Is Twiggs our least favorite NPC of all time? Why does Umbi want to die so badly? And does this campaign have less Eric WTFs than previous ones? All that and more on this Afterparty!
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here.
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: 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: Whoa. Okay. Going—
Eric: Mine didn't beep.
Amanda: Yours doesn't beep.
Eric: Mine doesn't beep, but yours beeps?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That's crazy. That's discrimination.
Amanda: It's a setting. I could change it.
Eric: I want mine to beep.
Amanda: Okay. We'll make it beep.
Eric: Brandon, tell her.
Amanda: We'll make it beep.
Brandon: No, I was about to say, I would also want mine to beep, if I were you. So I get it.
Eric: Thank you.
Amanda: I prefer mine not beep, because it's like, "Aah."
Eric: So then why does yours beep and mine doesn't beep?
Amanda: Well, because I haven't made sure to give you the green circle and me the yellow square, but—
Eric: You got chocolate in my peanut butter.
Brandon: Oh, no.
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the Afterparty where Julia has prompted us with a wonderful question. Guys, if you were a Halloween candy, what Halloween candy would you be?
Julia: I think we should choose it for the other people on the call. That's my—
Amanda: Right.
Brandon: Oh, okay.
Julia: —hot take, because before I said I had gotten Amanda a— the Nerds Gummy Clusters and then Eric said, "Amanda, you're such a Nerds Gummy Cluster." And that inspired the prompt—
Amanda: Thanks.
Julia: —for this one.
Eric: Right. Because Amanda has the power of a bunch of Nerds stuck together.
Julia: Yes, correct.
Amanda: I mean, that's basically true.
Julia: Yeah. So we already know Amanda's.
Amanda: Eric, I think you're the big Reese's Peanut Butter Cup with Reese's Pieces in it.
Eric: Wow.
Julia: Whoa.
Brandon: Ooh, that's a good choice.
Amanda: Yeah, because you are like a variation on a class Seek, and you contain even more than your delicious outside prompts.
Brandon: Wow. Real wife guy answer.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: You know.
Eric: Brandon, here's what happens when you're a wife guy. Sometimes your wife says nice things in return. Brandon, you're like a bit of honey, and I don't know why the fuck there's still— this still exists.
Brandon: Hey.
Julia: Damn. I was gonna say, Eric, you remind me of a Butterfinger texturally, and—
Eric: Hmm. Okay.
Julia: —I don't know how else to describe that in a way that will make that make sense.
Brandon: You're crispity, crunchity.
Eric: I was sponsored by Bart Simpson in the 90's, so that explains why.
Julia: Ah, okay.
Brandon: Well, that's true, yeah.
Julia: I don't remember that.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: Eat my shorts, Julia.
Julia: Fair, fair. What about the Butterfingers?
Eric: Yeah, you can eat my Butterfingers, too.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: Julia, I think that you are a Warhead, real classic energy. And I think that over time, as we age, we appreciate more and more that there still are, in fact, candies that make your face go, "Ooh." It was everywhere in the 90's, but here in 2024, Warheads— don't we all go around be like, "Man, I wish I had Warheads around." And wow, here's the Warheads. Here it is.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I thought you were gonna say, "We appreciate now that there's candy that hurts you."
Eric: I can write a whole essay that, actually, candy that hurts you good, and that's Julia.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yes, that's kind of the only candy I'd want to eat from my childhood today, apart from the Nerds Gummy Clusters. Brandon, I do think that you are also the Hershey's special dark chocolate, because in a pinch, you can make a load of cookies with that.
Julia: True. True.
Amanda: You know?
Brandon: Yeah, I do.
Amanda: Good to eat on its own, but excellent as an ingredient.
Eric: Actually, I think that Brandon is a candy you can only get in Scandinavia.
Amanda: Hmm, a Skor bar.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: Yeah, like a Skor bar, because it's like, "How did this get in my candy bag? Why does this one family give me Skor bars? That's crazy."
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: "We're going there every year. All right"
Brandon: I'm into it.
Julia: Yeah. Brandon's a Kinder egg that you had to sneak into the country.
Amanda: A lot of little plastic parts in Brandon.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Amanda: We don't talk about it very much, but it's true.
Brandon: It's true.
Amanda: That's good. Julia, thank you very much. Do you know what I would love to find in my Halloween trick or treat basket this year?
Julia: Is it questions about Campaign Three?
Amanda: Some fucking Dispel Dice, Julia. They're so pretty and—
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: —they're here.
Brandon: Yo!
Amanda: Aaaah!
Eric: The real scare that we had this October was being told that these are not, in fact, preorders, but in fact, you are buying the dice because they are here.
Amanda: Yeah. So a little peek behind the curtain, Dispel Dice been working with them since last PAX Unplugged, so almost—
Julia: Wild.
Amanda: —a full year to get these dice designed, and tested, and perfected, and refined for all of you. And like many things, we said, "Great, we'll do a preorder. We'll, you know, get the manufactured." There is, like Lunar New Year. We have to kind of work around the manufacturing timetable. So let's just say quarter one, we want to make sure no one's disappointed or tries to order them for the holidays as gifts and then doesn't get them. And then Karen from Dispel Dice emailed me and said, "They're here." And I said, "What, Karen?" And she—
Julia: What?
Amanda: —said, "Oh, they're here." So enjoy. You should be getting your Dispel Dice if you have preordered them later this week in the US. Take a little longer for international. And if you were kind of like, "Oh, I don't know. I don't really want to preorder stuff. Like, hard to wait. TBD, maybe I'm saving up for, you know, holiday presents first." Hey, order those at jointhepartypod.com/dice.
Julia: Because now there's a limited quantity.
Amanda: Now, there's a limited quantity. We can reorder if the sales go well enough, but now—
Brandon: No, don't tell them that, Amanda. Limited quantity.
Julia: No, no. You'll never get them again. Order them now.
Amanda: For now— I mean, listen, people still email us that they're mad they missed the Chad Dice and that—
Julia: Well—
Amanda: —we reordered those twice.
Eric: We made so many of those.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: We made like 600 pairs of Chad Dice, and they were gone.
Eric: Even when, like, the country that we were sourcing the dice from, shut down for various reasons, happening in Eastern Europe. We'd still tried to get them, and yet we could not.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: That's right. We manufactured them in Russia.
Amanda: Poland, Brandon. Poland.
Eric: Poland. Poland was having some trouble.
Brandon: World War II really fucked our timetable.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: World War— Russia in 2019.
Eric: On Schindler's List was the Chad Dice.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: It's all black and white. The Chad Dice are green.
Brandon: This is a good bit about it.
Amanda: A lot of you love the dice. We love the dice. Thank you so much for saying. So from Lila, "Not a question, but I'm so excited for these dice. They're so beautiful."
Brandon: Wee!
Amanda: Boots_leight, "The dice is so nice." Crickman, "Wow. These are gorgeous." And everybody in the discord, can't wait to see you start receiving your sets.
Brandon: I— Eric and Amanda have seen the samples that came to the office, obviously, but I haven't seen— me nor Julia have seen them. Excited to see them in person, yeah.
Eric: Honestly, the high-quality photography that they do over at Dispel Dice is even better than having the dice.
Amanda: The dice are great.
Eric: Like, they're nice and everything and, like, they come in this beautiful box and they're inset. It feels like you're opening up artifacts and not just dice. But honestly, the thing that blows me away every time are the photographs from Dispel Dice. They're incredible.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Like, oh, you mean the professional product photographer is great. They totally are.
Julia: Shocking.
Brandon: The milk is glue.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: And so is the cheese, so you can really understand how good this Domin— this slice of Domino's is.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I got it, Brandon. I know exactly—
Amanda: Oh, oh. Now, like—oka— okay.
Brandon: There you go.
Eric: I know exactly what Brandon—
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: —is talking about.
Amanda: For some reason, the image in my head of, like, oh, those fast food billboard, you know, photographs are, like, gross and sprayed with hair spray or whatever—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: —is, like, toothpicks to, like, hike up the height of the—
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: —Big Mac or whatever.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: And so anytime I see a glamor shot of a fast food sandwich, I'm like, "Ugh, They have toothpicks in it."
Eric: I have friends who's worked in that or shot food videos, so I— they've worked with food stylists and I know about it. And of course, I've seen tons of TikToks about it. It was, like— probably one of the first big viral waves was like, "Oh, if you're a food stylist, you can make really good— really popular content out of this." And I see someone take Barbasol and put it on a pie— slice of pie and showed that, "Hey, this is what whipped cream looks like." And every time, I wa— the can is whipped cream and I see it come out. And then I see it, I'm like, "Damn, that pie looks good." Every time, every time.
Amanda: Well, speaking of items you could find in a convenience store, let's get into Episode 56, shall we? Where we have this convenience store fight and finding, and maybe fighting a mysterious intruder on the ship. It's Di. It's DiAnnalyse.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Question from Ginger, "If Nonny sees everything in 50's cartoon style, does Bartlett seen a different style of media? Do all pets? Or is Nonny special?"
Brandon: I mean, she is very special.
Julia: Yeah, I like to—
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: —think that Nonny is special.
Brandon: But if Bartlett did see in some other sort of vision, media vision, what do we think it would be?
Julia: I think I Love Lucy or, like, Leave It to Beaver kind of style.
Brandon: That's really good, Julia.
Julia: It's like a 50's sitcom.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I don't think I can beat that. I was gonna say claymation, but I like the I Love Lucy much better.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah. I Love Lucy is perfect.
Eric: I thought that— I know this isn't media, but in my head, Bartlett saw everything like a heat camera.
Julia: That's scary.
Brandon: So The Predator is what you're—
Eric: Yeah, like The Predator. Yeah.
Brandon: Cool.
