him to drop out.

Amanda: But his bros— his brothers in arms.

Julia: His brothers-in-arms were the one that put him in there in the first place, Amanda.

Eric:  In my head, they like he woke up and he was like on a mattress he— on a mattress in the boat, in the middle of the great salt sea.

Julia: Yeah, we've all seen Parent Trap, Eric.

Eric: Thank you.

Julia: I know what you're going, man.

Amanda:  If—if Troy ever gets a chance to talk to that med school full man, he will have some choice words.

Eric:  God, that was so funny you— you two didn't know it because the episode wasn't out yet.

 Amanda; Yes.

Eric: Episode four. Like Amanda was like, your friends did that to you?!

Amanda: Yes. I was in my feelings Yeah. 

Julia: We were like we— I think we had reactions were like, Troy was taking this really personal. 

Amanda: Yes you did. You were like, damn Amanda, this is really resonating for Troy. I'm like, you have no idea! Yes it is!

Eric:  Your brothers in arms? And I’m like, what?

Brandon:  I always forget that you got the inspiration for the giant crab monster from Parent Trap. Julia: Yeah.

Eric: Yeah. 

Amanda:  And then finally the cool hand Lucas wants to know, at the end of campaign three, is the camera going to pan out to see Dr. Morrow looking into a microscope? 

Julia: Who can say?

Amanda; Well, Brandon just pushed his chair back halfway across the room. 

Brandon: [shouts] WHAT?!

Julia: Jesus.

Amanda: Who can say!

Eric:  You’ve all been like a beachy snow globe the whole time.

Amanda:  January pads by drinking hot chocolate. 

Julia: Yes.

Eric:  Hey, let's go hey, don't look at me. Don't make it weird.

Amanda:  Alright folks, that is it for this super size after party. I am loving this campaign, and remember, this is the perfect time to get new folks into the show. So please text someone who you love, send them a message, send them a Discord message, send them a Facebook message, message them on Hinge, and say you can earn a date for me if you listen to the first episode of this podcast and send them to jointhepartypod.com/start. Or you can go to our Verda Stello page. You can listen to one of the previous completed campaigns you can get onboard with the show baby. We're doing hot fire shit and we need more people here to hear it. 

Julia: Get on board

Eric:  If you want a place a congregate, there is a Join the Party subreddit that I recently stumbled on, it has 350 people in it.

Amanda: What?

Eric: Not really people have messaged all that much. The last post was from like two months ago. If you guys want to go hang out there— there you all exist I didn't know you existed on Reddit. I thought all of you were not on that, place go over there.

Amanda; Damn.

Julia: Dang.

Eric: It's I think it's joined the—r/jointheaparty_pod.

Julia: Okay.

Amanda; That's so cute.

Eric: That was there go check it out. I don't run it. I just saw it existed, and like go check it out.

Brandon:  Oh, it's already some like fan art-style stuff on there. Just fun.

Amanda:  and oh my god huge shout out to our first fan dance Cece put together, like a wonderful dance music video basically to the theme song and the Intro to episodes. I had a full cry in a coffee shop watching it. So— I mean absolutely incredible, and you guys are the best. We— at least for me I feel so great knowing how much effort and time and love we've put into making This world that is resonating with you. So with that everybody, we will see you next week with a brand new episode of the Legends of the Book Depository.

Brandon:  Hell yeah.

Julia: Yeaah.

Eric: Yargh.

Brandon: Byee.

Eric: Yargh.

Julia: Avast.

Eric: Yargh.

Amanda:  May your rolls trend ever upward.