How do you plan for a time loop arc? What audio magic is Brandon doing to reverse the theme song? And is the Spoily Corner overflowing? All that and more on the Afterparty!
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- Dungeon Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Milo Lane), Co-Producer, Editor, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Aggie O’Hare), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Co-Host (Val Vesuvio), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast, powered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. That means a group of friends create a story together, chapter by chapter, that takes us beyond the tabletop to parts unknown. In the first campaign, we explored fantasy adventure, intrigue, magic, and drama. In the newest story, we tackle science, superpowers, a better future, and the responsibility to help others.
Every month, we sit down for the Afterparty, where we break down our game and answer your questions about how to play D&D and other roleplaying games at home. We also have segments at the beginning of each campaign to teach people how to play the game themselves. It’s a party, and you’re invited! Find out more at jointhepartypod.com.
Transcript
Amanda: Now, it might feel like we have done this already, guys, because we've gathered for so many Afterparties together, you know, wearing our colorful sweatshirts and hanging out our video chat, but in fact, it is the first time that we are meeting to discuss Join the Loop, one and two. Get it? Time travel. Y'know.
Brandon: Whaaaat.
Julia: I'm honestly a little concerned because you didn't say, hey, hi. Hello.
Amanda: Oh, no. That's how I know I'm not in the loop! Ahhh!!
Eric: Destabilized. We've changed the loop so much that now Julia needs to say, hey, hi, hello we've changed everything.
Julia: I refuse!
Amanda: Hey. Hi. Hello. And welcome to the Afterparty where we have only done this once, I promise. And we are all extremely excited guys, we played this game like two months ago before the Chad dice were out. We have been sitting on this for so long and finally we can talk about it.
Brandon: I had to cut some chad dice references because occasionally we'd be like, oh, you could go buy them now at blah, blah, blah, because by the time we got to it, they were sold out.
Julia: Already sold out, brah.
Eric: Oh man. If only we could get more chad dice. Hmm. I wonder if there's anything we can do about that.
Amanda: Working on it, working on it. Working on it.
Eric: Hmm.
Amanda: So I do want to say right off the top that people had some very good questions, all of which would have to go in spoiley corner and many of which do get answered. So I am going to not ask questions like who is in the loop? Why, how is he doing this? What does a guy, the trenchcoat doing? What a level of games have to do with it all? Because trust me, you're going to get answers and whatever answers you don't get at the end of the Eric, I promise we'll talk about it. But first, I would love to know just Eric whence did this come when what was your inspiration on what viewing of the movie Palm Springs did you first think of this and how did you think about approaching doing a time mark?
Eric: Yeah, I think. Oh, man, there's just so much happening. Alright, let me let me see if I can refine this down. No one has really done a time thing since the 11th hour in Adventure's on balance. And I thought it was always something that was ripe for Dungeons and Dragons. It was something I wanted to put in. This was also as we were working through the arc previously in Join the Channel, I realized how much of it was being like very like a plot driven. Where like we are learning about Aunt Min. We are learning about the weirdness and the affect of society on the powered folk in Lake Town City like we're really driving the main plot of the story forward. But the thing that's wonderful about comic books is that you can take a left into doing something else. So I really wanted to experiment kind of just with that storytelling, and I thought that this would be a very fun, like little arc to take to the left. And the fact that this is happening like later in spring instead of in summer was definitely something I wanted to do there and to throw you all a curveball because I just decided it would be it would be fun. This campaign has really been me trying to, like, stretch my idea of what Dungeons Dragons can look like as a D.M. that I'm presenting to you three, but also like what what we can do on a Dungeons Dragons podcast. And we will get to the Brandon sound designer corner where everyone was like Brandon. Oh, my God, such a good job. Oh, my God. So you have time to brace yourself for when we're going to talk about this, but -
Brandon: Thank you. I appreciate your consideration.
Eric: You have like a solid 20 minutes, I think, before we get to Brandon sound design corner.
Brandon: It's a difficult time for me.
Eric: Yeah, but knowing that I can run this and then it will be edited and sound design in a way that we can enhance that, especially something that we've literally been doing at Multitude since Next Stop, I'm like, I can do something wild here and we can really start assembling it, like doing the things that feel like flourishes in Dungeons Dragons games where maybe you take a player off to the side and you have one on one scenes or you hold a secret from one person and then it gets revealed later. Like, that's just that's the medium we have here. And I really wanted to stretch that in some ways. So that's just like what I wanted to do in terms of doing something different and interesting in the podcast. And then, like, we can have a whole conversation about time loops and how a game can make a time loop even more interesting. So it Palm Springs. But also like that was when I was getting really, really into Hades and the reinvigoration of the Roguelike game, which for those of you who don't play video games that much, it's kind of in runs like you have to restart at the beginning every time you die or when the run is over. And I'm like, oh, that's a time loop, just like in Hades. And the justification in Hades, which is like you're Hades' son trying to escape the underworld. That's such a wonderful justification for dying and repeating every single time. And I'm like, oh, that is very similar to something we can do in a comic book setting, which is the time loop. But you insert a villain in a different way and we're messing that in a different way that I've seen from Palm Springs, Groundhog Day, Russian doll as well, pushing that genre into a different into a different way. I've never watched the Supernatural one. So all of your references totally past me. I'm sorry.
Brandon: There's a Supernatural time loop one?
Julia: Yes, there's a supernatural episode with the time loop.
Eric: There's something about a Tuesday and something about the heat of the moment, the song. That's all I know.
Brandon: Yes.
Amanda: Destiel.
Julia: I'm personally very glad that we didn't have to die in order to reset the loop. That's my big thing, because a lot of those it's just like you die and then the day resets like Russian doll. That is the main focus of the day.
Amanda: Palm Springs. Yeah.
Brandon: You didn't die? Milo definitely died. Is that bad?
Julia: Yes. Terrible. But you're part ghost anyway. So it's fine.
Brandon: That's true, that's true.
Amanda: I would love to know about each of your impressions, Brandon and Julia too, about the time loop. Julia and listening to the most recent episode, Join the Loop two. I was so struck by the fact that I was facing the projector, I'd be like and you were just like asking all excellent questions and making great inferences and being like this is how it is without making me feel bad because I definitely did feel bad listening to it. But what do you guys think? How what kind of like time loop stuff have you watched before? What were your thoughts when we realized it was happening?
Julia: This is one of my favorite genres, so I was very excited to get that. I think this is this is funny for me, because if you listen to the episode where the time loop is revealed, I yelled at Eric, I had called him liar.
[Eric laughing]
Julia: Yeah. Because because I had suggested for our our previous live show that we do a Groundhog's Day themed episode because we did the live show like the day after Groundhog Day. And Eric was like, no, that would be too hard. I don't want to do it. I was like, okay, that's fair. You know, like that is a kind it's hard to keep track of, especially for a one shot. And this episode was revealed that I was like, you, motherfucker.
