Goats, Free Lancers, and bones—oh my! There is so much to love in this week’s Afterparty, from how we prepare for oneshots to where on Earth (or space) Dr. Bertha Bones came from. Plus, stay tuned for a preview of our schedule for the next month as the Camp-Paign begins!
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a D&D 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. Begin with Campaign 2 (The Join Campaign) for a modern, sci-fi superhero game, or marathon all of Campaign 1 (The Party Campaign) 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 (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the Afterparty. You may come in with a certain number of bones, you may leave with fewer or more bones just you know, put on a little colorful name tag or handkerchief in your pocket. This is something to learn from Terran traditions in the early 20th century. And it'll indicate if you want to keep your number of bones, increase them, or decrease them.
Julia: I love that.
Brandon: It's just like a stop like a flashlight party or you've stopped by a-
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Stoplight party. That’s exactly it!
Eric: I disco- I discovered this around the time that San- in the Old San Francisco, not new San Francisco, which is on New Mars, but old San Francisco from Terra, where they had groups of bed would come around and they had different handkerchiefs that said we had the number of bones they wanted. Get it? It's a joke.
Amanda (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Happy Pride!
Eric: Joke. Happy Pride! Hey, hello. Welcome to the Afterparty. I didn't DM all this stuff, so I'm doing it today!
Amanda: Yeah!
Julia: Oooh!
Eric: It's me! I'm Amanda. I've been Amanda the whole time.
Amanda: Happy Pride to you, Eric.
Eric: Thank you, I very much appreciate that.
Julia: Amanda. I do have a request for the listeners.
Amanda: Oh, sure.
Julia: You know how you like to like quietly whisper things to Brandon while we're talking on like, you'll–
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: –quietly whisper your jokes. Can you just quietly whisper some pistons throughout the episode and I'll create like, a supercut for after the credits.
Amanda: I did- I did tell listeners in the last midroll that I said the word pistons in the accent and then told them that on the honor system, they have to become patrons if they listen to it. So I'll just do that again and if you stick around after the credits people, you have to become patrons, okay? That's the rule.
Julia: That's the rule.
Eric: This rule will come to your house we know we have space technology now.
Julia: We do.
Eric: We know.
Julia: I invented it.
Amanda: Pistons.
Eric: Oh, you just said pistons again.
Julia: There it is.
Eric: I heard it. Alright. Well, I'm gonna take these reigns, they're sticky, they have jam on it. Amanda–
Julia: Why? Who did that?
Amanda: Eric, you know my favorite food is toast with honey, so much honey!
Eric: Oh, it's honey. It was Amanda.
Brandon: It's Amanda. There's no way that thing is sticky. That's– this– that's a lie and you know it, Eric.
Julia: Nothing Amanda owns a sticky, ever.
Amanda: My favorite foods are honey and fruit though. So I– my hands are frequently sticky then I feel yucky and then I washed them.
Eric: Also for those of you who live in Amanda's apartment, some things aren't sticky. I'll tell you.
Julia: Sounds fake.
Brandon: I wonder who else lives in Amanda's apartment?
Eric: Hey, for all you listeners out there who lives in Amanda's apartment, this is for you.
Amanda: Secretly.
Eric: It's exclusive. Alright, so I want to start this out because we're talking about Goat Party 2. What was it the revenge of Anderson Cooper?
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: And Space Party Episodes 1 and 2, Revenge of Foxtrot Squad, and A New Hope of Foxtrot Squad. I first want to talk about hey, look at these other GMs. I'm so excited. I want to say first, Amanda Julia, how did it feel doing recorded actual play, Amanda for your first time in I don't know 2/3 years? Definitely before the pandemic and Julia, your first time ever here on the Join the Party RSS feed.
Julia: Amanda and I just both pointed at each other being like, "You go first."
Eric: Let's start with Amanda.
Amanda: It was really fun to return to the land of the goats but made me very nervous to prep. Even though I'd done it once before I looked at my notion document, not spawn, but I use notion for my prep and realize that I had written an opening monologue for the first Goat Party and then just had a few bullet points of things you might encounter. One of which that Tilda Swinton, the other one said Rihanna, and that was it. And so I was like, Oh, shit, I really Eric-ed myself here and did not prep, and then looked back at my lack of prep and got retroactively terrified. So I was very nervous. I don't know how you do it, Eric, keeping all those balls in the error trying to hit things that I think they would have hit. And then you changed course and I had to change along with it. I had a lot of fun in the end, I did watch many episodes of the mole and videos of Anderson Cooper. And what's his face?
Eric: Andy Cohen.
Amanda: Andy Cohen drunk at New Year's Eve and did not get to put a lot of that preparation into the story. But I really appreciate everybody going with the flow and feel like you were really down to clown on New Year's Eve.
Brandon: Always am, baby!
Eric: Always, especially when New Year's Eve ends at 9:30, fucking-
Brandon: Yeah, New Year's Eve is terrible. I'm taking it all back. I hate it.
Amanda: Yeah, the barreling terror of, oh, no. When do I like as I was saying the beginning. I was like, It's 9 PM? I really wasn't sure what time it should be. I'm like, oh no! I planned for it to end with the ball dropping anyway, it was a ton of fun, I don't know how you do this every week. But it was it was nice to step into those– those generously-sized shoes that are the same shoe size I wear. I don't know.
Brandon: listeners may not know but Eric does juggle constantly while DM-ing, it's really impressive, balls in the air the entire time.
Amanda: It's true.
Eric: I do it with one hand and I'm typing with the other hand, side stuff. Julia, how does how did this go for you?
Julia: I think it was- it was nerve-racking. I think I over-prepared for sure. I wanted to make sure that you all had things to do and because the rules of Lasers and Feelings are so loose, I was like very concerned that you would do something and I wouldn't know how to respond to it. So I think I might have like, kept you guys a little bit too on the rails. But at the same time, I was– I was very excited with how it turned out. And you guys blew me away with your character choices, which I think made the whole thing that much better.
Brandon: I don't think that's true, Julia. I feel like we knew the shape of the game and we played in the shape of the game. Like I don't think I didn't feel railroaded at all.
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: Like I feel like when we veered off and especially at the end.
Eric: Yes.
Julia: We'll talk about the end.
Brandon: You improved nicely.
Julia: Thank you.
Eric: Yeah, I also don't think there's any problem necessarily with railroading in a One Shot or a Two Shot.
Julia: Right.
Eric: I also think that railroading is a dirty word that like people say because they say they want a sandbox, and then they're like, this game sucks. There's no snakes. Fuck you. So it's more like a ride at Universal Studios where you need the men and like the men and black ride we have to shoot all the you have to shoot all the aliens–
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: –and the Buzz Lightyear ride equivalent.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Would you say it's like the Jungle Cruise where the operator gets to improv while the visitors go on a track around the thing?
Eric: No, that's a different thing where the DM just monologues for 20 minutes while the players sit there and clap.
Julia: I was worried that I was doing that sometimes.
Amanda: You know, Eric really liked that metaphor because much like a ride like that like yes, there is a path there might be a track that you can turn around you can look up you can look down you can go sideways and I totally felt Julia that we had options. Even though you know like, I, you heard my delight when we got to the last fork in the road. And it was things that we had bypassed before I was like, hihihi, you're like, yes, love it, can't wait.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, listen, we've done this for live shows too.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: When I had run a one-shot I'm like, guys don't fuck around. And you guys fuck around like 50%, so it's fun. So honestly, I don't think that there's necessarily even a problem if you did do that. Which like, you know, it's not the I don't think it's a big deal.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Gotta finish in two hours. That's tough.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Exactly. Let's keep talking about like, what it's like to run One-Shots before we go into summaries here. @OnCampaign asked, "How do you create meaningful stakes in a One Shot?". Where there something that Julia and Amanda you guys kept in mind about like making sure we had fun and something to like chafe against? Especially, this is again, touching on what Julia, you said. I think running one pagers is really difficult, like the person running the one pager, which is just like a one page for one page RPG that has very simple mechanics, like Goat Party and Lasers and Feelings, the various iterations of Lasers and Feelings, it's like you don't have game mechanics to lean back on.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You just have to do plot. So how do you keep the stakes up?
