How do we pick games for the OSD? How does Eric go from idea to actual game? Should we do this more often? All that and more on this week’s Afterparty.
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Housekeeping
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: https://multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.
Transcript
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the Afterparty. This one's hosted by Amanda, guys. Don't worry.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: There's not another McGarry waiting in the wings.
Julia: I was ready for a McGarry.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): Too bad. This isn't a video podcast with a multi-million dollar advance paid by Spotify.
Brandon: That’s fair.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): A Swedish company trying to maximize its shareholder returns in the US multimedia market.
Eric (as Bill Staufferson): Hey, I just wanted to come in. I'm Bill Billofferson, the US head of podcasting and talk stuff at Spotify. And—
Brandon: Uh-huh.
Eric (as Bill Staufferson): —I've acquired Join the Party from underneath you, and Sunchoke—
Julia: Oh.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): —McGarry is now the host.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): Yeah.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): That's why you can see that I am simultaneously live streaming myself. It's for safety, but also, like for my contract, because when I simulcast on multiple platforms, I can eat more advertising money. Yes, stop looking at me. I have to maintain eye contact with the camera. I have to make lots of ad money for video podcasting and vertical video, which is definitely not a trend that is going to disappear pretty soon.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): So as the head of talk, I just need to figure out how Brandon and Julia fit in here. I've murdered Eric. He's gone.
Julia: Okay.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): It was just easier.
Brandon: Right.
Julia: That's fair.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): He talked too much.
Julia: Oh.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): And he came at me with a foam sword that I thought was a real sword, so he's gone.
Julia: Oh. Yeah.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): So which of you are going to do pranks and which of you are going to do sex advice?
Julia: Me, sex advice.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): Okay.
Julia: Famously. I just came back from sucking dick, as we all know.
Amanda: Yeah, I'm not gonna call this podcast PG-13 anymore. It's not.
Julia: No, it's not.
Eric: It's— no, I don't think it is.
Amanda: It's recommended for mature teens and over.
Eric: This will free us out more to make more jokes that don't get cut.
Amanda: You know?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: This is good.
Brandon: I don't cut jokes.
Eric: I meant— no, in your mind, Brandon.
Julia: Give us the fuck cut.
Eric: No, no, no. Pre-cut in your brain.
Amanda: Eric, don't say pre-cut on this version of Join the Party.
Brandon: Oh, I see, I see. I'm doing sex pranks, Eric, thank you.
Eric: Oh, you're doing sex pranks? Good, good, good, good.
Julia: Sex pranks, got it.
Amanda: Oh, what are those? Can you give me, like, two to three examples?
Brandon: I could, but then I would have to make this the X cut, the—
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): It's proprietary. Hey, it's Bill Bill—
Julia: I'm the editor this time, baby. We're keeping it all in.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): It's Bill Bill Staufferson, again, we're gonna discuss this at corporate for six months. We're shutting it down.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Okay, cool.
Brandon: That's fair. That's fair.
Amanda: Bill, which of your 19 houses are you recording from today?
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): We're gonna do the one that I have on the moon.
Amanda: Oh, good.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: Oh, great.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): Yeah, I'm doing really well with the current government situation, by the way.
Julia: It seems like it.
Eric (as Bill Billofferson): Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the question part of the Afterparty. How fun was this One Shot Derby? Am I right?
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: So good.
Brandon: It was very good.
Eric: I missed it. I think that's why I said I thought this was the year—
Brandon: You missed it?
Eric: No.
Brandon: I'm pretty sure you were there.
Eric: No, I enjoyed— I missed— shut up. I think that's why I said that we did this last year, because it feels so resonant and so much fun that we had done it in the past, that— it's like, "Oh, yeah, we do this every year." No, we don't. No, we don't. But it felt like it.
Julia: I wish.
Amanda: Yeah. Somehow it was in January 2023, making this our biannual or every other year One Shot Derby cycle.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Like cicadas.
Julia: Like the Olympics. That's not how often the Olympics happen. Never mind.
Eric: It's okay, Julia. I said like cicadas, so we were both wrong.
Amanda: Yeah. If you divide the cicada mating cycle by pi, you get the One Shot Derby cycle.
Eric: Wow.
Amanda: That's pretty close.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: That's pretty— it's pretty close.
Julia: That's actually not wrong.
Brandon: 14159. No, that's 5.4.
Julia: Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Eric: Dividing the cicada cycle by pi feels like a line from National Treasure 3.
Amanda: You're exactly right, Eric. You're exactly right. Speaking of Nicolas Cage asking great questions, lots of people want to know, and I assume Nick Cage is in that group, how do we choose One Shots? How did this particular lineup come together?
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Eric?
Eric: Oh, me?
Brandon: Oh, you.
Amanda: You chose them.
Eric: Oh, me, that's right. I did pick them. So we've had— we had a few different iterations of this question, one of which was something like, how do I pick tabletop RPGs for my table when I'm doing One Shots? And I need to recommend to you, do GM-less games. The main thing that stands in the way of people enjoying themselves a tabletop RPG tables, and I think one of the largest problems of the DND-ification of everything. DND saying they're the biggest and best role-playing game, and so many people believing it, is that so much onus goes on prep. And as someone who is now teaching again, man, prepping stuff is hard and sucks. Like it is really difficult to set something up that you then show to someone else. It is rewarding, but is definitely like a barrier for work, especially when you are doing something else for the majority of your life, because we're working, we have jobs. So doing GM-less games is actually a lot more like running a board game. Like one of those board games that runs itself, or, like, has a campaign mode, or as cooperative. Reminds me of like playing together with Betrayal at the House of the Hill, where you just need to learn the rules together, and it's all of you doing a collaborative project as dictated by the rules.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So I'm incredibly attracted to one—
Amanda: Your wife.
Brandon: I was gonna say me.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I almost got him to say me. That's how you know we're married to both of us, Eric.
Eric: Oh, right.
Amanda: It's the same.
Eric: My work wife and my wife wife, that's right.
Amanda: Yep. Uh-hmm.
Eric: And Julia lives in the apartment over at the garage.
Julia: Yes, I do. The FROG.
Eric: The FROG. So I'm incredibly attracted to GM-less games, also, because I professionally do this, so I feel the weight of how much goes into prepping and doing a good job, and the expectations of doing a good job. The other clarifying thing for this is that this needs to have a— needs to be easy for all of us to learn. I have to learn it first, so then everyone else learns it. So that disqualified at least two very popular tabletop RPGs, because I just thought there was too much going on.
Brandon: Name them.
Eric: I won't. But also it has to have good character creation, like it has to have full character creation. So there's some lighter games, like one-pagers. Remember last year when we did the Brontes one?
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I had to build out character creation because I enjoyed the mechanics so much. So if you're not explicitly jonesing for a character creation piece, feel free to run those One Shots, because then again, like you all kind of figure it out together. You learn together. And if someone is running the game, they can just go off for 15 minutes and figure out something silly, and then come back.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yep. So once you got the set of potential TTRPGs, what was your deciding coolness factor?
Eric: I am someone who is pretty online about this stuff. I subscribe to Rascal. Everyone subscribe to Rascal if you want tabletop RPG journalism. I'm on top of a lot of, like, the new, hot, critical darling games right now. So I'm like, "Oh, I've considered a lot of this. I've heard of these. Are we thinking about them? Whatever." Also, I played a bunch of games before. Last One Shot Derby, we played inspectors, which is a game that me, Amanda, and Julia, and, Jake played over the pandemic. So I'm like, "Oh, we should play this. This was so much fun."
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So I was weeding through a lot of that stuff, and I ended up buying a few games that we didn't end up doing, but I'm like, "All right, I'll give you $10. It's fine." But now, I have a DriveThruRPG account. Man, that website sucks. Man, that website sucks. If— I hate it so much. Put your games on Itch, it is so much easier to use. Man, DriveThruRPG sucks so much. So I was like, "Oh, these are some games I never want to do. I definitely want to give Fiasco another crack." While that happened, I was writing True Crime Podcast Game, so I'm like, "Oh, let's do this at the same time." I knew— known about Brindlewood Bay. It's kind of a critical darling right now, so I'm like, "Oh, I definitely want to check that out." It gave me an excuse to buy it and read it, which was really nice. And then Julia really wanted to Weird West game. So it was nice, like, trying to figure out by genre, what could be done in the constraints of the One Shot Derby, and that's why we settled on The Great Train Robbery. And I guess we just all talked about how Christ has influenced our life for a little while.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah, I specifically wanted to call this out because Violet on Discord said that when searching for One Shots, I just find similar games that are all revolving around classic fantasy DND.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: And when I said I wanted to do a Weird West, I found a great Tumblr that I think is very useful for finding tabletop RPGs of specific genres or types. That's called theresattrpgforthat.tumblr.com.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: And it allows you to be like, "Okay, I want to search like, all games that are Westerns." And then that made it a lot easier for me to like, come to you, Eric, with, like, two or three options being like, "Are any of these good please, papa? May we play a Weird West?"
Eric: No, I think that's totally fair. You just need to be prepared to dig into it a lot, because there was one—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —that was, like, super crunchy—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —and you needed to know a different— the Savage Worlds system in order to play it. And that's just like where tabletop RPGs are right now. It's not like video games where they can walk you through a tutorial. There are a lot of games that need to know, like, the based super crunchy system to get there. And also a lot of games are kind of amateurish. Especially on Itch, you, like, have to sift through good ones or bad ones to figure out what you're looking for, and eventually, we settled on this. So, yeah, feel free to buy stuff. I mean, even if it's not good, you're giving a creator, like, $5 or $10 so don't feel— don't be afraid to, like, try out a bunch of games and put a bunch in your pocket for later.