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: We have a number of questions about the Grim Reaper's solicited visitation to the Sea Whip, I'll say. So Brandon rolling a double zero, big part of this episode. Melanie, "Why do you all want to kill Umbi so bad?" Melanie asked.
Julia: It's not that we want to kill Umbi.
Brandon: Oh, no. I want to kill Umbi. I think it's funny.
Eric: Yeah. My follow-up question to that in the Discord was, are you talking to Brandon? Because it's certainly not Eric, the person who got yelled at for saying, "You can't punish me for rolling a double zero." It can't be Eric.
Brandon: I just— I want him to die in a not heroic way, because he's not a hero. But, like, I don't want him to die slipping on a banana peel. That's just— it— that's just embarrassing for us all, yeah.
Julia: It can't be cardiac arrest because he was laughing too hard.
Eric: Umbi doing something really well and laughing so hard, he died, is on brand.
Brandon: That is true. That is true.
Amanda: That's Dungeons & Dragons, baby. I don't know what to tell you.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: We put the clip out there, and it got a lot of response, and I'm super stoked on it. I just want everyone to know, just because I was nice to my player does not mean this thing doesn't matter.
Julia: No.
Eric: Not at all. No, no, no.
Julia: Yeah. No, no, no.
Eric: So it's in my pocket. Brandon will have to roll five times at some point. I— I'm going to remember this forever. It's not going anywhere.
Brandon: I still maintain that a joke of, "Can I roll now?" should not be canonized.
Eric: You know how— Brandon, we've been doing this for so long. If you roll the dice that— you roll the dice.
Julia: It happens.
Amanda: It's like—
Eric: You don't go up to the monkey's paw and say, "Haha, Monkey's paw. Wouldn't it be funny if I did a wish right now?"
Brandon: I respect the table rules, but I'm saying in the PHB, there's nothing that says that dogs can't play basketball. You know what I'm saying?
Amanda: That's for sure. And—
Eric: I don't know. I think there is something about if dice is rolled, it counts in the PHB.
Julia: I agree.
Amanda: I'm not a constitutional fundamentalist like that, Brandon. That's— I bring a revisionist energy to my tabletop RPGs.
Brandon: Yeah, exactly.
Eric: I also, like— I wasn't gonna kill Umbi then. Like, Brandon, obviously, didn't like it. I don't— I'm not gonna do something Brandon doesn't like. What's the point of that?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I think there was a comparison point made to— in the second campaign of The Adventure Zone in Amnesty, where one of the characters died pretty late in the campaign.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And then, like, the whole time— but I— you know, you don't ever know if those things are true or not true, if it was set up beforehand. Like, you know, referring to campaign one. Conversations that Brandon and I had beforehand. You can make choices to fail intentionally for story reasons, right?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But, like, so when that happened, I'm like, "I didn't like that." It's weird when you get to the end of a campaign and you swap a major and, again, the protagonist, one of the protagonists, out for a different protagonist, where there's only a few episodes left. Like, I don't like that.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So I'm not gonna do something Brandon doesn't want to do. I think it's losing a lot of momentum that Umbi is just off the field here. Maybe if we went off and did like a Hadestown style, going to get Umbi's soul from the crypts of hell—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —if that existed, maybe we could do that.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: But we would have to go do that thing, and we've already been setting up a lot that we're charging towards the end of this campaign.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So I want everyone to know, I'm not forgetting about it, and it's definitely going on—
Brandon: Right, yeah.
Eric: —Brandon's permanent record, no matter what school he transfers to. But, like, I'm not gonna kill Umbi like this. I'm just not.
Brandon: I really maintain that the only reason I'm not dead yet is because Julia won't let me take Dr. Cornelius Cobb.
Julia: No.
Brandon: So—
Julia: I won't let you. Come up with your own backup character.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: You can't have mine.
Amanda: And the fact is no matter how many shenanigans we get into, like, if one of us was like, "Time out. This feels bad." You know, we would figure out a way around it. So—
Brandon: Oh, yeah. Of course.
Amanda: —this is not— again, not against anybody's wishes. It is only— we only protest in a funny way, and not to an extent that one of us is actually mad.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Ginger did raise an interesting possibility, which is, "Is Umbi's zero on the dying in your sleep going to manifest when the group reaches the salmon? I imagine it'd be like when an elderly person decides it's their time when they're surrounded by family and everyone's set. The senator in Umbi will be pleased once he knows that all of Verda Stello has fresh water."
Julia: Yeah. Well, famously, Umbi is not afraid of dying, so—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: —when it comes, it'll come.
Amanda: It comes.
Julia: You know?
Brandon: I think it's a big, old, who can say?
Julia: Who can say?
Eric: I love famously— I love famously, like it's being written up.
Julia: Famously— well, Brandon said it multiple times on the podcast. That's why I say famously.
Eric: But it is, like, reported in US Weekly, like Al Pacino.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Al Pacino has a new movie coming out, so he does a bunch of interviews where he says wild shit.
Brandon: Oh, man. I just had a thought that Umbi would be that piece of shit director on the set that's like an asshole to everyone. He's like, "You're doing 64 takes and you'll like it!"
Eric: Yeah. Umbi has real Sam Peckinpah energy.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: It's like, "I can mistreat this actress, and no one's gonna say anything about it."
Amanda: I think Umbi would be a real George Clooney prankster on set.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: Oh, no.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: Umbi would love pranks.
Brandon: Did you mispronounce, uh, Jared Leto, Amanda?
Julia: I knew you were gonna say Jared Leto, Brandon.
Amanda: Is he into pranks? I thought he was into, like, subsuming himself with his character.
Brandon: No, he's—
Julia: No, he's into harassing people with pranks.
Brandon: He's into, quote-unqoute, "pranks.
Amanda: Oh, right.
Eric: During the Suicide Squad movie, he, like, sent a dead rat to Viola Davis.
Julia: And like used condoms to Margot Robbie. It's— it's fucked. He's a fucked up guy.
Eric: That's weird.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, that's fucked up. In other news, Crickman asks, "What jerky would each character's choice have been at the convenience store?"
Julia: Ooh.
Brandon: I mean, Umbi would have obviously chose the mango jerky if he were able to.
Amanda: Brandon, that's the wrong answer.
Julia: That's fucked up, Brandon.
Brandon: If he were able to, I was gonna say.
Eric: There was something that I didn't really get across in the convenience store thing, because, like, I had so many different influences happening in the same time. Like, with this turned into such, like, a stylized action movie once things broke bad. Like it felt very John Wickian to me, once the fight happened. But, like, I thought it was so funny to be there, like, there's a conven— it's like a convenience store in the Everglades, and they're like, "Hey, do you want some endangered—"
Amanda: Alligator jerky, yeah.
Eric: "—some endangered crocodile jerky?"
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: And you do. You absolutely do.
Eric: Yeah. It's like, "Well, I— if I'm gonna buy it, I might as well buy it here."
Brandon: Yeah. Like, that's like going to Disney and not getting, like, a Mickey bar.
Eric: If you went somewhere and they had bald eagle, would you order it?
Amanda: No.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: 100%.
Amanda: Absolutely not.
Brandon: Yes.
Julia: No.
Amanda: Well, Julia, what would Cammie have gotten at the convenience store?
Julia: I— in my mind, there's, like, a type of turtle that is also a pineapple, and you can, like, peel the pineapple off of the turtle, and then it— the shell grows back.
Amanda: Oh, nice.
Eric: Oh.
Brandon: Well, that's fun.
Julia: So that's what the jerky. It's sustainable.
Amanda: That's good.
Brandon: I like that they're just all— like a spit where they just, like, turn as their shell comes off.
Amanda: No, it—
Brandon: It's really cute.
Amanda: No, it's like harvesting wool from a sheep. It’s like sheep get hot.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: You harvest it. They're fine.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: There's a turtle that's just like a giant pineapple, because—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —they escape the enclosure?
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: That's great.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: That's pretty good. Well, of course, the end of this episode meets the—
Julia: Well, hold on, what about Troy?
Amanda: Probably something kind of fermented and a little bit gross feeling. I'm thinking about the grubs maybe, like— yeah, weird, like calcified algae, like leather. You know, like a fruit leather—
Julia: Cool. Yeah.
Amanda: —but algae or seaweed. I think so.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: That makes sense.
Amanda: Yeah. Soldier rations. There was also, of course, the whole issue of Troy's younger sister sneaking onto the ship with an extremely cool, like, mirrored, angled, sort of like device. Eric, tell us a little bit about when you decided that DiAnnalyse would become a stowaway. And did we ever have a chance to prevent that from happening, or just to perceive it once it did?
Brandon: I assume we definitely had a chance to perceive it. We just kept failing at every roll.
Julia: Yeah. We did not perception check very well there.
Amanda: We didn't perceive.
Eric: Yeah. I thought that DiAnnalyse, after she escaped from the facility and— because she got out of there before you did, because that's where you all looked around for—
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: —the Dilly dagger, right?
Brandon: Right.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So she had a chance to kind of, like, set up, and then she's like, "I'm gonna tell Troy," because he's gonna do something that she perceives as destructive, which she said, "Don't help Archie. Don't do it. Please don't do it. Don't do it. This is bad for me."
Amanda: Troy said, "I'm about to. See you later."
Eric: Yeah, exactly. So she was telling you guys the entire time. I think this was also shown by the fact that when you pulled up to the convenience store, you didn't look around at all, and that's part of one of the things I was asking about. So she was on your tail. I was thinking that she had some, like, spy mechanics that were made out of flowers, which I used to make, like, the little tent that she talked to Troy about.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And I thought that having this, like, mirrored setup was another thing where she— you know, you roll a ball of flowers, then it explodes into a— like a real James Bond-esque gadget.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Julia: Eric, you just said something that I don't think I realized or I didn't put two and two together, but was the thing that I assumed DiAnnalyse found in the file cabinet tower, was that the Dilly dagger?