Julia: Yeah. One of the things that I faced during the episode, like, Brandon, I think you rolled poorly on like trying to get away from one of the sculpture monsters–
Brandon: Me?
Julia: –or something. Yeah, I know. It was weird.
Brandon: I don't think so.
Julia: But I wanted to injure you. But I'm like, well, there's no like hitpoints mechanics in Lasers and Feelings. What do I do? You know.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Like, I was just like, oh, you rolled your ankle. And I guess you'll roll you know, with one less dice, which didn't even happen because Amanda finished the fight very quickly after that. But I was like, I don't- I don't know how to solve this problem because there's so few rules in this game.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: And for me, I think that goat crashers actually does a really good job of setting that up for you where you are given a motivation and it's, you know, to have a cheeky little goat time and cause chaos.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And the structures of human society, the fact that you are goat busting into a human party, like that already is a tension that is pushing back against you, where you don't want to be discovered. And if you are, you know, human beings will do what human beings do if they were to see a cheeky little goat in their party, and you know, like, try to get them out of there.
Brandon: Pet
Julia: Put in petting zoo.
Amanda: Yeah. Pet it, adopt it. Yeah, feed it grapes. Exactly. So for me, sending it around an iconic New York event, I wanted to have a call back to the first Goat Party which took place at of course, the Met Gala, the biggest party I could think of, and I also had just watched Ocean's 8 and so I had you know, everything on my brain. And for New Year's Rockin Eve, I just thought it would be fun chances for you to get on television chances for you to you know, go after a big shiny, sparkly, New Year's Eve ball a lot of foods around there. So I thought it would be fun and I like really setting my One Shots in a physical location. I know well, I have a lot of respect for Julia making up a whole world Moon/State possibly? to set your one shot in but for me, like when I was first preparing for Goat Party, knowing every inch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I knew that like if you said you wanted to run out into the hallway, I knew it was there. And so I would have to invent you know, the characters or the obstacles or the stuff in the way but it was for me almost like a skeleton or a scaffold on which I could hang my fiction. It's like setting a party in your apartment. Like if some if you run into napkins, you know where the napkins are like, you know, it's– it's not a totally unfamiliar scene. And so similarly, I've unfortunately spent a lot of time in Times Square. And so I knew that when you wanted to, you know, go to the next block, you could like I knew it was there. I mean, it was also a bit of a sort of advancing looks like Julia had the different challenges and the different dates, I sort of saw it as you know, you have five blocks to traverse before you get to the ball. And that helped me a little bit and thinking about what you can encounter in each block.
Brandon: Confirmed, Amanda lives in the Met! We knew it!
Julia: We all knew it.
Amanda: I lived near the Met for like six years and so I went there very often.
Eric: It was funny while we were doing it, and this is a problem of us all spending time in New York City is that like, I think at one point, we've had to pull up a map. So we can accurately go to the ridiculous Times Square restaurants-
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: -that exists and be like, no, we can't go to Bubba Gump, that's two blocks away.
Amanda: The Red Lobster is South the 42nd Street and the Olive Garden is North.
Eric: That's not even technically Times Square. That's the Flower District, everyone knows that.
Julia: We were also like, well, that place was close by 2016.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: So, we can't go there.
Amanda: I did look up who was performing at the New Year's Rockin' Eve of 2016.
Julia: Great job.
Eric: I'm really sorry for both of you that we can go to the Jekyll and Hyde club.
Julia: RIP.
Eric: RIP.
Amanda: RIP. Forever on a side street. It's not- not Time Square proper.
Brandon: I also don't know that just as a player. I don't know that I want, quote unquote, like meaningful, like emotionally meaningful stuff. Like what tasks are just supposed to be like an hour or two of fun, you know? Just have–
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: –fun with it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: If that– if that puts any less stress on you as a DM, you know, question asker?
Eric: Yes. Ralts asked us how our approach to playing tabletop RPGs for a shorter game like a one shot or two shot versus a longer campaign? Do you just kind of come out swinging and wreak havoc?
Everyone: Yes.
Eric: The answer is yes.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Because there's no repercussions. You just fuck around.
Amanda: Put a tentacle on.
Julia: You just make wild character choices and you see what happens?
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: All three of you.
Amanda: Put a tentacle on.
Eric: I don't know what you're talking about, Julia. Well, let's go into the actual games for us to talk about the ridiculous character choices that we did. Let's hit Goat Party because I know we're gonna play. We have to spend like 40 minutes talking about Bertha Bones. So that's going to be–
Julia: Yeah, yeah, we really should.
Amanda: Sure. Sure.
Eric: Let's do Goat, Let's do Goat Party first. What was everyone's favorite part? I know I just said this before. But the joke about New Year's being at like 830 or 930-
Julia: It's so funny.
Eric: -was so funny. So funny to me. And then the goats singing Auld Lang Syne to cue all that? Brandon, could you just cut that out and make that my ringtone?
Brandon: I can. I did have to align it in a little bit in the session because we are over Skype-
Julia: Oh, I get that.
Brandon: -or Hangouts and then also, not all of us can sing in rhythm, apparently.
Amanda: Does that break your brain? Are you okay?
Eric: Brandon, you could say it right now, Lauren's not here to defend.
Julia: Yeah, Lauren, classically, the best singer.
Brandon: The only other person who has a degree in music.
Eric: Yeah, I can't. This one's embarrassing that Lauren cannot sing, I can't believe that. Yeah, what was uh, was everyone else's favorite part.
Julia: I mean, the ending was impeccable, truly incredible. Eric, all of your choices about feeling that every time something said never ending, you thought it was connected to hell. I was like, oh, okay. Sure. Very good.
Amanda: Like, do most commercial kitchens feel a little bit like a hell mouth? Of course, they do. It was so suitable.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: It was the thing when you said that all the kitchens were connected, where I'm like, oh, is there something there? And I kept pursuing it. I just wanted to run down that- that thing just as an excuse to like, move things along. But I'm like, no, it's because hell is there.
Julia: No, it's good.
Eric: We're in hell because we're in Times Square on New Year's. So we obviously need to be in hell. The characters the different delivering classes, quote, unquote, that you get and Goat Party also ridiculous. So it's like, what else are you supposed to do? I mean, Bran- like, the entire- the entirety of your character is 'I'm small'. Like what are you supposed to do?
Julia: Maybe it's about being small.
Eric: Like, you're the whole thing's supposed-
Brandon: Yeah!
Eric: –things about being small and getting on top of stuff.
Amanda: Yeah, the image of Brandon's goat under a hat. So he's cute.
Julia: Adorable. Riding the hat like a small boat on a thing of Margaritaville margaritas, incredible.
Brandon: That was- that was Eric someone else came up with that but that was genius.
Julia: I still love it.
Brandon: Was that you, Julia?
Julia: I don't know, I don't remember, might have been Lauren.
Eric: I think it was Lauren because it was the blood-red Margarita.
Brandon: That's- that was very good.
Eric: I like the Jimmy Buffett was like, you know, instead of being in the back of an Italian restaurant, there were the back of a Margaritaville and Jimmy Buffett as being the Conciliary. I think it's very funny.
Amanda: I did have to play Jimmy Buffett to mobsters and you know, two separate sort of Margarita machines that could create an explosion at any time.
Eric: It was your choice to give them voices and I don't know why you did that.
Brandon: And googly eyes? That- that was weird but...
Amanda: But no, it's- it's a lot. It's hard to make two different characters without body language to be able to distinguish them. I give you a ton of credit every time I GM, all two of them I've or three of them. I've really come away with a greater respect of the balancing act that you do.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, it's hard. [laughter] I don't know what to say.