Julia: Yeah, dude.
Brandon: So where does the United States rationing because of the war effort come into your choice? Is that part of it or—
Eric: No. Remember when we did the original One Shot Derby, when I was thinking about it, Derby was—
Brandon: Uh-huh.
Eric: —like, had that Americana in my head, and then Amanda decided to be Scout McGarry from the first One Shot Derby.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Right. Yeah. So—
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): You may remember here in the 21st century that I am not old enough to drink, but I am old enough to illegally buy cocaine. So as a generation Z/alpha cusp baby, I can tell you that the government would never subsidize art.
Julia: I was gonna ask you, Sunchoke, whether or not you live stream you doing your lines of coke for safety reasons.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): No, that's putting evidence online for the cops.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, that seems like something you would stupidly do.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): I would never.
Julia: You have Narcan on you, right? We're good with that? That's all good?
Brandon: I don't think Narcan works for coke.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): I'm definitely trained in peer interventions for me and others.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I'm talking about, if it's fentanyl-laced, Brandon.
Brandon: Oh, fair, fair, fair.
Eric: Which is the most— which is the thing you— honestly, you need the most.
Brandon: Yeah, that's true.
Eric: Amanda, is Sunchoke inspired by that AI-generated band that only does the girly songs, that's all about girl bossing and doing lots of coke? Do you know what I'm— do you remember what I'm talking about?
Amanda: I do know what you're talking about. I— it's not AI-generated. It's someone making that song.
Eric: I know but the voice— the voices are— it's like an AI voice band.
Brandon: Like the Gorillaz kind of thing?
Eric: Yeah, similar to Gorillaz.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Our friend group was, like, so obsessed with it. it's so funny.
Amanda: I think that, like a root vegetable, like the sunchoke itself, Sunchoke McGarry has been like growing within me, like a tuber, like a rhizome, for years. And note, I said, tuber, not tumor. Those are very different things.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: And just like—— just the sort of, like, outcome of girlies and TikTok and the VIP girlies who review restaurants on TikTok and yell about, like, how mid the pasta is at Carbone. Also, like, just true crime podcasting and absolutely, the 10 Drunk Cigarettes, like—
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: —you know, girly pop up of it all.
Eric: The song I'm referring to is called 10 Drunk Cigarettes by Girly Girl Productions, and it's a seemingly quote from the article I'm reading on Mashable, quote, "AI-assisted Diddy about all the things a girl needs more than a man."
Julia: Oh, my God.
Eric: It's so funny.
Amanda: It literally says—
Eric: Just go listen to this.
Julia: Yeah. Yes, I've seen the clips of this.
Eric: Yeah, it's incredible.
Amanda: "Girls don't need men. Girls need 10 drunk cigarettes and several lines of coke."
Eric: "Four more lines of coke."
Amanda: Yeah. I don't think you should do drugs. I don't think you should start smoking, if you haven't started smoking, also vaping. That's also bad. It's not better. However, Sunchoke McGarry has a sort of nihilistic attitude that she is not going to see 40—
Eric: Right.
Amanda: —so she might as well enjoy her way down.
Eric: Yeah. Sunchoke has real "I'm going to take all of the upwards mobility that my grandparents made and just waste it."
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Just run it into the ground.
Amanda: I think after the war, the McGarrys got real deep into oil fields, and so they're oil rich, which is why they're from Texas.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Got it.
Julia: That makes sense.
Eric: Got it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: So did anyone else have questions?
Amanda: Yes, yes. We sure do.
Julia: You know, just about the Sunchoke lore at this point.
Amanda: Nope. Checks watch, 15 minutes in.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: We're just vaping and chilling.
Brandon: No vaping.
Amanda: No vaping.
Eric: No vaping.
Amanda: No vaping. Ellekenzie asked specifically, you know, as someone who's overwhelmed by TTRPG and wants to try new things and also support small creators, like Elle really wanted this advice. What I'm hearing is that, like, it is normal to feel overwhelmed. It is normal to try a bunch of stuff before you find one that you like, and it's normal to get recommendations from friends, from trusted sources and from places like rascal.news, which is a wonderful worker-owned actual play and TTRPG journalism outlet.
Julia: Yerr.
Eric: Yeah. Just put the genre you're looking for, or the type of thing you're looking for into Itch, itch.io, and just look around and see if there's something that fun that you run into. I think that there's also something worthwhile of trying to check out these podcasts where game designers go and talk about their game, because then it's like if they could talk intelligently about what they're trying to do as a artist and as a creator, you might think that this isn't just gonna be like spending $7 on a Word document, which always bums me out.
Brandon: Is there a good podcast you'd recommend that does that?
Eric: Yeah, buy everything I made at the Join the Party merch store.
Amanda: Look at shows Eric's been on and listen to those. And now also, another plug for your friendly local game store. You can always go in, ask the—
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: —employees, take a look at the zines and games that they have there, and at least just page through and see if you like it.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Amanda: All right, folks. More questions, Rikyjanne says, "Hey, loved the derby last cycle, and we'll definitely keep relistening to it all year through. Do you ever play the systems that aren't chosen by the audience in your free time? If yes, do you use the characters you've already made?"
Julia: Oh, interesting. I don't think I've played, in our free time, any of the games. I'd like to do Brindlewood Bay. Like, if we don't do that as the One Shot for the One Shot Derby, I am, like, actually very interested in buying the physical copy of it and, like, playing it at home or something.
Eric: It's really cool, for sure.
Brandon: And when you— fun fact, when you buy a physical copy, it does come with an old lady that you get to take home, so—
Julia: Oh, amazing. Aw.
Brandon: Yeah, she makes you cookies.
Amanda: Hope she doesn't feud with my grandma Joyce.
Julia: Or my grandma Joyce.
Eric: Or my fictional grandma Joyce.
Julia: I thought your grandma's name was Melon.
Eric: Oh, right. That's right. Well, Julia, you're too busy playing 12-hour board games to fit this into your life.
Julia: Not anymore, man. I can't do that anymore. I can't do it.
Eric: God, I— if you could make some time for me to play one Twilight Imperium, let me know.
Julia: I don't know, man. I think I'm done with it. I— Jake and I got into a huge argument the last time I played it and I swore off of it.
Eric: I agree with you.
Brandon: Whoa.
Eric: Jake needs to take a 12-hour endeavor more seriously. I'm on your side.
Julia: Yes. Yes, he does. Yeah.
Amanda: But no, definitely open to doing it. I think it'd be very fun to do this. I'm running a board game club for my synagogue, and I think I want to start putting in TTRPGs to that, too. I think One Shots be super fun. Everyone who's attended is in their 20s or 70s, so I think it would be an incredible combo.
Brandon: That's funny.
Julia: Brandon would be with a bunch of 20-year-olds, and also 70-year-olds actually would be perfect.
Amanda: Yeah. No, it would—
Brandon: It would rip, yeah.
Amanda: Another question in from Carlos, "What is your favorite character that you created, hosts, and what is your favorite game that you played?"
Brandon: Ooh.
Amanda: Lyle also asked this. They want to know what game we want to play, but Lyle's already voted, so we're not gonna sway any votes here.
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: Yeah. Are the votes still open?
Eric: Oh, the votes are very open.
Julia: The votes are still open.
Eric: They run—
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: Until at least Friday, we'll probably—
Brandon: Where do you go to vote, Eric?
Eric: You can go in the episode description or jointhepartypod.com/vote. Remember, it's ranked choice voting, which we can explain to you of how— at some point, because I don't know where to begin.
Julia: How that works.
Eric: I'm gonna have to do some research of why it's good.
Brandon: And where do you go to get a ticket to the Portland live show again, Eric?
Amanda: Oh, it's jointhepartypod.com/live.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: Yeah. I'm gonna touch Brandon.
Julia: bookshop.org.
Eric: Not— no, not bookshop.org.
Amanda: All right, folks. Favorite game, favorite character, we're gonna go rapid fire, just say it. Brandon.
Brandon: Don't start with me. I'm the least rapid fire man alive.
Amanda: Julia.
Julia: Brindlewood Bay, but also Bex Beckett from the True Crime Podcast.
Amanda: For me, favorite character, Sunchoke McGarry. Favorite game, probably Brindlewood Bay for the One Shot. Yeah.
Eric: I'm a 100% going to go only for myself. True Crime Podcast game was wonderful, and I really loved all the characters and NPCs that we created.
Amanda: No, choose one.
Eric: Oh, the guy— the snake guy.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: The snake guy who was not on the podcast, was incredible.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I'm gonna say— I think Fiasco, actually, is probably my favorite. I just like that game system. I think it's fun. I think— I like the way that it handles the conflict and plot and stuff. So I think I'd like to play that. Favorite character, I want to be my preacher boy.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: My preacher boy from The Great Soul Train Robbery.
Eric: Yeah. I like—
Amanda: That voice is so good.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I like my character from The Great Soul Train Robbery, too. And I also really like how Fiasco works. That's why I keep putting Fiasco in. It's just like— it's not— Fiasco is such a wonderful overarching system, and it's really about finding the play set that works best for you.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I still have some feelings about the Fiasco character I made for last One Shot Derby.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: Because the, like, disgraced zoology student who is smuggling penguins is still one of the funniest, like, things I've ever thought of, and I'm still like, "What would she be like if I was playing her now? What's up with her?"
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Totally.