Eric: I had been planning this for like two months before we even did the one shot for the live show. So I had to come down super hard on you. I think what I said explicitly was we're not doing that unless you want me to die and kill myself, try to figure this out.
Julia: I was like harsh but fair.
[Everyone laughs]
Brandon: Yeah. Soon as I heard Julia, it was like she, like, locked and loaded like her. She was like she was it's the apocalypse and she's been prepping for three years.
Amanda: Oh, yes. How about you, Brandon? I know you're very into sci fi. So what what are your time loop thoughts?
Brandon: Yeah, I love the, I love the the trope. I'm not like I'm I'm pretty anti tropey media consumer, but the time loop is one that I very much do dig, but I don't think I've like considered it critically in the way that maybe that Julia has. But yeah, I just watch Palm Springs a couple of months ago now and it was incredible. So I was excited to be Andy Samberg.
Julia: You really are playing up the Andy Samberg angle for Milo and I appreciate it.
Eric: I think Tuna is really the Andy Samberg and we're all all the people around.
Brandon: That's true.
Eric: Let's talk about Palm Springs for a second, because Palm Springs is actually what planted this idea in my head alongside Hades, because the thing that we that Julia just said is that you usually need to die to reset the time loop, whether we're talking about Russian doll or whatever. It's been so long since I've seen Groundhog Day, I don't even remember exactly why you go to sleep. Can you go to sleep?
Julia: You can either go to sleep or die. Those are the options for him, right?
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So in Palm Springs, though, you can go to the cave and walk in, which is the other thing. This is not a spoiler for Palm Springs if you don't watch Palm Springs. Well, the thing that starts there's like a magic time bubble inside of this cave that gets unearthed and you can only go to it after like the cave is revealed and the cave you walk inside of the cave. That's how it that's another way to reset. I mean, that's so interesting that we know what is resetting the time loop. That's so cool. I wonder if there's a way to insert that. And I'm like, oh, this is something that I don't think I've seen nearly anywhere else where the villain has control or the antagonist. We are not even necessarily sure about the man in black right now that the antagonist has control of the reset. And that's I think what makes it interesting in a game perspective is that it becomes a cat and mouse relationship between you and the person holding the time loop. And that's something that we've been really pushing on. So like planning on this, I'm like, okay, well, here's what's happening during the day. But depending on what you do to bother this person who has an 64 where you can just push the reset button, that's what I can control. It's an it's really just NPC interaction, but I need to keep track of the things that are happening at the same time. So in terms of planning, it was actually a lot simpler. I'm just doing the thing that you would do in a D&D game or maybe if you were running a dungeon or you're running like a closed town sort of game where it's like, alright, you have these six buildings, that's it. You can't leave. You have to do this. So in terms of planning that, I'm like, oh, this happens at this time, this and this time, I know what everyone is doing for like a few hours around and then while they do stuff that will change how it works. But also I'm changing, controlling the NPCs. I usually do the actual resetting, which is the man in black carrying the modded N 64.
Brandon: With Banjo-Kazooie in it?
Eric: I can't tell you I can't tell you what.
Julia: The game is reveal. But at some point I will say that.
Brandon: Was Banjo-Kazooie an N64 game?
Eric: It was right. Yeah, you were right. Okay, it was Star Fox. Sorry I have to spoil it. It was Star Fox and I did. So what made a Star Fox reference. At one point.
Brandon: Yeah. And I mentioned it and then you did an excellent - what's the bad guy's name.
Eric: Andros. I can't let you do that, Star Fox.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Someone asked why an N 64 and it was the first thing that popped in my head that had a very obvious reset button. I mean, this is something I've been thinking about recently, especially because I've been killing myself, trying to get an Xbox series X and playing my switch in my Game Cube that I have. But new tech don't have a reset button. I think it's like the idea that like your stuff with our computers, our phones are always on. Like, think about for those you have have a Nintendo Switch, you just put it to sleep. You never really turn it off.
Brandon: It frustrates the hell out of me.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: So having a reset button feels very inherent to the idea that you are turning something on and off and like there's one program running at the same time. So like I have a reset button on my Game Cube and I was like, oh, what else has a reset button? And the N 64 the the reset button, which is as big and bulky as the power button is what stood out to me.
Amanda: Speaking of references, Val also said dogs have no concept of time early in this episode. And everybody in the discussion was like, woooaah.
Brandon: Is that a reference?
Julia: Is it a reference? I just kind of said it.
Amanda: No, it's just it's referencing time. And that is not something that we knew about at the time. You said it. So just like coincidence? Particularly. Yeah. Being a pre-con Julia. Do you want to tell us anything?
Julia: I, I have nothing for you. Dogs don't have a concept of time. That's why they get so excited if you leave and then come back 10 minutes later.
Brandon: Whoa, are we the dogs, man?
Julia: We're the dogs, man.
Brandon: Woaaaah.
Eric: Terrible. 4/20 was a few days ago.
Brandon: Oh, well, I've been I've been stoned for two days so.
[Everyone laughs]
Julia. Just for weeks, weeks Brandon.
Eric: I would love to know what you all thought was happening during episode one. Like I listened back to it as we usually do in podcasting. I relistened to that episode and I'm like, it's so funny. This feels like it's going absolutely nowhere. Or it's like the first chapter of a book where there's a lot of exposition, a lot of setting stuff up. And Dr. Morrow is like, can you just go do something for me? That would be super helpful. So I want to know what you all thought was happening here, especially when I gave all of you your well for Val and the Aggie, your emotional conversations and Tuna hiding everything that Milo owns.
Brandon: That was a very emotional Eric, for Milo.
Eric: I could tell because you burned a fifth level spell's lot on it.
Amanda: I know. Looking back, I was yelling at you in the moment.
Julia: I thought that there was going to be some sort of upset with the protesters and whatnot. I thought this was going to be kind of the next throughline for what was happening with the bloggers and with Councilman Burdock in that we were going to start seeing the kind of like anti weirdness sentiment, taking the next step or going to the next level. That's kind of where I was at towards the end of the episode. When we got to the art gallery, I think it was more of a, oh, there is going to be a weird science thing that Dr. Morrow forgot about, which is why I instinctively was like, I need to text her and ask her.
Eric: I want to say you - you texting Dr. Morrow was very great, like keeping all of you not in the dark necessarily, but that I knew things and you didn't do things. You still all made choices that were really, really interesting, which I really appreciate it.
Amanda: I was similarly like, okay, well, this is this is something that Dr. Morrow doesn't think is going to be an encounter. Maybe uncharacteristically Eric is going to drop us into initiative as soon as we like, get to this gallery. But I too was thinking about like Dr. Morrow responsibility or legacy and sort of like making so much future bending tech literally in one place over the course of decades and just being so prolific, like, of course, there's going to be, you know, stuff that she kind of discarded or didn't think twice about that later somebody else might find and co-opt. So I thought we were really going in a kind of like people's river, you know, interrogating that technology direction.