Julia: There was a part in mine I know we're talking about Goat Party. But I agree with you, Amanda, because there was a part in the second half of space party, where Brandon kept this in where I was trying to, like, get words out while doing-
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: –the Barb voice. And I was like, oh, it's really hard to do a voice and also think of what I'm trying to say at the same time. Ooh, boy multitasking.
Amanda: Think of the words. And then say them, yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I kept– I kept those in because they immediately lead to jokes and I can't cut the joke.
Julia: I understand.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: The key is just doing voices that you think are really funny.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And then you're more interested in doing the voice and you're like, oh, they'll say this and stuff.
Julia: But it was like trying to do exposition in the Barb voice that I hadn't written down. I was like-
Julia (as Barb): It's. It's this and uh, uh, uh.
Brandon (as Barb): Error, error, error. Give me a second, error.
Julia: I should, I should have done that.
Eric: Well, Brandon's nice, and he cuts out all the times that I say error really.
Julia: Fair enough.
Eric: For us players, how about the characters that we chose? I get I said that, like, the classes really defined us as people, but like, man, Goat Parties really, really good. Thank you, Grant Howitt. You can just get it for free on Itch and it's on Twitter, and it's been floating around in social media. I do think that it's- it's his best one pager. I know lots of people feel a way about Honey Heist. But like, I mean, it's so straightforward, and- and the. It tells you that the character you have to be from the different types of goats. Being the Demonic Goat is so much fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Because it's just like, I just want a Demon and that sounds great.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Then that's really fun.
Brandon: Demon daddy!
Eric: The best one you could roll. What did you- what did you like about your characters?
Julia: I– I really liked the name that I picked. Everyone was like, oh, I'm just gonna pick like a goat name. I'm like, I am Whitney Bleatherton, I'm making a reference to Bridgerton, and I don't care.
Brandon: Julia, I will fully admit that as I was editing and I Slacked Eric and Amanda, because I didn't want to make you feel weird or-
Julia: No, you asked me. It was all good.
Brandon: Well, hold on.
Julia: He just asked us.
Brandon: Is this a reference I'm not getting? And then none all of us were like, oh, don't fucking know, man, and then I asked you.
Julia: All my names are references, man.
Eric: That's a very good point.
Julia: Amanda, was there anything that we missed that you were like, really excited for us to do?
Amanda: I had a lot of thoughts around like convincing the TV producer kind of like, you know, Weekend at Bernie's-ing Anderson Cooper, and having to kind of like, convince him and like, talk him through a career crisis and like, get him to a point of sobriety enough to do the New Year's Rockin' Eve. I also had some mechanics about alcohol in re goats. So having kind of, we took more time getting to the sort of ball than I expected we would but I do think it turned out really well. I had not prepped anything for that party that we almost took the elevator up to. So I was like, Oh, God, hope that doesn't happen. And again, had not thought about Margaritaville replace that there whatsoever. The way I structure my notes were like people you can interact with, you know, objects that might draw your attention, things that might provide interference for you, and then just like tasty morsels, both food and otherwise, that, you know, might be little incentives to draw you out. And then from there, you know, I didn't have a preconceived notion as to how it would go.
Julia: Nice.
Eric: Did you have the Levi's store in your notes?
Amanda: I did not. It was like, oh, they everyone, obviously, it's 2016. We all need to get jean jackets because 2016 is gonna be the best year of our lives.
Brandon: I regularly went to Times Square because there wasn't one closer to me.
Julia: Fair enough.
Brandon: That was the closest one.
Eric: I respect that. I do have a question here. That's written in my notes. Amanda, pick your favorite goat and why is it Buckwheat? And that was written by Hold on, let me pull out the name for you.
Brandon: Yeah, who asked that question? Because they're a genius.
Eric: Oh, it's from Brandon. Brandon asked that.
Brandon: Another Brandon? Someone else named Brandon?
Eric: It must have been a different Brandon.
Julia: It's Brandon Gragle.
Amanda: That sounds like a cereal for some reason. Gragle.
Julia: Gragle.
Amanda: My favorite goat? Was any goat played by Lauren Shippen.
Brandon: Yey!
Amanda: That goat fit in so well and brought so much sweetness and levity, and creativity to our One Shot.
Julia: So fancy.
Amanda: So good.
Eric: So which ending did you all listen to for Goat Party 2? I listened to the one where Buckwheat was the murderer.
[shocked screams]
Brandon: That's the twist, Buckwheat was the murderer in all three of them, Eric.
Everyone: Oh!
Eric: I only listened to one.
Amanda: Did you guys catch the Aftershow hosted by Andy Cohen on YouTube?
Eric: No, I didn't.
Julia: No, it's because- because a goat stabbed Andy Cohen, so.
Eric: I didn't know Lauren knew so many Real Housewives. That one-
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah, very impressive
Brandon: I would- I would pay any amount of money to see if Lauren knows any of the Housewives. I'm gonna guess; No.
Eric: Maybe one I'm gonna say one?
Brandon: Unless they're on Tumblr. I don't know.
Amanda: There is a Housewives-Queer culture overlap so I put money on at least one.
Brandon: I'm gonna text her and by the end of this episode, we'll know.
Eric: Sure. I bet she knows Big Ang, I'm gonna go with that.
Julia: Is Big Ang a real person?
Eric: Big Ang, she was in New Jersey.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Amanda: I think she knows at least Lisa Vanderpump, probably.
Eric: That's- that's fair. I always forget that Lisa Vanderpump was on started as a housewife. But of course, she did.
Amanda: It's the– the doctor was a mother answer to this question.
Eric: And then finally, of course, honestly, we should really, GingaSnappD but also various other peoples want us to release a goat cover of- of Auld Lang Syne.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: So we should just do that. What I love about is that I still don't need to know the words of Auld Lang Syne.
Julia: Yeah, if you're baa-ing it you can't- you don't need to.
Eric: It's perfect. Okay, let's go to Space Party. It's time to talk about Space!
Julia: Space.
Julia: Space, baby!
Brandon: Pause, Lauren does not know any of the names of the Real Housewives.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Damn.
Julia: Excellent.
Brandon: Dang
Amanda: Okay. All right. Well-
Eric: I'm gonna need proof of that text that says, "Hey, Lauren, can you just say that you don't know any Housewives?"
Julia: Screenshot it.
Eric: Alright, let's talk about space.
Amanda: Eric, before we get into the details of Space Party and choices I may have made that may have upstaged the rest of my compatriots and I really apologize. How do you approach character creation for one shots, it must be so different to NPC creation. At least I know all Brandon, Julia, and myself make characters all the time that we play when we make PCs. But how did you approach this, how do you feel about that?
Eric: Yeah, that's a good question. I do find the being a player being very different for me and DM. I mean, like, I never, I never am a player. Even in the home games that I've done, I've DM'ed and I have said that this, it makes me feel the most like an athlete that I ever do is that like, I'm putting up reps in the gym that no one sees. So like, when I want to play a character, I think I just want to more play a character as an archetype that slots into the way everyone else's players, or everyone else's characters, or it's like, I'm going to do this, and this is how I'm going to relate to everyone else. I kind of I always want to get my character a game as well. Like a thing I can lean on to make jokes, or whatever situation it is.
Amanda: Does that sound familiar? Brandon?
Brandon: No.
Amanda: Seems fake.
Eric: So for Kirkwood Gaps, AKA Chef, I definitely wanted to be a like kind of a flat straight man, but also be in a relationship with the ship's AI was like, yeah, he also- he also is in a relationship and hooks up with the ship. I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you.
Amanda: It's very Becky Chambers. I love it.
Eric: Yes, I think all of us took inspirations from Becky, from Becky Chambers, or at least I know, Julia and I did explicitly. I told Julia explicitly, I was going to rip it from a long, strange journey to a–
Julia: Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
Eric: Yeah, well, it's exactly what I said, it’s any of those adjectives.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: You Google some version of that, it'll come up. Don't worry.