Amanda: So good.
Brandon: I don't remember any of the any of the other games we played, obviously, except for that we did play and that Fiasco setting.
Eric: For sure. Well, here's a question I have for all four of us, how have you enjoyed being able to create characters so willy and nilly? I think there's something about Dungeons— again, the Dungeon and Dragons hegemony, which is slowly crumbling because they haven't really juiced it, and they're squeezing everything for its worth. It is very hard making a Dungeons and Dragons character. Like if you—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —zoom out of— you— the fact that you have to, to play Dungeons and Dragons, it is incredibly difficult. It's so hard, you need someone, usually, to hold your hand while you're doing it. And you need 5,000 subscriptions to D&D Beyond to do it online. How have you enjoyed, like, this lighter version of making so many characters in a short amount of time?
Julia: I think playing a bunch of different games and the character creations for those really highlights which games feature, like, substance over, like, form, I guess.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: In the sense that I think I know way more about the character I made for Brindlewood Bay than I do about the character that I made for Great Soul Train Robbery, right?
Eric: Sure.
Julia: You know, because some of them ask you to really think about your past and how that shaped you as a character in the present. And then some of them are just like, "What's your vibe? What's going on here? What's your trope?" You know? And I think—
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: —that's a really interesting thing. And I prefer games where I'm like, "Yeah, I know a lot of my backstory. I know the vibe. I know how I got here, and that's going to inform the way that I play this character moving on into the future."
Eric: I mean, I feel incredibly influenced by that doing— picking games for the One Shot Derby.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like if— you should have a session zero.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And if— it's built into the game even better, where everyone introduces their characters, and maybe you do a world-building game, where— Brindlewood Bay, you're supposed to do all that stuff together. And also, for a lot of PbtA games that have playbooks, that you have this sort of, like, ceremony of making your characters and sharing them together.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And then you do, like, a little bit of gameplay to get them in. And, like, I really love that. I think that's a very modern sensibility for where we are in 2025 with tabletop RPGs.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Brandon: Yeah. The next characters I make are going to be named Willy and Nilly.
Julia: That's really good.
Eric: They're twins.
Julia: Brandon's playing twins in Campaign Four?
Brandon: I wish. Yeah, I agree with all of that. I have a ton of fun playing these character creation games because they don't matter, right? They have no consequences. And I love— mostly, I love hearing what y'all come up with, like as a passive listener. But I do think I prefer— if I'm actually making a character that I'm gonna play, like I think I prefer taking some time to think about it like— and not have the game sort of shoehorn me into the random chance or through, like, a table that I choose for whatever it is, into a thing. Obviously, I like some prompts, but I think I like the way that PbtA games do it, where, like, yeah, you can sort of make a character— you make 95% of it, and then, yeah, what you were describing, like, the last 5% is how you integrate it within the web of the game. That's really nice.
Eric: I also want to echo that I hate rolling on tables to tell me what my character is. It drives me crazy. I'm like, "Let me choose." I also want to say that, like, I think that Brandon most thoughtfully, puts his characters together and puts his whole uh, Grugle-sy into what he's doing in that way.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Don't ever say that again.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): That's one word you can't say on TikTok.
Brandon: That's one of the eight swears that— I upped it. Seven swears you can't say on TV.
Eric: Like, you need— you don't need the prompting that I think some people do to, like, remember, to have a creative idea. And I think almost that—
Brandon: Sure.
Eric: —like, that proves the rule of why it's necessary, so I find that interesting.
Amanda: On the other hand, I absolutely love rolling on a table. I find it so structuring. I really like to have the, like, the wild character bits, sort of filling in the gaps of the scaffolding that the game provides me. Like I would really love— I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but like, a sort of Craftnite or something where you, like, keep passing around a craft, or, like, somebody starts a thing, and then you, like, pass it to your left, to your right.
Brandon: That's fun.
Amanda: I find that so much more fun than starting from a blank piece of paper, because I get sort of over sort of overwhelmed with the, you know, vast canvas of choice in front of me.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: And so especially something like The Great Soul Train Robbery, where, you know, I get to select a couple important motivators or background, you know, details, and then fill in the person that embodies all those things, somehow feels like far more freeing to just my particular sensibility than something like DND, where it's like, "Okay. You have, you know this— these skill sets, basically, figure the rest out." And I'm like, "I don't know where to start."
Julia: Yeah. I think— I also like rolling because I— for a completely different reason in that, I like the challenge of making things that don't necessarily make sense, make sense together. You know?
Brandon: I thought you said like a challenge of rolling dice.
Julia: Yeah, I— it's hard. You know?
Brandon: They're heavy. They're very heavy.
Julia: Yeah, they're heavy. I have one of those— have you seen the guy who has, like, a exercise ball D 20 that he uses?
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Julia: And he rolls it until he rolls a 20, and that's his, like, workout.
Brandon: That's great.
Amanda: Incredible.
Julia: Yeah. But, no, I like the kind of challenge of being like, "Okay, I didn't pick this for myself, but how does this make sense? How can I make this make sense and put these things together?"
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: And especially with something like the One Shot Derby, where you kind of get to flex those character creation muscles, that is a fun little challenge that I very much enjoy biannually.
Brandon: Yeah. And you're really good at that.
Julia: Oh, thank you.
Brandon: The connective tissue, putting those things together, so—
Julia: Thanks.
Brandon: That's why I like hearing you make characters, because I get to sit back and be like, "Oh, dang. That's good."
Julia: Thanks.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): Complimenting your co-hosts is really bad for engagement. You gotta stop.
Brandon: Oh. Julia, let's get into a fight, quick.
Julia: Fuck you, Brandon.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): That's much better.
Eric: I mean, I think that we've seen more than anything that these types of imagination games and prompts work incredibly well for Amanda.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Amanda has really come into our own— with coming up with these incredibly wild characters, especially in One Shots that we've run, starting with Dr. Bertha Bones, but also the other stuff that you've done in One Shots. It's very impressive.
Amanda: Oh, well, thank you.
Julia: Yeah, I think I said in one of the episodes, watching Amanda have a Dr. Bertha Bones moment in real time is truly a marvel.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): Well—
Brandon: I'm gonna start calling that Birthin’ the Bones.
Julia: Ooh, Birthin’ the Bones.
Eric: Hmm. Birthin’ the Bones.
Julia: Yes, Brandon.
Eric: That's true.
Amanda: I do have a whole section of questions about the McGarrys and their lore, but I am gonna save that for the end.
Julia: It should be the end, yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. First, though, I'm gonna pop on back into the kitchen and get us some more random roll on a table, and that's the seltzer you're gonna drink today. What flavor is it?
Brandon: Oh, delicious.
Amanda: Who knows?
Julia: Who knows?
Amanda: Be right back.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, everybody, it's Amanda. By the way, if you become a patron and you would like me to do a midroll in the voice of your favorite character that I've played in the One Shot Derby, I'll just do that for you. I didn't run this by the rest of the team, and I'm pretty sure the only person listening to this midroll is going to be Julia editing it. So Julia, if you agree with me, give me a little sound effect. All right. So if you want your next midroll to be read by Dr. Bertha Bones or Scout McGarry, and you're a new or existing patron, send us a message, okay? Thank you and welcome, by the way, to those who have just joined the Patreon. I am excited for you to enjoy the full One Shot of the winning derby game when it is out. Thank you to Kira, Bethany L., Shaughnessy, L. Kenzie, Connor J., Stephanie and Diana who upgraded their pledge. Remember, you can always have an annual membership. If submitting and kind of committing to something monthly, doesn't work for you, totally cool. You can join for a full year of Patreon support at a discount, by the way, at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. You get biweekly Party Planning. You get ad-free episodes. You get Discord access. You even have early access to new episodes, including the first episode of Campaign Four, y'all, a whole day before anyone else at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Folks, I am about to start packing for our Portland live show. This is your final reminder to come to the live show or tell your friends who are in Portland, Oregon or the Pacific Northwest, to go. Get your very affordable tickets for a double-header live show of Spirits and Join the Party at jointhepartypod.com/live. You don't need to know anything about our podcasts or DND or mythology to enjoy. If you like us and our vibe, come hang out with us, IRL, or tell your friends to do it. I am gonna have so much fun, jointhepartypod.com/live. Woo-woo-woo. Woo-woo-woo. Woo-woo-woo. Oh, what's that? There's a new Multitude member podcast. Hey! Remember when I say like there's so much happening at Multitude these days, there's always so much happening. And for the last couple of months, we've been working hard to get This Guy Sucks out into the universe. This is a history podcast for haters, by haters, where historian Dr. Claire Aubin and a new expert every week, pull back the scholarly curtain on some of the world's biggest bummers. No dead person is safe, and the show's guests prove that the best part of understanding the past is criticizing it. There are new episodes every Thursday wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, the MultiCrew have already listened to the first couple episodes of the show, but you are going to be able to listen to the first two episodes on Thursday, March 20th, when it comes out. From Charlemagne to Carl Schmitt, every episode gives listeners all the ammo they need to win dinner table arguments over why history's main characters are actually kind of the worst. So good, y'all. I— the show, it's everything. Look at the art, subscribe. You're gonna love Dr. Aubin and all of the guests that she finds. Listen to This Guy Sucks. We are sponsored this week by Audio Maverick, a new nine-part documentary podcast about one of the most visionary figures in radio, Himan Brown. You can explore the golden age of radio through the life of this famous New Yorker, whose programs brought millions of families around their radios each night. Now, that's not an experience I had growing up, but it is one that my grandma and to a lesser extent, my aunts and uncles did, and so being able to hear real excerpts of the golden age of audio shows and just understand what made this such a phenomenon is really cool. Audio Maverick features archival audio and contemporary interviews with media scholars and podcasters. You can learn about the birth of radio, the height of radio drama, and discussions with the new generation of podcasting Audio Mavericks that Brown inspired. So subscribe to Audio Maverick in your podcast app now. That's Audio Maverick in your podcast app today.