Brandon: I was just kind of holding my breath the entire time, waiting for the shoe to drop-
[Eric laughing]
Brandon: Because like on the one hand, like I'm a sucker for, like, very specific detail storytelling, you know, like I love that kind of stuff. So, like, I really was enjoying it, but I knew that I was to average for the reality.
Eric: Sure.
Amanda: I had no idea, guys. I had no idea. I was just like living man. I was like, yeah, let's let's role play how to get into this gallery. I love it. Like, I don't know. I had I had no inkling.
Brandon: I mean, I didn't suspect a time loop, but I did. Yeah. I didn't expect like something to, you know, happened with the protesters or with the gallery like the can to go off or a fight to break out or a helicopter to arrive on the scene. I don't know, you know, some than I was expecting something wild because everything was so small scale at the top that I expected Eric to go huge at the end. Which you did.
Eric: I just want to say, I like I said, you all made really interesting choices and I really appreciate all of you doing that. And I think that that's that was very helpful. And I think that's very exemplary of all of your play styles. Is that, like, Amanda just fucking rolls with it? Brandon is waiting for me to fuck off over and Julia is running towards some some deeper themes in terms of the story. And I think I was definitely trying to do all of this. I think that this is the backdrop. Definitely doing this on May 1st is a big deal to me. I mean, my birthday is on May 2nd.
Amanda: Also I also hey guys, I've been Eric for four years, didn't put those two things together.
Brandon: Woah, has it really been four years? Oh, my God.
Eric: We found a birthday present that Amanda gave me a my brother, my brother and me covered notebook.
Amanda: 2017.
Eric: For 2017.
Amanda: God we were so young.
Eric: This is so wild. I can't believe this. I've always known about me first and recently obviously with everything going on with workers rights and the protests that's been happening over time, but being more, definitely more involved over the last year or so, it's something that I really wanted to play with. And Julia what you're saying about that overt weirdness. And like, I don't want to coin a new slur of what we're doing here, but I definitely think that all the sentiment that we've been feeling in the world right now also applies to the powerful and the rise of this as well.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. I mean, people who are against powers and strangeness are definitely anti-union also, like, I think that's a very clear tie. And I felt acutely nervous about that situation just again, because of the context of the last year and a half of living. And that's why it was so important for for Aggie like, listen, I'm a peacekeeper. That's exactly what I'm here for. I can, you know, go out there and try to quell these counter protesters that are clearly trying to turn this demonstration into an opportunity for violence.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm I'm interested I'm glad that some of those things happened there. And we're in a flesh that out, obviously, because, you know, we were only there for a few hours and there will be more and more loops. But all those things that you all said were true, even if you said three separate things, I'm very happy that all of you pick that up, especially when we get to episode two and then we start fucking around. And I want to talk about a little Amanda. Let's talk about our conversation about who was in the loop initially in loop two.
Amanda: Yes. So as soon as we stop recording loop one, we turn we we stopped our microphone recordings and then all of us were just like, what the fuck? Eric be very excited.
Eric: And then I was like, I know winky face.
Amanda: Eric, when he's satisfied with himself as a DM is quite kind of Tuna-esque in here, which I really enjoy.
Brandon: He grows a tail. It's weird.
Eric: Mmm I know don't you love me?
Amanda: But as soon as we hang up the call, he turned to me and said, You realize Aggie is not in the loop, right? And I was like, holy shit. I was like, why? And then I put it together. I was like, Oh, that's right. Because Val and Milo were directly next to the device when the man in black reset it and I was far away doing something else. And so I didn't communicate that to Brandon and Julia. And so when we started the next morning, when we started, you know, join the loop two, I was I felt like I did a bad job role playing that because I was so excited that-
Brandon: No you didn't I was so confused.
Amanda: I was like, you know, I just it was like a surprise party -
Julia: You crushed it.
Amanda: Oh, well, thank you. But I felt like I was at a surprise party. I was staring at the person it was for being like, what do you think we're going to do tonight to sit here and watch a movie? Maybe?!
[Everyone laughing]
Brandon: But it was it was very I thought you were just like riffing. Like, I thought you were just sort of like taking it upon yourself to add some flavor to the thing.
Julia: No, you did a great job with it.Seriously.
Amanda: Thank you. But it was it was very exciting. And it it was hard at first to get my brain in order to be like, oh, that's right. The thing that Aggie thought she was doing on May 1st was going to the gallery because it just like it didn't occur to me at first. So that might be actually a good segue way to say, like, I know that right after session one, I took detailed notes on, like all of the things that we did, the conversation I had, the timeline, all of that. But Eric explained a little bit about things like the the fast forwarding where if we want to, we can just do the same thing we did last time. Clearly, we can do it. We do it again. But how did you go about sort of setting out all of the mechanics for how to allow us to do things and repeat things and change things in this loop?
Eric: That's a great question. I can't say too much because it might reveal how I put this together. And we've all played some episodes ahead. What I will say is that. I know what a lot of the NPCs are doing, just like in any Dungeons and Dragons game, the only thing is I need to put you three back in the same place and I need to remember what I did last time and write that down to make sure that you all get to interact with the same things. Like instead of the ordinarily I'd be riffing or I we go move on to another thing and like a joke disappears into the ether and I forget what it is now I need to remember. So a great example of this is the guy in the front in the gallery, the dude with the top bun, right. I had to remember that the dude with the Taliban was there, that the last thing that happened was that you were trying to get in by looking at the VIP. You worked it like that. And the charm person was the thing that made it stick. And the details were that the wristbands were behind the desk. You could choose to do that again, but then you chose to do something different. So I did play the same NPC as if I did it at the beginning. But you're doing a different role to negotiate that. However, we've established already that he's kind of like a creepy dude or like at least like a like an artsy version of crunchy person and just like kind of a little sketchy. So in my head, I'm like, well, he's probably fascinated with all of you and he probably knows who Kilonova is. So he's going to ask a weird question. He could ask a weird question then. Now he knows that Milo has ghost private parts.
Brandon: He wants a tabloid scoop, you know, I get it. I get it.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah. My my read on him was that he sort of mistakes being shocking for being substantive. And I definitely run into a lot of that. Over the years.
Eric: Absolutely. And then of course, like whether or not we end up doing that again is like, oh, do you want to take the scene again or does this stick? So whether we fast forward that or you go back to that, I can be like, hey, do we want that to stick? Is Carmen very upset right now?
Brandon: Eric. That's the same outside of a time loop to.
Eric: Carmen's always upset with something that happened on Twitter. She was so happy that Milo is interacting, and then that's what we get. And then it's just like I just need to remember what I did before, which I only do like some of the time because, you know, it's part plot. Part comedy is how we how we play the Dungeons and the Dragons.
Amanda: Yeah. And Julia, you kind of helped uncover a lot of the mechanics here in talking about why Val would oversleep, because you are repeating the previous loop, not the first loop. So did that kind of change the way you were approaching your gameplay for for two or three?
