What did we miss in the final fight flowchart? Who were our favorite NPCs? And how has the TTRPG landscape changed over the last two years? All that and more on the Afterparty at the end of Campaign 3!
Send in your Afterparty questions about Campaign 3 via email, social media, or Discord
Housekeeping
- LIVE IN PORTLAND, March 23! Get your tickets at jointhepartypod.com/live
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- JTP’s upcoming episode schedule:
— February 11: Afterparty Pt. 2 (submit your questions!)
— February 18: One-Shot Derby begins
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here.
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude Podcasts: https://multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.
Transcript
Amanda: Yo, ho, ho. A pirate's life for us, folks. It's part one of a two-part Afterparty. It's like a ship convoy where there's one ship and then another ship also following. So that if one of them gets destroyed by cannon fodder, maybe some survivors can swim to the other ship. Hello.
Brandon: Hello.
Julia: Hello.
Eric: I'm never going home. I'm wanted in my home country.
Amanda: But this is international water, so you're good here. So, Eric, maybe let's start with the final section of this Afterparty agenda, which is, it's 2025 now, huh? And we made this podcast—
Eric: It sure is.
Amanda: —in late 2022, is when the four of us started planning Campaign 3. The world sure is different, and it's been fun to just be pirates for a couple of years, hasn't it, folks?
Eric: It sure has.
Brandon: I killed so many people.
Eric: I think pirates are neat and nice, and is what I want to think about them.
Brandon: I said that really quietly under Eric, so no one could hear me.
Julia: Yeah. Nope, I got that.
Eric: Well, what did you say?
Brandon: I killed so many people, Eric.
Eric: But that doesn't have to do anything with your pirating, that’s just you.
Brandon: That's true. That's a good point, yeah.
Amanda: We will touch on the world this podcast began in, and the one it is ending in, in terms of actual plays, TTRPGs, us, our interests as players and creators. But first, folks, there are a record-setting six episodes of Join the Party. Wait, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 7 episodes of Join the Party. That's right. Real time corrections, because we care about fact checking, that we have to cover since we had our last Afterparty.
Brandon: Wee.
Amanda: Seven episodes. That's so many.
Julia: So many.
Eric: So many.
Amanda: So many. So, folks, let's review together, what is something that happened in these past few episodes that you want to explore and make sure that we talk about in true Afterparty style?
Julia: Hey, I should have killed Piney, huh?
Amanda: Now, Julia, I don't remember you not killing Piney. I think you tried.
Julia: I'm pretty sure I distinctly did not kill Piney.
Amanda: Okay. Walk me through. How do you feel about that now?
Julia: I feel like I maybe had the opportunity to get Piney on our side and I failed to do so, which made me feel bad, but also like at the end of the day, Piney still kept trying to kill us. And the fact that they died does not destroy me the way that it probably should.
Eric: Yeah. Episode 62 and 63, being the Legends of the True Salmon II and III, where it was just a big Piney fight. And Julia is like, "Okay, well, what if I break the entire mechanics of this and just start drowning this motherfucker?" And here we are. I think it made— you had a change of heart more, because we played it out in one session. And then I'm like, "All right, I guess I'm rolling to see if I can get out of this," as you continue to drown Piney. Like, I think it was a war of attrition, of you hearing me fail rolls that it slowly chipped away at your soul.
Julia: I think if Piney had been better at trying to kill me, I would have felt less bad about trying to kill Piney.
Brandon: Now, are we talking about this one instance where you didn't kill Piney? Are we talking about the original instance where you didn't kill Piney?
Julia: I mean, I kept trying to not kill Piney. At the end of the day, I succeeded in not killing Piney.
Brandon: You did.
Julia: Someone else killed Piney.
Brandon: You did real good.
Amanda: I feel like by the time we re-met Piney here in this arc, Legends of the True Salmon, there was no going back for this relationship. And so while I think we did our damnedest. Like, I don't know what more we could have done to possibly get Piney on our side. We saved— we saved Piney and their lover. Like, what more could you do for a person or Piney?
Brandon: I mean, we saved them— it's like beat the shit out of someone until they're almost dead, and then being like, "Aha, I saved your life." Like it’s not quite--
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. I took out a baseball bat and beat you. And at the hospital, they took— they found your breast cancer really early, you know?
Amanda: Aren't you glad?
Julia: It's— in my mind, it's more like when you're dueling someone and then you do the honorable thing by not killing them at the end.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Being like, "I'm giving you your life back."
Brandon: But isn't that always in every movie, like the impetus for like, oh, the character— the protagonist made a mistake and should have killed them, you know? Because they're gonna come back.
Julia: Eh. Eh. Sometimes it wins the person to your side, being like, "Wow, they did the honorable thing."
Eric: Or maybe I could say that all three of the people who confronted you in the final fight were all people who you let live after they showed you that you were getting in their way, and they would do anything to try to get you out of their way.
Brandon: Well, you're not gonna kill Di. That's famblicide or something. You know?
Amanda: I would've, though.
Eric: Famblicide
Amanda: I would have, if she—
Eric: CSI Famblicide.
Amanda: If she stood in our way, I think Troy would have, and been pretty destroyed but done it. Which feels like a big change in Troy's character that I think we're gonna get to.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Also Di didn't die in the last episode, did she?
Brandon: Not that we saw?
Amanda: She was down.
Julia: I think we— she was just real sick.
Amanda: She was down, not dead.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: She was having a bad time—
Brandon: I didn't—
Eric: She was having a bad time and then a one year time jump happened.
Brandon: I didn't see a body, so she ain't dead.
Amanda: Julia, I think you, on behalf of Cammie, or you through Cammie, did far more than certainly I did for our party and our goal in this last arc. So I think you should feel good about yourself.
Julia: I felt really good about the polymorph.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: I just want to say that. I felt really good about that polymorph.
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah, that was cool. It was very cool.
Amanda: It was so fun. We got fan art for the ginkgo crab immediately. Thank you so much. It was one of many incredible reveals to happen in these last seven episodes. Brandon, what's something that sticks out to you?
Brandon: Hey, Eric, why you give me the Waterer? Why me? What did I do deserve—
Eric: Because you rolled double zero on your joke 100 dice, that's why.
Brandon: Were you planning on that already?
Eric: I knew that. I realized that we— when I was listening to the bloopers, the big bloopers that you did, that only people from our Patreon can listen to.
Brandon: You mean the hour-long— two-episode, hour-long bloopers that people can get if they subscribe as a patron?
Eric: That's exactly what I was talking about.
Amanda: patreon.com/jointhepartypod.
Eric: We discussed how funny it would be if Umbi had a heart attack in his sleep.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: I mean, the humor was more about the fact that it was a fictional character. When you put it like that, it sounds pretty dark.
Eric: I remember laughing, I thought it was really funny.
Brandon: Dark and funny, you know.
Eric: I remember hearing it, and then when it actually happened, I'm like, "Okay, I can't"— you were very adamant to say that, actually, it didn't count.
Brandon: Yeah, it didn't count.
Eric: But that's not how dice work. That's not how numbers work.
Brandon: Well, we'll disagree on this 'till we die, Eric.
Eric: I know, but— and instead, I found a compromise. That's our relationship, is Brandon says, "We'll disagree until we both die, clean our graves." And I'm like, "I found a compromise and I used it for creative fodder." So, yeah, that's why. I wasn't— I was not anticipating that this keeps happening, but it's just really funny that you keep striking bargains with gods in the afterlife.
Brandon: I guess— yeah. I mean, that is a funny parallel that keeps happening. But my question is more like, were you planning to reveal the Waterer to someone regardless, or was it I need to figure out something and this is a good person for Umbi to see? You know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
Eric: Yeah, for sure. I can talk about the Waterer. So after Mango Crossing, I'm like, "Okay, we do need to resolve what's going— we do need to resolve what's going on with these zeros that Brandon rolled." So I had remembered that in the labyrinth, when you were in the cool garden, in the middle, that I had made an offhanded joke about the Planter and the waterer. I just made an offhand joke about it. I didn't know what I was talking about. It just felt like something that should have made sense in there, and having more of a cosmology than just this, like, monotheistic sort of vibe going on.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Which I didn't want to have with the Planter. So I like that there were different powers pushing in all directions and all that stuff. So—
Amanda: You didn't want one deity, the deities reincarnated, godson, and then the instantiated—
Eric: And then the spirit of the deity, right.
Amanda: —force of, like, that god's will in the world?
Eric: Yeah. And then you eat a cracker and that counts for it.
Brandon: Hinduism is what you're talking about, right?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah. So I didn't know if I was ever gonna return to it, and a bunch of people were like, "Oh, my God, with the Waterer." And I'm like, "I don't know." Just kind of— I just kind of, I just kind of said it. So when you rolled the double zeros, I'm like, "I kind of like this happening, something having to do with how we die." I think it's a little more complicated with— it complicated all so much with creating the path and how dogmatic it was, and having— seeing how, like, rigid it was, especially with Cammie's backstory. Or, like, I wonder if there is reincarnation. I wonder if this is real or people are just being like absolute black and white dicks about it. Instead of embracing— doing good things are good and doing bad things are bad. Like that is just a true— that could just be like a truism, you live your life by. So introducing the Waterer or someone fun and funky was nice, and then telling Umbi he did something, everyone noticed. And in exchange, you get— it's like you have a ticking clock, but you get a little prize for it. And that was nice being able to really reveal it with the hint in the seeds.
Amanda: That was so moving to me, and I loved, especially, the sort of intention of the engine. Can you tell me a little bit about the inspiration for the folded hand engine and intention taking us where we want to go for Lake Encounter as a vessel?
Eric: Yeah, I thought— I— because the Waterer was involved, I really did want— I didn't think you guys would figure it out unless Cammie rolled— Cammie was the one who got there and was able to take some time to figure this whole thing out. I really thought you would be the only one to figure it out, unless you rolled something crazy high.
Julia: Yeah. I was too busy doing an attempting murder, so it didn't quite work out that way.