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: Oh, good.
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: That wasn't just me that—
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: —just put that together? Okay, great.
Julia: I just put that together.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Julia: I wasn't sure what the item— oh, because you did say that it was kind of briny and kind of vinegary.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: It was different, because it's like— this is— it is brinier and vinegarier than—
Julia: The stuff that was on us?
Eric: Right. Than the stuff you were on, you— that in which you explicitly asked about.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Eric: And I'm like, "It's still— there's dill. It's spice—"
Julia: Got you.
Eric: "—in this particular—" so that's— yes.
Amanda: Oh, that's the spice Troy smells and couldn't eat.
Eric: Oh, my God. Fucking damn it, guys. Come on.
Amanda: Eric, we're too in the fiction. We can't put the clues together.
Eric: Julia did CSI, come on.
Julia: I did. I did do that.
Eric: I had to come up with stuff for Julia to find clues about.
Julia: It's true. And we did.
Amanda: Sorry. If it's not a Nancy Drew point and click PC game, I cannot put the clues together.
Brandon: You can't be upset with me, because this is always the case with me, so—
Eric: I don't know. Brandon's fine. He— Brandon is coloring outside the lines, in his— in the remedial looking at fiction class. But you two—
Julia: There's so much happening. There's so much happening.
Amanda: There was too much happening. I'm sorry to say.
Eric: Any— I mean, it doesn't really matter. I mean, we say— again, I had said this before in an Afterparty, and I read this somewhere, but it's like when you do clues and you're supposed to have foreshadowing, you want to make sure that, like, 50% to 70% of your audience understands what you're doing, especially for ones that matter. This didn't super matter. I also—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: This would have only mattered more if you didn't catch Di.
Julia: Right. It was a setup—
Brandon: Right.
Julia: —clue for a thing that we discovered later. So—
Brandon: Right.
Julia: —it's not that important that I didn't get it right away.
Eric: Well, I mean, it's—, there's motivation for you to catch Di anyway—
Julia: Yes.
Eric: —right? So— or for you to be suspicious that there is someone on board that you were gonna grab them and everything. So there were other motivations going on, but, like, one motivation could have been like, Di has this thing from the item area that we— that no one could access other than her, so that could have—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —been something. I did not think this episode would go in that direction. I was, like, fully prepared to deal with Umbi being caught by the Key Retrieval team with their various net guns.
Julia: No, no, we handled it.
Brandon: Ain't nobody catching Umbi.
Eric: Well, I— yeah, we know that now.
Amanda: He's too lubed up.
Julia: So lubed up.
Amanda: Can't get a good hold on him.
Eric: And like, you know, there— this is happening on two different— and happening on two different plains. Like Troy trying to stay low. Our moss boys on the ship, holding it together. Gloria doing what— Gloria stuff, and then while Cammie and Umbi were pinned down. So—
Julia: No, no. Ship crew did a great job, I want to say.
Amanda: Listen--
Julia: Troy—
Eric: No, but all of you did it so quickly.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: So it's like— then you found a different mystery, and then that was what we did during the episode. Like I had to stop and— because you were going to systematically check the ship, for the first time ever, I had to write down all of the rooms up here. I have my— I have the— my thing right here.
Brandon: Yeah, we did have to pause in the middle so Eric could—
Julia: Figure out what the ship layout was.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Which we don't do very often, and is very cool. Most of the time, if our, you know, recordings are interrupted at all, it's because we have a split scene, or a split party, or someone has a flashback that, you know, is private, but that was the rare time, and he was like, "Give me two minutes." And we took a break.
Brandon: Yeah, because it's really difficult to improv the layout of a boat.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: So I— for the— I had to write down all of the rooms below deck—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —which was— so I— it was Cammie, Umbi, Troy, all of your rooms. Havana has another room. Hallway which would— basically was the entire middle of the ship.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Which I counted as a room.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Kitchen, which I've never talked about before. There's an eating— like a general meeting and eating place.
Julia: Yeah, a little galley.
Brandon: Meetin’ and eatin’!
Eric: Yeah. Then the captain's quarters, which we've established, but it's like, all right, but that's from left to right.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And then I had two separate rooms for the hold. Like the hold counted as two rooms because it was so big, and then you had to go down the stairs. And I'm like, "Okay. Where are the stairs in this ship?" I had to write down and figure out where they were. So, like, Cammie— Cammie's room was closest to one set of stairs, and the captain's quarters was closest to another set of stairs.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: All the way on the other side of the ship.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So I'm like, "Oh, I didn't know this. I guess we're doing this." So I had to stop and write all that down.
Amanda: Shout out to Gloria. I think without smashing some of those panels, we would have had a very difficult time finding each other and, like, seeing what was going on outside the ship.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I was relieved.
Brandon: Shout out.
Amanda: So as we unmask DiAnnalyse, chase her down, and attempt to, I don't know, use any fucking strategy to get her to stay.
Eric: Oh, my God.
Julia: Just the worst pirates ever in that episode. We just kept failing. It was tough.
Amanda: It was a real Comedy of Errors.
Eric: She rolled so well. I rolled incredibly for her, every time.
Brandon: I— again, I have to say that it's expected for me. What the fuck was y'all's excuse?
Amanda: I have none. Julia also tried valiantly. She just got out rolled which to, like—
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: You know, I don't know if she's rogue or what, but like to, you know, assassin-y person doing assassin-y things, fair enough.
Julia: Yes. I do regret— my biggest regret, just for comedy purposes, is that cursive chains didn't work because I really wanted a magical like, you guys have to put the friendship t shirt on.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Yes. The get along shirt.
Eric: That would have been so funny.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I wish that works, too.
Eric: I'm still trying to figure out what to do at the end of scenes to establish y'all lost, I'm sorry, other than like the enemy leaving.
Amanda: That's about— Eric, Eric, on a stage play, when the character is done talking, they leave.
Eric: Yeah, I—
Julia: It's Shakespeare, baby.
Eric: DiAnnalyse exude, pursued by Bear.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: Yeah, she went on to the crow's nest and then I had to look up what a crow's nest— this nest— of a crow's nest.
Amanda: "Sorry, you didn't know the diameter of the crow's nest platform before you started your campaign?"
Julia: That's wild, man.
Eric: Sorry, I— A squared plus B squared equals C squared a little bit. And then I'm just like— and then she jumps off and disappears, I guess. Like, that's what happens.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You know, since this is a game and not a story, to me, it feels abrupt as like a storytelling device. But, like, I don't know, Pokemon run away. Abra uses teleport.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You got to get to the next stage. Like, it's just— it's like— it is what it is. What we're doing here in actual play is so much more like video games, and it's like— or it is so much more segmented in— than actual scenes in television or movies that you kind of just gotta do what you gotta do.
Julia: Yeah. I can think of so many video games where I am in combat with a character, and then because I'm not supposed to defeat this character yet, they just kind of, like, throw a smoke grenade and then disappear.
Amanda: Fucking kyogre on— in the ship, in Ruby and Sapphire. Come on.
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Like Abra in the grass every time I tried to teleport.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Tell me about it. I have a question here from Ginger. Do you think people in Verda Stello pay attention to royal families the way that we do, willingly or not, honoring—
Brandon: Do you mean rich people? When you say we, do you mean rich people?
Amanda: Or Brits.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: "So after the last scuffle with Di, I had a picture of some academic Greenfolk person being like, 'On average, two or more members of the Breakstones are fighting at least once every 2.3 days.' And a bunch of student Greenfolk going, "Yes. Yes, of course, of course."
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Which is just an adorable headcanon.
Brandon: That was really funny. What do you think the acade— like what is a academic professor, like a collegiate professor Greenfolk? Like a parsnip or like—
Amanda: Ooh.
Eric: Yeah, a parsnip wearing an— a sport jacket with elbow patches.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: That's very cute.
Julia: A patch of reeds.
Brandon: Ooh, also good.
Eric: That's pretty good.
Amanda: Nice. I was definitely picturing something that grows underground, like maybe a rhubarb, you know, something along those lines, a ginger.
Brandon: Hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Appropriate, given the question asker's name.
Amanda: Right?
Eric: The thing is, and people in the Discord know, if you— and join the Patreon, so you can join the Discord and be a part of this. If you say something that I missed or that sounds cool, I'll just say yes.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And then you can feel good that you made canon. There was a part where we were talking about the fruit bats in the next episode, and I think someone was like—
Amanda: Jaya, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, Jaya was like, "Oh, if they're fruit bats, are they just bats and they can be any type of fruit?" And I'm like, "Yes." And then Jaya was like, "Nice." You— that could be you.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That could be you if you join our Patreon.
Amanda: Exactly. The genus is fruit bat, and the species are, you know, specific fruits, X bat.
Julia: I do want to address my headcanon for Ginger's question, which is—
Eric: Uh-hmm.
Julia: —I think that much like in Game of Thrones, the noble houses give a shit, and maybe, like, the scholars, like the people who are studying to be Maesters.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: I haven't watched Game of Thrones in a while.
Eric: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Julia: I think they care, but the common people don't give a fuck. It doesn't matter who's in charge right now, so long as—
Amanda: Agree.
Julia: —they're still, like, you know, having to pay taxes and whatnot.
Amanda: I'm with you. And I think there are maybe some students from Overstalk at, like, the School of Public Policy that are—
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: —comparing, you know, ruling systems and find that theirs is the best every time, you know, kind of.
Julia: Correct.
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, like, it'd be the same way that— yeah, in the same way that Americans, like, look at the Royal family, but don't really care about the Royal family, you know? Like, it'd be that because there's— yeah, why would you care about some other country's monarch? Like, that doesn't affect you.