Julia: Yeah, I think so, because like in an ideal world, Val would have been awake and ready to go and not being yelled at on the phone ideally. But that's not how we played. And I thought it was the right character choice to have Val sleep through that alarm because they genuinely would have thought it was the next day. So I had to be true to the character. And if that screwed me over a little bit, you know, that's just the consequence of that.
Eric: Yeah, no, I think that was totally fair. I have like, absolutely Val thought it was Saturday, didn't set their alarm. Absolutely. But the weird temporal nature of this thing that it's not like a everyone's time loop. It is the the men in black's time loop that he is resetting every single time. And that's why that locked in because your intention of sleeping in until 9:00. That's the other thing that I was really happy about, which is something that is a little complicated, is that I didn't tie it to like you wake up and it's a new day necessarily. It's like we are setting this at nine a.m.
Julia: Like Aggie is already awake when the time loop starts because was an early riser.
Amanda: I am.
Eric: Yeah. And I just I like that a lot. Like knowing that he set the time on his N 64 and we were resetting at nine. Regardless of what you are all doing, it's not like it's not a general time loop. It's like but now you are stuck in the time loop with the dude.
Brandon: Or is he stuck in there with us.
Eric: Both, it's definitely you stuck in there with each other. Yeah, that was the other thing that I was really interested in about is like how can I make this a little bit different, is controlled by someone else. So the rules are on someone else's terms and you all need to kind of deal with that, which I found really interesting, especially at the end of loop three at the end of episode two where he showed up and he's like, "fucking stop it."
Julia: I think it probably got cut because it was table talk. But like the end of that episode, one of my chief concerns was, is Milo going to be in the loop or not because he was not close by to the reset.
Brandon: No, I kept that in.
Julia: Oh, did you? Okay!
Brandon: And I did, because it was interesting too, because still as me Brandon during that time and also now I don't think I fully understood what you were trying to get at. I don't think I put it together that it was like an effect.
Julia: Yeah. I think I figured that out pretty quick because Aggie was not near the thing and therefore she didn't get pulled into the time loop with us and I was concerned. That if you were not near the reset, you would not have been included in the time loop. And then you would have been stuck doing something else totally.
Brandon: And I had assumed that Amanda was just playing in the space and not wreaking Eric. So I didn't know that that was, you know, actual in canon canon kind of thing.
Amanda: You know, I'm assuming that once you're in the loop, you're in the loop. And it was just a matter of proximity to get into the loop in the first place. I don't know if we directly address that next episode, but that's that's the the theory.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's there. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I see it's very funny with stuff like this. And this is another thing for DM's to just think about. It's like the stuff you don't say is just as important as the stuff you do say.
Brandon: Oh man, it's like jazz!
Amanda: Like jazz.
Eric: The jazz man.
Amanda: Just like jazz,
Eric: Just like jazz.
Brandon: Chess. It's the moves you don't make!
Eric: It's exactly like chess, the moves that are made. So I can understand why all of you are flooding this spoily corner with questions. But like, I can't tell you, I just can't tell you. And we're going to reveal this as this stuff goes on. And what I can say about the projector is that the reason why you only figure that out in three is because Aggie wasn't in the time loop yet. It's true. And because Aggie interacted with the projector outside of the time loop didn't work for her once Aggie was in the time loop, then it worked.
Amanda: Fascinating.
Brandon: I did not put these things together, I'm bad at this game.
Amanda: well, there's a lot of implication and we have to do storytelling, which is not just kind of explaining of everything as we get to it. So I think it's a thing that we have to balance for sure. The Brandon, it might now be a good time to turn to what you're very, very good at, which is sound design. And I just have a note here: everyone thought it was tight shit. So please, please discuss.
Brandon: I thought it was hilarious that everyone everyone loved it so much because I had exported a version to send to the team to listen through a few days before the published date. For whatever reason, no one had quite had the time to listen to it. And so on Monday, like I put it in the midroll and the recap, which is normal, and as I was doing it, I was like, oh yeah, I remember we made a joke at the end of this episode or at the beginning we we were just like messing around and warming up. I was like, Eric if you could do this whole episode backwards, that would be great. And then throughout it you were like, oh shit, now I want that. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll just like, maybe I'll just throw in a backward effect here and there. And then I spent all of four minutes on this and apparently it defined the episode.
Amanda: It was incredibly tight. I heard it and I was like, oh, my brain wants it to go the other way. But this is really good to very good.
Julia: It's very funny because I did listen to the the draft. I just didn't have any notes, so I didn't say anything but.
Brandon: Oh wonderful. That was not sarcastic that was, I was actually saying wonderful.
Julia: But when the episode dropped everyone was freaking out about the beginning. In the ending I was like what?
Amanda: What did I miss?
Julia: It was just like a beginning and ending for the episode. I don't remember anything like super weird happening. And then I listen to him like, oh, Brandon that fucking slaps.
Amanda: Fuck yeah dude, fuck yeah.
Eric: What I love about Pro Tools is also what I feel about like Photoshop is that there are so many secret little tools buried in there that you don't know do stuff. So the fact that, like, you just probably threw something on that you knew existed, knowing things in Pro Tools is like half the battle and like,
Brandon: Oh yeah.
Eric: That's incredible. That you knew is like, oh, that would be cool. That would be in there. And then you put it on there.
Brandon: Yeah. It's like I'm doing I've been listening to and watching a lot of territorials on stuff during quarantine because I'm a nerd. And like yeah, it's definitely like it's 1000 thousand percent of craft, like it's knowing your Philipps, from your flathead, from your whatever, you know, like it's very much that and spending a lot of money on plugins but that. Well if anyone was curious and has Pro tools was from freak show industries. I believe it's called back mask.
Eric: Cool.
Julia: Tight.
Brandon: And I believe it's free technically. But you can pay what you want, so pay some money for it.
Eric: Nice.
Julia: Throw him a couple of dollars.
Eric: Amanda did Brandon say that thing about screwdriver's right?
Amanda: Yeah, I have no notes.
Julia: Philips and flat. Those are the two.
Brandon: Alan Wrench. That's a third one I was going to say it was.
Amanda: Speaking of tools though, one of my cabinets in the kitchen is a little bit askew and I won't feel right until I tighten the hinge. So I'm going to be right. Okay?
Eric: Okay.
Julia: Sounds good!
Amanda: Alright see you in a minute!
[Transition note]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda, I had the wonderful experience the other day of for the first time in a very long time, sitting at a table with a beer in a glass, watching people walk by on the sidewalk. And that is not to be a bummer, you know, but that's not an experience I think I'm ever going to take for granted again. So welcome to the Midroll. We have your favorite beer on tap.