Anthony: Are you always looking for something to watch? Do you love bad movies? Well, boy, do I have a podcast for you? Cinephobe, where Zach Harper, Amin Elhassan, and myself, producer Anthony Mayes have watched over 250 movies rated 40% or lower on Rotten Tomatoes. And we've ascertained whether or not those movies are accurately poorly rated or maybe just didn't get a fair shake. From beloved classics like Rocky IV to movies you've never heard of, like Theodore Rex, Cinephobe has you covered. So subscribe today, that's Cinephobe, C-I-N-E-P-H-O-B-E.
Amanda: Podcasts we love that we would love for you to check out is Rude Tales of Magic. In this impoverished narrative role-playing podcast, you join artists, writers, and comedians from such distinguished places as Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Marvel Comics and more, as they fight and fumble their way across the madcap and exceedingly rude fantasy wonderland of Cordelia. Branson Reese and his jester's retinue of Christopher Hastings, Carly Monardo, Tim Platt, Joe Lepore, and Ali Fisher star as a group of unlikely survivors who must solve the mystery of Polaris University's vanishment and return balance and higher education to their world. It's going to be very difficult and very, very rude. Whether you are a longtime lover of the series or a movie to Cordelia, this tale is definitely one you won't want to miss. Subscribe to Rude Tales of Magic on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, that's my preferred podcatcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday. And now, let's get back to the derby.
[theme]
Amanda: And we're back. Julia, you rolled a four. Here it is.
Julia: What is it?
Amanda: What flavor do you— take a sip. What flavor do you think?
Julia: Passion fruit?
Amanda: It's finger lime.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: Right? Right? Pretty cool.
Julia: I always wanted one of those in real life.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Mine tastes like motor oil. Is that good?
Amanda: Brandon, you might be having a stroke. Let's go through the checklist. How is your left side feeling?
Brandon: Super empowered.
Eric: Nice.
Brandon: I think I have super strength on my left side.
Julia: Wild.
Eric: Mine tastes like I described what a pomegranate was to the seltzer, but the seltzer is— does not have ears or a brain, so kind of just, like, put together the best possible thing it could do.
Julia: Interesting.
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: That's the LA qua promise. All right, folks, we have some great questions here about each of our separate episodes in those worlds.
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: Starting with one that I know Julia is going to have an answer to. Riky wants to know, what's your favorite Hadestown song, Julia?
Julia: Oh, I really love the chants. And particularly, the final chant, not from the Broadway version, because they cut all the good shit out.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Say it again.
Eric: I wanted to talk about this—
Amanda: Say it again.
Eric: —specifically.
Julia: But rather—
Brandon: Sorry, let me go get— I'll go get some coffee while you guys--
Julia: You know, it's— I have a lot of feelings about the Broadway adaptation from the original New York Theater Workshop version. It really feels like they dumbed it down for Broadway audiences, because they're like, "People don't— you know, people know things." I'm like, "People can follow along. It's okay. You know?"
Amanda: Yeah. Julia, the wall is a sort of, like, direct metaphor for immigration, in case that—
Julia: Oh, interesting.
Brandon: It— a fun fact, it wasn't. I'm— yeah. I look— because I— when I saw it, I was like, "This is so fucking, like, blatant and boring to be like the wall." And I looked it up, and there's multiple interviews where they create— I forgot the name, but the creator was like—
Julia: Anaïs Mitchell.
Brandon: No, that was just— it just happened.
Eric: Yeah. Who's just, like, absolutely vibing--
Julia: Yeah, it happened like— she wrote this in 2000—
Brandon: Long, long time ago.
Julia: Yeah, six.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Or something like that. So—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: The thing I remember the most about Hadestown was— you know, Amanda had told me that she had seen it already and I'd listen to it. I'm like, "Oh, this is really interesting. I think it's gonna be a good musical." But it was hard for me to enjoy it because we were in the balcony and we were seeing it with Amanda's sibling, and—
Brandon: I thought you were like, "Because we were in the balcony and the seat sucks."
Eric: No, we were in the balcony and— let me— we were in the balcony and it was relatively small. The balcony was only like 20 people, so—
Brandon: Hmm. Were you in a box seat, Eric?
Amanda: No, we were in the rear, rear mezzanine, and there were, like— we were sitting in the front, there maybe like six or seven rows behind us, but like it was a tiered mezzanine.
Eric: It felt like a box.
Amanda: So it was very small.
Eric: The way that the actual seats— there was no free shrimp, Brandon. It was just the seats.
Brandon: It was just the sandwiches, yeah.
Eric: Like—
Amanda: And it was not in preview, so it was mad cheap.
Eric: And every single person around me was crying, screaming, how emotional they were into it the entire time. And I just— so I'm just like, "This is good, but it's getting— it's almost like they were making me a contrarian as I was watching.
Brandon: Just by contrast.
Amanda: Eric leaned over and was like, "Is it okay that I'm not sobbing?" I'm like, "Yeah, I think it is."
Julia: I will say, I saw it by myself after Amanda recommended it to me, and I sat like— the original production was kind of like theater in the round style, and I sat in, like, the front row center by myself, and I think several of the actors looked at me concerned for the last 20 minutes of that play, because—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: —I did sob through the last 20 minutes of it.
Amanda: Julia, having ushered it, that's very normal.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: But yeah, it was a volunteer usher thing I did a lot before the pandemic, and called Julia illegally at intermission on the phone I wasn't supposed to have on me, and said, "Buy a ticket right now." And then hung up.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It was really good.
Brandon: Julia, did you say what song you liked? I'm sorry. Did I miss it?
Julia: It's Chant II from the original New York Theater Workshop version.
Brandon: Got it.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, that banger.
Julia: Because that's one of my favorite, like— oh, God. It— like the whole thing is there's these beautiful moments that are then reflected between the two couples of the show in order to kind of put them in conflict with each other and also reflect each other. And the Chant II has a beautiful line from Persephone that gets cut in the Broadway version and it drives me crazy, because it really reflects— oh, God. Anyway, I could go on. I could write a whole fucking article about this.
Brandon: Would you say, Julia, that it's very akin to them cutting the song from the Muppet Christmas Carol that makes the entire thing makes sense at the end?
Eric: That's true. Brandon, you're a 100% correct.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That's true.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: They added it back in on Disney Plus.
Eric: Persephone is the best character in the Broadway one. Like they still can— because, like everyone else, is such an archetype. Like Orpheus is like himbo. Let's give the Tumblr kids what they want. Himbo. And then—
Brandon: Sorry, Orpheus is the main guitar guy?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: As himbo?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: What version did you see?
Julia: Well—
Brandon: —that man was the skinniest piece of shit that I could knock over in the playground I've ever seen.
Eric: You know, like himbo twink? You know the himbo twink continuum?
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Himbo twink.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Golden Retriever energy.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Like, again, we've been doing romantic-y tropes on the Patreon and with Party Planning, and I feel like I'm seeing the trope tags right there.
Brandon: I love himbo twink. That's really good.
Julia: That was another terrible change they made from the Broadway to Broadway version was Orpheus was supposed to be like a young Elvis type, like, extremely charming.
Eric: Oh, that's cool.
Julia: Extremely gifted.
Brandon: That's much better.
Amanda: Yeah, he's like a troubadour.
Julia: And then they literally change it where they said in interviews, they decided to make Orpheus touched by the gods.
Eric: Oh, my God.
Julia: And the way they decided to interpret that is, in my opinion, offensive.
Eric: Yeah, in the way that that's like a euphemism they used in the 18th century, for sure.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, I 100% do that.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It's like they gave all of the charisma. It's like, "No, no. Only two actors can have charisma. It's Hermes and Persephone."
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Which is fine, because both of those parts are great. And the actors, if I remember correctly, who did it— especially the actor who played Hermes, I think he got dominated. He was incredible.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, he's had, like, a whole third act to his career off of Hadestown. It's been incredible.
Julia: Yeah. Andre—
Eric: De Shields.
Julia: —De shields. Andre De Shields.
Eric: Yeah, I love what— love that dude. He was so good, but it's— it— I definitely see it being put together in that way. Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): That's great content where you tell TikTok that the thing they love is actually not that good, and that they are missing out on the best parts of what they had, because they were not in their 20s in the 2010s, so excellent job.
Brandon: Shit. I would do well on TikTok.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): I see you getting better as we go on, and that's really important.
Julia: The live original cast recording is available on Spotify. You can listen to it and hear the differences.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): Excellent plug. Spotify does electric shock me if I don't mention Spotify twice per episode, so thanks.
Brandon: Would it be good if I were— like a good TikTok, if I were like, "Hadestown? More like Boringtown. Check out Next to Normal instead, idiot."
Eric: Yes, but four years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible.
Julia: Oh, Jesus.
Amanda (as Sunchoke McGarry): No notes, and now I'm feeling a little bit threatened about my job and profession in this room. So, Brandon, take it down a notch.
Eric: Amanda, every time you say that, I feel like you're about to recommend to me a pho spot everyone already knows about me.
Julia: Damn.
Brandon: You recommend Joe's Pizza.