Amanda: You don't.
Eric: I love going to a School of Public Policy in Overstalk, is, like, going to the Sorbonne.
Amanda: Basically. And they're like, "French, the best language."
Eric: Yeah. It's like, "Sorry. We just all— every time we run stats, we think we're the best. I don't know what to tell you."
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It is what it is.
Brandon: It happens.
Amanda: Well, in these three action-packed episodes, we also get two Mango Crossing island itself. We very, very smartly subdue those guards that are sort of in training—
Eric: So funny. God, it's so funny.
Amanda: —and not particularly skilled. Brandon, where did that wonderful inspiration come from to entomb these men alive in concrete?
Brandon: I gotta give it to our old buddy, Mage Hand Mike.
Amanda: Mage Hand Mike.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Mage Hand Mike.
Amanda: Once again.
Brandon: For coming up with some great fucking potions. That's where it came from, baby.
Eric: It's good stuff. I thought that was so funny. Coming up with Mango Crossing, it almost resembles just dungeon— regular dungeon building. It's like, all right, there's this stage, and then this stage, and then this stage. And, you know, this is the first stage of a dungeon, which is the doorway or there's a guardian, right? So it's like, why can't you get in? You have to deal with this kind of first issue. And it doesn't really matter— especially because you're not in the dungeon yet. You're, like, on the precipice of going into the dungeon. You can do it however you want. There— this is the one that has the least kind of reverberating consequences, because you're not inside just yet. So it's like, "Yeah, dude, that sounds great." I'm like, "We didn't establish that there was a guard rotation, but of course, there's a guard rotation." And if you take one out, then you have a clear shot to go do what you want to do, and then you can kind of sneak up, and then boom, stage one is done.
Julia: Makes sense.
Amanda: I was feeling a type of way, I'm not gonna lie to you guys, that we got guidance to be nice to the ghost and not to, like, go help the ghost.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Because I think my read on that was that, like, being rude to the ghost was like a trap that Archie was trying to help us avoid. Not an instruction to get a fucking passcode for these fucking guys to believe that we are who we say we are. I got so mad. Like, I don't think I've heard myself be madder in an episode of Join the Party, then Troy being like, "We're going," and then making us walk too fast in Episode 58 back down the mountain.
Julia: What I also really liked about that was it felt very reminiscent to Spirits for me, where, like, we talk a lot about, "Hey, being polite to ghosts actually works, and they'll stop haunting you if you're just—"
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: "—polite to them." And I was like, "Okay, great. We could do that."
Amanda: We can do that.
Julia: We could be polite to a ghost so that it goes away. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Eric: Never. Absolutely not. Different podcast.
Brandon: Okay, I have— okay. I have many things to say here.
Amanda: Brandon, let's do it.
Brandon: Number one, I assume— and maybe, Eric, correct me or tell me what you were thinking, but like, I assume that if we had not gotten the advice to be nice to a ghost and, like, said the wrong thing or did something wrong, then like, you know, there would have been, like, a ghost attack, or, like, something would have happened.
Eric: Yeah. Well, if— it's almost like— again, I'm pulling from RPGs here. It's like if you do a, quote-unquote, "sequence break—"
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: —this was almost like a gate here. It's like the key— you couldn't skip all the way up to the top because you needed the password.
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: But because you decided to sequence break, you got a clue.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: It's— the kind of, like, the stripped bare game mechanics of what— of what's happening here.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Yeah. I can go into the desert with the sandstorm, but if I don't know strength, I cannot move the boulders around the fossils.
Brandon: Exactly.
Julia: True.
Eric: Right. But you learned that. It's learned by doing instead of following the natural sequence of what I think you're going to do.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: And then my second point that I need to bring up is that we were the nicest possible people on the—
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: —planet to this ghost.
Amanda: We have never been more polite.
Brandon: We were genuinely polite. And this ghost was, one, just an asshole. And two, I don't know what else to do for you, Eric, but that's me being nice.
Amanda: It was like meeting your partner's, like, racist grandma and you're like, "You are 87. I'm not gonna change you. We gotta just get through this interaction."
Julia: Truly, I don't think I've ever disliked an NPC more than that ghost.
Amanda: Really?
Julia: And that's like, including, like, Sour Anthony.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: You know? Like it was bad.
Amanda: The voice was enough like Sour Anthony that I felt myself getting little, like, tinglies down my back. I was like, "Oh, no. Oh, no."
Julia: Yeah. I was like, "Oh."
Eric: Shout out to Romulus H. Twiggs.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: Love that guy.
Brandon: Bad ass name.
Amanda: So, Eric, do you love or hate it when you make an NPC who provokes such an artistic reaction in us that we go, "Fuck you. Fuck you. I don't wanna be around you. Fuck you."?
Eric: Well, that's fine by me, considering how that you have a ticking clock going on, right? You're around all the eggs. The mother tortango is gonna come back at any time. And, oh, you're gonna get sucked on by a bunch of orchids that want your blood.
Amanda: Those were cool.
Eric: So it was intend— obviously, the NPC was intentionally a massive jerk.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: The only thing that I was trying to seed to Umbi, because Brandon rolled so well, but twice, was that he was obviously deeply traumatized and hurt.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And he was projecting it by being an absolute jerk.
Brandon: Yes.
Julia: But we did not have time to give him therapy. We didn't have time to give him therapy.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: No. And I was trying to also backfill it by saying, "Well, not only is this character a jerk, but their soul is inside of a soul gem."
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Like, that's why they're a ghost, because their soul is trapped.
Julia: Right.
Brandon: But I maintain that it would be more rude of me to understand that he was traumatized and then be like, "Oh, I think you are traumatized and you had a terrible time." Then it would, like, bring it up apropos of nothing.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: No, you're totally right. You're absolutely right.
Brandon: Okay, okay, okay.
Eric: The only thing I was thinking in my head, how could this go frictionless? Again—
Amanda: Lube.
Eric: The 360 no scope of this is if you just are so placating and tell them they're right at all times.
Brandon: Like deferential, yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.
Eric: Like we— okay.
Julia: We're just gonna ignore that Amanda said lube, huh? We're just gonna ignore that Amanda said lube.
Amanda: Julia—
Brandon: Amanda said lube?
Amanda: Julia, when I say it— so I do this all the time on Join the Party, and then it's just a little joke that's there— not about lube, but little jokes about, you know, in the tape—
Brandon: Amanda just says lube in every episode very quietly. You gotta go listen for it.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: It's an ARG. If you find it enough times, it gives you a codex.
Julia: Amanda, that time, I caught it.
Eric: And that 35— $50,000 that's buried in a treasure chest in a graveyard somewhere.
Amanda: One that is the only way to go frictionless. It's worthwhile. B, when Eric's talking and I say something, you can't cut it because we're in the same room.
Julia: Yeah. It's true.
Amanda: So I try to be very specific and very selective about when I make a little bon mot that cannot be cut.
Julia: No, I heard that one, and I just wanted to acknowledge it, because—
Amanda: Thank you.
Julia: —the boys just skidded right over it, like they were covered in lube.
Eric: I was talking.
Amanda: Eric was talking and was wearing headphones.
Julia: Nope. I said what I said.
Eric: And Brandon was listening to me.
Amanda: And Brandon was listening.
Julia: I said what I said.
Brandon: Those are little editor treats, is what I like to call them.
Amanda: Yes. Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah. But listen, I— this was intentionally difficult. Like, of course, it was intentionally difficult. Brandon had to roll impossibly high twice again. I think we talked about this, like, 10% on you rolling, critting your do I know this person, and then, what, the DC was 25? Like, that was crazy high. So another like— another 10%. That's 1% for you to get both of those.
Brandon: This is my favorite thing that's ever happened in all of Join the Party's six years or whatever, is that I got— okay. Yeah. So one out of 10 times, one out of—
Eric: I don't remember what the— you didn't have to crit, but maybe you could have gotten like a 19 or something?
Brandon: I think I had to get an 18 because I had a plus seven. So—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Okay. So one out of 10 and then 15— 10% times 15%. That's like nearly— we're looking at nearly 1%— 1.5%.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Okay?
Brandon: That's— yeah. I've never been more proud of anything I've never done in my entire life.
Julia: Well, my favorite part of that, too, Brandon, was you kept telling Eric, "And remember, he likes me."
Brandon: Well— okay. This is my second— this is my third bone that I need to pick with Eric. I guess not bone, but more of a question. A question bone, Eric. I'm gonna toss you a bone with a question on it.
Eric: Okay.
Amanda: Fetch.
Brandon: One, was— is— am I misunder— not misunderstanding. But am I— is the skill work that way or was the skill sort of floundered by the jerk NPC?
Eric: It was by the jerk NPC. There was only—
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: —so far I could tell you, because I gave you so much specific information. I really Forrest Gump to you. Like, I put you in a historical event that you probably shouldn't be there for, but I let you have it, right?
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, I was right behind Nixon.
Eric: Which is fine. That was the gift I was giving you, was in return, I couldn't make him like you, but what I could have done was give you all the historical detail possible for you to understand what's happening.
Brandon: Gotcha. So if he was a friendly creature, like a friendly creature to us, it would have been like, "Oh, my God. Yeah, I love you. Like, here's, you know, something--"
Eric: But he also accepted all the things that you said, like—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And then he was like, "Oh, this is a person who was an adult near me, who's also not from the country that put me in The Hunger Games."
Brandon: Yes. I just assumed that if it were a friendly— like a genuinely friendly creature in D&D terms, then he would been like, "Oh, yeah, here's the password." You know?
Eric: Yeah. But, like, I couldn't give that to you because also—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. Gotcha.