Eric: Someone pointed out to me that I use the name of one character, like the relationship of a different character.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And then the personality of a third character. I'm like, yeah, it's a great book, guys.
Julia: Yeah, it's a good book.
Eric: You should all go read it. So I did- I definitely did that explicitly. Let's start with Julia about where how you felt running a space campaign. And then we'll talk about the other– the other characters and get into it.
Julia: I felt really good about it. I knew I wanted to do space. The way that I kind of approached creating like the plot and the like world was- I was like, Well, I've always wanted to do a reverse Indiana Jones.
Brandon: Ah, Jones, Indiana, the classic.
Julia: Jones, Indiana.
Eric: It's called a Connecticut Smith, Brandon. It's like you don't read any of my blog posts.
Julia: Which a reverse Indiana Jones is basically like, oh, we're taking things out of museums and returning them to their rightful owners.
Eric: Is that when you throw your hat in somewhere before a door closes?
Julia: Yes, precisely. You're like, I don't want this hat, throw it under the sliding door.
Eric: It's your– it's your problem now I don't want it.
Julia: So I kind of worked backwards from there. I was like, okay, well, if we're doing space, there should be a group that like enforces an international law that says, hey, you can reclaim your cultural artifacts at any time. Who would be in charge at that? Well, it would probably be like a group of like hired adventurers basically. What would have hired adventurers look like in space? And I'm like, Oh, the Federation of Free Lancers, got it.
Eric: So funny.
Julia: And then from there kind of building out like Madam Claudelle.
Brandon: The FF! I just realized where the FF.
Julia: Yeah, you're the FF. The kind of building out Madam Claudelle exomoon and stuff. I drew inspiration from like, alright, what's weird shit that rich people have like in their houses and I was thinking of like, the cocaine hippos in–
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: –Colombia and stuff like that and I drew inspiration from that and I also drew inspiration from the House on the Rock which if anyone knows what the House on the Rock is, it is a like, tourist attraction in middle of America, that is just like, a fucking weird house.
Eric: I don't know what this is.
Brandon: Like Winchester weird? Or?
Julia: Yeah, the Winchester house-
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: –is the one in California. The House on the Rock is like, basically like, a museum of strange collections.
Brandon: Ahhh.
Julia: I heard of it for the first time because it is mentioned in the Neil Gaiman novel, American Gods. It is a tourist attraction located between Dodgeville and Spring Green, Wisconsin. It is a complex of architecturally distinct rooms, streets, gardens, and shops designed by Alex Jordan, Jr. And then some of the rooms include the streets of yesterday, which is a recreation of early 20th century American town, the Heritage of the Sea, which features nautical exhibits and a 200 foot model of a fanciful whale-like sea creature, the Music of Yesterday, which is a huge collection of automatic music machines. And what the management bills as the world's largest indoor carousel, which has 269 carousel animals, it contains no horses, which was what the reference to the carousel was like, you guys can't find a Horse.
Amanda: I was wondering where you pull that from. Like, it's very uncanny. But I was like, what? What is that? What is your buddy reaching for?
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Hey, Julia. I hate this house.
Julia: Good.
Amanda: That's so big.
Julia: I love it.
Amanda: How big is the carousel?
Julia: I haven't been there, but I love it.
Amanda: It must be like 800 feet wide or something?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: 269 is the worst number. Why is it odd? Why is it odd? I just don't like that.
Amanda: If you– if you place the golden ratio on top of the number 269-
Eric: No.
Amanda: –it actually all maps out.
Eric: Leave me alone.
Julia: So yeah, I wanted to give you guys like, a place to go through the maze was an idea of like keeping you guys on track but also letting you make decisions on what challenges you faced. And then Madam Claudelle was just off the rails.
Eric: You gotta give an old lady a spider body.
Julia: I had to.
Eric: You gotta
Amanda: So good.
Brandon: That sounds like Futurama to me, I don't know if that's what you're pulling from, but-
Julia: I was picturing the-- I was picturing a very distinct scene, which is like the older woman in Anastasia who like drops her gown. She's like, "It's me, grandmother. I'm Anastasia!" when they're like auditioning people to play her.
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: That's incredible. Let's we're gonna get more into Julia's brain. Julia's big space brain. And before we talk about– before we talk about Dr. Bertha Bones, Brandon, let's talk about Jet Byrne. So is this just like were you playing a character? Was-
Amanda: Is this your Id?
Eric: Was it you?
Amanda: Yeah.
Amanda: Who, who was it?
Brandon: You know me, Classic Playboy Brandon Grugle.
Eric: Classic Space Playboy Brandon James Grugle.
Brandon: I mean, I–
Amanda: Pistons
Julia: I just saw Amanda say 'pistons' into the mic. I didn't hear it. But I saw it happen.
Eric: I heard it.
Brandon: Incredible. I think- I think I came up with the y'all came up with your characters first. So I just chose one that slotted well in those in from the one pager. And then I think I've some reason Rose Byrne came up, the actor. And so I was like, “Oh! Oh…” And then I came up with a name that way and then it kind of just morphed into Kirk. I didn't really want to play Kirk, but it was just Kirk.
Eric: Yeah, for sure.
Julia: A very sex-positive Kirk.
Brandon: Yeah, I then I had a fun time with Eric trying to think I was a horrible human being and corrected him every time he tried to say that.
Julia: Excellent. I love that.
Eric: Like, in recorded stuff? Or was it or just I was talking?
Brandon: No, I'm a horrible person in real life, so on the podcast.
Eric: Okay. Okay, great. I think that sex- sex positive Kirk is a very funny character choice and like, I don't know, it's Kirk in himself and William Shatner, the William Shatner impression, I feel like overcomes all of that. So doing explicitly Captain Kirk and then taking that in a different direction. I think it's very funny and I really enjoyed that.
Amanda: Yeah, me too.
Brandon: Thank you.
Amanda: I really enjoyed Eric you being the person like saying the joke quietly in a way that is dry and like pointing out the absurdity of Brandon's and my characters, you know, situation and we will keep going because there's we see no problems what we're doing, but that was just a really fun interplay for me.
Eric: I don't know what you're supposed to do when you have the best character of Join the Party history and sex-positive Captain Kirk. What- what I'm going to try to make jokes loudly? What am I gonna do?
Amanda: I'm just saying, you- you were a perfect condiment on that sandwich. I just wanted to call that out.
Brandon: You were the base mayo layer.
Amanda: Your stone ground mustard, just the right amount!
Eric: I'm the lettuce that gives you the crunch. A hundred percent.
Amanda: It's essential, without it, you'd really miss it.
Eric: All right, Amanda, can you say one piston as a tease for after the mid-roll where we start talking about Dr. Bertha Bones?
Amanda (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Pistons.
Eric: There it is. We're gonna go get some snacks.
Julia: Yeah.