Eric: The best pizza in the entire city is exactly where you think it is.
Julia: Damn, called out.
Brandon: In the subway with a rat.
Amanda: It's already been eaten by a rat. Idiot. Move to Queens. Okay. So some questions about Brindlewood Bay in particular. Not a teen witchh says, "I think Amanda has to know that I used to work at Goodwill with a very old woman named Joyce Lemon, whose nickname was Juicy."
Brandon: That's really good.
Eric: Incredible.
Julia: Amanda, if we play Brindlewood Bay, your character's nickname has to be Juicy.
Amanda: Absolutely. But Julia, great segue into Riky's question, "If you had to choose, how would you want your murder Maven to die?" And as a reminder, this is because one of us would have to run the game if and when we play Brindlewood Bay.
Julia: I think, you know, like a fun, little human sacrifice style covered like in candles and whatnot, in the circle, that's how I'd go.
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, mine's easy. In the throes of ecstasy, we have a heart attack.
Amanda: Sure. I mean—
Julia: Fair, fair. Not a mystery that the people have to solve, though.
Brandon: I— Julia, because no one likes women. The symptoms of a woman having a heart attack are very hard to figure out.
Amanda: Unknowable, on Google.
Brandon: Unknowable.
Eric: Does it involve motor oil? Do you taste motor oil?
Brandon: It does.
Eric: I think I planned mine almost to be a hook for— assume— like I kind of assumed I would be running Brindlewood Bay, maybe not necessarily, but I planned that for myself, if I had to, was that there would be, at least be suspicion on the serial killer who they see in jail all of the time.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Some sort of— I— some sort of— that would be, like the main hook.
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: I think it'd be fun for Joyce to be, like, accidentally stumble across, like, a clue or a lead, or, like, for once, try to, like, pursue something on her own, because she's sort of, like, in an opportunity where it could help the other mavens. And then, you know, ends up getting knocked out by a killer, but that death ends up being helpful in some way to the broader mystery.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: That's what we can all hope for, is that our death is somehow helpful to a mystery that our loved ones are going to be solved.
Eric: I'm gonna write— I'm— as soon— while I'm dying, I'm gonna write a series of numbers down, and y'all are just gonna have to figure it out. It's probably the Dewey Decimal System. I hope you remember this.
Brandon: That would be so fucked up.
Julia: Ooh, fun.
Brandon: Eric, if you wrote down random numbers in like--
Eric: No, it wouldn't be random. I would set—
Brandon: No, no, but—
Eric: I would spend most of my 80s setting up a series of clues.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: That's just fun, but it would be— okay. You do that. I'll write down a series of random numbers just to fuck with us.
Julia: Oh, man.
Eric: Yeah, Brandon, you forgot that you were you when I was me. You felt it was the opposite again.
Julia: I think once you turn 80, you should start setting up an ARG for your loved ones to solve after your death.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Exactly. And then put in your last will and testament, sort of like a, you know, a kickoff event. Maybe it's on your tombstone, maybe it's at your funeral, maybe it's— you know, whatever, where there is, like, either, you know, QR code, a clue, a, you know, single red rose that is not accounted for. You got to kick off the mystery somehow.
Brandon: And at the end, you find my body.
Julia: I think that's the only way, too, that anyone can get any of the inheritance that I'm giving them.
Eric: Oh, for sure.
Julia: You know?
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanada: Julia, we're millennials. What are you talking about?
Julia: Yeah, that's fair.
Brandon: I hope that YouTube, like the YouTube Creator economy just sort of ages with us, and by the time we're 80, they're like, "I made an ARG for my grandkids."
Julia: "It's my last will and testament."
Eric: Just making the Pog face as an 80-year-old.
Brandon: "Oh." Your jaw falls off.
Amanda: Not wrong. Glass Cat Owl says, "Brandon's Brindlewood character would definitely have a selection of the works of a person I went to art school with, IRL."
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: "She makes blown glass penises and vagina bowls, which take a surprising amount of effort and skill—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: —to make blown glass look skin-like, by the way.
Eric: Oh, wow.
Julia: Oh, yeah.
Amanda: "Her works are technically incredibly impressive. I was in first year when she was graduating, and I remember helping her wrap up her pieces toward the end of the year. The one time we did meet, she was crying because her favorite vagina had broken."
Julia: No.
Brandon: I hate it when my favorite vagina breaks.
Amanda: Me, too.
Eric: I want to go back to Campaign Two where everyone now— where everyone started sending me mugs that had boobs on it.
Julia: Uh-huh.
Eric: I'm like— I didn't know that already existed. Like, I'm so glad you found these and sent them to me, but I made it up because I knew they existed. So I'm glad that this—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —that Cat Owl has a master artist reinforcing the male and female primary and secondary genitalia craftsmanship that I've been looking for.
Brandon: Eric, huge fan of boobies. He knows everything about them. All the different types.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: It's more like— we live in Brooklyn and his wife's bisexual, and so, like, the— just every fact about our life together adds up to we see boob pottery at least once a week.
Eric: That's true.
Amanda: Like, at least once a week.
Eric: Confirmed, confirmed.
Amanda: A friend's house, the cafe, like, just on the street for someone to pick up. Like, really, honestly, anywhere.
Julia: They're just everywhere.
Eric: Free, needs a good home.
Amanda: Right.
Eric: It's a mug— it's an oversized mug where one boob is definitely smaller than the other.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I mean, that's just because it's hard to shape them on a wheel, you know?
Amanda: That’s the representation we need.
Eric: Yeah, by God.
Julia: I was going to say, it was probably a self-pottery, which is like a self-portrait pottery.
Amanda: Yeah. Do you think she has time to make sure each boob is exactly the same number of grams? No.
Brandon: Is God the potter? God's the potter?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Brandon, that's pretty good.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Amanda and I just recorded a Spirits episode where that is the case, where one of the gods is the potter that created humanity.
Brandon: Julia, there's only one god? Thank you very much. Jesus Christ.
Julia: And his name is Khnum.
Amanda: It's so fun to say.
Eric: And her name is Jesus Christ.
Brandon: And here in Seattle, there's the Chihuly Museum, because this is where he's from. And great museum, you should go. But there's one room where— I forget the actual— it must be like shells or something like—
Amanda: Uh-oh.
Brandon: —the inspiration. But they're all, like, very technically difficult things that look beautiful, but they're all, like, bowls with waves, basically.
Eric: Sure.
Brandon: And that's just the vagina room that every time I walk into it, so—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, I once went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art just to, you know, look around, and they had a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit. And it was— it wasn't just about her, but, like, several O'Keeffe works were in a broader exhibit about, I think, like Coney Island, or it was some kind of, like, curated thing. And I, like, looked around the room. It was a large room, like one corner was the O'Keeffe paintings. And every person standing to my left and my right, visibly a lesbian, and I was like, "Oh, man. I love us, and I love Brooklyn, and what a time to be alive." All right, folks, another good segue into some questions around the True Crime Podcast Game, which Eric, weirdly, I thought that that text was going to be available for free to all paid patrons at patreon.com/jointhepartypod, is that true?
Eric: That is true. We sent it out last week.
Amanda: Hey.
Julia: Woo.
Amanda: Incredible.
Eric: So if you want it--
Brandon: Are you sure the URL is not jointhepartypod.com/live?
Eric: No, no, that's for a different thing, Brandon.
Brandon: That's the other one, that's the other one.
Amanda: That's the other one, but if you come to our live show in Portland on March 23rd, I can just, like, DM you the link. I'd be fine to do that.
Brandon: Oh, yeah, Eric could sign your phone.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, print out 12 pieces of paper and then I'll sign it.
Amanda: People have done crazier things, Eric.
Eric: Yeah, I don't think it's— there's anything crazier than them having a printer.
Amanda: Exactly, exactly.
Eric: I'm looking out for our audience. I understand our audience. Our audience will make us beautiful arts, usually fiber art, depicting our podcast. They cannot print out 12 pieces of paper.
Amanda: It's not possible.
Julia: I know, I get it.
Amanda: BentoCatto's question is, "The whole female podcaster bit in the True Crime Podcast Game reminded me of this visceral awkwardness I felt when my friend got me to listen to the podcast." Now, should I say this out loud?
Julia: I'll bleep it.
Brandon: I don't even know—
Eric: I've never heard of the show.
Brandon: —what it stands for.
Amanda: "My friend got me to listen to the podcast [bleep] and the male hosts talked about wikifeet for, like, 10 minutes, while the woman host Lucy added some sparse, concerned comments every so often."
Julia: Not really a question, however, does make me laugh.
Eric: I— you're absolutely right. Thank you for sharing, though. I really wanted to know that.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: It reminded me of— I think I said this on the Join the Party feed at one point, that every female podcaster, has had the worst trauma possible to them.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And they have come out the other side a renewed, beautiful, smarter, more resilient person, ready to say what they have to say on the microphone. And every male podcaster is just like, "I got some bits. Do you want to hear them?"
Julia: I just want to say I'm looking out the website for this podcast, and one of the segments on their show is called The Hole Report, H-O-L-E.
Brandon: Guys, they're Australian, so it's all good. It's all good.
Eric: Oh, yeah, no, it's probably fine.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: No, it's fine.
Brandon: Yeah, no, it's probably really funny, because it's Australia.
Julia: I don't know.
Eric: They've seen 80% of the world, so they have a real broad sense of everything, so I think it's okay.
Amanda: I mean, they start every day in tomorrow, so maybe that's fine tomorrow, and we just don't know about it.