Eric: —one, that's the puzzle, but two—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —he's too messed up to have given that to you. There was also a thing that I thought happened, was, like, Archie put the soul gem down, and was like, "Hey, dude, do this and maybe I'll let you out."
Julia: Fucked up Archie.
Eric: And then probably Twiggs was like, "Can I be as much of a jerk as I want?" And Archie's like, "Yes, sure. I don't care how you do it. Goodbye." And then walked back up to his camp. So there— that's what I envisioned happened— was happening before you all got there, and why this was so difficult.
Brandon: That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Also, think of it this way, Brandon, this character was very traumatized. And even people who you like when you're traumatized, sometimes you're mean to them.
Brandon: Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: I was just trying to figure out the mechanics of the skill, because we— because Eric invented it. So it's like—
Julia: Right.
Brandon: Is it a like— not dominate beast. Is it like a charm person thing or—
Eric: Sure.
Brandon: —is it more like a reinvent the past thing?
Eric: Yeah. It was more like— this was a conversational puzzle, a role-playing puzzle here.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: And then I only let you roll your roll of persuasion because you had that common ground, even if he— Twiggs seem not to like you.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: You know, if— again, if we're pulling from a different video game, we're playing one of these Skill Tree— like we're playing a Mass Effect, or one of those types of games, or even Skyrim on some level. It's like this ability to do something is only unlocked because of the negotiations you've already had, which is what I was giving you. So if you—
Brandon: That makes sense.
Eric: —would not rolled as well as you did on your did I know this person, you wouldn't even have the ability to try to persuade them. You would have had to placate a lot and do something—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —else while this was going on.
Brandon: Gotcha. And how did it feel when you were like, "Motherfucker, this is a 25," and I was like, "Let me knock that down."
Eric: Well, Brandon, I respect the numbers, and when you roll something, I'm like, "Congratulations, you did it."
Amanda: Supershmup wanted to know, "Eric, were you sad when Brandon rolled a 25?"
Brandon: Yeah, you had to have been like, "This player? My— this is my player?"
Julia: This guy?
Amanda: This one?
Eric: I feel like I'm your parent, and you've just asked me, like, a really tough question of what I was like raising you. So I'm going to be honest and try to take emotion out of my voice and say, "Yes, I was disappointed."
Julia: Even though it still hurts to my core.
Amanda: It's pretty go.
Eric: We rolled with it, and it went well. I really— I'm really happy with how the bed blooms went.
Amanda: Yeah, that was funny.
Brandon: That was really cool.
Eric: Because, you know, it's hard when you take a straight up D&D monster. I reskinned this from like— we— if— like a blood sucker, there's really only one monster, right? And I think we've used them before. They're kind of like mosquitoes. They're like probisci, and they're just like blood suckers. But the thing that was in the actual stat block, was like you have to use an action to remove this from you. And of course, that makes sense. In initiative, you have to waste your whole action and not have blood sucked out of you. Fine, whatever. I thought it was fun, and I don't know if you all noticed, but like, I had to prompt you to remind you to do it. And you were like, "Yeah, I use my action to do it."
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And then I did something else immediately.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like I— the— not even the bed blooms, but like the ghost would do something. Or, like, I took— I feel like every time you all said that, I took agency away from you, or the person who didn't say that, like when Troy didn't, I'm like, "Troy, what do you want to do?"
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So it was fun, like, controlling the narrative of being able to jump in after you say like, "Well, I gotta take six seconds to do this."
Amanda: Gotta do this now.
Eric: "Something else happens somewhere else."
Brandon: No, I love that. That was great. Yeah.
Amanda: It's awesome.
Julia: Oh, the idea of taking six seconds to pull off a blood sucking thing, that's too long.
Amanda: That's too long. Yeah.
Julia: Oh, I don't like that.
Amanda: And to contemplate the fact of it, way too much.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Well, Julia, I'm gonna think about how long it's taken me to remove leeches from myself as I run into the kitchen and refresh our appetizers.
Brandon: Oh, Amanda, can you get me a cup of blood? Cup of blood, please.
Julia: Just a quick cup of blood.
Brandon: Quick cup of blood.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: Thanks.
Eric: Can I get almond blood?
Julia: Feed Me.
[theme]
Amanda: Hello, everybody. It's Amanda. And welcome to the midroll, where I would like to thank and welcome our newest supporters on Patreon, Kathleen C., Jupiter, and a patron called Happy Birthday, Hermione Hoff. Is this a real person named Hermione and a present? So cute. Welcome to the Patreon. We are only able to do the cool stuff we're doing, like spending a year designing dice, trying out new formats for our patron-only podcast Party Planning, and, of course, investing in making the patron-only discord the absolute, certified greatest place on the internet because of your support. So to get all of that, plus ad-free episodes and even early access to new episodes an entire day before anybody else, and an exclusive Discord channel where you and only you can talk about the episode that you and only you know about, join us at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Remember the dice that we made with Dispel Dice are officially here. They are in stock. Our partners at Dispel crushed it, and if you preorder to set, they are going to start shipping to you soon. If you haven't ordered a set, because you don't like to wait for stuff, because that's hard, you no longer have to wait. If you order, they will ship at jointhepartypod.com/dice. There's so much happening at Multitude. It's been very busy, and the announcements are not stopping, y'all. We have big stuff coming through the end of the year. And the first thing that I want to make sure you know about is that our newest member show Wow If True is worth your time. Wow If True is your one-stop internet culture shop explaining how what's happening online shapes the real world. And your hosts are internet experts and real-life besties, the tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling and science fiction author, former attorney Isabel J. Kim, Esq. More importantly, they're the only podcast that will mention Neopets and horizontal mergers in the same episode. Is it my favorite show to listen to every week? Yes, it is. So check out Wow If True, wherever on the internet you find your podcasts, including this app right here, where you're listening to me. You can just type in Wow If True, and then they'll come up. New episodes come out every other Wednesday. We are also sponsored by United By Blue, a sustainable lifestyle brand that prioritizes great materials and ethical manufacturing to lead the change toward better business practices. For every product that you purchase from United By Blue, they remove a pound of trash from oceans and waterways. Hence, why the world is united by the blue of the ocean. That's been over three and a half million pounds so far. And from picking up plastic bottles to cleaning up their own packaging and supply chains, they're on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic all over the world. I really love so many of the things I've gotten from United By Blue. They have incredible bundles. They have great socks. They have extremely cute bundles of like a hiking pack plus a water bottle. Almost everybody at Multitude has gotten a backpack from United By Blue because we love them so much. There's also like a little, tiny backpack on a carabiner for, like, your dog, you know, like trash bags for when you go on a walk. Seriously, you're gonna want to check it out. I use every single time I go anywhere more than, you know, a few hours, I'll bring my half growler, my insulated half growler from United By Blue, which keeps my water or iced coffee, whatever I'm in the mood for, or, yes, occasionally, a mixed drink that I will bring to the park, cold for me to share and use all day long. I— seriously, the ice lasts, like, two days. It's amazing. So if you go to unitedbyblue.com, you can use the code JTP. That's JTP, all one word, all uppercase to get 20% off your order of socks, mugs, ceramics, water bottles, backpacks, all kinds of gorgeous T-shirts at unitedbyblue.com. The code is JTP. All right, folks. Let's get back to the show.
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Amanda: All right, folks. We are back, and I have made little bite-sized mango-flavored pastry.
Julia: Where's our blood?
Amanda: I don't serve blood in this household.
Julia: Damn.
Amanda: Sorry.
Brandon: I have been wanting a mango cake for, like, you know, weeks now. Like a layer-tiered mango cake.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: It's good stuff.
Julia: I think I'm vaguely allergic to mangoes.
Brandon: Oh, no.
Amanda: I'm sorry.
Julia: They make my tongue feel all hairy. Is that normal?
Amanda: Oh, no.
Eric: Yeah. I think that's—
Amanda: No.
Eric: —the key sign of your allergic.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: Yeah, okay. Good to know.
Eric: Oh, Amanda, there's something hard in my mango tart. Oh, it's our dice from Dispel Dice.
Amanda: Oh. Eric, I specifically said don't instruct others to eat them.
Eric: Well, you shouldn't eat them, but you can if you want to, because they're here. It's no longer a preorder.
Brandon: It's possible.
Eric: It's possible.
Amanda: It's no longer a theoretical warning, but a real warning. And when you get your Dispel Dice, please do not eat them. Thank you.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Even though they're beautiful. You want to crunch.
Julia: I'm not your mom. I'm not gonna tell you what to do.
Eric: I don't know. With grocery prices this high, you might as well eat your dice.
Amanda: Oh, boy.
Brandon: Hey, you want to eat milk or you want to eat these dice? One's cheap than the other.
Amanda: It's true. Here's a question we can all agree on. "Is Troy's pumpy bigger than or smaller than a baby tortango?" That's from Leo.the.lizard.kwing.
Julia: I think smaller than.
Amanda: Agreed.
Eric: Definitely smaller.
Amanda: I think the pumpy is the size of like an embryonic tortango, like in development when they— when the eggs are first laid, and then they grow—
Brandon: Oh, pretty small then.
Amanda: —big and strong.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: It's cute. I like it.
Eric: Well—
Julia: I picture pumpy like the— I have a pumpkin pillow, and that's the size that I picture the pumpy.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: Oh, that's cool.
Julia: Like, it's like, vaguely, like, I could cradle it in my arms kind of— like a wide cradle.
Amanda: I thought you were gonna say like a wide baby and I was like, "Whoa."
Julia: Yeah. Real wide baby.
Eric: In my head, I thought it was just like small pumpkin size.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Not like bean seed pumpkin size, but, like, small pumpkin size, right?