Eric: I mean, it's— well, I thought that was interesting. It's like, well, if you don't put the person in the thing, then it's like, "Well, what is this?" You might not even know. And especially because Lake Encounter was something that was so long ago and so weirdly religious that we never really touched on. I kind of— it's like, all right, I need to figure out— because I never deepened it, because you never went there. So once you wanted to go there, I'm like, "Oh, this needs to be a thing." And I'm like, "Okay, we should— there should be something related to Tessie being weirdly religious," which is something we already knew. And then the hands, I thought, made it really interesting, of why they were using this battleship/aircraft carrier as their podium and diorama for— would the salmon really look that? So the hands were like, "Oh, this kind of goes with the whole thing of, like, letting go— letting the current take you." And something the Waterer would know about and be able to guide you on. And maybe some like, you know, twisting ideas of what a deity said at one point to whatever you believe, I think, kind of made sense. And so it was a combination of that stuff, plus, like, the randomization drive from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Amanda: Difference engine?
Brandon: What is it called?
Amanda: Or is that in math? What's real and what's sci-fi? Impossible to say.
Brandon: Impossibility engine?
Eric: Looking it up. Oh, the infinite improbability drive.
Brandon: Improbability drive, yeah.
Eric: It was always some— my favorite part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I liked it that it was all just random. I never really understood what it worked— how it worked, but I kind of liked that there was just randomization or whatever you wanted was kind of shoved into the spaceship. And I liked that that worked out. And you being able to ask the Waterer for it, just kind of all made sense to me.
Amanda: Wow.
Eric: And being able to actually, like, surprise Amanda and Julia with that. I thought it was nice.
Amanda: It was really cool. I love— and I feel like we've really leveled up on the solo episodes, the bottle episodes, having different players leave the room and come back and listen to it later. And Brandon and Eric, you're so conscientious during the edit schedule, too, of being like, "Okay, Julia and I have to play the reveal to us in-game of what happened before we, as our roles of producers of the show, had to listen to what happened." And it worked out perfectly.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah, I was very grateful that I didn't get to hear the episode before the reveal happened in-game.
Amanda: It was tight as hell. So coming into more of the reveals that we have from the end of the campaign, in these last few episodes, we get confirmed, the Salmon is just a fish.
Brandon: Just a fish.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: What do we think, players?
Julia: I had a feeling that that was going to be the case. I think I would have been surprised if the Salmon wasn't a fish. You know what I mean?
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Did you think it would be a salmon berry?
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Julia: I don't know, because— no, because that's what Eric did in our guest One Shots.
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: Oh, yeah, that's right.
Julia: That the salmon was a salmon berry.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: And I was like, "I don't think Eric would do that if the actual salmon that was going to be revealed in-game was going to be like a salmon berry."
Eric: Yeah, you're right. The giant that you were all stranded on was a giant berry that was painted to look like a salmon berry so that you could get bamboozled. That's right.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I mean, it's ju— it's only just a fish in our world. In the Verda Stello world, being a fish is, like, unique and weird. So, you know—
Amanda: It's true.
Brandon: —it's not just a fish. It's just a fish, you know?
Amanda: Yeah. It's like— if you think about it, it's kind of like a biblical angel, because much like biblical angels are, like, all eyes or all wings or all wheels. Julia's got me on this one, then the Salmon is, like— it's like missing half of it. Like, imagine a person that's just a hand or just a head, and you're like, "Oh! Ha?"
Brandon: Oh! You’re biblically accurate!
Amanda: Right, exactly.
Eric: Oh, I knew the salmon was always just a fish the entire time. I mean, I also think that the Salmon of Knowledge from Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into myths and legends. I don't know what the second half of the episode— what the podcast description is.
Brandon: You should get that tattooed on your arm, just so you can read it at these moments.
Eric: Brandon, it's written on your back. I tattooed it—
Amanda: Aah!
Eric: —on your back so I can see it. I think the Salmon of Knowledge is really cool. I think it's funny that people— that— who were making a virus in the geology was like, "Nah, dawg, you have to understand, you got to go to a lake or a river, and there's a fish there that tells you stuff. It's awesome." I think he's— I think he's very cool.
Amanda: You won't believe what this one fish knows.
Julia: I'm really glad we didn't have to eat the salmon this time around.
Amanda: Me, too. I was worrying about that. And also in our real life, about a year ago, Eric and I started subscribing to a wild salmon share that's, like, sustainably farmed, then they like ship it to you frozen, and we, like, share a bit with bunch of people in Brooklyn. And Eric was like, "Oh, it's like, eating a power pellet. Like, it's just pure protein, man. Like, there's no fat on that fish." And I was like, "Oh, we're gonna have to bite the salmon to do a wish. If so, Troy passes."
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: "He's done, he's not doing it."
Eric: That would have— actually, that would have been really funny if you showed up and the Salmon is like, "All right. Time to eat me. Ha-yuck."
Brandon: That would have been great.
Julia: Made some sushi. Some underwater sushi.
Amanda: We also had the very moving instantiation of the Tree of Life, a symbol from throughout world mythology and folklore, and a very literal bearer of seeds that turn into Greenfolk. I love this guy. I love this image. I got it tattooed on my hip the other day.
Brandon: Not only Greenfolk, but also just, like, events, inspirations, influences, people, any of these things, yeah.
Eric: I had a real moment when I was thinking about, like, the civilization skill tree of how you, like, learn animal husbandry. Like, well, yeah, seed fell, and then it turned into animal husbandry.
Amanda: That one's a chicken.
Eric: This is how you make cows kiss. This is how you give a cow a husband.
Amanda: Ideal. All cows are straight. We— everyone knows that. Sorry, I'm just laughing at the idea of, like, cows needing to believe in the institution of marriage.
Amanda: Cows are like, "We can't copulate until we're married."
Julia: Not until after marriage.
Eric: I did think that for a while, when I learned what animal husbandry is, out of context, playing Civilization IV and V. I will admit that.
Brandon: That is where we got the inspiration of marriage from. It was from cows. It's in the Bible. It's biblically accurate.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Eric, tell me all about the origin of where the Salmon lives, what happens when we meet there. Was the kind of structure of, like, the Salmon's infinite lake filling— you know, cascading over the size to be the Cascade to have the seas of Verda Stello. Like was all of that clear from the beginning of the architecture of the Bialy?
Eric: First of all, it's the Old Testa-moo.
Brandon: Pretty good. Pretty good.
Amanda: Aaah. There's not a good way of podcasting to depict a shocked silence, but there you go.
Brandon: If you out there have cow, go ahead and rename them Old Testament. Thank you.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Brandon, it's Old Testam-moo. Very important. I always knew that the Salmon was in a— this freshwater lake that fed the Cascade. I also knew that something was blocking it, that you could only access if you got there. That was always something I wanted to do. I really wanted to do something opposite of Campaign 2, where, like, nothing was resolved, because that's how life do. And in this one, I'm like, "Oh, the reason why you got to get to the Salmon is you got to fix the problem. There's something happening, and you just got to get in there, but you got to find what the thing is. I think that also has to do with— and I figured this out later. This also had to do with why the Diamond Knot, or whoever got it in control of South Kompos City locked up the Salmon. Because whether or not they went in there, they're like, "Aaah, blackberry dragon. No, thank you. Go away. We're just— this is probably where the Salmon is, but we don't want to deal with it. Lock it up." That was the deal. And I don't know if— I'm still trying to figure out if it was some— something involved with the seedlings from before, from the civilization before, or with the Planter, or with the Diamond Knot. Like some combination of those three elements, put the lock on the Salmon.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Right. And that's— and then that's why South Kompos city was made around it, and because it's like, "Wow, this is a really cool thing that's here. Let's stay away from the blackberry dragon, but it's probably fine." And then they got their scary boulder disease, and then everything went bad.
Brandon: So the blackberry dragon was there already when people moved in?
Eric: The blackberry dragon was a protector of the Salmon.
Brandon: Ah, okay.
Eric: Yeah. And it kind of had a fraught relationship with that once— which is— I think what it was trying to communicate to Umbi was like, "I'm here"— which I think it didn't have the words to describe it, because it doesn't know what it means to be free or not free.
Brandon: No one knows what it means to be a dragon, you know?
Julia: No one does.
Eric: That's the whole point. Yeah. It's like, "Well, I'm here to protect the Salmon, but if I— protecting the Salmon means getting used as a bioweapon and having a collar around my neck, this thing sucks. So I want to get out of there." So that's why I was so happy that Umbi let him— let it out.
Julia: Were you somewhat inspired by, like— I can't remember the name of the dragon, but like in Norse mythology, there's a dragon in the roots of Yggdrasil that is, like, protecting it so that the tree can never fall.
Eric: Julia, you know I was probably playing God of War at the time.
Julia: Probably, probably.
Eric: You know, I probably was when I was thinking about.
Brandon: I think that the dragon's name is Puff the Magic Dragon, I want to say.
Amanda: Does he live by the sea?
Julia: No, he lives in the roots.
Eric: Can I tell you that in my Jewish upbringing, there was a song called Puff the kosher dragon that was sung.
Brandon: No, really?
Amanda: No, that's a lie. That's a lie.
Eric: About him hanging out with a little Jewish dude.
Amanda: No. Lie.
Eric: No it’s not a lie.
Amanda: Lie.
Brandon: Puff the Kosher dragon.
Eric: I sang it with Avery Trufelman, noted podcaster.
Brandon: Google it now. Yeah, it's a thing.
Amanda: These are things that are--
Eric: It's a thing. It's a thing. Frolic in the synagogue and drank the kosher wine.
Brandon: That doesn't even rhyme.
Eric: Little Rabbi Goldberg love that kosher puff and fed him locks and matzo balls and other kosher stuff.
Brandon: Okay, that one rhymed.
Amanda: Okay, that did rhyme. You landed the plane there.
Eric: Now, that was me unearthing a song from my brain from 20 years ago. I think that was pretty good.
Amanda: Let's get into the pollution metaphor of it all. Brandon, Julia, how did you feel about it not being anything like terrible, but just a big old, backed up drain?
Brandon: I mean, it is terrible. Like I understand because I feel like you—
Amanda: Malicious, maybe, is what I would say.
Brandon: I think this sort of feeling or sentiment was also in the episode a little bit of, like, it's not some grand conspiracy of climate change, necessarily, but like, that is climate change. Climate change is just— for me, sorry, for me, like, climate change is just like the little, small things that combine into fucking up the world, you know?
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: So, like, I still think it works as a metaphor, but I am curious to hear what Eric's intention was. Although you're dead now, you're— because you're the author, so I don't know if that counts.