[midroll]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda. My midrolls have really just turned into plant update corner and you'll it I'm fine with that. Because I recently attempted to grow a medjool dates palm, you know how you can save an avocado pit and like sprout it in water and grow an avocado tree? If you didn't know that you can do that. It's awesome. It's so much fun. I tried doing that with date pits and guys, they are growing. They grew little roots and then I put them in soil and now they're growing little shoots. And soon in like four to eight years, I might have a palm tree that can produce actual dates. When I told my grandma about it, she was like, "You know what, Amanda, you can do that with olives, too." And I was like, [gasp] "What?" So today's midroll is brought to you by pits, don't throw him out, sprout them. First and foremost, thank you to those of you who honored our pistons honor system and became new patrons. Rachel, Tanya, Lee, Derek and Dylan, thank you so much for joining. And if you out there would like to join the Patreon Discord aka the purest and kindest place on the internet. Join us for just $5 a month at patreon.com/jointhepartypod or if you're not in a place right now to support us financially. You know what you can text somebody to listen to the show that is just as helpful and goes a long way in growing the Join the Party family, as we say at the end of this week's after party, our Camp-Paign our monster of the week summer camp campaign begins next week. It's a perfect time for new people to join. So text them the link to jointhepartypod.com
Amanda: What's it smell on the air? Ooh, okay. I smell sunscreen. Because I sunscreen a lot over the summer. That's true. Ooh, it's hot sidewalk trash. That one wasn't a good smell. But also it's Multitude survey summer! Oh my god, it's fully my favorite time of the year. This is our fourth annual summer survey and baby I'm so excited. This is of course your chance to give us, the Multitude team and hosts feedback on what you think of our shows and what you want to see us do next. There are options for you to suggest new merchandise tell us what cities we should do live shows in. Name your favorite small business as a potential sponsor. It's all multitude.productions/survey. And the link will also be in the description of this episode. We got about 1200 responses last year which is incredible. And we want to beat it this time around. Enjoy the photos we embed in there the emojis every question has an emoji and very proud of that. And all of the fun-filled questions galore at Multitude dot productions slash survey. We are sponsored exclusively this week by Hero Forge. Now I didn't predict this, but this has ended up being the perfect week to have a Hero Forge extended sponsorship. And do you want to know why? It's because Hero Forge offers fully customizable tabletop miniatures with dozens of fantasy species and 1000s of parts to choose from. Now, who can you think of that would really enjoy a service that allows you to without blood gore smells or waivers, combine parts and really just like build a fantasy creature that no one's ever made before right on your computer? That's right, Dr. Bertha Bones! Now when you search for the word 'tentacle' and Hero Forge, I do have to admit to you nothing comes up and that is something I will be talking to them about. But there are many many options for choosing body parts and then adding on all kinds of extras that would make Dr. Bones proud. There are of course you know your expected animal fusions, okay there are centaurs there are merfolk. But don't you want to get more creative than that? And when Hero Forge means they have dozens of species and 1000s of parts to choose from they truly mean it. We have a serpent folk okay who have a human top and a big ol snake bottom. We have a frog folk and elephant folk which prints in an XL the miniature says XL so I don't know how big it is, but it's quite big, which have frog or elephant heads and human torsos. There are robots of course there are zombies there are like fantasy, creatures of all kinds. We have skeletons, all bones, baby! Ravenfolk, lizard people, turtle people, Hero Forge does not disappoint. And if you want to dress your mini like a plague doctor or give them just a bone to hold, you could do that. Because they're easy to use design tool lets you build your perfect miniature online using a fully 3D in-depth character creator right there in your web browser. These custom minis come in a variety of materials that you can choose from including newly color printed options. For those like me who cannot fathom painting miniatures, I truly respect all of you who do it. This is a game changer. They also of course have downloadable model files. So if you have a 3D printer at home, you can just print that design right in your garage or your den or whatever. So design your unique miniature and get it printed in full color, no painting necessary folks with Hero Forge custom color minis visit heroforge.com to start designing your custom miniature today and check back often because new content is added every dang week. Hopefully, one day soon that includes tentacles. and now back to the Afterparty.
Brandon: Oh Eric, can you make me some guac.
Eric: Oh, I'm already back- we're back from the midroll.
Brandon: Oh, fuck!
Eric: I missed it.
Amanda: Oh next time, next time, sorry.
Eric: This is my first time doing it, I'm sorry. I didn't know–
Brandon: This is actually good.
Eric: –I was supposed to actually get snacks. Amanda would just, would just made a joke about it the whole time. Did she actually get you snack?
Brandon and Julia: Yeah!
Amanda: I Door Dash them, yeah.
Eric: Oh, you god! I'm fucking this up, we're starting the whole thing over again.
Amanda: Honey, you're doing great.
Eric: Julia, throw it out.
Julia: No!
Eric: Julia, throw it out! Fuck! Error! Error! Error! Error! Alright, it's about time. It's Dr. Bertha Bones Corner. Amanda, WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS COME FROM?
Amanda: What happened there? What happened to you?
Eric: Porkchop.papi wants to ask specifically, "Where the heck did Amanda get the idea for this bonkers character in Space Party?"
Amanda: Well, I think Lena is actually the one who put it together which is Dr. Bertha Bones was exposure therapy for me hating animal hybrids.
Julia: That's true.
Amanda: It is perhaps the longest-running gag on Spirits. It is something that has come up time and time again in every podcast I am on and I find it highly disturbing when there are unexpected combinations of animals and humans beyond the expected centaur. And I thought one, I want to base this character on my favorite character to read about in the Star Trek universe which is Dr. Leonard McCoy aka Bones specifically as portrayed by Karl Urban because I got into Star Trek fandom via the 2009 movie by JJ Abrams featuring lens flares.
Brandon: Oh, that's why it's not actually like Bones. Because its the Karl Urban one.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. No, I that is– that is 100%. The basis for my understanding of the Star Trek universe as Julia knows when we went to Star Trek trivia and I got one question right out of sheer luck.
Julia: Yep.
Amanda: So I thought it would be very funny to play a Dr. Bones and focus on some kind of cryptozoology angle. Apart from that all I gotta tell you is the spirit overtook me and my version of you know, Karl Urban New Zealanders Georgia accent came out as whatever this is, and I gotta say, I'm, I'm enjoying my- my sharp left into just absurdity.
Julia: My favorite part too, besides everything that Dr. Bertha Bones did in this in both of those episodes, was that I had picked out a voice for Madam Claudelle. I was like, this is like one of three NPCs that I'm going to do in this episode. And I was like, immediately Amanda was like, "Now, I'm not a Southern..." I'm like, oh, god, we're both doing accents. We're doing the same accent again. Why does this keep happening?
Amanda: But it worked out perfectly for us.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I– do you have a D&D theory or a tabletop RPG theory, where if you don't have an accent for a thing, it just comes out Southern like Southern is the default accent.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I was DM'ing made a home game and I didn't realize like at the end of it. My one of my players was like, you realize that all your voices were just Small Southern or Large Southern? I was like, oh shit.
Eric: Is that when you get like a chicken biscuit from Bojangles or you get for chicken biscuits from Bojangles?
Julia: That's the that's the ranking. Yeah.
Eric: It's a small Small Southern and a Large Southern.
Amanda: It is.
Julia: I– Dr. Bertha Bones, incredible. Like truly, I just was blown away every time you spoke and that was fantastic and fun for me as the GM. Like I didn't want to move you guys along in the story arc because we're vibing so hard.
Amanda: Listen, it's not that interesting for me to say that just something overtook me and this is what came out. That is the real answer.
Brandon: It's kind of like and I don't mean this in the like romantic like sexualized way that movies do it. But like, it's kind of like we're the librarian with the spun up bit blonde hair. And then suddenly, she pulls off the pencil and their hair comes down, the glasses come off. And it's like, oh, it's Dr. Bertha Bones!
Julia: That's it. That's it.
Amanda: Yes, I put on a wig and– and yelled, "Tentacle!" and then it all came out.
Julia: And then you also I'm not just you but the entire party, like immediately changed the ending that I had for this-
Amanda: Oh, really?
Julia: –by creating the concept of New Mexico just going.
Brandon: That was so funny. That was inspired, Eric.
Eric: Thank you.
Julia: You guys kept talking about it and I changed my notes at the end to include the fact that she had like a turquoise necklace.
Amanda: So good!
Julia: To kind of tease that out.
Brandon: Which was hilarious because correct me if I'm wrong, I think Eric made the New Mexico joke first.
Everyone: Yeah.
Brandon: At the end, Eric got tricked by the fact that you added New Mexico onto a necklace at the end.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: It was delicious, delicious irony.
Julia: It's very, very good.