Julia: But like—
Amanda: Like a four or five-pounder. Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Oh, okay.
Brandon: I got a— a pie pumpkin in my CSA this past week.
Amanda: Perfect.
Brandon: And, yeah, those— they're, like, smaller. Yeah, like, yellow pie pumpkin size.
Julia: Are you gonna make pumpkin pie?
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: This has been a news article lately because nothing else is happening in the news, other than the fact that state fairs are doing their, like, biggest produce—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —measures. And of course, like, there are 2,000-pound pumpkins out there that are winning these things.
Amanda: So big.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Scientists are saying they don't know how large pumpkins can get.
Amanda: Oh. Theoretically unlimited?
Eric: Theoretically unlimited, and I find that very funny for the pumpy.
Brandon: I find that disturbing.
Amanda: That is disturbing.
Julia: We just interviewed a plant professor for a future episode of Spirits who said something similar about trees—
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: —Amanda?
Eric: Hmm.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: And that's also scary. The fact that they're like, "These could potentially just live forever." So the idea of a pumpkin that can grow exponentially forever infinitely Is scary.
Brandon: Well, I do know like a physics limit. A tree can only get as tall as the atmosphere.
Amanda: Sure.
Brandon: And a pumpkin can only get as heavy as it would not fall through the Earth.
Amanda: Unless it did.
Eric: Yeah. Brandon, fair, fair point.
Julia: Fair.
Brandon: I'm a scientist.
Eric: But what if I can fell through the Earth and then just kind of, like, went through our poles, like moving through the center of the Earth.
Brandon: That'd be tight.
Julia: I think it would burn up, but I don't know.
Amanda: Gravitational event.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Julia: What if it then became a moon?
Eric: Oh.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: What if pumpkin became moon?
Eric: What if pumpkin became moon?
Brandon: What if then Halloween all year?
Julia: Then Halloween all year? This is the dream.
Brandon: The dream.
Eric: Nightmare Before Christmas 2: What if pumpkin became moon?
Julia: Wait, hold on, I have to rewrite the sequel to space party that I was gonna do. One second.
Eric: The pumpkin is the moon?
Amanda: That's pretty good. EepyFella would like to know, "To what extent are there endangered species in Verda Stello? Can Greenfolk species be considered endangered or rare, connected to what they are a Green folk of? And if yes, what are conservation efforts, if any? And who's in charge?"
Brandon: May I, Eric, also install this rule of no bummers?
Julia: Yes.
Eric: Because we're talking about environmental issues just kind of around the freshwater in Verda Stello, I think the answer is yes. I think it's a little bit more distributed, because obviously, like, every country has a— has deals with this stuff in their own countries. And there is a loose confederation— a secret confederation of the countries of the Diamond Knot. But, like, I don't think the Diamond Knot spends their time talking about endangered species. I think the thing with the tortangos is they tried to lay out a little bit, was like people are aware of them in the last 50 years, in terms of just the mapping of the Great Salt Sea and the fact that Mango Crossing is detailed and etched on maps, like you would see a forest on a map now, or like a state forest, or like a national forest or national park on a map. But I don't know if there's actual endanger— I don't know if anyone is doing anything about it.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: I think— my headcanon is that of the types of Greenfolk, like the sentient Greenfolk, that there aren't any, like, body standards, because they prize diversity among, you know, kinds and, like, constituted species of Greenfolk. So it's not like, "Oh, like everyone wishes they were square, like the Cranberry Bog or whatever." But instead, it's like, "Yeah, that's what you are," which I think is nice.
Julia: We've also established that, you know, there's not necessarily, like, genetic lineage when—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: —it comes to—
Eric: Right.
Julia: —like, what Greenfolk give birth to what kind of Greenfolk.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: Now, I do want to agree with that, but that was before Umbi was on the scene. Because now, obviously, Umbi is the body standard that everyone aspires, so—
Eric: This is what the ideal male form.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: This is the ideal male for, look at it. There is a phenomenon where humans donate more money towards natural conservation of cute animals.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: True.
Brandon: Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah.
Eric: And I like the idea that, like, only people who see themselves reflected in the endangered species. Like, there's a mango person out there that's like, "We have to serve the— save the tortangos! We have to!" And I kind of find it funny.
Julia: "We have to do it."
Brandon: Yeah, that is funny.
Amanda: And relatable, yeah. Here's a related question from Ginger, "Are any of you worried that bringing the salmon back will bring too much water and instead of drought, the new problem will be that everything is too swampy? Have any of your characters thought about how to navigate this monkey's paw?" Sub question, "In this universe, would a monkey's paw be a Monkey's Pawpaw?"
Julia: Yes. Also—
Brandon: Pretty good.
Julia: —water world. Water world. Water world.
Brandon: Water world. Water world.
Amanda: I mean, clearly, we can inhabit, you know, flooded environments, like Kompos City.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I don't want to know about Ginger, but I mean, like it's not bringing back water. It's bringing back the falls, which are already on. So I don't know why it would bring up too much water.
Julia: But then that'll also separate, you know, the pirates from the countries, because—
Brandon: Right, yeah.
Julia: —that's what happened last time.
Eric: The arid— I mean, there's something about, like, you know, places that are arid or dry getting, like, lots of rainfall, and then the ground not knowing what to do with it.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: So it's possible that, like, you know, the environment is different, and the falls come back, and then the— or the— maybe the falls come back magically even stronger, because this— if it is, in fact, a monkey's paw situation.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: I can definitely see that happening.
Amanda: Yeah. I mean, when it rains too much.
Eric: Like, well, that's kind— if I was, like, making a Marvel Comic, and I needed to, like, figure out what was gonna happen next for Batman and his friends or, like, for the Teen Titans, I could only—
Brandon: If this is a Marvel comic, does that mean that Umbi is Deadpool?
Eric: Yeah, Umbi is Deadpool, for sure. Congratulations.
Amanda: Scary.
Eric: But no, no, no. If I was writing a comic where, like, I had to keep it open-ended be so that someone could start a new arc, that's something interesting.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I don't know. That's cool. I don't know. I'm not saying yes or no to that, but that is an interesting idea that I can think about.
Brandon: I'm just also thinking about pawpaw fruits have, like, big, old giant seeds, and usually, like, three of them or so. And so I'm thinking of the monkey's paw instead of the fingers going down, it's like the seeds.
Eric: Oh, I like that.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Nice.
Brandon: Escaping, I don't know.
Eric: Yeah, like the seed— or the seed falling out of the fruit?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, Yeah.
Eric: That's really— that's very Jordan Peele of you.
Brandon: Jordan Bananapeele?
Eric: Yeah. I also said Marvel Comics and then I named two DC properties.
Julia: That's fine.
Brandon: I know you did.
Amanda: That was a test to see who would pause the podcast and tweet to you and who would wait for context. All right. So from the bottom of the bialy to the top, EepyFella wants to know, "Will Hothouse ever send someone to space? Has there ever been a space race? Will there be and who would it be between?"
Julia: See, I don't think there will ever be a space race— assuming the answer to the first question is yes. I don't think that there would be a space race, because no one is as technologically ahead of the game as Hothouse.
Amanda: Unless Overstalk just builds buildings tall enough to reach?
Julia: Ah, maybe.
Brandon: I don't— I— may— I mean, Eric, you tell us, but I get the feeling that these folks don't particularly care to go into space. I don't know. I— maybe that's just me, but—
Julia: Depends on our cosmology, I guess.
Eric: What is that Apple TV show that I really loved that was all about the space race?
Brandon: For All Mankind.
Eric: For All Mankind, yeah. You know, from watching For All Mankind— and I guess I'm not a space person as compared to— certainly compared to the other people at Multitude and Brandon. But, like, I know, like, how politically motivated the space race is.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: And it's like, yeah, going to space is a kind of— is a real human wonder thing, but I don't know if Greenfolk feel that way, because they have, like, a good relationship with the sun, you know?
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: So maybe they're, like, less— that's, like, not a thing Greenfolk care about as much as humans do. Also the political motivation, like, I'm not saying whether or not there is a secret world government conspiracy here on Earth, in the Earth prime that we're on, but like—
Brandon: Eric, are you part of it?
Eric: Yeah, they're called Jews, Brandon, but—
Julia: Space lasers, baby.
Amanda: Walked right into that.
Eric: Yeah, Brandon, you walked into that.
Brandon: I did, I did. I'm sorry.
Eric: I'm sorry. But I don't know if, like, having the Diamond Knot mitigate some of that. So it's like— let's— if we spill it— spin this out all the way and they— and think about, like, archetypically, right? If there is a technologically advanced country out there, whether it was the United States or Russia, or like a technocrat country that exists in a fictional world that you see in all of your fictions, right? What do they use their technology for, right? The United States and Russia did it to flex on each other and do the thing that humans like to do. But if there is, like, this kind of— if you need to go to the technology company to do the thing, then, like, they would much rather have control over things that their people want, much like what we were talking about with Hothouse having this, like, communicate— installing a communication system—
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: —for every country in the world.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Well, that makes me think that finding the salmon is the space race, because the space race is in part about— either like proving who's best, but also dominating resources.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: True.
Amanda: And that is absolutely what the countries in the Diamond Knot are attempting to do.
Julia: I can also see a situation where Hothouse wants to go to space just because to prove that they can. And then a Overstalk person discovers a text that says, "Actually, space is very important to the cosmology of Verda Stello."
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: "So we also have to compete to get to space first, so that Hothouse doesn't, I don't know, anger the planter or something."
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: And then Open Fields gets involved and sabotages that— because, you know, we don't need to be reaching that high.
Eric: I like what Amanda said, though. It's like we're inventing a new MacGuffin, like space as the MacGuffins.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: The moon as the MacGuffin.