Eric: Yeah, I'm dead.
Julia: It's whatever you want it to be.
Eric: I'm dead.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Julia, did you have a headcanon of what you thought stopped the Cascade?
Julia: I don't know that I did, because of how Eric laid out kind of clues throughout the campaign, was I thought it was kind of this interesting cyclical thing. Because of the fact that the drought zones existed and everything like that.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: So I wasn't sure if, like, crews in the past had gone and made the wish on the Salmon to bring the Cascade back and it was like something that just happened every once in a while, or if it was just like a natural phenomenon that we weren't, like, understanding because we didn't have enough historical data about it.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: So I was going into it being like, "Okay, well, one of us is gonna have to wish this, because that's how the world works." You know what I mean?
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Can I get resurrected? Do you want to resurrect me or do you want me to just stay dead?
Julia: I don't have the diamonds for it.
Amanda: Ah, shit.
Brandon: I've got—
Amanda: We really should have saved that.
Brandon: What's the one that Umbi gets, lightning resurrection? Whatever the fuck.
Julia: Wasn't it like Lazarus bolt?
Brandon: Yeah, Lazarus bolt. I Lazarus bolt you.
Eric: Aah, I'm back. We're back to modern critical storytelling, not post-modern. Yeah. I mean, we've been talking about this the whole time, right? Like and we kind of really put a pin on it with Umbi's backstory, of this being a metaphor for just people doing stuff to fix problems, or if they just kind of make markets around the problems that currently exist. That's more of the thing I was talking about.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I think I was close— Julia, when you were talking about this, close to what I was getting at, it wasn't even this— this wasn't even necessarily about, like, pollution or climate change as it is.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But about peoples who can change things, having apathy towards them, and instead, just like bending their life around the thing to try to hold on to power or make money or make power because of the situation. It is relatively natural in this world, not climate change. We did that. But like in this world, it's like the tree at the top of the world so— has roots, and sometimes they keep growing and they get in the way. Sometimes trees in our world get into the road or get into our sewers and fuck shit up.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And another— and I thought it was interesting for this to be similar. You did not have to spend your wish on moving the roots. If someone— if you had gotten there and had the spells or the item or the whatever to get there, you could have done it, then you would have kept your wish.
Julia: Here's the thing, I'm almost glad that I did spend my wish on moving the roots, because I spent the entire campaign trying to figure out what the fuck Cammie's wish would be.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: And even by the time we got there, I still hadn't come up with something that I was, like, genuinely happy with that felt right.
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: So the fact that Cammie's wish was basically bringing back the Cascade made sense to me. You know?
Eric: It was really fun— and I'm glad you did it also, because that's kind of how we ended the whole story. But it was fun for you to just be like, "Can these move? Can you do something about this?"
Julai: Like, can we do something about this? And I think that's also— I'm not sure if it came across in the recording or the edit of that episode, but I was so frustrated knowing that, like, Crimson Larceny and Mandy Potash were there and didn't wish for that.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: That's what annoyed the shit out of me. I was like—
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: "—Why wouldn't you— you're here, do the thing, you know?"
Brandon: Uh-hm.
Amanda: Well, because their individual legacy was more important to each of them, or fun, or just novelty, than something that would be beneficial to all, which has no relevance to today's world. Just to, like— just to criticize.
Eric: Sorry, I died again. I can't comment.
Julia: It's so easy to do the right thing, and that's something I've been saying in my real life lately as well.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: It's so easy to just do the right thing, and people choose not to, and it's so incredibly frustrating.
Brandon: Yeah. That's real.
Eric: Yeah. I think that kind of symbolizes— I feel like Crimson Larceny and Fun Mandy Potash kind of came out of nowhere there at the end, and have only dotted the story a little bit through. But I think it also has to do with, like, how much people actually remembered them. All Crimson Larceny ended up being was a goddamn Disney World restaurant theme, you know?
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So it's like I was really doing this in comparison for One Piece, which the whole thing is, like, there was a king of the pirates, and everyone knows that, and loves that guy, and tries to be that way, and characters who knew him are, like, revered as legends, too. And there just isn't— it wasn't enough time. It was only 50 years, and Crimson Larceny kind of made a bet to, one, that maybe he'd be remembered as a pirate legend, I guess— yes or no. Two, that someone else would be like, "Oh, well, I did this. I'm not that great. Someone else will probably clean up the problem here and use their wish on something else." But three, I'm gonna put myself in the cosmic game, and that's infinitely more spicy, which I think might have also symbolized why things got so weird in our campaign all the time.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: I really appreciated Mandy and Crimson as a device to remind us that, you know, we are far from the first pirates to try to do this. In some ways, I'm shocked nobody else did it in 50 years. But also, like, of course, there is an entire legacy of people who have tried to do the same thing.
Brandon: Well, that— I guess my wider question, and maybe this is the wrong place to put it, but my wider question is like, so the Diamond Knot— you know, whether or not— I don't care about the mechanism of how they were profiting off of it, but is the idea just that the Diamond Knot were trying to keep the status quo because they were profiting off of it?
Eric: Yeah, pretty much. They wanted to keep the status quo because they were currently in power.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: I think that was the whole thing about the Diamond Knot, is like they didn't want a hero to come through, because they're— they spent all this time doing this.
Brandon: Right. Yeah, yeah. So they would rather keep their status quo in power than, like, take the, quote-unquote, "risk" of, like— if the Salmon exists or not wishes.
Eric: And they turned Lucky Edie into a bioweapon to do that.
Brandon: Consensually.
Eric: Like the— yeah, that's true. Well, well, we'll get— we'll talk about that. But like—
Amanda: If the government wants a person, is it ever consensual.
Eric: But— I mean, you have so much power that it's like Di and lucky Edie were so committed to being agents of maintaining that power just as, like, ancillary versions of that. I think that's what I was trying to get across with why they took every opportunity to try to— well, Lucky Edie took every opportunity to try to screw you over after you firmly rebuffed her and Di tried to take every opportunity to give Troy an out while doing what the Diamond Knot said.
Brandon: I also just want to say for the record that Umbi never rebuffed Lucky Edie. She just, by association, hated Umbi.
Eric: Right. Umbi just needed to wear a sweater because he was cold.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: And now he's punished for being cold.
Amanda: Among the best podcast moments.
Eric: Probably one of my favorite moments of this campaign. It's so funny.
Amanda: All right. So Julia talked a little bit about your wish, and it was difficult. You didn't necessarily know exactly what to do, and so you really took one for the team there. Brandon, how did you feel about the Umbis--
Julia: Brandon.
Amanda: —and wishes?
Eric: Oh, my God.
Brandon: I mean, a little bit like Cammie situation. Like Umbi is obviously— this was going to be to just start the Cascade again in whatever way that needed to happen. And so when his wish was sort of taken care of, what else is he gonna wish for? He's gonna wish to not die.
Eric: So funny.
Julia: Gonna wish to fuck over a god.
Amanda: Did you guys think we would each have a wish?
Brandon: No.
Amanda: Because that kind of staggered me.
Brandon: Yeah. Exactly.
Amanda: I was not— I did not expect that.
Brandon: I think that was part of the problem too, is, like, I expected one wish total, and we each got one. So I was like, "Uh, I don't know. Blockbuster should return. Fuck, I don't know."
Amanda: Julia, did you think we each get a wish? And Brandon and I were just, you know, a little bit dense?
Julia: No. I thought that it would probably be the one wish, and so that's also why I was like, "I'm gonna yield probably to my co-players and just, like, let them figure out what they want to do." Because I— again, I had no idea what I really wanted to wish for, besides bringing the Cascade back. And I figured with like more information, maybe that would help, like, color our choices—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: —about what the wish would be.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Which also is probably why I didn't have an idea of what I wanted to do until the very moment we got to the wishes.
Brandon: Yeah, it makes sense .
Amanda: Totally.
Brandon: I do have a question about my wish, Eric, because it wasn't actually fulfilled. So, like, is the Salmon only half-potent and, like, you know—
Eric: It was absolutely fulfilled.
Brandon: Was it, though? because, like I said, he still died and still came back as a stink bug. So did he go up—
Eric: Well—
Brandon: Did the Salmon go to the Waterer and the Waterer, like, rebuffed him and hit him on the snoot, and said, "No. No, Salmon."?
Eric: Well, you sent the Salmon to break up with your deity girlfriend for you.
Brandon: Yeah. So?
Eric: Which was really funny.
Amanda: Who hasn't?
Brandon: Who hasn't?
Eric: God, it was so funny. I think the thing that you only did was wiggling out of your current deal, which was you had to immediately get off of this mortal coil.
Brandon: Oh, I see. So I have to die immediately? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: Which is what you got. The Waterer— yeah, you that's why you got to walk around as a ronin for, like, two more years—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: —after this. The Waterer still controls what happens to you when you die.
Brandon: That's fair.
Eric: So that is— that's what I was doing. It was awesome. I— you get five points of inspiration and a Joken for that. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. I just like— there's only so much I can do. And just the Salmon going, "Oh, no. Oh, jeez."
Brandon: Oh nerts. Oh nuts.
Eric: "Oh, no. Ha-yuck. Oh, jeez."
Amanda: Here's a specific question, Eric. How'd you land on the voice of the Salmon?
Brandon: I will tell you this directly, because it was a little portion of the edit that got cut, because it was just us fumbling for a second. But it was Eric doing a voice and then saying, "Ah, shit. Do I want the Salmon's voice to be goofier? Ha-yuck."
Amanda: Classic.
Eric: Yeah, there's a tic in One Piece, which I really like, and I think it has to do with, like, the translation from, like, a Japanese anime to an English anime. And, like, trying to capture— you know, when you create that many characters, you got to give them— you give them, like, voice tics and I wonder if it's something that's easily— more easily expressed in written Japanese.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: But every single character in One Piece who appears— like every single enemy and every single like, quote-unquote, "NPC" that appears in One Piece, they have, like, this— they either have, like, a really weird voice, or they have a really weird laugh, or a really weird vocal tic.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: And it was nice to just kind of, like, reach for that after I'd done so many like, "I need to give exposition, so this voice can't be too stupid." And especially when it felt like they were— I felt like they were too cute when you busted in the penultimate episode.