Julia: I just— hold on, I just want to say, so I'm reading their bios now, too.
Amanda: Great.
Julia: And the one woman on the show, it says," Lucy suffers from IBS." I'm like, "Why? That's the first line?"
Eric: Yep.
Brandon: This is what I'm saying. Australians are very funny people.
Eric: They were talking about wikifeet, but then Lucy was like, "Oh, no."
Julia: "Oh, no."
Brandon: They just sound like that, guys. They just sound like that naturally.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Eric: I want to shout out the folks over at Escape This Podcast that Julia and I have been on a few times, and—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —that is, like, a younger person, Australian thing. So it's like— it's very funny that we're talk— always talking about a 25-year-old saying, "Oh, no." Because, like, they don't sound like that and it's— they told us that. It was very funny.
Julia: That's fair. That's fair.
Amanda: Incredible.
Eric: Amanda can do it better than me.
Amanda: Well, I mean, I watched several 100 hours of Bowie Jane during last summer's Big Brother, so—
Eric: Please.
Amanda: "Oh, no."
Eric: "Oh, no."
Amanda: Shanna Mandell wants to know, "Eric, do you enjoy creating new games? What other games are bouncing around in there, like Tigger on a sugar high?" Which I thought was such a charming depiction of Eric's brain.
Julia: What's bouncing around in that brain, huh?
Eric: Well, I was— I really wanted to do True Crime Podcast Game. That was the thing I wanted to do after Model Our Nations. I'm very lucky that I have a creative group that I can subject them to, are my first drafts.
Julia: True.
Eric: Which is something— I mean, I've been thinking about this since I saw some of these Afterparty questions, and I'm remembering, you know, my time writing poetry and having some of those groups in college from— when I was doing on the poetry slam team, three-time National College champions poetry slam team.
Amanda: Bap, bap, bap.
Eric: And having, like, you know, the mandatory writing workshops that I had for my creative writing minor. And then, like, after I graduated, I didn't have people to, like, send poems to, so I'm like, "I don't know if this is good. I just wrote it. And then I don't want to edit it, because I don't know who to send it to or show it to, how to make it better." So the fact that I have people to show my first drafts to or work them out and on the microphone or on Patreon is— has been really nice, which is why I really wanted to do the Party Planning where I showed you my first ideas of True Crime Podcast Game. I also got really lucky that I got to play test it with a bunch of folks who are affiliated with Multitude, which I think is in the later question, which I'll talk about. But other games, I want to talk about, I had an idea for running a tabletop RPG that I wrote up to like, try to get, like, a Jewish Artist Fellowship to, like, use the structure of the Golems legend to tell any story within that actual structure of, like, oppressed people has problem. The way they solve problem is by using divine material to make Guardian, and then Guardian goes too far. And just playing out those kind of three acts in whatever world you want to use. Very inspired by Dream Askew, Dream Apart, which Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum wrote, which does that kind of like— I call it like shtetl fantasy, where— which is in like, Everything is Illuminated, if you remember that book by Jonathan Safran Foer, where the— using, like, the structure of folk— Jewish folktales from the Jewish shtetl in that sort of fantasy realm, to tell this particular— and then using, like, whatever world building you do and then playing out those particular acts. I didn't— I don't know if I actually want to finish them, because I really wanted to do it, and have money to do it, and, like, really pay people to, like, make this kind of, like, formalist, artistic undertaking, but I ended up writing True Crime Podcast Game instead.
Julia: Fair.
Brandon: So if anyone out there wants to underwrite the Golem game, let us know.
Julia: Send Eric money.
Brandon: Eric, I do want to step in here and say, as your work wife, I can answer the inspiration, like what— like the bouncing around like Tigger on a sugar high.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Eric doesn't ever sit down to like, "Okay, I'm gonna go write an RPG now." It's like a blast from an alien spaceship.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Gets shot into Eric's brain and he says, "I got to write this down."
Eric: Yeah. I have to do it, I have to do it.
Julia: Fugue state.
Eric: And make it as quickly as possible. There's usually a reason. I am really the kind of person who gets triggered to do it by something that's going on. And I am very lucky that Join the Party has given me opportunities to be like, "I need a game to tell this story." And that's where Model Our Nations came from, and so many other games that were in the world-building games like, "Oh, like, bro, let me tell you about that story," or whatever that was called. That was like, you know, trying to write a tabletop RPG to achieve something that Dungeons and Dragons can't touch.
Brandon: We have a mantra here at Multitude that it's good for the business when Eric is bored.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: He hates that, but it's true.
Amanda: It is.
Eric: No, you're right.
Julia: It's either he's the Joker in creating absolutely wild shit, or he's bored and creating absolutely wild shit.
Eric: Yeah, I'm the Joker because I'm making, like, 10 things in two weeks, or I get blasted like an alien spaceship beaming— shooting a beam down on Earth, and I'm just like— all my atoms get rearranged.
Amanda: Yeah. While, like, recording a different podcast, or going on a walk, or cooking dinner, and then you're like, "Ahh."
Julia: Like Danny Phantom.
Amanda: So true. Very similar, Eric and Danny.
Eric: Yo, Eric Silver, he was just 14 when his parents built a really strange machine, designed to see a world tabletop RPG.
Amanda: Yep.
Eric: "We gotta catch ‘em all because Eric has to write stuff"
Amanda: It's pretty good. Pretty good.
Brandon: Phanny Dantom.
Eric: Nice.
Brandon: Phanny Danton is what it is.
Julia: Phanny Dantom?
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: That sounds like an Amanda McLoughlin One Shot Derby character.
Julia: It does. It does.
Eric: Phanny Dantom? Phanny Dantom is when we play the Victorian version of Brindlewood Bay.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That Jason Cordova was telling me about.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Amanda's playing Phanny Dantom, who is a disgraced lady, who now is a PI.
Amanda: A widow of means, exactly.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Guys, did you see the column of light that was beamed down from this— from the alien spaceship, into Eric's brain just then? Did you see it?
Eric: It's just a joke. I just know things. That's why I'm good at podcasting.
Brandon: No, no. I saw the beam, Eric.
Eric: All right. We're not fighting. That's already written. Jason Cordova is taking care of a lot of this stuff for me. And I'm too busy working on Campaign Four. I honestly have my hands full.
Amanda: So let's zoom in on this particular beam of inspiration for a second. Katie Hulme asked on Bluesky, where, by the way, Eric keeps posting with the energy of Twitter about seven years ago, but today on Bluesky. So follow us @jointhepartypod.com on Bluesky. Katie asks, "Love the True Crime Podcast Game. Where'd the inspiration to create it come from? And what is the likelihood of actually getting pocket guides of all the awesome TTRPGs Eric wrote?"
Brandon: Ooh.
Amanda: Oh.
eric: I definitely want to do that. The. folks over at Certified Crucial are ready to make merch in 2025, so I'm ready.
Julia: They are.
Eric: I gotta put together True Crime Podcast Game with Bren and make it formal, so y'all can buy that soon. But then once we have it and it's all laid out, we can put that all together in one kind of super bound thing, which would be wonderful. So yeah, the inspiration just came from— I had realized— it is hard for me to gauge if the things I care about have actually breached containment, like social containment. And because I was playing— I was watching a bunch of Twitch streams and I saw a bunch of video games were making references to podcasts, both like true crime podcasts and, like, entrepreneurial podcasts. I'm like, "Oh, okay, that's good to know." And I really wanted to— especially with, like, the post-modern inspirations that I had been learning from, especially reading Brindlewood Bay, I was like, "Oh, I want to make a game that is inspired by— or uses a genre format as a basis." And I— that's why I wrote True Crime Podcast Game. And I was really able to shape it. I wanted everyone to die. I wanted everyone who worked on a True Crime Podcast to die. And I slowly started putting that together, and I got to play test it with Roux and with Mischa, and Bren, and their home game worked it out. So it was really nice being able to show that to them. And then it slowly came together of this kind of mechanic. But I also like— because it was inspired by the One Shot Derby, it was very, like, character creation first, and then I had to figure out what the game loop actually was to make it fun.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Great segue into Paw.print.payton's question, which is, "I saw the PeeP."
Brandon: Hey.
Amanda: Brandon, you'll be glad to know that Payton used the Brandon-patented phrase PeeP.
Julia: Peep, peep.
Amanda: Aka Party Planning episode, an exclusive podcast just for patrons at patreon.com/jointhepartypod, where Eric showed the scraps for the True Crime Podcast Game. "Could he talk about making it into a full TTRPG?" From my perspective, Eric is one of the people who saw, like, the various phases of the game. The thing that changed the most was the actual game loop. Like, once you've made the characters, what happens next?
Eric: Yeah. I was really inspired by triangle agency, which is another really good tabletop RPG. It's very crunchy, which is why we didn't do it for the One Shot Derby, but does have an interesting character creation. Very control-inspired, if you all are interested.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: But where other people control NPCs that are important in your character's life, that I really liked, so I was trying to fold all that together. I wanted everyone to have a different death hunting them, but it turned out that having all the same death hunting everyone on the show made it easier and better to work with and have— and, you know, share that pool of NPCs, and it was kind of, like, endlessly replayable. Just like Betrayal at House on the Hill. And that's the thing that changed the most when I played with Roux and with Mischa. I also kind of wanted to make the game shorter, but then Bren played it with their game group, and they're like, "No, this is great. This is three hours."
Julia: Perfect length.