Amanda: The moon is the salmon. The salmon is the moon. They're both made of cheese.
Julia: We actually don't know if there's— oh, no, we— we've established there's a moon in Verda Stello, because I've talked about it as like stars and moons and navigating through that.
Brandon: Wait, if the salmon is the moon and it's made of cream cheese and the salmon is locks, and we're on a bialy, Eric—
Amanda: We're the capers.
Brandon: We're the capers.
Amanda: Have we considered the capers as berries?
Brandon: We're doing a caper.
Eric: You're doing capers.
Brandon: We're doing a caper.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: Oh, shit.
Brandon: Oh, shit.
Amanda: Well, thanks for listening, everybody. No, I'm kidding.
Julia: Goodbye.
Brandon: Do we have a dilly dagger?
Amanda: Few more questions.
Brandon: God, it's all there. It's all there.
Julia: It's all happening.
Amanda: Few more questions. This is particularly, I think, well-suited to us from LoafObrett, "Seeing as there are multiple maze keys in existence, have some been made to use whisKEY?"
Brandon: I like this.
Eric: This is so good, I'm mad.
Brandon: Pretty good.
Eric: And I don't do this. I don't do the thing where I let people tell me missed jokes. I don't do the thing where I'm like, "Dang, I should have done that." That's awesome. And I can immediately think that imagine they're— as pirates looking for the fucking divine whiskey made out of the key that needs to be ha— first of all, you got to go in multiple times, because it's only one ear of corn at a time, right? You have to go in multiple times, and then you have to ferment it. Like, there's probably only one two bottles of this in existence.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: God, that is like a— that's a one shot waiting to happen.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: That's our Holy Grail quest.
Eric: Sure. Yeah.
Brandon: Ooh, yeah.
Amanda: Pretty good. Put them all in a barrel. Let them get funky in the bottom of your ship. So good.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Oh, my God. Troy wants the barrel. The door— Troy wants the angel share that's in the barrel that made this whiskey.
Julia: Wow.
Amanda: That's when Troy takes a little sip before bed.
Julia: Troy.
Amanda: Gives the barrel a little kiss, takes a little sip.
Eric: Troy sucking out a barrel before going to sleep.
Amanda: Question from friend of the show, Ivan, "What do Gloria's Glowing footprints look like?"
Julia: From the clue spell?
Amanda: From the clue spell.
Brandon: Does Gloria have feet or is Gloria like a slider? Like, does she slide along the ground like a worm?
Eric: I thought that we knew it was Gloria, because she's a slider, yeah.
Julia: Oh, okay. That's very funny.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Like a kind of slug trail.
Julia: She does a little wiggle.
Eric: Yeah. I thought it was really funny that, like, all of you have footprints, but Gloria just, like, slur— like someone drew a marker on the ground.
Julia: That's pretty funny.
Eric: Like, in the clue spell, there's, like, a highlighter line going everywhere.
Amanda: Basically. And here's one from Soupdumpling, "Is there any thread that any of the players wish they had pulled on that we didn't? Eric, is there a story element that, in hindsight, players could have pushed on that you really would have enjoyed creating more world-building around?"
Eric: I think this is a who can say. I want to— let's come back to this in the Afterparty at the end of the legends here, because—
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: —I don't know yet. There's still plenty of time to do stuff. I know that I've said, both multiple times, like, this is the last arc, we're going there. But I have no idea how long these things take or not take.
Julia: Right.
Eric: So like, we might end up hitting stuff that I don't know what we're going to hit or not, or things that we're—
Brandon: True.
Eric: —like going back to old notes and pulling them back out and fleshing them out, because we're actually doing it. So I can't really say, just yet.
Amanda: All right, fair enough.
Eric: I mean, unless you all have things that you're thinking of.
Julia: I am constantly regretting not pulling on certain strings as a player. Like, I'm constantly just like, "Man, I really should have gone back and asked more questions about that," or, "I really should have gone down that path and, like, seen— maybe that would have changed things." But also I have to live without regrets, man. I gotta live without regrets.
Amanda: You know, all we could do is choose the regrets that we have. You know? Look— choose a future, knowing that all the other ones are ones that we are okay let— letting go and sail bravely forward.
Julia: True.
Amanda: Anyway, question—
Julia: So no one else has any thoughts on that?
Amanda: Just me.
Eric: No, Julia is the only—
Brandon: No, I don't.
Eric: —one who stays up at night thinking about all the things she didn't do. I mean, you know, it's a lot of give and take. I know it's kind of a joke that I don't prepare, but, like, of course— but it's— I have to follow the threads you pull on. Like it's like driving down a highway more than anything else. Like you don't not take the exits that you take. It's just you follow the roads that you go down on, and then you see what you see. You know, the things that you wanted to know about became developed and then you continue to pull on new strings that were off of that new developments. So, you know, who even knows?
Amanda: I'm with you. Like, Julia, I definitely think about, like, obvious moments to, I don't know, roll a perception check that I didn't do. But the journey feels so customized to each step that we advance sort of down the plot that it's hard for me to say— not at the very end of the campaign, which, you know, will definitely return to this question, Soup, don't worry. What I wish I could have done.
Eric: There's just a big difference between this and, you know, other types of storytelling, video games, and also define discrete storytelling, like a book or a TV show or a movie. Because, like, you know, if you imagine this like a video game, and, like, when you're in a video game, only the place that you— only the stuff you can see is actually loaded. That's where they talk about, like draw distance and stuff like that, because it doesn't make any sense to load the entire game. That would destroy your computer or your Xbox, right?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So, you know, inherently, you're only seeing the things that you see, and there is a discrete things that get loaded in that because, like, all right, either you— if you go— try to go through a door and it's locked, either it's locked because you need to find the key, or it's locked because there's nothing behind it. There is nothing behind it. If you want to go through a door and you really want to go through that door, I need to make sure there's something behind that door. Like your choices inform what exists, because everything exists theoretically, but the players are the one who decides what exists and what doesn't, as opposed to me, discreetly, right, making the world, and then you run around in it.
Brandon: Yeah, that makes sense.
Eric: Like, there isn't some— there isn't like a side quest you missed that, you know, need to go back to, to 100% the game.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Makes sense to me. Speaking of other kinds of games, question from Sharpsnooter that I really enjoyed, "If you guys could put your current characters into the worlds of a different TTRPG, say, Blades in the Dark, Victorian crime vibes or roots, adorable woodland creatures, what would you like to see them in?" I want to see Troy in Smash Bros. I think that he would have a lot of fun, and if you comboed him with DK, they would have a bunch of barrel-related like combo moves.
Brandon: I like that.
Amanda: I think it'd be so funny.
Julia: Hmm, interesting. Interesting.
Eric: Putting Troy into a fighting game, especially like a cartoony platforming fighter, would be really funny.
Amanda: It's not a TTRPG. My actual answer is a 2D, you know, Nintendo era platformer.
Julia: Makes sense. It checks out.
Brandon: I think, as everyone has been chanting outside my window for weeks now, Umbi in space, Umbi in space, Umbi in space.
Amanda: Just imagine a space suit, just a circle.
Eric: Umbi in a mech. Let's put Umbi in a mech.
Amanda: You know what? His mech would look like those single, hardboiled egg gadgets, you know? Like the ones where, like, you put a single egg in it, it makes a hardboiled egg?
Brandon: Yeah. Really good.
Julia: Aw.
Eric: It's biometrically calibrated to Umbi's form.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: He's drift compatible with Bartlett.
Amanda: Julia?
Eric: That's fucking stupid.
Julia: I think— so my, like, real answer is Cammie would fit really well into the world of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, which is a game—
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: Oh, sure.
Julia: —from Possum Creek Games. However, the idea of putting Cammie into the Good Society and having, like, a regency romance with Cammie would also be extremely funny.
Brandon: That's really god.
Amanda: Hell yeah, dude.
Brandon: Yeah, that's really funny. I like that.
Eric: I love the good society thing. It's like, I don't want Cammie to be in a cozy game. I feel like I— we need Cammie's ability to, like, break and unearth the darkness.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That I really— I would really, really enjoy. It would be really funny if Cammie was in Good Society and then, like, casts an eighth level spell.
Julia: Yeah. Agreed.
Amanda: I really enjoyed Cammie's blend of politeness and welcoming with, like, absolute power, and so I agree. I like her best in a non-cozy setting.
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: I am now remembering, though, that there are Carly Rae Jepsen one shots, and I don't know if y'all have seen the music video for The Longest Time or whatever, with Rufus Wainwright. And I'm imagining Umbi as Rufus Wainwright in that, like, white suit, just singing a duet Carly Rae Jepsen is also very good.
Eric: The tabletop RPG I want to see Umbi in the most is a Carly Rae Jepsen music video.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I get it.
Amanda: Well, now I'm picturing Umbi Instead of Jack Antonoff, like, lurking on the side of a Lorde concert and that's also very funny.
Eric: Umbi is married to Margaret Qualley.
Amanda: Who knew?
Brandon: No, Umbi doesn't suck. It's fine.
Amanda: All right. And a final sort of point of discussion observation that we had again in the Discord, big plug, it's a great place to be and have these discussions. So Lyle, from the Internet, posed, "I feel like this campaign has received fewer Eric, what the fucks than in the past. Do you feel like you're becoming less unhinged, or you maybe desensitized us as your audience to your absurdity?" And Lyle also acknowledged, which I think is just really sensitive and important that, Eric, you might be feeling undernourished because you subsist on the Eric, what the fuck reactions, so like, you know, can we help you?" But then Soupdumpling replied and said, "In retrospect, I recently listened to the whole of the campaign again, and Eric, what the hell? There's Troy's family reveal, the Key with A Gaze thing, Threelips being the traitor, the locks to the salmon being in the prison." There have been a lot of reveals that maybe because we're in it, we're not feeling. So I'd love to know what our players and what Eric think of that sort of, like, question response.