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: And when you all made it very clear to me you wanted to talk first, I'm like, "I need a voice that embodies the relative innocence of a powerful creature that's just kind of vibing, but also I need to talk to you. And also doing this vocal tic would be really funny. Ha-yuck.
Brandon: And my headcanon also, the, like, Lake Encounter model was a pair of googly eyes on a patch of garbage because they maybe only heard the voice, and they were like, "This must be what it looks like."
Eric: Hmm. That's interesting.
Amanda: That's Good.
Eric: Now, here's a question for me as, like, things that would have changed. Would things have changed if you had went to Lake Encounter earlier and seen the— seen that as the Salmon, like in episode 12?
Brandon: I don't know.
Julia: No, because I think we probably would have done similar roles, and then would have been like, "Oh well, this is just a fake version to throw people off."
Amanda: Right. This isn't it. I probably would have been more pessimistic about the existence of the Salmon as a possibility. But I still think we would have charged forward, especially as we uncovered more and more strands of the very tangled web that the Diamond Not wove.
Brandon: The web of roots, if you will.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Nature wove that one, but the Diamond Knot wove the steel ropes on top—
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: —of the locks and chains.
Brandon: That's good. That's good.
Eric: Damn dude.
Brandon: Damn, dude.
Eric: Just like society.
Amanda: Lots more questions to get to, but first, folks, I'm gonna have to dip back into the kitchen and get us some more sea water sake.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: Special. It's the last Afterparty.
Julia: Is that rice grown on the sea?
Amanda: Sure is.
Julia: Cool.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda. In these chilly days of early February, there is nothing I like more than working with a heating pad at my back and a heated blanket over my lap. I feel like a kitten in a burrito or maybe a baby in a blanket. In any case, swaddling is amazing, and welcome to the midroll. You are in good hands. Welcome. Thank you so much to our newest supporter on Patreon, A. Simon. If you want me to thank you by name, just like I did for A. Simon, you can join the Patreon today at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. We can only make this show because of your support on Patreon and do things like this incredible double Afterparty. Put so much thought and effort into this campaign, put the One Shot Derby together, and start planning what's next. 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[theme]
Amanda: And we're back. Because this episode has no listener questions and just our questions, I asked Brandon and Julia for a bunch of questions, so I'm gonna read off a bunch of those questions now.
Brandon: Wee.
Julia: Awesome.
Amanda: Here is a question from— oh, it's gonna be Brandon on this one. "Eric, what else was on the flow chart that we didn't see?"
Brandon: Tell me.
Eric: Oh, the flow chart.
Brandon: I love knowing all the things that I don't get to see.
Eric: A lot of the stuff that the three of you asked me was like, what's all the stuff you missed? And ultimately, when you miss things, it's kind of like— it gets wipe— either wiped away because— you know, I have described this as a video game loading, and—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —I only create things you were actually interested in. So there aren't necessarily very large things that you missed, unless, I don't know, if we were in a dungeon style thing, maybe you didn't see it. I think maybe there were— there might have been some stuff in the labyrinth that you didn't see, like in the gardens because you were too busy, like, grabbing a pumpy and getting kicked out of it before— like, seeing before— necessarily seeing everything. So there's only so many things that you do or do not see. However, this thing, I built— the reason why I made a flow chart was so that there were things that you didn't do and we could see what you could have done instead.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Eric: So here is the flow chart unveiled.
Brandon: Unveiled? Oh, no.
Amanda: Oh, man, there's no boxes obscuring the words. Damn.
Brandon: Damn.
Eric: So how do you want me to go through this? Like I can go through all the different ways. I can—
Brandon: Let's go path by path.
Eric: Okay. If you remember how episode 65, The Legend of the End started, was like, "Okay. We're doing this arcade style, going through stages. You have to pick your ways out, and then you got to fight your way out. So you had to get out of the— out of Lake Encounter, which Umbi recklessly drove into the middle of everything.
Julia: Makes sense.
Eric: Which, again, I say with no judgment.
Brandon: I didn't take it as any judgment, so now, I'm taking this with judgement.
Eric: There were no— I just said there was no judgement, Brandon.
Amanda: And Cammie was plastered over Piney in the gaping hole of the hull.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Like when you try to force a cork back into a wine bottle, and it doesn't work, and then it breaks, and you're like, "Shit." And then you put tin foil over that.
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Tin foil.
Eric: Yeah. And Troy was in an office.
Amanda: Going, "Aaah. I'm not buckled in.
Eric: Troy and his sister were sitting in an office.
Amanda: Aaah.
Eric: So your choices were, get in the fray, go for the Rotten Key, and rush the facility. You all chose rush to the facility.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: The other choices were get in the fray, could have been for get in the fray. You were going to just throw yourself kind of in the middle of a fight between the zombie pirates, the agents, and the regular pirates, right? And then it would have been more of a free for all. People would have been going in all directions. It would have been a lot more chaotic of a battle, instead of you all trying to leave and everyone noticing and then charging you.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So it would have been like— it would have kind of went in all different directions. Get in the fray was also just, like, turn the tide of the fight on no one's side, or you could have chosen a side, I guess, but it's like, "we're gonna stop the current battle that's happening and then go do our thing," was kind of what I was getting at.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So then under that, there were two conditions of get in the fray that I put in gold. One was more violence, continue to submit as many people as possible towards your power through battle, or you could turn the tide and pick someone to throw all of your power behind. From there, you could have— if you turn the tide, I called it the great pirate turnip-bellion.
Amanda: Hell yeah, dude.
Brandon: That's something, Eric.
Eric: Yes, it is.
Julia: That's something. All right.
Eric: This is where all the pirates would have risen up, and it would have created a new age of pirates.
Brandon: Turnip-bellion.
Eric: Turnip-bellion.
Amanda: Well, do we fly like a turnip flag instead of the skull and crossbones?
Brandon: I guarantee there's some flower plant out there that— with, like, the word bell in it that we could use.
Eric: Nope. Turnip-bellion, Brandon.
Brandon: Like Victory-bellion.
Julia: Bluebell. Bluebell.
Amanda: That's a Pokemon, very close. Bell Pepper-bellion. No, we all know nightshades are French, shit.
Eric: And I think you all would have given, like, empowering speeches towards the pirates, to, like—
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: —fight off the government and the zombies, that how being a pirate is awesome. Blah, blah, blah. This is what we could have went on. But if you had done more violence, the Diamond Knot would have dropped their most devious invention ever, which I called the Big Net.
Amanda: No.
Brandon: Was that a big net?
Eric: It was a big net they were going to drop on, literally, the entire battle.
Julia: I have a question. Why do they love nets so much?
Eric: That was just their thing. They just love nets. They love capturing people and torturing them for information.
Julia: But why nets?
Brandon: They just— they ordered a box of nets once, and they meant to get—
Amanda: Oh.
Brandon: —10 units, but they got 10 million units.
Amanda: I see.
Brandon: And they just had a lot of them, yeah.
Amanda: They cut one of— one big net up into many little nets. Like they said the package was missing, but then it ended up coming, and so then the replacement was already coming, and they had two big nets, and it's like—
Brandon: Exactly.
Amanda: —what do I need two big nets for?
Brandon: Yeah, but it's two million.
Julia: Sew them together, giant net.
Brandon: Ooh, and that's a big net, Julia.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I think they sewed all the small nets together for a big net.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: That's what I'm saying.
Eric: It was just so funny when— after Umbi like— it was— it just stuck in my mind that the— after using all the net guns that in the Mango— in the beginning of Mango Crossing, that, like, they just were invested really heavily in nets. Especially after Julia's character in Model Our Nations, like, was really pushing, like, technological advancements that gets sold to everyone.
Julia: And the technological advancements was big net.
Eric: It was net gun yeah, it was big net.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: That— it's like you hire McKinsey as consultants, and they're like, "We got to capture people." And they're like, "Nets. Give me a million dollars, please." That's what I had in my head.
Amanda: That's business, baby. And then when you ask the Diamond Knot sort of how their, like, portfolio is doing, they say, "I can't really invest in new things right now. My money's all caught up."
Julia: But—
Eric: Pretty good.
Amanda: Thanks. What's next, Eric? What if we didn't choose to get in the fray?
Eric: If I was a pirate, I'd say my money was all liquid right now.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: That my ship is on. It's in my ship.
Brandon: I really wanted to give you another big reaction to that one, but I ran out of inner steam for the reactions.
Eric: That's okay. That's fine. That's okay. That's okay. All right. So if you had went for the Rotten Key, that would have been like— in a kind of, like, a real AAA RPG sort of way, action- adventure RPG, you would have had to, like, hop from ship to ship to get as close as possible to the Rotten Key while going through the zombies. I think that using the ship to scout ahead might have been more helpful. You know, using Kidd Cervantes to clear out a whole swath of people could have been helpful in this kind of different way. Very, very video game-y, arcade-y for that way. And then you would have run into the Scylla or cryptos of who I'm talking about here, you would have run into boss battle Salix or boss battle Radbert.
Amanda: Hmm. Gigantamax. Mouth too big.
Eric: Yeah. And we would have seen how that went. I think Radbert— you know, Radbert would have caught you in a petal storm of his own. Lot of obscuring, a lot of you being blind while getting sneak attacked by— and bitten by zombies inside of a— like an entire hailstorm of puffballs. And Salix would have just been a real zombie battle against your friend who's really strong, sort of vibe.
Amanda: I mean, that does sound like a really fun scene in a video game.
Eric: From there, if— depending on who you bought, the other one would have escaped. You could have fought either Salix or Radbert, and the other one would have retreated to tell the Rotten Key you were coming. And then the Rotten Key would have stepped up with some sort of buff from the other one. And then the Rotten Storm would have happened. I knew the Rotten Storm was going to happen in some way, shape, or form. In this other way, maybe the Rotten Key had gotten their hands on Tessie, the Storm earlier, and then you would have solved the terrible transformation anyway. But it would have been real, like, boss rush. This was like the boss rush—
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Column?
Eric: —procedure you could have taken.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Cool.
Eric: For this one, you ended up rushing the facility. You went through the spike cave. You could have went through the front door. If you went through the front door, you would have, like, had to kind of get through the final bastion there, maybe blowing up— using a battering ram, blowing up the front door, some sort of thing. And then it would have been, like, running through the facility. The decision tree here was A to B, just running through where Cammie and Troy had done, by running through the facility, kind of in the back way. Or if you would have found another way, maybe from above, maybe from the side, maybe you want to check out more stuff in the facility to try to help you out.