First and foremost, thank you and welcome to several beautiful people who joined our Patreon last week: Kristina, Lux, and Lucy! We are so grateful to every single one of you who make room in your budget every month to support creators, whether that's us or somebody else, but particularly for those of you who support us on Patreon, we are so grateful we could not keep making the show without your support and putting ours into the sound design, the preparation. The Afterparty is making sure we have all of our ducks in a row making cool merch. It is such a gift to be able to do that as our jobs. And we we totally owe that to you guys. So we so appreciate it. And if you're able to pledge five dollars a month or more, we would love to see you at Patreon.Com / join the party pod feed some incentives. We tell you first about merch. We have NPC stories and playlists that go out with each episode and of course, our discord, which is amazing photos of dogs and foods and RPG support, people finding each other to play games or to ask advice. It's just the best place on the Internet. So all of that at Patreon dot com slash, join the party pod. And if you did not, here we are doing a digital live show next month. Cannot wait May 17th at this time loop ever lets us advance to May 2nd. We will be there on May 17th, 8:00 p.m. Eastern with a new one shot set in Lake Town City featuring Vulcani, Preserver and Kilonova. And I know you're caught up since listening to the Afterparty, but if your friends are not caught up, it's totally okay. It is not like set in the plot at any particular time. Not going to be spoiley and it is going to be so much fun. We in fact had an incredible amount of fun doing this in February for our first live show. So we're doing it again. And just like last time, your ticket includes a video on demand copy of the show that you can watch afterward because you know, you're in other countries. Maybe you can't go to a live show very early in the morning or very late in the evening, depending on where you are. So we let you watch it any time you want. So, listen, even if you can't come at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on May 17th, buy a ticket anyway in the video link will be emailed to you. Plus, we are announcing some new merch again that I promise are going to be very excited about who can say buy your ticket right now at Join the Party podcast live. That's May 17th, 8:00 p.m. Eastern or any time with the video on demand at Join the Party Pod Dotcom live.
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[Transition note]
Amanda: Well, I have brought back some leftover birthday cake from the kitchen, and that reminds me, we haven't talked at all about Brandon's use of a repeated day where Val had a variation on the conversation. So did I. I went to see Dez Brandon, why did you choose to go to the OTA and how do you feel about what you discovered there?
Brandon: I'm still parsing how I feel about it. Eric and I chatted and I had sort of made a list of things that I that Milo would want to do as a as a person. But because he's Milo, he didn't want to have the actual future consequences of doing those things.
Eric: Yes, that's right.
Brandon: And one of the things was, was spy on his dad, figure out what he's doing and if he's telling the truth, because I think he trusts his dad, obviously. But like, as much as any kid is, like, you're the tall authority figure in my life. So I trust and believe you. But like, I'm definitely going to sneak behind the back and see what you're doing. And also with a Dr. Morrow same same thing with Dr. Morrow, you know, like I think he believes Dr. Morrow and trusts her, but definitely wants, like, confirmation from a third party source on what's actually happening there.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. I thought that was really interesting. The first thing that I said once you all recovered from the fact that this was a time loop, I'm like, think about some stuff that you want to do, like let's mess with the genre of the time loop and see if you can learn some stuff. And Julia decided to have an adorable moment with Hitomi and -
Julia: Needed to fix what was wrong.
Eric: And Amanda was reliving over and over and over again a very stressful conversation with her parents. Which I got Amanda's consent to do by the way.
Brandon: I left that in the episode too!
Amanda: No, it was great!
Eric: So the OTA so you said was that like you were worried that the OTA was the Office of Technology Assessment. Where Hank Lane works is like perpetrating like the banal evil that the American government does all the time. And I'm like, that's very fair. And I very much appreciate that. And also, it didn't really help that all of you kept rolling nat 20's and rubbing my face in it.
Amanda: Oh, that's true.
Brandon: That doesn't stop. That continues on for the next 12 episodes.
Eric: The chat dice are spicy man.
Amanda: They love drama.
Eric: Only 20s and 1's only 20s and 1's from the Chad dice.
Julia: I should start rolling my Chad dice more often.
Amanda: It is worth saying, by the way, that after we recorded Join the Loop two Eric did test the dice to make sure they weren't weighted. They're not. They're just spicy now.
Julia: They're just good. They just like drama.
Brandon: Although he didn't do it in salt water. So I don't know. I don't know man.
Eric: I did. I tested it. I tested it again in salt water.
Brandon: Oh, you did?
Eric: I did test it. Yes, I fully tested it. But then at one point I was like, you know, maybe I should just trust that, like, you all rolled in that 20s and then you kept rolling nat 20's. And I'm like, no, I'm testing this fully. And then I know the see the chad are just are just super spicy. I didn't think any of you were lying about your rolls. I thought that Chad was lying about your rolls.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Chad likes to put his stamp on things, you know.
Julia: Loves drama.
Eric: Right. So in the OTA. Okay, so within an nat 20, I'm like I, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to tell you. I think there was a lot of stuff on the back burner and there's a lot of stuff that we've done together as players, especially like I said, in the first four episodes, the pre episodes of worldbuilding that I've metered out in little bits in canon in the what were in the actual story. But I don't know if we've actually touched on like anyone actually knowing it. I remember when I was we were doing episode one and I got David Ryanstorm to come in to be Sage Lanceleaf, and he did that sanitized version of the thing that we figured out. I think that's what I was implying, is that people know some stuff about like the general history of what Lake Town City is and the valorizing of Dr. Morrow. But I didn't know how much anyone knew. So now Milo knows everything that we did in the world, building games.
Brandon: Potentially the worst player to have that honor.
[Everyone laughs]
Brandon: I want to go back and listen to them.
Eric: Yeah. So here are some some things in there is that while everyone was watching Back to the Future, Dr. Morrow in her cabin was messing around with this. There was a giant explosion. Diaphorum was discovered, and then like everyone got infected by the delta radiation. That diaphragm pumped out and like that's what happened. And then the government came in and put everyone on lockdown for a year to study everyone. And then they decided, oh, I guess it's fine. And then they're like, I guess you guys should become like a real town because you're growing rapidly and there's like economic contracts around that. People want to get their hands on the energy and diaphragm. And then what happened was there was a vote for mayor and whatever happened and whoever else was running. But they decided, well, Dr. Morrow was the one who discovered it. She's a local celebrity. And we've already talked to her and spent a lot of time with her over the time of this quarantine. Basically, Agent Hank Lane getting assigned to Project Delta being a part of this. And that's where Dr. Morrow and Hank Lane met in the first place. They're like, hey, we know her, she's in the system. Let's keep her. Let's keep her there. And she's like, okay, I guess I'm mayor, too, and I think this is also how we see her laissez faire executive town governing privileges, is that she's this kind of like, well, the government's running on mayor or whatever. I'm going to do whatever it is and have a secret superhero task force instead, because that's where it comes from. Is that like we don't know necessarily if she wanted it. We don't necessarily who voted for who if there was someone who actually wanted to do this job. But the OTA and the American government came in and and took care of that.
Brandon: Is the OTA a federal agency?
Eric: Yeah, it's a federal agency. It's like it's an offshoot. Again, the OTA is real. That was a real thing. It got discontinued in the 90s. Newt Gingrich struck it down when he was speaker of the House during the Clinton administration.
Julia: Damnit Newt.