Eric: "This is three hours, four hours, how long a tabletop RPG goes." And I'm like, "Okay. You're right." The— I spent too much time recording a podcast to remember that this is like an afternoon activity for someone in their game group, so—
Julia: Not just a quick hour and a half like we do here on the pod.
Eric: Yeah. I'm like, "Oh, I really want this to be an hour long." And Bren was like, "No. No, you don't." I'm like, "Okay, there you go." So yeah, that's— those are the main differences going from what I had before to what I was putting together. But I'm also glad that I was able to spend a lot of time making examples for other folks and, like, giving people a lot— I don't remember who said it that was like, if you're having a fantasy game, you should have a table that's, like, 200 slots, that if someone rolls number 195, there is a sword in the stone, and then you have to roll a 12 on a D 12 to pull the sword out of the stone, and you should know what happens if someone rolls that. Not necessarily because you want it to happen or you need to know everything that happens, but that someone seeing it on the table will be excited and inspired to play your game.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Interesting.
Eric: And I think about, like, hiding Easter eggs like that into games at large, which is how I felt about building out so much of the different scenarios for the different deaths you could do.
Brandon: I love that.
Amanda: Incredible.
Julia: Hell yeah. It was also just— in terms of being your collaborators on things, it was genuinely very fun for you to be like, "Here's my ideas." And then being able to be like, "Oh, I think this would be fun." Or like, "Oh, I think, like, this would make sense here," or something like that.
Amanda: I mean, it's like your favorite director or TV show producer, it's like, "I'm gonna make something new. What would interest you?" And it's like, "I have a lot to say, Charlie Parsons." But instead of Survivor, it's Eric making TTRPGs that amuse us, specifically. It's great.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Wow.
Brandon: Is there a Survivor TTRPG? There must be.
Amanda: They just released a trading card game, TCG.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: Yes. Jeff Probst and the guy who— the Exploding Kittens guy are, like, real— are, like, best friends.
Brandon: That's awesome. I love that.
Amanda: Huh? Isn't that weird?
Julia: It is weird.
Amanda: What a combo.
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: Jeff Probst trusts two men to run his gamesmanship and actually gives him constructive feedback on Survivor. It is the Exploding Kittens guy, and it is Mike Weiss.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Of the White Lotus.
Eric: Of the White Lotus.
Julia: Yep.
Amanda: Incredible. All right, folks. We have two important segments to get to before the end of this Afterparty. The first is perhaps the most engaging part of this whole month-long process of the One Shot Derby, which is the phrase, "You get what you get and you don't get upset."
Julia: Jeez.
Amanda: Now, we've learned a lot about this phrase. Brandon, could you please begin by helping to voice as the non-New Yorker in this podcast? It can only be one. What the rest of the country says, specifically Wisconsin, as voiced by n/a Nicole.
Brandon: So, well, first of all, I resent the statement that I'm not a New Yorker. I lived there for a long time.
Amanda: Sorry, the non-East Coast elite?
Brandon: Yes. Yeah, that's better.
Julia: Yeah, that's better.
Brandon: Yeah. So in the Texas accent, it would be, "You get what you get, but you don't get upset." And that doesn't rhyme.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Because it's— the vowel sounds for the E's, there's two different ones, technically, but I didn't know that until I moved out of Texas. So—
Julia: Say both of those words again in not the full phrase.
Brandon: Which two words?
Julia: Get and upset.
Brandon: Get, upset. You get upset. G-I-T is get— you get upset versus get, get upset.
Amanda: So then, how— what if you said the variant, would that—
Julia: Oh, wait, Brandon's being Sunchoke McGarry here.
Amanda: No, no, no.
Brandon: Get upset.
Eric: Yeah. You get what you got, and you have to go to Carbone to get their incredible pasta. It's worth the five-hour wait.
Brandon: So the two things that— or the two words that helped me figure this out were pen and penguin.
Eric: Oh, sure.
Brandon: So pen and pin are the same word for me, like the writing utensil and the poking utensil.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Pin and pen, as I would say it.
Brandon: Pin and pen are— it's kind of difficult for me to say, honestly.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: And then pinguin or penguin, which— it's wrong to say pinguin, but, like, that was the one that helped figure it out for me, in my brain.
Julia: Hmm. Interesting.
Amanda: So how about the variant that Nicole identifies as being common in Wisconsin and other parts of the country?
Brandon: Yeah. Apparently, Nicole said, "Get what we get— you get what you get and you don't throw a fit," which I don't think I've ever heard.
Eric: I have not heard that one.
Brandon: But maybe I have and I just forget about it. Forgot about it, but—
Amanda: Forget also rhymes with fit and get.
Brandon: Forget. Yeah.
Eric: I thought this was really funny. I went on some linguistic research for this, and I read an article that was like, "The or— the surprising origins of you get what you get, and you don't get upset." And it's just tied to, like, that part in the early 20th century, where we started to recognize that children were different than small adults.
Julia: Hmm. Interesting. Interesting theory.
Eric: The way that they wrote it was, "The origins of this mantra can be traced back to the early days of childhood education and developmental psychology. It is believed that the mantra gained prominence in the mid-20th century, a time when the field of child psychology and education underwent significant evolutions. As researchers and practitioners delve deeper into understanding the cognitive and emotional development of children, they recognize the importance of instilling resilience and emotional regulation from a young age." So this is just— child psychologists were like, "We got to tell these kids to fucking buck up because they're not small adults. We should get them to rhyme wherever we live."
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Great.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Ideal.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yep.
Eric: I also want to give a special shout out to Minnesota, because they play a specific childhood game. If I were to say the two words, duck, duck, what would you say?
Amanda: Goose.
Brandon: Go.
Julia: Yes, and I know exactly what you're gonna say.
Eric: You say go—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —in duck, duck goose. In Minnesota, they go, duck, duck, gray duck.
Amanda: No.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: No.
Eric: Yes.
Julia: Yep.
Amanda: You're lying to me. No. There's no way that's true.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Yep.
Eric: The reason why is that in Minnesota, the— they have a lot of Swedish or I think Nether— Netherlands immigrants, and that is the translation. It is duck, duck, gray duck. So they literally use the translation instead of being like, "Hey, let's make it into a different— let's make it sound better." But they still just call it duck, duck, gray duck out there. Shout out, Minnesota, you're great.
Brandon: Okay. So I just texted my family. So this is the interesting thing, is that we're— my family, like my generation, obviously, are from Texas. My parents are from the Midwest, so we're sort of a Midwest weird middle ground thing.
Julia: Interesting.
Brandon: And I said complete the sentence, you get what you get and you don't blank, and my sister, so far, has said throw a fit.
Eric: Oh.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: What? The generational differences that are happening here. Wild.
Brandon: Let's see what my mom and my brother say, but—
Amanda: Wow. I love a Join the Party episode where we get the Grugle group chat, the Grouple chat involved.
Eric: I'm ready for one of your siblings to be like, "You get what you get and shut up, Brandon! Shut up!"
Brandon: Well, I didn't say it, but the first thing Jessie said was, "You get what you get and you don't eat your booger," is what she said, so—
Julia: Hell yeah. Hell yeah.
Amanda: Brandon, you can't censor Jessie. I'm sorry to say, she might be vying for Seth as second funniest Grugle.
Eric: And the most funniest—
Julia: Your mom's first.
Eric: —our first patron, Tom Grugle.
Amanda: No, Tom is the best Grugle. That's a very different one. Brandon's mom, respectfully, the most clownish of the Grugles, just in profession, not in, like, personality. Brandon remains the funniest.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Thank you. I'm professionally funny.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Seth is getting old, so, you know he's— he says dumb shit now. I don't get it.
Amanda: He did briefly run the Denny's Tumblr, so that's—
Brandon: He didn't— he did not run Denny's—
Julia: I was gonna say, is that true?
Brandon: He had Denny's as a client. He does not use social media.
Julia: Damn, Amanda.
Amanda: He was associated with the Denny's social media campaign. All right, folks, this brings us—
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: —to our final section of this Afterparty, which is McGarrys and One Shot Derby deep lore.
Eric: I get—
Brandon: Wee!
Julia: Let's go.
Eric: Amanda has— still has some Catholic stuff in her, because I could see her whipping herself like the guy from the Dan Brown novel Silas. Like making her do 65 minutes of other bits before she could talk about Sunchoke McGarry.
Amanda: I know what the people want, Eric, and I'm making them come to the end of this podcast. Our completion rate is, like, 98% on Multitude podcasts as a whole.
Julia: That's really good, yeah.
Amanda: I'm not letting that go, baby.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: I want you to know that that's—
Julia: Damn.
Eric: —actually very high, for those—
Amanda: It's very high for a podcast.
Brandon: I feel like it's a 100%, because the last 2% is probably just the theme song and credits so—
Eric: Yeah. For sure. Oh, a 100%.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Join the Party listeners are great. You're all great. I love you all deeply. I'll tell that to your face.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Come see me in face and I'll tell you I love you.
Amanda: At jointhepartypod.com/live where you can see us, IRL, in Portland, Oregon.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Leo.the.lizard.kwing on Bluesky asks, "Does Sunchoke McGarry own horses? If so, do they follow the naming conventions of Buttons and Gloves?" Before anyone answers, there is a correct answer. There is a correct answer.
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda: In my brain, I haven't said it yet. I want to know what each of thinks.
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: I'm going off my world-building I've already used, which is that at some point, maybe when she was 11, Sunchoke had a horse that was named in the naming conventions of Buttons and Gloves, but they get to sell all of it because Sunchoke McGarry's dad is terrible with money and ran the business into the ground.
Amanda: And what was the horse's name?