Amanda: I love that this was an option for us because we know someone who excels at doing structural damage to structures via bombs.
Brandon: Julia.
Julia: Yeah. Me in real life. I would've showed up as a summon.
Amanda: You know what? Julia, if I had to call someone and be like, "How do I kneecap this building?" It would be you. And I'd say, "Julia, put the phone on speaker. What do you and Jake suggest?"
Brandon: How do you kneecap a building?
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I thought you're gonna be like, "If I did want to do some arson, I would call Julia."
Julia: Fair.
Amanda: By which I mean, like, cut the important trust or, you know, compromise the center pillar.
Julia: Yeah, no, Jake would know.
Eric: I thought you would say like," Julia, I need someone to come over and help with my home demo. You want to bring a sledgehammer?" I would call Julia, that's what I thought.
Julia: Also.
Amanda: Also that.
Eric: Yeah. And then, since you went with a spike cave, it kind of— I ended— we ended up doing the thing with Threelips instead, that I thought was more fun, instead of decide— figuring out what was happening, because you all felt— I— very, like, resolute to get there. So it would have been either charge forward or maybe the pirate— the zombies would have flooded behind you. Maybe you fought them instead. But we ended up doing something different, so we didn't even get there.
Brandon: Love it.
Julia: Dope.
Amanda: What inspired you to bring Threelips back?
Eric: I— it was funny to see NPCs again.
Julia: Fair.
Eric: Having someone randomly snipe at you is just really funny and doing a lot of random damage just like out of nowhere, I thought was just funny. So—
Brandon: Except for the people that it— gets sniped, Eric.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: That's true. Yeah. Like I said, it was funny. And I wanted— you know, I was really trying to bring as much closure as possible to as many characters. You know, regular.
Brandon: We sure did close his life, huh?
Amanda: Uh-hmm. That's one that we were like, "Hey, full dead. Audience, full dead, just so you know."
Julia: Just to clarify, dead.
Amanda: This brings up a great question by one Julia. "Is there an NPC that you thought had potential that we never really dug into? I'm thinking especially around the hold, but also the broader campaign."
Eric: Well, do you have any regrets of NPCs you wish you would talk to more?
Amanda: I was so intrigued, and one of the things I wanted to talk about is, like, players, what do we wish we maxed out in the hold among the Skill Tree? And just because of me and my interests, I was so interested in the magnolias. I really wanted to know what they were doing. I would be very into a campaign where we were, like, building soft power, you know, there. And, like, made the puppet show, you know, a, like, propaganda machine. Like, there's so much we could have done there. I—
Julia: We tried to do that.
Amanda: I know. Brandon, you tried to dig and roll. I really thought we'd get back to the big creb. So there— there's a lot there, but I think the NPCs, for me, that stick out most are relationship building in the hold. Because we have, obviously Francois, our best friend, but, you know, he moved on.
Julia: I think my thing was—
Eric: Oh Aubergine.
Julia: Because I just— the insanity of the Outback Steakhouse owner caught me so much by surprise.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: So I was very curious if that was like— if there were other people like that, NPC-wise, that you thought were like, "Damn, I could have done something really cool and/or funny with that."
Brandon: I forgot about the restaurant owner until just this moment, and that's 100% my answer. I would have loved to know more about that fucking insane man.
Eric: I think we just poured all of our energy into Aubergine instead.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Like all of the jokes that we had with the restaurant tour, I think we pushed into Aubergine because Brandon unlocked the backstory— Aubergine's backstory first.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So, like, any— I feel like I chose one or the other, and they would have been kind of— it would have been a similar stuff. Except that, like, the Outback Steakhouse thing was, like— I always knew he was crazy, so we ended up just kind of closing the book on that instead.
Julia: I'm so glad that I chose to dig and roll, and out of spite, Brandon decided to unlock Aubergine's backstory.
Amanda: One NPC that I was certain was going to have an appearance in the final boss battle something, was Orello. I thought that— I mean, it was, in retrospect, clutch that Orello recovered the Key That Still Hurts, that we were able to buy it off of him, huge. But I thought Orello would end up being like a double agent or, like, have a change of heart and actually help us. But Orello is a simple Greenfolk motivated by coin, which feels a lot truer to the world than the thing I was expecting.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I think he would have wanted to stay far away from that fight.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: He's like, "Oh, things are getting weird. I'm going to the other side of the sea."
Brandon: "But I will sell you ARBs."
Eric: Yeah. I think Orello being there, seeing the Cascade turn back on, like, right on the edge, I think is really important. So—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —him being involved in that way, I think was really good.
Amanda: Oh, wait, you know he captured— or claims to capture some of the first drops of the reinstated Cascade, and is, like, selling sniffs of them, like a reliquary.
Eric: Absolutely. 100%.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: That's exactly the kind of shit.
Brandon: A reliquary? Is that someone who peddles relics?
Amanda: A reliquary is the vessel that holds a relic that you then, like, take around, and it's like a cool box with, like, a finger of a saint in it.
Brandon: Oh. Cool.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And so I imagine a relic, like, building an incredible one, and then, like, charging people admission to come—
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: —like touch or smell it.
Brandon: I love that part.
Julia: Fun fact, every Catholic Church has a relic of the kind that Amanda just described, like the finger bone of a saint.
Brandon: I learned that from the TV show Evil.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: An important relic is touring right now, and Ivan was like, "I'm seeing it." And I was like, "Cool, great. Did— you still toured, but—"
Eric: That's right.
Amanda: "—that's right on."
Julia: Is it the Shroud of Turin? Is that one still touring?
Amanda: I don't know. I have to check.
Brandon: Is there like a mosh pit at these concerts or—
Eric: Can that be the name of our next tour?
Julia: The Shroud of Turing Tour?
Eric: The Shroud of Turing?
Amanda: Yes, it can be.
Eric: Yeah, Orello is a good one. I did want him to just be motivated by coin. Tessie the Storm is someone who I didn't really figure out what to do with. I think you guys ended up dealing with Piney so much more that Tessie almost sat back as someone, you know, like, turned out to be like Piney's girlfriend in that way. Like, didn't end up being fully fleshed out after you—
Julia: Except vice versa, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, instead of vice versa. But I'm fine with that, honestly. Yeah, there's some— the creb, definitely, I think that if you had pursued Lords of the Manor, there would have maybe been more of a— like, more rivals on the hold. But I think we ended up putting a lot of that energy into Lucky Edie instead. So—
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Right on. Sorry, Julia, I cannot find— oh, here we go. It's Veneration of the Major Relics of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: From the 750th anniversary of his death.
Julia: Kind of fun.
Brandon: Kind of fun.
Eric: So, like, is it his books, or like his knees?
Julia: Is it the books or the knees?
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Various relics, various.
Brandon: Various.
Julia: So knees and books.
Eric: Books and bones.
Brandon: Head, knees, and books, and toes.
Amanda: I mean, touring museum exhibition. I love it. Here's a great question regarding an NPC I love from Brando. Y'all remember Hondo in that cult? They're still culting.
Julia: I assume they're zombies.
Amanda: I assume they're full zombies, but they have a sort of a cult within the zombie community.
Julia: Oh, that's fun.
Brandon: Well, when everything is done, do they— do people return from zombie status or they just die? Like, you know what I mean?
Eric: Good question. I think they just die.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: The thing that ended up happening with the rotten— kind of the whole rotten vibe was I just thought it was like a malevolent force that kind of bounced around. Especially at the end, where I envisioned that, like, Audrey was the teenage— my headcanon for this was, like, Audrey was the teenage daughter of, like, a person— of a treasure hunter.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Who, just like, bopped around. And this was the equivalent of opening up a tomb of a cursed pharaoh and seeing what's inside. And then Audrey got it from him.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Which is what I was kind of like gesturing towards there at the end. So the rotten force was always just this malevolent thing that happened. I think it also was— I was trying to get at that by being like, "No one knows what this thing's doing other than amassing power, that's amassing people, that's all it wants." That's what you saw when you were talking to the hedge sergeant. I love that guy. That guy was great. So, you know, that kind of randomness is like— at some point, a rotten fruit rolled off the Tree of Life, and then fell into a jar, and then there it do.
Brandon: Into a reliquary?
Eric: Yeah. I mean, ultimately.
Amanda: Listen, Brandon, anything that holds a relic is a reliquary. So you can have the humblest of relic carries, but often they're nice.
Eric: But the cult was worshiping the angler fish, which was crazy.
Brandon: Well, I was about to ask that, was the angler fish also just a fish?
Eric: The angler fish was a sea monster, like the creb.
Brandon: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And that's what they were worshiping. And then Audrey's like, "A group of people? Hell yeah, dawg." So it's like the cult was always— was kind of a red herring for being able to bring in a major enemy from the jump.
Brandon: I just really— what I really wanted to get at with this question was, do y'all remember how cool Hondo was? I liked him.
Amanda: I liked Hondo a lot. That was the most traditional. Like we meet, you know, villagers who are disguising something, like in a loving way, where it was just like, the plot hit, like the reveal hit, and then we sailed off. And then on the deck of the ship, it was like, "Oh, wait, Audrey, who's that in the distance? Oh, Cammie wants to be BFFs? Can't wait to pull on this thread." And it was just like— I think back to that as such a thrilling kind of, like, entree into the campaign proper.
Brandon: Yeah, I love that.
Eric: The sun gulls were my favorite thing.
Brandon: Julia, are you bummed that you didn't become best friends with Audrey?
Julia: I— one of my questions, I think, was, could I have, like, convinced Audrey that we could have been best friends?
Eric: Maybe. I think you could have had to bring the fight— go to her first. By the time she got to the pirate meeting and had, like, a document on her, I think he was— might have been like, "Hey, why aren't you submitting? Why aren't you submitting to me? I— I'm winning." I just don't know. I— that might have been a little too late.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: For it to—
Julia: All right.
Eric: For it all— for to have all gone down.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: In the city where all goes down.
Amanda: Cammie's best friend bite the dust, that's something that happened. I made a section of this Afterparty agenda called Remember that? Where we listed things we remember from the campaign. Brandon and Julia filled it out with a plum but that is one that I was like, "Oh, yeah, Brandon, so right. Cammie's BFF just died."