Eric: Listen, I didn't think I don't think anyone listens to me when I say these things. But we're playing like whatever, I guess. Well, it's like, I mean, that's the joy of doing a tabletop RPG instead of a book is that like if someone has an idea, you can just like fold it into your notes and then that's what it is now, you know what I mean? It's like there is there is a melee ability to playing a game that is improvisational that like you can see the foreshadowing, which is just one of your players making a joke. Like I foreshadowed myself, and I didn't even know I was doing it.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Because how am I supposed to know if you're gonna pick it up or not?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You know what I mean?
Julia: That's a great point.
Eric: Which is really- which is a super fun.
Amanda: Foreshadowed your dang self!
Eric: I have two particular quotes that I want to touch on what was the jo- where did pistons come from?
Julia: So we- Amanda, Amanda suggested like if something happened to Jet-
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: –what could we replace his bones with? And you asked Amanda, and you're like name three things you can replace the bones with and the first one was-
Julia (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Pistons.
Amanda: They're just like joints but for cars.
Eric: God, I just like it's so funny seeing these things out of context, but I just want a context to get because I couldn't remember it. And the other one which Finn pointed out was Dr. Bertha Bones and Jet each saying, "Exploring each other's bodies"
Julia: In different ways.
Eric: But in different ways. Like that was just so- that was just so funny that you to have that simpatico thing of like yeah, we explore bodies.
Amanda: Boneology.
Julia: The only body that Chef explores is the body of Barb.
Eric: That's true. Finn wanted to know how does how to Chef about this is like I don't, yeah, I don't touch bodies. I fight
Amanda: My loves all in the mind, baby.
Julia: That's why you have those cybernetic fingers.
Eric: Yeah, just on the thing from a Dark Twisted Fantasy to a Long Angry Planet. See, I made an intentional mashup that time.
Amanda: Eric, it's like a drag race runway.
Eric: Kanye West and Becky Chambers Smash.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: I think it was really moving and like Becky Chambers really fucking hits it hard making you feel emotions about these space people, you know? but I'm like Becky Chambers. I'm going to take your really emotional character and I'm going to make a stupid fucking joke about it. I'm like, I'm just a guy who has some cybernetics that I used to touch my wife who is a computer which is so thank you so much for– for allowing me a very emotional thing to kind of like to kind of pivot on.
Brandon: I can't wait for the, you know, in end game where all the adventures go to cleanse house and it's like, oh, you have a family and children all the shit. When we go to space Jet's house and I have like 47 children and 16 wives and you all get to meet them.
Julia: You already know that that's true.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: No, I know. But you all get to meet them, it's gonna be fun.
Julia: It's gonna be fun.
Amanda: It's also like, multigenerational. And in polyfamily is in the Becky Chambers universe. So we're truly just- we're just playing in Becky's space.
Brandon: I love it.
Julia: That'll be the holiday special, Brandon.
Brandon: Yeah!
Julia: Spend time and Jet Byrne's in the holiday.
Amanda: Accretion Day.
Brandon: I just want to make Julia do 47 children's voices.
Julia: Sure, why not?
Eric: Julia, welcome. This is where Brandon makes you do things so that he can listen to and clap like a baby. More voices, please? More voices!
Brandon: Oh, I've been found out? Oh, no!
Julia: Oh, no!
Eric: There is nothing funny. And again, Brandon does did the same thing I did where he took the emotional thing, which is like creating an alien species that has a different understanding of what relationships are and how families interact. But it's just like, yeah, here's Kirk and his 46 wives, husbands partners. It's very funny to me. There all like-
Julia: Unless you make tax jokes. So I was- I was down for that.
Amanda: Yeah, Brandon, you truly did not miss an opportunity to make a really well-placed joke and every time I was surprised, so anathema to like you usually are like in play.
Brandon: At some point when I get tired I sort of zoned out until I flick a spidey sense or I'm like oh wait there could be a joke here.
Julia: I can insert a joke, go!
Amanda: But I think that's my One Shots are so fun like I– you know, I've chosen my- my PCs for our longer campaigns about you know, like deep shit I was working through in my life and you know, voices that I felt like I could do that were just basically my own shifted down or up, you know, half a register and you know, families that were like my own in different ways. And just going buck wild and committing to a choice and committing to a bit is something that I'm sure DMs do and GMs you know build up that muscle people who have been in more campaigns than me people whose campaigns are perhaps not you know, recorded and edited and posted for content but it was incredibly fun and I hope I can bring some you know, I was fed a little bit of like Multitool energy inspiring and proceeding Dr. Bertha Bones. So I don't know what– what happens from here but I'm- I'm worried I've peaked that's the thing that I'm just gonna have to carry and live with. But I'll just- I'll keep you guys posted.
Julia: Well, I hope this is not the last time we see Dr. Bertha Bones.
Amanda: Me neither.
Brandon: I want to see the home game in which a player is playing a character ala Dr. Bertha Bones and the GM over a course of like 20 sessions tries to find an emotional core to this character.
Eric: Ha! It's like no, she- is there trauma? I liked the idea of like someone like JJ Abrams, like going through the jungle. I mean like, is there a trauma here that we have figure out what is this? It's just like, no, it's just tentacles all the way down.
Amanda: I love tentacles!
Eric: Alright. Listen, we're gonna rapid fire, finish out the Bertha Bones section here. Hakuna Your Po-Tatas wanted to know. " Is Doctor Bertha Bones related to the bone witch??"
Amanda: That was covered in our Twitch stream so I'm just gonna have to refer you to twitch.tv/JTPsidequests where we explored the backstory of Dr. Bertha Bones.
Brandon: When was- when could people watch that?
Amanda: Thursday at 6 PM Eastern or later in the VOD.
Brandon: Oh, every week?
Everyone: Every week.
Brandon: Whoa!
Eric: That's, hey, wait, do we play games on that when we're streaming?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: We sure do.
Eric: No, we don't play. We play ga–
Julia: We play a game called Side Quests.
Amanda: We play in the space and give you little presents that you can take into your own home.
Brandon: We play WoW, we play League of Legends.
Eric: Where do- we do MOBAs- we're really into MOBAs now.
Julia: I like that you set us up to be like, "No", we're like, "Yeah, we do."
Brandon: We’re too yes-and-y.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Anything's a game when you're chatting with your friends?
Eric: We come up with side quests that you can put in your own game that we just kind of generate through our general engine of creation which I think it's really fun and good to do.
Amanda: Me too.
Eric: So yeah, you should definitely watch our stream to figure that out. Here's another one moss whos driving the giant lobster wants to know, "one of the best parts of space party is that I have no idea if the southern? accents Amanda and Julia are doing are accurate at all but I LOVE them." and Tattooed-N-Tall asked, "Can we get a one shot where all the characters just speak in southern accents the whole game?"
Julia: I think everyone but Brandon should do that.
Brandon: There's no accurate accents in space it's all just bullshit so it doesn't matter.
Julia: Yeah! Everything's changed.
Eric: I'm gonna- I'm from space south and it's Irish.
Julia: Yeah. There you go.
Brandon: We could do a Western one where the world was different because everyone's not racist and terrible.
Julia: That's- that's always an option.
Amanda: Brandon, the world building is truly the equivalent of like bringing a car to the mechanic and then they go, "Yeah, that's totalled we're just gonna take it down to scraps and sell it off for parts that's what that would be like."
Eric: Weird, I want to do Weird West so bad because I love- I love-
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: –that genre but like there's just no yeah there's no way.
Amanda: It's yeah, it's a racist and imperialist all the way down.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: But I have found myself slipping into Dr. Bertha Bones' accent from time to time in my daily life when I get enthusiastic about something. So you know this– this is here to stay in some form.
Brandon: And you just imagine you whispering and Dr. Bertha Bones' accent to your plants as you water them and miss them.
Eric: Entirely possible. A lot of our-
Julia (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Leafwatch. I'm going to replace you with pistons.
Eric (as Dr. Bertha Bones): I hope that you have a little tentacle and he's just gonna wiggle around and I gotta give you enough water.