Eric: The OTA was originally made to explain technology and like the Internet to congressmen and senators to make sure people were like properly taught things that were going to happen in the future, in the digital age. And of course, then it got struck down, which is why none of our senators know how to use a computer, including the Democrats. No one actually knows how to use a computer. It's all paper. It is a federal agency that was tied to it. And then, like the New York state government was stoked on it and was happy that all this stuff was happening, which also has to do with, like Lake Town City becoming the capital of New York and the kind of like, well, thanks for participating. Good things are happening. You and then going from a town to a city and growing so rapidly. That was another thing that I don't think that we touched on. And something that Sage Lanceleaf touched on very quickly was like Dr. Morrow made the companies bring jobs to Lake Town City so they could have the diaphorum. And like, that's kind of true. Kind of not. But it's definitely part of like the whole, you know, just the the business of like we don't explore necessarily the histories of our cities until it just, like, happens. And that's kind of the stuff that happened. The OTA and the American government and New York state government had a hand in keeping Lake Town City growing. And also there were other social factors, like people leaving New York City to move to Lake Town City once the the bullet train and not wanting to be a New York City post 9/11. That was another thing. I was like I remember how desolate people were feeling in all of New York State during like 2001, 2002, 2003. And if, like if there was another option, people would go. And I'm sure that that was that was an opportunity. And that's why Lake Town City is partially the way that it is. And now Milo knows all of that.
Amanda: Whether or not Milo will share we'll see.
Brandon: I think the only like sort of like lingering thought for Milo is whether or not Dr. Morrow is sort of like, for lack of a better word, compromised.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: I don't think Milo is sure and I'm not sure if if the government came in and started trying to push on Dr. Morrow to do something with the sort of threat of like, well, do you still want to be mayor? I'm not sure Dr. Morrow would say yes or no because I think that's an equal chance.
Eric: Sure, sure.
Brandon: If they care about being mayor. Yeah, I think it's very it's very obvious from your conversation with her that she's just like, I'm sciencing right now. I when people tell me to do stuff or whatever, I believe them, it's fine. It's like not in like a she not being willfully ignorant. She's just like, this is not my department. Can someone else, the others department take care of this? And I think that that was another thing that we learned from Dez is that like Dr. Morrow gets hyper fixated on things and doesn't care about other things. So what you said about her being compromised, maybe maybe she doesn't even know she's compromised because it's not a conscious decision in that way.
Brandon: Right.
Amanda: Good stuff.
Eric: Yeah. I just wanted I wanted to touch on that because it was a big thing and I was very excited about it being able to dump all my notes on Brandon as like I rolled a 30 and then I threw a notebook through a computer and it hit Brandon in the face.
Brandon: And then you threw a tuna through the air into a cake.
[Amanda laughing]
Amanda: I know what a moment for it to reset, that was awesome. Yeah. In lieu of spoily corner since this, we're going to get there in the arc. I promise we have Juju Corner, who is a wonderful person that wrote us an email full of thoughtful and lovely questions. So let's start with some character related questions. Importantly, Julia did you would like to know how many pairs of Doc Martin's Val has?
Julia: Oh, I think it's just the one pair and they're super beat up and they probably have to replace them every five years or so just because they just get absolutely smashed. But I think it's just the one pair continuously.
Amanda: I respect that. Very utilitarian.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: When Val vibrates. Is it like friction? Like does it heat up your clothes and or shoes or is it like the Flash where you burn holes in shoes. You know?
Julia: That's a good question. I don't think that Val vibrates fast enough for that to be an actual problem.
Brandon: Okay.
Julia: I picture it like Cannonball, not like the Flash, you know what I mean?
Eric: It's enough for it to be hot, but not enough to go fast. Yes. In the comic book, the logic of that.
Amanda: What term does Hitomi use for Val maybe significant other partner and date-mate, enby friend, etc., or some people. Just use girlfriend/boyfriend Juju observes.
Brandon: I read that I loved date-mate that was so, so good.
Julia: In my head, I picture your partner, but Eric's Hitomi's actual brain, so.
Eric: I like that she's your bird girlfriend and you're like and you're like, yeah, my dance partner, my neutron star.
Amanda: Aw adorable. And we know the Mountain Lobster's hockey team is culturally important. But how invested are the characters and NPCs in the team? Do you, like, know all the trivia or is it kind of like casually yay mountain lobsters?
Eric: Yeah, just in terms of a world building, which is why I said all the way back in pre episode one, I chose NHL because being a one sport city is very important, like shout out Portland, the Blazers, they ride fucking hard for the Blazers. And hockey is very much like a cult classic sport as well, because, again, it's very regional.You have to be in a place where it's cold and hitting people indiscriminately. I mean, that's a very good way is an activity that you love to do. So I feel like lots of people ride very hard for them. And it's a lot of local celebrity stuff, like if you saw not even Fritz Brightstone Star, if you saw anyone on the Mountain Lobsters, you'd be like, oh, shit, it's Danny, Danny. What's up? You want to come and get free stuff? Like, they're definitely local celebrities, so maybe not into this obsession, but they are and everyone knows who they are and they're ingrained in the fabric of the city very much.
Amanda: Yeah. I'm going to borrow an idea from a romance novel. I just read I just read like a series of romance novels that are about NHL players, which is extremely satisfying. And in one of them, a an out player has a drink named after him in a local gay bar. And so I think that Aggie has a couple like low key, like pub style, like lesbian bars that she likes to go to. And I imagine that one of them names like all of their mixed drinks after queer players, because in my reality, that we're building together lots of players in the NHL.
Eric: Sure.
Amanda: So I think I think she particularly knows those players. But I imagine. Yeah, like on the Weather Channel and local commercials, you know, like parades. I'm sure you just kind of know the faces.
Julia: The car dealerships using them as spokespeople.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Local commercials is perfect. I'm thinking about all the way back to a horse episode that I did where Mike told me about all the San Antonio Spurs players, the basketball team doing local commercials for HEB, the local grocery store. And like there's like continuity in these, like they have persona is so very much. Very definitely. Very much so. I love that. I also feel like the mountain lobster team, they they're like a blaseball team to me. So like, whatever you want to exist on there about lobsters definitely exists. Like the only canonical person on the Mount Lobsters is Fritz. So like whoever you want know about lobsters exists. Does the goalie even have a body part? Is it just they're just floating pads maybe. So whatever you want other lobsters, it's they're pretty much just a blaseball team.
Amanda: And Juju you like to know if any of us are hockey fans? I'm a casual fan of the the Nashville Predators. I think they're very fun and I've had that to smash.
Julia: Let's go Islander's.
Amanda: Yeah, I went to a lot of islanders games growing up.
Brandon: I am not a hockey person. I thought that I don't like and I just don't know anything about it. But Milo is definitely the kind of guy and the group that like they all have a jersey for sure. And like, you know, every season they go to a couple of games and they like go hard and drink hard and eat lots of nachos and then, like, don't talk about it at all this year.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Hockey is so much fun in person.
Amanda: Yeah it really is.