Julia: Love Smelly Haze.
Eric: Love Smelly Haze.
Julia: RIP Smelly Haze.
Eric: She was great.
Brandon: RIP Smelly Haze.
Julia: She has such a bigger footprint than I thought she was going to have on the campaign.
Brandon: That was such a good moment. I love that one.
Eric: I gotta keep you on your toes with traditional Dungeons & Dragons traps.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Listen, I— all my DND is through your lens. It's like a kid that's never seen Bluey, and they see bluey and they're like, "What?"
Eric: That was so funny where Cammie just watched her mentor die—
Julia: Brutal.
Eric: —by falling down the stairs, and then had to talk to a gym teacher.
Julia: It was also so hard to RP, because I, Julia, had just met the character and they were so impactful to Cammie's life.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Julia: And then they died, and I'm like, "Um—"
Amanda: What do I do?
Eric: And then you had to talk to, like, oh god, and then talk to, like, the spirit inside of this tower.
Julia: Who was useless, completely useless.
Eric: It's like, "Sorry, no one believes in me anymore. I can't help you."
Brandon: It was really good.
Amanda: All right, here's a great thread that Julia brought up. Why was the mayor running toward the volcano after the destruction of the games?
Brandon: Of the Bullseye Games, yeah.
Julia: This haunts me, Eric.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: This haunts me.
Brandon: I don't— I didn't remember this, honestly.
Amanda: I remembered it as just an image of, like, the captain going down with the ship and, like, the, you know, the mayor is, like, doing their best to, you know, do what they can.
Julia: But he was leaving the town to go to the volcano where Laurel is or whatever the fuck his name was—
Amanda: Right.
Julia: —was.
Eric: Yeah, the spirit of—
Amanda: I assume that it was like a pull ripcord in case of destruction situation.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Yeah, the spirit of competition. I think that the mayor— I— I'm trying to remember, I think that the mayor just still believed in the spirit of competition and was just trying to, like— well, what do you do, Julia, when you're the mayor of Jaws, of the Jaws town, and then it happens. Like you're just like, "Well, I guess I was wrong. All the times I told people not to worry, guess I was wrong."
Brandon: You get voted out next term.
Julia: No, but he doesn't, because he's still the mayor in Jaws two.
Brandon: Oh, well, then politics as usual.
Amanda: Shocking.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I think it was just him running away from the destruction and then towards the volcano where Laurelius was, was important.
Julia: Gotcha.
Eric: Yeah, look— man, looking back at my notes for the Bullseye Games feels like such a blast from the past. Like me really trying to come up with these NPCs. Can I just remind you the NPCs we met at—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —we met there?
Amanda: Please.
Eric: So we had Framboise Bossier the dung beetle, who, with the blunderbuss—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —she was gonna be my second like, "I wish we would have done more of this NPC," because she was great.
Eric: Yeah, I— Aubergine— just like Aubergine's whole French separatist thing was just like I don't know what to do other than let this dog run free. You know?
Brandon: Right, yeah.
Eric: We met Threelips there.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Which is great. Future builder prospect who was there, Archimedes Sevens.
Brandon: Woop.
Julia: Shoutout.
Eric: Adjectives, self-serious, charismatic, humorless, kind.
Amanda: Aw.
Julia: Aw.
Eric: Which I liked. The Paladin of the path, Continuous Thankful.
Julia: Fuck that dude.
Eric: A real sad sack character with sunglasses, gloves, always dropping stuff, will bite someone if it all goes bad, that's Radbert Sutherland of the Radbert Pirate Crew.
Brandon: Boo.
Julia: I was like, "Who's gonna bite someone?"
Amanda: Can Radbert transmit infection via biting or just for fun?
Eric: Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: Oh, oh. Got it. Got it.
Eric: Zombies stuff. It got— it didn't get to, like, an Among Us kill sort of situation.
Amanda: Sure.
Eric: Radbert just ,like, threw his puffs everywhere instead. That's, of course, where we met pirate sharp shooter, Kidd Cervantes.
Julia: Woo.
Amanda: None other.
Eric: Who rolls in on a fan boat and doesn't say nothing about nothing.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: With his water gun named Cushion, where he can change the pressure in liquid. The stream can catch things in it, which is why folks thinks he shoots his bins.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: And then, of course, Troy.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: There were so many good NPCs from that arc. Damn. Damn.
Amanda: Remember when I didn't tell you guys I was a prince?
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Remember that?
Julia: Yeah, I remember that.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: That was really fun.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I liked having secrets. No, it was very fun to have a secret, but I thought it was really cool, and gave Troy some depth beyond his himbo cover.
Eric: I want to give a shout out to me, Eric, in the past for my precision tests. You remember that when you had to transcribe a letter or play a round of celebrity or play the match game? That was awesome.
Julia: You remember when Amanda had to get us to guess squirt?
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: We weren't doing reels then, but—
Julia: Man, if only we had been.
Brandon: We can go back, we can go back. We have the technology.
Julia: We must have recorded that in Riverside, so—
Amanda: The video exists.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I was cooking because the categories were sports teams, dogs, breeds and sodas.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: One you would all get, one you might get, and one you definitely wouldn't get. I felt really good about that.
Amanda: Sports teams went better than we expected.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Julia did a great job.
Brandon: Well, Eric, there's a question here from one Julia, I believe it's pronounced.
Julia: What's up?
Brandon: What if we didn't fuck up the bullseye games, Eric? What would have— what would happen?
Amanda: What if?
Eric: You know, I think you would have— you would have taken it to the Kraken. Like it would have been an underwater thing. You would have went— you know, it would have been a— kind of like in a real Buffy, the Vampire Slayer situation, where it's like, you fixed the portal at the last moment. It would have been like, "Well, you kept the Kraken for destroying the stadium."
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: We'd have the cloud key if Troy had been in and won that final duel.
Eric: Exactly.
Amanda: And I mean, I was ready to bring Threelips into the crew, which was obviously a very bad idea. Can I ask you now, Eric, about, like, what is Threelips' motivation? Is there any world in which he would have been okay to become a pirate, or join us, or, like, leave and agree that sometimes friends grow apart and it's sad, but you need to do it?
Brandon: Yeah. Why is he so mad at me again? I forget.
Julia: Because you kept insisting that he needed to become a pirate and—
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: —and he didn't want to become a pirate.
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Julia: You're being very pushy about it.
Brandon: I was being too open and welcoming.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Okay. So I want to see if I did a good job. Do you remember what Threelips wanted ultimately?
Brandon: He wanted Troy to not be a pirate. He wanted to come back and—
Julia: Yeah, he wanted to— try to come home, didn't he?
Eric: Yes, exactly. Okay, good.
Amanda: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Eric: Me as an English teacher, I'm like, "Oh, no. Do we have to do we have to cram before the finals?"
Amanda: No, no.
Eric: Yeah. So Threelips thought that Troy— because, remember, Troy just dipped from the city guard training.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: And thought that Troy was basically having, like, the equivalent of a— like, a midlife crisis.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And then Threelips was like, "I gotta go get Troy because he's making a big mistake." And then Troy's like, "No, I'm fine. Cammie is a terrifying magic user." And Umbi's like, "You should be a pirate. Be a pirate right now." So Three— that's why Three— and that's why Threelips thought that you two were holding Troy there captive.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Had to kill both of you.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And then Troy was too far gone and Threelips said to kill all of you.
Brandon: Yeah, that's true.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: I love Threelips. I was really proud of that character.
Amanda: It was a really good character, and I like that girl from the kitchen. So what was her name? I forget.
Julia: Yeah, you're like, the friend who knew you.
Amanda: The friend who knew me, yeah. Yeah, she was nice.
Julia: It wasn't like Rosalie. It was something like that.
Amanda: Something like that, yeah.
Eric: Oh, who you ran into outside the stadium, who was just like, "Oh, hey, what's up?"
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, Mary Jane, or Mary Rose or something.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Rose Amber. Incredible. Hey, guys, remember when we found the glasses of knowledge behind the bar, and totally—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: —weren't supposed to have them but did?
Brandon: Uh-hmm. I do.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: That was so cool.
Brandon: I most—
Julia: It was very hopeful.
Brandon: —mostly remember the drink, because I want to have that drink.
Amanda: Of course, everyone wants to drink the drink.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I wanted to give Amanda a reward for doing such a good job going through the bar. And I wanted the bar to be a little bit more than just my Disneyland homage for Julia and Brandon. So I gave you the glass of knowledge. I think it also had to do with like— did Crimson Larceny go there? Is that why Tessie the Storm was obsessed with it? Did Tessie the Storm have it? Where did they get this? Why do they keep it in the restaurant?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It gave more questions than it did answers, but it was more like, here's a reward for doing a good job.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I'm just glad we had them to unlock the visage of the drought stones. Like that is one of the—
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: —most moving scenes in the whole campaign to me, is Julia going down there and, you know, learning about the fact of them and also talking to people at the time.
Brandon: Well, that's something— when I was thinking back on it, that I wanted a little more clarity on, was like— so I forget the guy's name, Jeremy or something. The first person to find the Salmon who made the drought stones.
Eric: Oh, yeah, Jeremiah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brandon: Jeremiah. So did he invent the keys or was that the Diamond Knot? Or— because the Salmon didn't know about the keys, so someone put these locks in place.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: And then put the drought stones out. Was it Jeremiah?
Eric: So, yeah, I said earlier on this episode that, you know, I wanted to be ambiguous, but it's like this was done to lock it up. I think that it could have been either the seedlings, or the Diamond Knot, or in collaboration with the Planter. If we want to put our mythology hats on—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —we can imagine Jeremiah, after wishing on the salmon and fixing everything, like going on a big Greek mythology-ass pilgrimage to Mount Olympus—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —and going to talk to the Planter. And be like, "Hey, Planter, this sucks. Fix it. This thing you invented sucks." And convince the Planter to, like, make the keys and then—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Or— and then— or maybe the Diamond Knot did that right when the Cascade opened up again. I think a comb— know, a combination of stuff like that.
Brandon: Love that. Yeah, it's a great idea.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Eric: Mount Olympus is so funny when you think about it. It's like there's a mountain where all the gods go, and you just gotta go up there.