Amanda (as Dr. Bertha Bones): I leaf shoot is just a damn tentacle!
Eric: We don't have to go over the ending because it's so wild and we just figured it out. But like Julia, the pun at the end was absolutely wild.
Amanda: Eric's theory, ugh, so good
Eric: I have to– Listen, the I want to share my theory and have been recorded on the podcast, and Julia that was a terrible pun and I hate you.
Julia: Thank you. So actually DRUM:BOT is a character that I had created before this One Shot for like a pilot of like an animated TV show that I wanted to write.
Brandon: Oh, cool.
Julia: And so DRUM:BOT is a like a leftover remnant of that and I was like, oh, I just loved DRUM:BOT so much. So I want to him to be here.
Amanda: It was a perfectly delivered reveal and pun.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I love you, DRUM:BOT
Julia: Yeah, the Republic of Concerta Kappa. Like, yeah, that works.
Brandon: Oh, wait. I remember my favorite thing.
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: It's when Julia was like, what were you listing? You were listing?
Julia: Oh, I was listening to artifacts that were in her- in her collection. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, and you were like weird bullshit. Weird bullshit. Weird shitbullshit, random noise!
Julia: It was, ShhAHHHHH 6.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: That was so funny.
Julia: Thank you.
Eric: We do have a New Mexico listener who wants to give us some props for including New Mexico. VidaliaRose says, "Y'all it is so weird and fun to hear my usually-ignored home state be mentioned and joked about so much. Also, it's true, everything here is turquoise. Even me. If you live in New Mexico for more than a year you turn into pure turquoise, that's how we can tell who the noobs are."
Julia: And the tourists.
Eric: There you go.
Amanda: Thank you for not mentioning the regionality my accent VidaliaRose, you're a real one.
Eric: Julia, I would love to know about some of the challenges that we didn't end up picking.
Julia: Sure. There was really only one so I wanted to make sure you hit at least three of them, which is why I built in that like
Julia (as Madam Claudelle): Oh, I'm still putting on my face don't come by yet.
Julia: And– and like I also I as a player feel a lot of FOMO sometimes when I'm made to choose between things, so the only one that you guys missed was The Carport which I did I build it specifically for Eric? Yes, I did.
Amanda: Oh, piss.
Julia: It was basically a Mario Kart race that you guys would have had to compete in and you would have had to like lap the other contestants three times in order to get an exit back into the hedge maze or straight to the house.
Eric: I love it. Julia, you made the body horror too good.
Julia: Sorry.
Eric: That I needed to follow the body horror.
Julia: Alright.
Amanda: Well, Eric's- Eric's next birthday In about 48 weeks, so just hold on to that.
Julia: Well, do you want me to read you the description for it? I actually have it.
Brandon: Yeah, we're there like shells and items and stuff?
Julia: I didn't have shells and items. I was gonna probably do it on the fly.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: So I had, you follow the hedge maze and after some winding through which again, it's a really bad hedge maze because didn't see any turn-offs or other options. It deposits you out on a open field that resembles a racetrack if you ever been to Walt Disney World. It resembles the Tomorrowland Speedway, so it's a lot of very small vehicles. You recognize quite a few of these miniature models of vehicles. There's a Blastion Surge, a Galactic Umbra, a Solar Vortex, and anyone would recognize the Venusian Epiphany with those prismatic wings. They are racing around the course but there are a few options that are pulled up into the pitstop. Over the entrance of the pitstop, you see a sign that is pointing to the other side of the track that says, 'Main House'. And then I gave you guys the opportunity to either like pick a car that I listed or make up a car name, which opens up the world for jokes a little bit. And then there's a little hologram that it's like a little droid with very expressive panels that are substituting his eyebrows. And he's like, "I'm Speedy, you're friendly Carport Protocol Droid". And then you had to basically best the top score and win an invitation to dine with the Madame at– at the main house.
Eric: Oh, that is good.
Julia: And then how it was going to work was basically you have one action per round to try to give yourself something of an edge. If at least one of you manages to succeed each lap, you open a more direct path to the main house.
Eric: Tight.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Dang me and my need to look at animals on top of other animals.
Julia: That's alright. I do love The Menagerie Carousel and I'm very glad we got there.
Brandon: Hey, Julia, you might be the only person in my life that knows this, has the speedway or whatever in Tomorrowland gotten progressively more railroaded and slower as I've gotten older-
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: –or have I gotten older?
Julia: No, I think it's both. I think they slowed it down a little bit.
Brandon: Okay.
Julia: And they really put it on tracks now instead of the like the I guess you can kind of zoom in and out before, no.
Brandon: Okay, cool. Okay, cool.
Eric: Julia, when you're editing this, can you take out the 90 minutes of Disney talk?
Julia: Absolutely. Sorry about that. I will limit it to just the question and not Brandon and I reminiscing for 90 minutes about the Tomorrowland speedway.
Eric: Okay, if I sound different, it's because this is five days later.
Julia: That makes sense.
Eric: If you can, like mix, figure that out.
Brandon (as Eric): [in a mascot mouse' voice?] I'm Eric now, five days later.
Julia: That makes sense.
Amanda: You do such a good Eric impression.
Brandon: Thanks.
Amanda: Did he dehydrate in the sun like a raisin?
Eric: Yeah, I did five days of manual labor now I sound like this.
Amanda: Well, actually, as a little. We talked earlier about how fun it would be to meet Julia play 47 kids. But I will say just a little a little cheeky preview as to what's coming next, we have- we have evidence that Eric plays a very entertaining child-
Julia: That's true.
Brandon: That is true.
Amanda: –in some upcoming content, and I cannot wait for you all to hear it.
Eric: Wonderful. Yes, we are going to get there. I want to rip through some of these remaining questions.
Julia: Go for it.
Eric: For the folks who- for the folks who listened. This is a quick one. Michellespurgeon also asked me what’s it like being a player instead of a DM? And I think Brandon, you would put it in this you asked me, do I metagame more because you're thinking about the inner workings of how games, of how games work. Metagaming to me is a bad word that you use it and be like, oh, no, this is a fire troll. Just use ice spells and it's fine, right? But I guess I do in that I definitely do something that like I like if I was in the situation, I want to do a thing. That's either a joke or helps the thing move forward and go party. I was like, I'm going to do the devil shit. And I'm going to use that as an excuse to move forward and to try to get closer to Anderson Cooper. I think with the other one, I definitely made space for Jet and for Dr. Bertha Bones to like do their thing while playing the straight man and kind of like hanging back and I think that having the AI with us at all times certainly was helpful to Julia. So like, I don't know, it's I- I'm just trying to be– trying to be helpful and have fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: That just sounds like being a conscientious collaborator.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I– yeah, I definitely there's like a different feel when I play with longtime DMs and I think it's yeah, because of what you're trying to say they're trying to like, be helpful. Whereas like, longtime players, you know, because we're selfish sons of bitches like we don't think about the DM very much at all. So yeah, it's just interesting dichotomy there.
Eric: Listen, I'm not saying that I'm awesome and perfect just because I'm doing it but like that is definitely what I'm thinking about and I hope-
Brandon: I didn't say you're perfect. I would never say that, Eric.
Eric: No, you know, why would you say that Brandon? But I hope that it helped was helpful for Julia and for Amanda while we were doing.
Amanda: It sure was.
Julia: Yeah, and I'm glad honestly Eric, you gave me an ability to comment on the things that were happening in character by giving me Barb to like interact with the party with. So thank you for that.
Eric: No, I appreciate I appreciate it. Barb was also the funniest, I also the fact that I called her barbecue, I thought it was pretty funny.
Julia: Barbecue ribs.
Eric: I know, it's pretty funny. All right. So We are podcasting questions here.
Julia: Great.
Eric: Amanda McLoughlin on our Discord wants to know, "What would a Goat+Space Party look like??" and does in the moss wants to know if a Goat Party and Space Party play out in the same universe.