Eric: So much fun in person. And this is someone who goes to many basketball games, hockey number one, basketball number two. So I like the idea of hockey games. My dad grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, which is like a small city in between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. And there is a minor league affiliate, the Erie Sea Dogs.
Brandon: That's a great name.
Eric: Great fucking - the names of minor leagues all over baseball, hockey, basketball, all of them have in -
Amanda: The Long Island ducks like it's just a team called the Ducks. It's great.
Eric: But I've been to a few of those games and like this when I was a kid. Well, you could just, like, run down to the boards and just like watch and like seeing someone get decked into the boards in front of you is just like so is a wonderful feeling. Everyone should go to a hockey game.
Amanda: It's primal.
Eric: And like there aren't that many rules in hockey or like it's a little fiddly, but you can pretty much follow it and like puck and goal and then everyone cheers. Like, that's really it's really what it is.
Amanda: I love it. The goals are so hard won, you know, and like it. There's only a handful of them per game. Each of them is very exciting. I also love how it's structured. It's three periods and so you got two intermissions. Everybody knows about it. And like you can go to the bathroom and one and get food and the other whatever. Like it's it's perfectly structured.
Julia: Yeah, great.
Brandon: That is a good structure.
Julia: hockey is great.
Brandon: This is actually why I don't like hockey or baseball that much, because I much prefer basketball, whereas high scoring and moves fast enough.
Amanda: Fair enough.
Eric: I agree with that. I think it has the speed of light. It's not soccer in that it's like the beautiful game because they're on god damn blades on ice. So and there's lots of hitting, so it kind of makes up for the fact that it's a low it's a relatively low scoring game and they have shootouts, which I wish basketball had.
Amanda: Those are very fun.
Brandon: And in between each period, they do figure skating competitions, which is always fun to watch.
Julia: Yeah. At Islanders games, it's usually like little small children come out and shoot into the tank and if they score, everyone gets like nachos or something. I don't know.
Amanda: I would watch like a TV channel or a livestream of the interstitial entertainment at like various minor league sporting events all over the country or the world. That'd be so fun. Like imagine all people, strange traditions and their stadiums. They'd be awesome.
Eric: In Nashville when they score. Tim McGraw comes on the Jumbotron and sings his song. I like it. I love it. I watch some more of it and that everyone in the stadium sings at the same time. It's wild, synchronized country singing.
Amanda: It's great.
Julia: Islanders scores everyone. Does the Danny O'Brien wrestling. Yes chant Yes, yes, yes. And the fingers in the air.
Eric: And if anyone needed to know the regionalist difference between Nashville, Long Island fucking got you there.
Amanda: You got it right there.
Julia: Daniel Brian not even from Long Island from Seattle.
Eric: My mom's both my my mom is both of those things shoved into the same person.
Julia: I will say, because Amanda brought up the Long Island Ducks that I once went to a Long Island Ducks game with about thirty wrestlers.
Amanda: Yeah!
Julia: We were the loudest group in the stadium because it was pretty empty. And then they liked us so much that they invited us back and gave us free tickets to another game.
Amanda: Awww! I love that! We have a podcasting question. You guys meet via video calls now and I would love to know. Have you ever had problems with Internet logging, messing up audio, some of not being able to hear, see, etc.? How do you deal with that? It's something that I think this is me editorializing now a lot of people are dealing with in their their work or school lives. And what is our experience been?
Brandon: Yeah, I think ironically throughout this recording, there's been a couple of times where I had either accidentally talked over Amanda or something or so I didn't hear what Amanda said.
Amanda: I have the softest voice. And so it's like when Google Hangouts is trying to process input's between four different people. Mine is one that they mute usually.
Brandon: Yeah. And so I have to either, like, stop and ask what Amanda said or just laugh along and wait for it on the episode.
[Eric laughs]
Eric: Brandon finds out Brandon gets Easter eggs later.
Amanda: Exactly. Yeah, that's right. I leave them for.
Julia: I think for the most part we do have a pretty seamless process. The last episode that we recorded though, my Internet just stopped working for like five minutes as as we were finishing the episode and Eric was in the middle of like a really cool, like, beautiful like description. He was like, motherfucker!
Eric: I actually feel like I don't feel as bad about that stuff because, one, our editorial process has been the same. Like Brandon is going to edit this regardless and put that shit together. And I mean, I've been feeling that way. And I know all the Julia as well as Julia has been editing podcast's stuff over the last two years. They're like, you need to do that stuff anyway. And honestly, having individual tracks with people not in the same room makes it super easy to make all that stuff work. So great example. When you dipped out on the Internet, I'm like, oh, well, the thing I said was already on the microphone, so that saved. And then I can tell Julia what I was saying which and that's going to get cut out. So at least I don't necessarily feel precious that what we say on the video doesn't have anything to do with what I'm saying into this microphone. And that makes me feel secure. The other thing that this is just like so serendipitous and I think about this every once in a while, is that like Brandon, you were moving to Los Angeles like a month before covid hit. And I don't want to say those two things are related, but.
Amanda: But we did have to adapt to all remote recording, which we hadn't done before. So it was fortunate that all of campaign two that's been our our setting. So it wasn't, like, extremely jarring to change that. But yeah, like you said, like each of us records our microphone of just our voice in our own room. And so it it makes it easier to edit. And I think as we've all been podcasting now for several years, that's something that I have noticed a lot in myself, that you just get better at talking with other people to make it easy to edit where you either don't talk over them. You understand the timing a little more. You let it breathe a little bit, you know how to retake your sentences so that it's fairly easy to cut. And it's a thing that is not really, I don't think, learnable except through experience. Like if I had described somebody else how to do it, it'd be very hard to do. But it's something that, you know, five years of talking professionally later, you know, here we are.
Brandon: Yeah. Like me and Julia and Eric are all sitting here nodding along to Amanda actually speaking, but not saying yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Out loud.
Amanda: Yeah. I felt self-conscious about my reactions to what was happening in these last two episodes because Eric and I are in the same room versus Julia Brandon are alone in their own homes and so I often like if I can't help myself, I will just say something. But if Eric is talking, then it has to stay in because we're in the same room. I'm sure Brandon you, you know, work your magic with it. But I have to try very hard to not to not speak and react with my mouth as you'd think.
Eric: But I want that like, you know, it's very different as, like a Dungeons & Dragon show as opposed to the other stuff that we want, because I want you to say shit, there were overlap in the fact that you would be playing at the same time like I so I want you to do that. I very much want to surprise all of you. This is the other thing that I'm dealing with, like by doing it remote or doing it for a podcast where I'm just like, oh, man, I'm going to have this sick fight. It's going to be so good. And then you guys are silent because you're thinking about what's happening next to me. Well, I really want you guys to be like, oh, shit. Like what we do.
Amanda: Well, there's music later. It feels tense. You know, you get to hear the tension that we feel or the excitement that we feel.