Amanda: By Spirits Podcast.
Brandon: I do have another question real quick about— going back to the Book Depository, about Tessie. At the end of the fight, the fight at the end of the campaign—
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: —do the Rotten Key and Tessie separate? Are they together permanently?
Julia: Who can say?
Eric: Who can say?
Brandon: Do— does the Rotten Queen come after us?
Eric: The biggest difference between making weird Dark Souls bosses and Dungeons and Dragons is that in— when they were doing Elden Ring, they weren't like, "What happens next?"
Brandon: Well, okay, then I'm gonna say, with my headcanon, is that they stayed together, and they did come after us, and Troy smote them down.
Eric: It's possible.
Amanda: For the first time. That'd be a first for the sequel, Troy gets good at shooting.
Julia: I like the idea that it's— after Cammie has gotten true polymorph as a spell, as a nice little spell, and then they're just permanently a ginkgo crab.
Amanda: Oh, Julia, great idea. Can you tell me what else Mage Hand Mike dreamed up that you could have got?
Julia: Yeah. Well, yes, but with the caveat that Valda's doesn't have original spells at that high of a level.
Amanda: Gotcha.
Brandon: Oh, okay.
Eric: You really— I was not mad that you kneecapped my two final fights, because, like you really did sit down— sit on them and make me not remember that you had these things. You really did hide the ball and that's good— that's just good gameplay.
Julia: Yeah. I will say— so my ninth level abilities— or my ninth level spells, if Cammie had gotten to that level, would have—
Amanda: Uh-huh.
Julia: —been astral projection.
Eric: Cool.
Amanda: Cool.
Julia: Foresight, imprisonment.
Eric: Oh.
Julia: True polymorph, weird, and I was wrong, there is one original spell in here, that is at the ninth level for witches, and that is the identity curse.
Eric: Oh, that's cool.
Julia: The identity curse is a touch spell. It's one action, the duration is until dispelled.
Amanda: Wow.
Brandon: Whoa.
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: You extend a finger to a creature's temple who then forgets its own name. Choose one creature you can touch to make a wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target falls unconscious for one hour and is cursed to forget its identity. When the target awakes, it loses all of its personal memories, though the target retains all of its general knowledge, proficiencies, and other statistics. The target will not realize it has any class features or special abilities, and so does not willingly make use of them.
Brandon: That's—
Julia: If left to its own devices, the target will adopt a new name and begin to build a new identity.
Brandon: That's wild. I love that.
Eric: That's awesome.
Amanda: Is that what happened to Aubergine?
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: The only way to dispel it is a remove curse spell at a ninth level.
Eric: That's good stuff, Mage Hand Mike. That's good stuff.
Brandon: Good shit.
Eric: Again, like I can't argue with the grand hex or the— it's good. That's good stuff.
Julia: It's good shit.
Eric: It's good.
Amanda: Julia asked another great question in the outline, could Cammie have killed the Planter? Julia says, "I wanted to kill them—"
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: "—after their shitty monolog at us, after the divine labyrinth."
Brandon: And the harvester was not the Planter, correct? They were two separate beings?
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, okay.
Eric: Not at that moment, no.
Julia: Yeah, not at that moment. Definitely.
Eric: Because, like, the whole point of the thing at the end was like— the Planter was like, "Hey, cool. Good job beating the level."
Brandon: Did we—
Julia: It felt more like I was being scolded and I was like, "Fuck this guy."
Eric: Yeah. I mean, I definitely was getting that. It was about— the Planter is not nice. Definitely not.
Brandon: Could we have killed the harvester in that moment?
Julia: We did.
Eric: We did.
Brandon: I mean, did we? Like, I know we did.
Amanda: It sort of, like, faded off into the horizon, and I assumed that they were down but not dead.
Brandon: I— yeah, I assumed they were gonna come back— like, reform, you know, like goo reforms, after you explode the bad guy.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I think so, but I think it just, like, retreated back into the labyrinth. Like it let you go in that way.
Brandon: Gotcha.
Julia: I also think that the Planter could have just planted another seed—
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: True.
Eric: True.
Julia: —and created a new harvester.
Eric: Yeah, for sure. Not at that moment, no. If you wanted to, I think we could have pivoted to do that.
Julia: To killing a god, yeah.
Eric: The thing is— and I guess it was like— I was reaching for when the Key with the Gaze un-alived was— when you were talking to Baba Rutabaga, who's, again, is a NPC I loved the most. I liked it when she was in your dream and sounded like Joe Pesci. That was my favorite part.
Julia: That was pretty good.
Amanda: She didn't show up once in the flesh.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amanda: She was like, "Ah, nah. Nah."
Eric: This isn't my story. I'm in the woods, I'm chilling.
Brandon: It's like she gets called back to the office and she's like, "No, I quit."
Amanda: "Not happening."
Eric: It was a moment for a parent to try to describe to a child how death works. And it's more complicated when there's actual— when you can, like, chase the soul— according, again, in a Greek mythology sort of way, you— like, you try to grab it before it goes into the Hades whirlpool, like in Hercules, you know
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And it's like, "Don't do that. That's a waste of time and you'll get turned into salt, you know?" So you could have 100% but it's like, "Don't do that. It's a waste of time." You could do it, but your whole life would then be devoted to it, instead. You'd become a monomaniacal about it.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. There are so many other questions and remembrances that we have here about Campaign 3, but plenty of time for that next week, where we are going to be answering your questions and probably a few of ours, all about what happens. I want to close out here about the thing I teased at the top, hey, it's 2025 now. It's—
Brandon: What?"
Amanda: —almost exactly two years and three months since we had our first planning meeting for Campaign 3. And it's also almost eight years that we've been making Join the Party, so floor is ours. I have a couple specific prompts, but let's reflect. How are we feeling here in February 2025 compared to October, November 2022 when we started the campaign?
Brandon: I can't believe it's been almost two years of this campaign. That it feels like it's been no time whatsoever.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: That's wild to think about.
Amanda: Maybe let's start with Eric. You are the person among us, I think, with the finger on the pulse of the actual play community the most. How are you feeling? What's going on in TTRPGs these days? Sure was a choice for us to play 5e with only homebrew, non-Hasbro materials in 2022. Would you do it again?
Brandon: Yeah. I would say, first of all, shout out Mage Hand Mike, this is an awesome text.
Amanda: Shout out Valda's,
Eric: We could not do without him. Every— if you haven't bought it, throw some money towards him. He's written some other stuff. Mage Hand Press is incredible. And again, I never feel more excited that I threw in with third party Dungeons and Dragons creators than I did before, during, and after the OGL crisis. I— that all felt like a really good decision. I felt very prescient. I don't know if it mattered, like in the download numbers or anything, but I felt like that was the right thing to do at the time. I— you know, actual play has changed so much since Brandon and I met because of a bandana of the Adventure Zone that Brand— he had brought to work. Everything's so different now. I think the way that actual play is used either as a parasocial machine for someone who already has, like, a YouTube channel, and then this is like their second YouTube channel, or as a way to, you know, further a career in, like, Hollywood things and entertainment. It just kind of bums me out, because I love games. I love the way that actual play toes the line between what we love about all of our other shows here at Multitude, the persons and expressing your love for a thing, and also the fiction stuff and how it— you ride the line in between the entire artistic project. But, you know, after really trying to throw myself into the community and arena in 2022 and 2023, I've just kind of been disillusioned by the whole thing. And I just— like Join the Party does— we do what we do, and then we'll keep doing what we do. And I'm glad that people continue to listen. And, you know, maybe we'll have shorter campaigns people have better places to jump on. But I don't know, this felt— it's— this felt nice.
Brandon: Yeah, I think that's all true, and I think maybe, fortunately, unfortunately, I'm not going to make any passing judgments, but like, yeah, obviously, the biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest shows are often platforms for jumping off into other things or secondary platforms. But that doesn't stop the fact that there are many, many shows, our level and around our level that are playing it just for the game. So shout out those folks who are actual— the actual real ones, actual place, you know. The actual, actual place, you know, shout them out.
Amanda: Julia, how do you feel? You consume a lot of this content, too.
Julia: I— the problem is I don't have as strong opinions about the form as Eric does.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: And I am just grateful for the fact that I get to play in an actual play and get to, like, perform in a space with my friends each and every week. And it's so different playing, like, your home game versus this as like a job and a thing that I do feel like I am a performer on, as opposed to just like, here's our little like, you know, voices that we're doing and stuff like that. So it is— it's a really interesting feeling to know that, like, people watch what we do and we get to, like, count on them to have feelings about the things, rather than just counting on like how our friends are going to react to the fact that Troy is a secret prince or Cammie has a spooky backstory.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: We also got to play out mini sessions in all of our worlds during the Rolling Bones Tour, which was like incredibly fun to actually do in front of others, not just this Campaign 3, but the whole history of the show. And like that, to me, is so exciting, of, like, the eight years of it all, where we are able to bring back and dip into, you know, Campaign 2, Campaign 3, to Camp-Paign, all these worlds that we love, that I love, and that people like enough to pay money to come out and see us physically in, is, like, the coolest thing in the world. Other podcasts don't have that and it makes—
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: —me incredibly grateful for the ones that we found, especially because, you know, when Brandon and Eric first got together, like one of the things that they were so clear about is that we don't want to have prerequisites of pop culture or actual play TTRPG, DND knowledge to come into the podcast. Like I would never listen too much. Let's be on a podcast like this, if you guys hadn't explicitly said. No, no, we value that someone is a— new to this world and can be on the show.
Brandon: You don't even need to know what the word relic carry means. We'll explain it.
Amanda: You don't need to ever know about sneak attack. Not one.
Eric: You don't need to know who Tom Bodett is. You definitely don't. No one does.
Brandon: No one does.
Eric: Yeah, I want to know about the positives that happened, like, this year and with the stuff that happened with Campaign 3. I'm really happy with— I just loved making a world again and being inspired to do it. Thank you, and/or, for making me feel that way. I want to shout out to the guest episodes that we did. That was really fun.
Amanda: Remember that?
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: God, it was really good. It was really good.
Brandon: The jumping spider.
Amanda: Remember Lucas?
Brandon: Lucas.