Julia: I don't think that there are less what the fucks. I think it's just we, as players, have been like, "Ah, yes, the drama of the world we're currently in." We're so immersed into it, like you said, Amanda. Like, we're just like, "Yes, of course, Troy's family and the betrayal of his sister and Threelips and everything like that."
Amanda: Right.
Julia: Like, it's— we established from the beginning that this is a pretty, like, big reveal campaign—
Eric: Hmm.
Julia: —so I don't know.
Brandon: I would guess that it's being acclimated to the what the fucks the audience, especially those who have been listening for a while, because, yeah, they're definitely in there, you know?
Julia: I think it's also you what the fuck more when you have a setting that is set in basically the real world—
Amanda: I totally agree.
Julia: —as opposed—
Eric: True. True.
Julia: —to a big fantasy world where literally anything can happen.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I totally agree. Like, it felt so different to be like, "Oh, sorry, you know, Val's friend is in mortal danger when Val is, like, your neighbor." Right? And like feels so relatable to you, versus in a world where we're all plant and bug people. We are pirates. It's in the, you know, style of a JRPG or an anime. It makes a lot more sense then for someone to, like, have a sword or surprise you, or be a stowaway. Like, those are all still high highs, but I go in expecting a certain level or kind of that sort of reveal. The last time I felt like a true, genuine shock was from players, because I had kept the secret of Troy being a prince, which feels like a million years ago. But that's because I personally am uncomfortable keeping secrets from my loved ones, and I felt very uncomfortable keeping the—
Julia: You did do that.
Amanda: —secret from Brandon and Julia.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: What do you think, Eric?
Eric: Yeah, it's an interesting point. I think that having a fictional world, it definitely contributes to that. I think I subsist more on the audience's what the fucks more than the three of you.
Brandon: Yeah, for sure.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But— and also, like, I definitely felt myself in the end of Campaign Two, and maybe in Monster of the Week as well, swinging more for the fences in that I need to, like, bang it out like that. And I think that has more to do with, like, where actual play was in 2021 and 2022, especially with, like, the rise of Dimension 20. Everyone starting an actual play, and me feeling like I need to defend my turf, as people were like, "Wow, actual play started in 2021. That's so crazy." I guess I just care about that less, because I think the whole form has plateaued to that. It's understanding, like, there isn't the massive boom that happened, like, right before and then through the pandemic.
Amanda: It's like stabilized a lot through Campaign Three.
Eric: Definitely, definitely—
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: —stabilized. So, like, I'm feeling a lot more about, like, just doing my thing. I think another thing I've been thinking about is, like, how much the LA-ification of actual play and it being like a portal for people to, like, become voice actors for video games, or it's like— or being a parasocial machine for someone to attach to their media. Well, Join the Party, in so many ways, was like the first Multitude show.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It was like— Spirits was, obviously, our first podcast, but it being— Join the Party being like an intentional collaboration from all of us, of starting the show with intention, and then it becoming, like, where we do a lot of the things that we do as a company, and that becoming the first thing we do, instead of like the last thing we do, which I feel like a lot of people have done when they start a popular YouTube channel and then add an actual play podcast. So, yeah, I don't know. I feel just really— I guess I'm feeling like I'm in my bag a little bit more, just, like, doing my thing. And it's nice doing a long campaign, while I think everyone is doing short campaigns now. I think that to the LA-ification of everything, it's like, why are we mirroring actual play podcasts like streamers? Like, why is everything 6, 7, 8, 10 episodes? I don't really understand why. That doesn't even make sense for the medium, I feel. I was thinking about this a lot because I was listening to an episode of 52 Pickup, which is a comic book podcast from our friends over at Aftermath. And they were talking about the new Batman show that came out, the one where Batman is, like, set in the 1940s.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I'm very interested in it, because I really love all those cartoons, and I want to watch it, but they were like, why is it 10 episodes? The Batman Beyond seasons and the Batman: The Animated Series, they were 32 episodes long. And yes, they—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —were 15 minutes. There were, like, two in an episode sometimes. But like— but still, they were long enough to go explore and do character shit. And I feel like that's what actual play is for, because it's even slower of getting things across, because of the dual paths of the story and the players— and the players and the DM playing together, there needs to be a lot more time to do stuff and explore and have fun. So I'm really happy that we are doing 60 episodes of this campaign. Spoiler alert, I know you just listen to 58, but there's more than 60 episodes in this campaign.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Because there's a lot to do. I'm thinking about that like— this was inspired by One Piece that has a kajillion episodes and—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —so much world-building, right?
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So I'm just like— I don't— I'm try— I think that I'm resisting maybe the way, the, quote-unquote, "professionalization" re at Hollywood-ification, LA-ification of the space, and just doing our own thing, so I'm not trying to swing for fence— kind of like fences like that. Like I'm what the fucking I hope for you all, and I feel like it's good, but I guess I'm— I care more about, like, leading my players slowly in a world that makes sense in between and also laying— as you all know, I think I'm doing quite a lot in this campaign, laying a lot of clues for you to find later on when you relisten to this episode and you're gonna be like, "Oh, Eric was teasing this reveal." Even if it's like— and I don't really mean this, but like, a seven out of 10 reveal, a six out of 10 reveal. No one's, like, screaming, ripping their shirt off, and saying, "Fuck you, Eric." Which I've seen quite a lot on streams and actual play videos. Like, yeah, maybe my— maybe the reactions are, like, six or seven, but like, looking back, you're like, "Oh, Eric's been teasing this for 30 episodes," if you really think about it.
Julia: But also, like, shock value is not— does not equal quality, you know?
Eric: Well, I think that's part of it, is like there's—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —a new discussion we've been having for a very long time, how you can't win tabletop RPGs for a very, very long time.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I want to give a shout out to Sophia Ricciardi who does Rolling with Difficulty, who invited me on an episode and as— our friends in Philly. We're gonna— we pit— we tried to pitch this panel to PAX U about winning tabletop RPGs in 2024. I think that winning in tabletop RPGs is being the player who gets the clip, who gets the TikTok clip, who gets the Instagram clip. And that is the proliferation of everyone trying to be the most chaotic thing to ruin everything, and how everyone needs to be improv masters, which I— to roll with the punches and assume your GM is going to let you do whatever you want to get the clip. That's what I think is winning now, is being like the fan favorite character who gets the clips who does the most ridiculous thing. And I don't know if I agree with that. Like there is no winning. Even in this media landscape, I still don't think there's winning, and I'd rather do this long form storytelling thing that we're doing instead.
Amanda: For me, winning is every time someone says that they're relistening to a campaign, that it feels like fall outside, so they're gonna relisten to Campaign Two, that their, you know, kids going to school, so they're gonna listen to the Camp-Paign, or, you know, something in Lord of the Rings just— hit just right, that they wanna relisten to Campaign One. Like Eric's watching—
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: —White Collar right now, a series that I really love and, like, I'm constantly rewatching elementary like these shows with procedurals that have, you know, like, seven seasons plus, or Supernatural or stuff like that, where just, like, it feels like home to be so in and invested in those episodes. And maybe you're given emotional reaction to each episode, doesn't like spike the, you know, cardiology meter. But over time, like you— you're— you care about that shit a lot. And when we're lucky enough to have folks react that way, or talk about our universes that way, that, to me, is the best.
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, we— I mean, maybe we're just being nostalgic, but like, yeah, we grew up with weekly appointment television.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: Which is what podcasts are.
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: Indeed.
Brandon: You know?
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Indeed.
Eric: Or an— or, you know, going all the way back is like incredibly raw— long running television shows that take time to explore character stuff instead of just shotgunning plot.
Brandon: Right, right.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: For sure. All right, folks, I love this discussion. Thank you all for your questions. And finally, folks, can we just gather around? I just have to spoil the plank real quick. Come on over.
Brandon: Oh, do I have to be on the plank or—
Amanda: No, you should just cheer as others walk off it.
Brandon: Oh, okay. Great.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yar.
Amanda: So first from Librarychick, "Will we see DiAnnalyse team up with our crew at any point? She says she doesn't work with family, but she is working for the Diamond Knot, which involves Hyperion. Is this a hint that she is pulling some Craggish politics move and secretly working against Hyperion?"
Brandon: I gotta tell you, Librarychick, who the fuck knows, man?
Amanda: Who can say, my friends? Who can say?
Julia: Who can talk of— to the—
Brandon: Who can say?
Julia: —motivations of a spy?
Amanda: Not me. From Shelby, "Will we ever know what the hell is that Lake Encounter? How do they view and depict the salmon? Do they have a giant blackberry dragon kite that flies around?"
Julia: Oh. Hmm.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Ooh.
Amanda: That's a—
Brandon: Who can say?
Julia: Maybe.
Amanda: That's a, who can say? Who can say?
Brandon: Who can say?
Amanda: I'll let you decide what that emphasis means. And finally, from Sebolicious, "If the salmon isn't real, who came up with such a creature that couldn't possibly exist, aka Avatar: The Last Airbender, Animal rules?"
Julia: Who can say?
Amanda: Who can say?
Brandon: Hmm, very interesting.
Amanda: Folks, check out the dice at jointhepartypod.com/dice. Join the Patreon if you've listened all the way to the end of this Afterparty and want to talk about these kinds of things with other people who love it, patreon.com/jointheparty. And folks, we will see you on Tuesday with a brand-new episode.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Wow.
Brandon: Wee! Go vote.
Amanda: Say bye, players. Say bye, players.
Julia: Later.
Eric: Bye.
Brandon: Bye.
Amanda: May your rolls turn ever upward.
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