Eric: No yeah, true.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think feel free to react Amanda, obviously. But that is something that like I've gotten a little spoiled on. It's like me and Julia track being able to shift around at time or like if I need to add an effect, it's super easy because there's nothing there's no like other mic leaks to get in the way of the effect or whatever. But if you are during the recording, I think we're all except for maybe Julia. I don't know if you are not or hardwired into the Internet?
JuliaL I'm hardwired in.
Amanda: Yeah. Yes. All of us have had to buy Ethernet cables during quarantine because it is absolutely necessary.
Brandon: Yes. So do that. And then we always use video so we can watch each other's reactions in real time. Yeah. And yeah.
Julia: It also allows us to like if I have a note, but Amanda is finishing up saying something that she's doing in character. I can just like put a finger up being like I would like to go next please.
Brandon: Which is something we did in the room too and we were all together. But yeah, that's another thing, one of those things that you learn. But yeah.
Eric: I was thinking about how precious that felt like having everybody in the room when we were doing campaign one and like how we're like we never doing remote recording like I know the McElroy's do it, but like we can't do it. We got to have the magic. And I'm like, well, now we have the experience that it actually feels is seamless. So I feel a lot less precious about it and how some of the benefits of that as well.
Brandon: I don't think we could have done it in season one. I do think it was necessary to be in the same room in season one. But with the experience, I think we have figured it out.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Totally.
Eric: Can I say something that reminded me of something that I wanted to say all the way back to the beginning of the Afterparty?
Amanda: Yeah, man!
Eric: Speaking of stuff that we codified in campaign, one that we've now brought over to campaign to, and that is helping me with the time loop. Making jokes in the world is so important to making any of this function, because if we were just making jokes out of it or just making references and things that were just like one offs or we're just being silly, then I wouldn't be able to do make the time loop work in the first place. Like it wouldn't be fun. It would just because you'd be we'd be like, oh shit, supernatural. That would be totally fucking Winchester that hell. Yeah. But the fact that we have the jokes in the world, then I can play on those jokes and do it again. Again, the top bun guy that you wanted to work him over and then this other thing happened which led to Carmen throwing her coffeepot down the street. But also that's because everyone walked out on Thornhill. So it's like this. It's this whole other thing. And being able to build and still have fun within the context of the game, like characters making jokes or saying things that are funny, or we're referencing something that's happening in a world that has definitely helped me do the time loop. But it's really about just like the thing that I'm putting together. I need to know everything, the ins and outs of it. But it's also very condensed. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that at least. And I also want to shout out Leah Libresco, who although she's like an incredible reporter and like thinker, I'd like religious issues. She's also like a big, big table, table top role player. And I heard on a podcast that she ran a time loop, one shot at like Gen Con or one of those other cons. And I'm like, hey, Amanda, you know, Leah Libresco, right? She's like, yeah, like, can I talk to her? Even though she's like probably dealing with her kid right now. And Leah was so nice and told me how she did it and like the principles and the intention that she put behind it that I've been carrying forward. And that call was very important to me while I was struggling to make sense of the Groundhog Day. On one hand, Russian doll and Palm Springs on the other hand. And on the third hand, which grew out of my chest is roguelike games.
Julia: That your ghost hand?
Eric: Yeah, that's my ghost. And so holding all of those at the same time and realizing I could do something different, like what we are truly doing here has been very helpful. And I thank her for for helping.
Julia: Aww.
Brandon: I didn't even think about that. That's that is so important that we do that to make jokes in the world. Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. And I think it's different when you're playing at home where you and your friends have the shared context of knowing each other, even if they're online friends like you, you know, you form your inside jokes and everybody's in on it because you all get it. But playing for an audience where we have no idea, you know, the pop culture that. You listener grew up with or that you are dealing with now or what you find funny and what you don't, you know, having us all kind of make jokes with the same understanding and with the same knowledge, like we all know what has happened in the podcast. We all listen to the podcast. That's what brings us together, I find very inclusive as a person who often doesn't understand references totally.
Brandon: I made it in this most recent recording we did. I made a out of world joke and I immediately afterwards and my head was like, I'm going to cut that shit.
[Everyone laughs]
Amanda: We make it for each other. Yeah, exactly.
Eric: It's funny you say that. The thing about the N 64 I did that with impunity is like if I'm making a reference, there's absolutely a reason why I'm doing it. Like I said, the reset button on the N 64. But there's some other stuff about like everything about technology. We're using retro technology in a futurist world. And I also found that really interesting when we're talking about time. But that's like an illusion. That's not a reference like we're alluding to it because it has a metaphorical significance. So I think that, like, if we're talking about something, there's probably a reason why, or at least I am when I've thought about this thing and trying to give it like semantic or metaphorical significance.
Brandon: You're also really good at giving context for those allusions that you do in game.
Eric: Thanks!
Amanda: So we're also set in the real world this time. So like Taylor Swift is part of the setting versus in high fantasy where, you know, you can't just be like, oh, I like Captain Kirked that one, huh? And that one necessarily doesn't work.
Eric: It's part of the reason why we're doing this for campaign to definitely. I missed it. I wanted to make references and allusions to modern day and talked about those issues. So this is definitely bearing that out in this way. I also feel like I'm on a fucking roll right now, guys. I feel really good. I really the last few episodes and the episodes and everything about this loop, I feel like I've I've leveled off in my DMing and I'm feeling very good about that.
Brandon: I don't know when you got off the roll from, like three years ago, but I hear you.
Eric: Like I leveled up when Bachelorette Party started and then I feel like I leveled up again some time in Join the Channel. When I started leaning, I think when I started leaning on Val as Aunt Min and like the threat of it was was just as dangerous as the other thing. And now I feel like I'm hitting one more in terms like the mechanics of this whole thing.
Amanda: I'm feeling really good about it. I'm really, really good about all the cool shit Brandon is going to do in combat in upcoming episodes for you listeners and Julia all of your character choices and just immediately knowing exactly what Val would do. It helps ground me as a character and I just it's very fun. I want to be able to talk about the five episodes of Join the Loop that we have played that you have not heard, but we cannot do it. But I am so excited. These just it keeps getting hotter. Don't worry about it. It's going to be great. I can't wait for the next Afterparty to talk about join the loop three and four and maybe some other stuff that's coming up. I don't know. Maybe you're not going to experience a bad Tuesday for several months. I don't know. I don't know.
Julia: Who can say.
Brandon: The audience is like the frog in the cold water right now. They don't even know. And that it's turning on.
Eric: They don't know. I will say this is probably this is the seventh recording I've done for Join the Party in the last two weeks.
Brandon: That's too many.
Julia: Isn't too much.
Eric: I agree, I agree.
Amanda: But it's all for you everybody. So thank you for your questions and your screams and your Eric with the fucks. We very much enjoy it and we can't wait to talk to you next time.
Eric: Oh, yeah, everyone go listen to Join the Party. No bad Tuesdays. Coming up, fake Julia Lambrusco. Get out there and keep on listening.
Julia: Later.
Brandon: Bye guys!
Amanda: May your rolls trend ever upward.
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