Brandon: I was gonna say a horse named Glue is what I'm thinking about.
Julia: Jeez. I'm gonna say that Sunchoke McGarry is actually a national equestrian champion.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: Much like the boss's daughter, who is an Olympic silver medalist.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Julia: And the horse's name Boots.
Eric: Boots is good.
Brandon: Boots.
Eric: Boots is really good. I think the— I'm with Julia that the horse's name was Boots, but then they had to sell Boots and Gloves and Buttons.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Question for you guys, when I say thoroughbred, what does that mean? What does that refer to?
Eric: Like—
Julia: It's a very— like It's a horse that's been bred to be good at being a horse?
Amanda: Racing, specifically.
Brandon: Okay. Eric?
Eric: Yeah, for horse racing, and for, you know, the— I was going to say the horse husbandry. I know it's really— there is a lot of money in getting horses that will win the Triple Crown horse races and stuff.
Brandon: Thoroughbred is a breed, motherfuckers.
Eric: Oh, really?
Amanda: Really?
Brandon: It's both. We use it for both now.
Eric: Oh.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: Fair, fair.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: But I did want to say that I thought that Buttons did— it was involved in some way with siring American Pharaoh.
Julia: Oh, yeah.
Amanda: Sure, sure. Brandon, what do you think the horse was named?
Brandon: Glue.
Amanda: Unfortunately, guys, you're all wrong. The horse's name was Zipper, just because that's a funny name for a horse.
Eric: Oh.
Julia: Oh, that's really good, actually.
Amanda: Also, just want to shout out a friend of the show and a person who helped make our metadata correct, Ivan Pliss who did come through and tell me how to say glue horses in Russian.
Ivan: [speaks Russian]
Amanda: So the more you know.
Julia: There you go.
Eric: I thought coming up with the names for the Minor League hockey teams was so fun. I forgot about that from the Murderous. That was really good. I know I was indulging myself with that, but I enjoyed that.
Amanda: Normally, I don't make a habit of naming jokes we missed on the podcast, because that can be a slippery slope. And, like, it's fun for you guys, when we get, like, 30 of them, it's like, "Ahh." And then I don't want to make you feel bad for, like, you know, reaching out to us, et cetera. Again, you're the best audience in the world. I just do, because it's about me, want to say that the Sky was no help said. Amanda said she wanted a traditional email and nickname, and Manny is right there. And Sky, that gave me a frizz on of gender pleasure that I have not felt in a long time, since I bought knock-off Doc Martens, actually.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: So thank you, Manny, I will take it.
Eric: They're not knock-off Doc Martens. They are like in a Puma-Adidas situation. The company that split off from Doc Martens that are not Doc Martens.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: They're excellent.
Julia: You told me about this, Amanda.
Amanda: Solovair, yes, they're very good.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Manny just makes me think of Manaphy from the Pokemon Manaphy.
Eric: Brandon, we've been playing too much Trading Card games.
Amanda: You have. Also the One Shot Derby has impact in the real world, folks. I just want to shout out this message from Ce who wrote, "I dreamt that I went hiking with the Join the Party crew. When we came down from the hike—"
Brandon: Oh, I'm sorry.
Amanda: "—we met Julia Louis Dreyfus and had some red berry smoothies from her renaissance fair stand??"
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Incredible. "We all called her Tia because she was Eric's aunt, and also all of you spoke—"
Brandon: Yep.
Amanda: "—Spanish as your first language."
Brandon: I wish.
Amanda: "Brandon said he didn't like mini marshmallows and—"
Brandon: How dare—
Amanda: "—our Julia said that he was crazy for saying that."
Eric: True, true, true.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Accurate.
Julia: Actually, honestly, it would be reversed. I'm not a huge mini marshmallow fan.
Brandon: You're crazy, Julia.
Julia: I know.
Amanda: "This whole time, Amanda was just enjoying her smoothie, paying no mind." Incredible.
Julia: Most accurate part of that dream, for sure.
Amanda: Incredible. And—
Brandon: Honestly, not unlike it would— what it would be like if they went hiking with us.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Which, you know, if you come to our Portland, Oregon live show on March 23rd at jointhepartypod.com/live, it's possible we'll have gone hiking earlier that day.
Brandon: Who knows?
Amanda: Who knows?
Julia: Who knows?
Eric: Brandon and I are going to be trading cards on the Pokemon Trading Card Game app the whole time.
Brandon: We could trade on a map.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: While we eat a great deal of Russian food. We are—
Eric: Oh, I'm so excited.
Amanda: We have plans to eat for lunch, people.
Eric: I'm going to eat so much herring before the live show.
Amanda: It's gonna be sick as hell.
Julia: Gross.
Amanda: Okay. Acosmodot wants to know, "How can we convince you all to play a One Shot Derby, oh, every six to eight months or so? The creations from both derbies are just so unbelievably good." And Dominique_wki, in a related question, wants to know, "Is it possible if maybe the votes are too close to do two of these One Shots?" It's too close to call.
Brandon: Oh. I mean, maybe if we get a certain amount of patrons, like new patrons sign up.
Julia: I was going to say, what if we made a new patron goal?
Amanda: So here's the thing, folks, if we add 50 new paid patrons, I think we can play a second One Shot Derby from this round, okay?
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: And if we add a 100 new paid patrons from the number we have today, Eric, I think let's run another One Shot Derby on the Patreon, patrons only.
Eric: Sounds great. I love it.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: Do we like it?
Eric: Yeah. So that's why—
Brandon: I like it.
Julia: I'm into it.
Eric: —it's important to vote. Your ranked choice voting is very important. There's— all this math that goes into what your first place vote and your second place vote and your third place vote are for, so it's really important to try to order them as best as possible. I know they're super close, but one and two are both incredibly valuable.
Amanda: Exactly. Ranked choice voting means that it's not your first choice that counts, it's your first choice and your second choice and your third choice.
Eric: Like, there's a parliament—
Julia: Just like the New York City mayor.
Eric: Like a parliament of games. And also, if we don't run them, then, like, I'll just put them back— you know, I like them. I'll just put them back in the pod.
Julia: Back in the box, shake it up.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: See what will fall out.
Eric: Like, if Fiasco doesn't go again, we're just gonna do another Fiasco set. I'll just keep doing Fiasco.
Brandon: We're gonna— well, at some point, we're gonna have to do Oops, All Fiasco.
Amanda: Ooh, different playbooks, yeah.
Eric: Hmm. That's not a bad idea.
Amanda: All right, folks, it has been an incredible five weeks here at the One Shot Derby. I feel, you know, I feel loose, frankly. I feel ready. I'm warmed up. I'm ready to see what happens in Campaign Four. Do we now want to share one emoji that will give folks a hint or clue as to what is happening next week when Campaign Four begins?
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: I think we should each choose one that represents our character, and then Eric should choose one that represents the campaign.
Julia: Ooh. Okay.
Brandon: Oh, I love that.
Amanda: Mine is the evil eye.
Julia: Mine is a lightning bolt.
Brandon: Mine is the lungs.
Amanda: Ooh.
Julia: The lungs emoji. Oof.
Amanda: An underused one.
Brandon: Did I have to look it up? Yes, I did.
Eric: And mine is the children's crossing yield sign.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: Is that actually—
Eric: That is a real one. That's a real one.
Julia: Wow. That's crazy.
Amanda: Oh, my palms are sweaty just thinking about Campaign Four. I cannot wait. So remember, folks, get your votes in for the One Shot Derby at jointhepartypod.com/vote. Voting is open until just before midnight Eastern on Friday, March 21st. Then, you have about two days to get to Portland, Oregon for our live show on Sunday, March 23rd, jointhepartypod.com/live. And of course, on Tuesday, March 25th, Campaign Four begins, baby.
Eric: Oh, my God.
Brandon: Wee!
Eric: I cannot believe that. That's sick.
Amanda: Wee!
Julia: Yeah, your votes actually count 10 times if you come to the Portland live show and then tell us what your ranked voting is.
Eric: That's actually— that's fair. If you tell us what you voted for, I— we'll juice you.
Brandon: I think everyone at the Portland live show should come dressed up as what they think that Campaign Four is going to be.
Julia: Damn.
Amanda: Oh, that's so good.
Eric: Brandon, you have so many TikTok ideas, because this is like what a— what— someone who's 32, who lives in Seattle, who wants to throw a themed party, that's what their themed party would be, that they film.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Extraordinary. I can't wait. Y'all, I love doing this podcast. I can't believe this is our job. I cannot wait for Campaign Four.
Brandon: Same.
Eric: Ya.
Amanda: All right. Say goodbye, players.
Brandon: Bye, players.
Julia: Bye.
Eric: Goodbye, players.
Amanda: May your rolls trend ever upward.
[theme]
Amanda: Both me and Eric are peeking, so I'm going to turn the game down slightly.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: We're peeking because we're having so much fun on the podcast.
Julia: Yeah. You did a big laugh. That's why you peeked.
Eric: I know. It's like those are the laugh lines I want in my DAW.
Julia: There you go.
Brandon: The laugh lines in my DAW.
Julia: Imagine your DAW started getting wrinkles from your wavelengths.
Brandon: That'd be pretty good.
Eric: Julia, that sounds like a sci— that sounds like a groundbreaking sci-fi book from the '80s that Elon Musk referred to for some reason.
Julia: Don't say that about me.
Eric: I— no, that's how good your reference was. He's so obsessed with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and does not understand anything what that book is about.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I didn't— I'm surprised he could read, so—
Julia: Yeah.