Eric: Ah, Lucas. Kristen, you're my favorite. You're my favorite person. I'm sorry everyone just knows you as the Alexa voice on TikTok. The Rolling Bones Tour was sick. Fucking love the Rolling Bones Tour. I loved our dice. I loved going to PXX U. I love that we came up with Model Our Nations. Good stuff that happened this year. I know it was long, but I wanted to get— you know, stomp around in this world for a while. I didn't want to leave.
Brandon: I'm curious on that point, like, especially as players, how we've seen from campaign to campaign to campaign to campaign, what you've learned, what you've done differently, what you've employed, what skills you've leaned on, what skills you've leaned off of, and the same is true for Eric, obviously, but from a different perspective. Like, I know, Amanda, you've, like, intentionally put something into action with every new campaign. So, like, what did you learn from this one that you're gonna use going forward?
Amanda: With Campaign 2, my goal for myself was to fully understand and use all my abilities, which sounds a little bit like a joke, but is— it was fully true. And I really enjoyed thinking about— because I chose a monk and Eric really helped me understand, like key points and all the things that were available to me, but also because we had the superhero layer on it all. And we got to do combo moves and, like, other things as the campaign progressed. That was really, like, using what I had on my character sheet, was of great interest to me. And then for this campaign, I think it was more like making interesting choices for plot. Troy was not very good at sharp shooting, because my rolls went to hell, which, you know, is fine, it happens. But I liked that Troy could just be a person with motivations that were not just, like, protect the status quo, which ultimately is sort of Aggies motivation. So for me, I wanted to, like, do a different character, feel like I'm approaching it from a different way. And I felt a little bit less, like I was, like, staring at my character sheet to figure out what to do in any given situation. I let sort of Troy's motivation guide me, which is describing role-playing, the aspect of it I wanted to concentrate on this time.
Brandon: No, it's hard, though, to truly put yourself. I mean, that's why actors learn how to act. They have the school, they got to get into the characters' motivations and stuff.
Amanda: And I feel like I could do that, because you and Julia had such command over like, you know, the spells and the bombs that I feel like really rounded out our team and meant that, like, I didn't have to be in a sniper nest. Like, you know, making sure that I was getting people from afar in order to make our encounters work.
Brandon: Hmm. What about you, Julia?
Julia: I'm not sure. I feel like when I am doing character creation and particularly like shaping the characters, like personalities and everything like that, I try to find, like, one ethos that this character is always going to be guided by. And for Cammie's, in particular, for this campaign, it was this idea of like, you know, do no harm. Like, everything that I wanted Cammie to do was kind of motivated by the like, "I'm going to assume the best out of people until they start, like, hurting me or my friends." And I think I, for the most part, stayed true to that. Cammie did some fucked up stuff, and I know we've made a couple of jokes about Cammie's bloodlust and stuff like that. But I also felt like I did approach Cammie in a very similar way to how I approach Val, which is— Val's whole thing was about family and community, in particular, community. And so, yeah, I don't know. I think that I have maintained the way I play my characters. I don't know if I've necessarily grown and I don't know if it's easy for me to, like, have that kind of introspection about how I play the game. But, yeah, I'm not sure.
Amanda: From my seat, your words to impact ratio is even closer to one-to-one. Val was an— was a PC of few words, high-impact and I feel like Cammie, that was even more the case.
Brandon: Yeah, I was gonna say, when you're the top role player in all of actual play, you don't really have to grow, so—
Amanda: You know?
Julia: Stop.
Amanda: Exactly.
Eric: Wow.
Brandon: Wow.
Amanda: Exactly.
Eric: Yeah. And you only break my encounter sometimes, which makes you better than most of the other top players.
Amanda: It's so much fun. It's so good for clips. Clips love it.
Eric: Yeah, I want to give a shout out to clips. Love clips. Honestly, I've been enjoying the clips.
Brandon: Love clips.
Eric: Bren did such a good job, but it's been nice to have—
Brandon: Shout out Bren.
Eric: —like these little moments.
Amanda: How about you, Brandon?
Brandon: I was going to— yeah, I was going to— thank you for asking. I was going to touch on like— there's a distinct sort of pendulum sway that I've been trying to figure out, that I think I sort of settled on here in Campaign 3. In, like— in Campaign 1, it was very much like the classic first time DND, or, like, way too much backstory, way too much personality, but still didn't really pay attention to that stuff. Just kind of was, like, a little bit chaotic in a not fun way or, like, in a non-directed way. And then I swung sort of the other direction with Milo to sort of, like, make him a person, right?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Like, I tried really hard to, like, make him a human. Not that— I'm always chaotic, but, like, you know, like, make him a person. And then for this campaign, I felt like I finally had the footing with myself and with my co-players, where I could lean into a little bit of the chaos, fun stuff that I love to do, without worrying too much about not being able to be supported or fucking up the game in a way.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: So, like, yeah, I think it was a nice, fun middle that I finally found. But I think for campaign— for the next campaign, I've sort of— I'm going to, like, be able to free myself of these sort of shackles.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: And I have some ideas about what to play and really lean into, sort of, like, what Julia is describing, of, like, really figure out these characters and lean into what they are and what they— what their motivation and what their personality is.
Amanda: Hey.
Brandon: So I have some ideas, but we'll see.
Eric: Listen, I got— gotta say, there are plenty of tabletop RPGs that make that easier, instead of like, "I don't know, what's your strength?" Dungeons and Dragons does.
Amanda: Well, Eric—
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: —give us a little taste. Where are we going next?
Eric: I don't want to tell them yet. I don't want to tell them.
Brandon: That's fine. Say that.
Eric: I don't want to tell them. We got stuff to do. We got the next episode.
Amanda: Okay. You're right. You're right.
Eric: We have— we need your questions for the next Afterparty. We got the One Shot Derby coming up after that. We'll tell you, we'll tell you.
Brandon: Who can say?
Amanda: Who can say?
Julia: Who can say?
Brandon: I think this is the last spoil the plank.
Eric: Don't worry, the glove has been here the entire time.
Amanda: As I— as I'm on the precipice of the plank, players, anything I forgot from your excellent questions?
Julia: Brandon asked, "Can anyone tell me, without looking, what Havana's name is?" And Brandon, the name is Havana Tropicana.
Amanda: Don’t deadname.
Julia: His old name was Rudy, so fuck off.
Brandon: What was his last name, Julia?
Julia: I don't think he had a last name.
Brandon: Oh, he did. I wrote it down.
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: It wasn't Rudy Tudy?
Brandon: It was not Rudy Tudy.
Eric: No, I got his name from a Normie name generator on fantasynamegenerators.com.
Amanda: Oh, then this is— oh, it can't stick in my brain, then. It's not possible.
Julia: It's just Rudy, then, in my mind.
Amanda: Brandon, what is it? And also, good pull.
Brandon: It is Rudy Thornton.
Julia: Thornton?
Amanda: Who is he? Who is he? Who is he?
Julia: No. That's Havana Tropicana.
Eric: God, shout out to Havana Tropicana, who got pranked so hard. He got put on a mattress.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And sent into the Great Salt Sea.
Amanda: And he couldn't have landed in a better place.
Julia: Real quick, I want to ask everyone's favorite NPC, because mine, I will die for Havana Tropicana. I will die on the hill of Havana Tropicana.
Amanda: Mine is Eric playing Harold.
Brandon: That's a good one. I mean, Aubergine, no doubt.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Of course, of course.
Julia: Damn. Damn.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: God. I ended up having a real affection for Archimedes Sevens.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Yeah. We can tell.
Eric: Because of how much he hewed to Umbi.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: And then how much he then hewed towards the Key with a Gaze, Archimedes Sevens' partnership probably was my favorite.
Amanda: I'm not ready to talk about it.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Eric, they were gay, right?
Eric: Yeah, they kissed. They did kiss.
Amanda: Aw.
Julia: What part did he kiss?
Eric: Don't worry about it.
Brandon: Last question I had to ask, speaking of Archimedes, who won the builder contest?
Amanda: It's Archie. It's Archie. I refuse to believe any other outcome. It has to be Archie.
Julia: Archie's dead. We fast forward a year and we find out Archie died during the games.
Amanda: I mean, he died as he lived, wanted to be the builder, but yet, I refuse to believe it. My headcanon is that Archie is the longest running and most successful ruler, builder.
Brandon: Fair.
Eric: In— if— since I'm telling a story, the answer is Archie, right? The answer is like Archimedes Sevens, who was— and I alluded to this a lot. I don't know if anyone ever noticed, but like, Archimedes was raised at, like, a future builder farm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah, like in a creche
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fahrenheit 451.
Eric: But like a collective of mothers that I said— yeah. Then I said, I alluded to it a bunch, and I thought it was— I— I guess kind of moved on every time I said it. So it's like he was raised— he then— when the Cascade dried up— or when he learned about the Cascade drying up, because I think it's like, they wouldn't tell you. Like, why would anyone need to know that? He's like, "You know what would make me a really good builder? Is if I went and did that." He escaped and then he came back, which is why I think it was so dangled over him in Mango Crossing, that he had to return, because they knew it was such a hook for him. So in storytelling, of course, he won. But, like, it's entirely possible with the way that he went. He's like— you know, he died, because that's how the builders games work.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Only one Greenfolk out of, like, 20, 30, 40, 50, wins that thing, and everyone else dies.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So I don't know. I— like, you know, for story reasons, of course, he won, but, you know, it depends—
Julia: Realistically.
Eric: —what kind of story I'm telling.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: The gritty reboot, we'll see if there's a check for that. You know, we can—
Eric: I really wanted Archimedes Sevens to have a happy ending, though. I think that was the whole thing, where I'm like, Archimedes is— not even a happy ending, but— I really wanted Archimedes Sevens to, like, keep on living outside of the world of the story. That's why I wanted him to dip early. And I think him leaving, and the last thing he saw was, like, you all taking care of the Key with a Gaze, and then all— everything else that happened was, like, that's what I wanted him to leave with. So I think—
Brandon: Love it.
Eric: —he was my favorite.
Brandon: Love it.
Amanda: Beautiful. Well, folks, we will see you next week with the final Afterparty part two, and then after that, of course, it's the One Shot Derby. We'll tell you more about it. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you for your questions, and we look forward to talking to you next time.
Brandon: Bye.
Julia: Bye.
Eric: Bye.
Amanda: May your roll turn ever upward.
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