Amanda: Certainly, they do.
Julia: Yeah, that 2016 New Year's changed the course of history and that is how we ended up with the Federation of Free Lancers.
Amanda: Yes, and New Mexico gone-
Julia: Because of the goats.
Amanda: –US history. Yeah, just like totally off- off on a logical extension of the, you know, the entire arc of the thing but yeah.
Eric: There has to be some sort of catastrophic thing that happened because of New Year's started two and a half hours.
Amanda: I was thinking, yeah, maybe there's like some kind of space time continuum, or there was like another war with England because Greenwich Mean Time thought that we were like declaring independence from it. That's- that's my kind of first thought. But I'll leave it to the folks at home to really nail down.
Brandon: I did just think about all of our goats in spacesuits with the helmets-
Amanda: Lil tiny helmets. Oh, yeah.
Brandon: But then Buckwheat in just the helmet.
Julia: Just the helmet.
Eric: Like a little fish bowl.
Amanda: I love it.
Eric: That's very good. Punk.acadami said, "I love the eps! Do one shots require more editing due to players getting so enthusiastic/hyper?"
Amanda: Oh, good question.
Brandon: No. They don't-
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: They require– they require less editing, generally speaking. Well like, the same amount of editing and in terms of like removing mistakes, and stumbles and umms and stuff but-
Julia: Sure.
Brandon: I would say it's pretty much like at this point, the main episodes and this episode are pretty much the same in terms of editing style, just because we've gotten tighter and looser at the same time in the main episodes. But I don't have to like move stuff around. Like there's no sound design and stuff in these episodes, so it's a little bit easier for me.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Wonderful. Jayellemo_ wants to know, "was space4 party recorded all in one day or did you break it up on purpose?" Yes, we recorded altogether.
Julia: I did purposefully build in in my notes a break time because I'm like, I think this is gonna be a Two Shot. And I said after I said the thing, I was like, Brandon, I think that's where we should cut it.
Brandon: And I was very grateful for that, Editing Brandon was.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I know a lot of other shows record like three episodes in one time. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, you guys. Okay? Like, recording and like doing that stuff together for that amount of time. And like, I know that other- other- other shows like record like, each episode comes out to being like three, two to three hours of tape, then– then boils down to like an hour and a half. So like-
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: –you record for like seven to nine hours. That's, that's a lot.
Julia: I'm sleepy after three.
Amanda: I'm sleepy after three. That's really my limit.
Eric: I will say this was easy- this was definitely easier. I'm glad that we did- we did two because we were starting to do two for the next stuff that we're doing.
Amanda: Oooh!
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: This was a really good kind of slotting into that.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Question surgeon Michelle Spurgeon wants to know, "Will we ever get Brando to lead a game?"
Julia: Brandon?
Brandon: Maybe.
Amanda: Brandon?
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: Who can say? I don't know.
Julia: Who can say?
Brandon: I mean, I'm happy to but I think that the- the thought process is that I also have to edit these so we try to divide the work up as much as we can.
Julia: That's fair.
Brandon: But I'm not opposed to–
Eric: Oooh!
Amanda: Oooh!
Julia: Oooh-ooh!
Eric: Brandon. Vickimoo also asked, "Are we going to get more Goat Parties in the future?" Probably.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Probably. I- we really liked doing kind of One Shots as we are transitioning to newer bigger things. So I am happy to run another Goat Party and other party have another system I feel a little more confident.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I definitely wanted to do Goat Party this time because my previous two experiences were Mothman and Goat Party. So I could definitely see myself branching out into another-
Brandon: Mothman was so fun.
Amanda: –installment. Yeah, the one-page RPGs, I know God, it was so fun.
Eric: Did I play a Shakespearean actor who pretended to be a roommate?
Brandon: Yeah, you did.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Oh, boy.
Eric: I'm just a regular Joe here with the rest of my roommates.
Amanda: Exactly.
Eric: That was very fun. I like that. Well, instead of Spoiling Corner, we have Scheduling Announcement Corner here.
Amanda: Pew! Pew! Pew!
Julia: Pew! Pew! Pew!
Brandon: I'm still gonna say, who could say after the end of each one.
Eric: That's far and the answer is us.
Brandon: We are saying in this moment what it is.
Eric: So for the scheduling announcements, again, we are streaming now. Come hang out with us. twitch.tv/jtpsidequests. 6 PM. Eastern Thursdays. Watch the VODs on Twitch. Eventually, we're figuring out YouTube. It everything's changed as Amanda was on it so long ago. We're still– we're still looking into it.
Amanda: It's a whole new world.
Eric: And then this is what's going to happen in the next episodes going forward. We are starting Camp-Paign.
Julia: Yeah!
Brandon: Who can say?
Amanda: Yey!
Eric: I- we are-
[all excitedly talking and cheering]
Brandon: Who can yey?
Julia: There we go.
Amanda: Yey!
Eric: There it is. Okay, so after this the next episode is going to be a Worldbuilding episode where we're running another style RPG city planner thing I made another world-building game for all of us to kind of establish the camp that we're going to be playing at. Then, after this is Episode One, the next episode after that, it's gonna be episode one where we intro the characters and we do some story. It's not an episode zero. It's like we're taking the monster of the week kind of introduction stuff, and then we're doing some story stuff on top of that.
Brandon: So, no skipping.
Julia: No skip!
Brandon: No skipping, you!
Eric: This is there's important stuff in that do not skip that.
Julia: Very important.
Eric: And then we're having our first mystery, which is how you run the Monster of the Week. Your first mystery is going to be Episode 2, and 3, and then we're having an Afterparty. So Worldbuilding, Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, and then an Afterparty after four episodes. Because I don't think you're gonna have any questions about the Worldbuilding other than like, "Wow, what is this?" And we're like, "We'll show you eventually". So that's what we're doing four episodes before.
Julia: Yeah!
Amanda: So you get a world-building episode a three-story episodes and then an Afterparty all over the next five weeks?
Julia: What?!
Eric: Whoaweee!
Julia: What?
Brandon: Who can say?
Amanda: Who can yay?!
Brandon: Who can yay!
Amanda: That's more like it next. Well, Eric, I gotta say I'm gonna give you 10 out of 10 stars, pumpkins, and tentacles for your hosting of this Afterparty today.
Eric: I like the tentacles rides with Pentacles
Julia: Tentacles.
Amanda: Oooh!
Eric: Pentacles.
Amanda (as Dr. Bertha Bones): Pentacle with tentacles. I gotta go write about that and tentacle journal.
Julia: That's how you summon a tentacle demon.
Eric: That's all I got. I got a special tarot deck but all of them are tentacles!
Julia: Hold on, I have to write down tentacle demon for next time.
Brandon: Oh, no.
Amanda: Oh, sorry. Zoë. Zoë, I know you're listening to this podcast. Can you just make a button that says, "Ask me about how I got these tentacles?"
Eric: Oh, my god.
Amanda: Just really quick, in the Joker font if you could just take care of that and just put it up for preorder at jointhepartypod.com/merch That would be wonderful.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: I got Bertha-fide and that someone gave me a tentacle that I didn't want.
Julia: I'm a Bones-ologist!
Brandon: I went to New Mexico and all I got with these stupid tentacles.
Amanda: It's pretty good. It's pretty good
Eric: Unsubscribe
Amanda: Alright, everybody we can't wait to introduce you all to the Camp-Paign it's going to be a very, very fun summer but in the meantime-
Amanda: Bye!
Julia: Later!
Brandon: Bye guys!
Amanda: May your rolls trend ever upward. Pistons!
Eric: Pistons.
Julia: There it is.
[Outro Music]
Amanda: Pistons.
Amanda: Pistons.
Eric: I heard it.
Amanda: Pistons. Pistons. Pistons. Pistons.
Eric: Pistons.
Transcriptionist: KM