New campaign, new setting, new Join the Party! Let’s learn about Verda Stello, the type of folk who live there, and where exactly this story is going to take place. And even though we’re returning to D&D, this isn’t the vanilla game that comes right out of the book…
Read into the Traditions mechanics, the countries of Verda Stello, and the other changes we’ve made to D&D for C3 here!
Upcoming Schedule
- February 7: Player Character Reveal
- February 14: Worldbuilding Game
- February 21: C3 Introduction Afterparty
- February 28: Story episode 1!!
Sponsors
- Witchy Cakes, the newest Kickstarter by our friends at Mage Hand Press! Back the project before February 16, 2023 at 11am ET by clicking here: kickstarter.com/projects/magehandpress/witchy-cakes
- Brilliant, the best way to learn math, science, and computer science interactively. The first 200 people to visit brilliant.org/jointheparty will get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription.
- Betterhelp, where you can get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod
- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod
- facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod
- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod
- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com
- merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch
Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: 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, this is Join The Party, where we are starting a brand new campaign. Are we ready for campaign three?
[Everyone screams]
Brandon: [screams] That was both a terrified scream, and excited scream.
[Amanda screams]
Eric: If you're new to Join The Party, we scream a lot.
Julia: We're screamers baby.
[Eric laughs]
Amanda: Oh, no. Oh, no.
Julia: [sings] I stand by it.
Amanda: Is this the new energy, is this what we're doing?
Eric: I think so, because you know we are—we're rootin’ and tootin’ when we're out here, out on the high seas, because campaign three, we're doing pirates, baby.
[Julia screams]
Brandon: What?! What?!
Eric: Brandon, you knew the whole time.
Brandon: I did know the whole time.
Amanda: We—we did talk about it. But saying it on microphone is—is a whole nother thing.
Eric: Yeah, I have a lot written down. And I wanted to do an episode where I tell you all things you don't know. So we get— I get your true reactions. But I also want to like set the scene of what we all know together to start, of like what's— what things we throw in the big stew that comes together for a campaign when you do something like you talk about it and is intentionally put together?
Brandon: Mhm, I’m into that.
Amanda: Yeah, we had a meeting a few months ago, where we talked about what's important to us, what we are interested in, what we will be stoked to do in campaign three.
Eric: Remember, we'd started this all the way back when we were planning the campaign two.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: We were still deciding whether or not we wanted to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons again, or a different one. And then like Monster The Week attached to summer camp, and that came out of that. So we have written down all these ideas. Didn't you just look up what date that thing was? Wasn’t it like November 2021?
Amanda: It was.
Eric: Oh my god. So we've been kicking around these ideas for quite a long time. I can't remember who wanted what. But I feel like all three—
Brandon: I do.
Eric: —we wanted something.
Amanda: We do. We do.
Eric: Okay.
Julia: Oh yeah.
Amanda: Julia, you go first, you knew exactly what you wanted.
Julia: Well, cha girl wanted pirates, and cha girl got pirates, apparently..
Amanda: Yay.
Julia: Brandon, how about you, what did you want?
Brandon: I think I suggested like Redwall/ James and the Giant Peach/ that kind of like, small animal thing.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: There's like a bucolic fantasy, is kind of how I put it together, like animals and, you know, feeling like your things are large as you're doing it, and I think starting a fantasy world. Also Brandon told us, he demanded, that it was claymation. And he's replaced by Michael Chiklis, who's going to be playing, playing in our thing. So this is Brandon's last episode.
Julia: Yep. I'm really excited to meet Michael Chiklis, though, he seems like a cool dude.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. Can I tell you, he only wants to play a guy with a shield?
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Huh, interesting.
Amanda: It's actually still voiced by Brandon. But mo-capped by Chiklis.
Julia: That make sense. That checks out.
Amanda: Our budget’s a little bit higher this season. And I was really interested in a kind of like, I don't know, a frontiers narrative or like a kind of wild west vibe, but that wasn't wrapped up in like colonization. So it's a delicate balance to strike. But something that was really interesting to me, is the idea of not having a home base. I think we did that so well in Lake Town City, and even now in the Camp-paign, and to a lesser extent in campaign one as well. But I liked the idea of kind of being on the move of having a ship, or a fleet or truck, Mad Max, like I wasn't sure exactly what form I was most interested in. But I like the idea of us being permanently mobile and not kind of having a home that we know really well.
Brandon: Love it.
Eric: Amanda, is it okay, that I'm going to say that we're doing the exact opposite of what you—of what you wanted?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Okay, okay. Just letting you know. [laughs] I want everyone to know, I did take in what Amanda said, and I didn't just say no, but we'll talk about that.
Amanda: But listen, I mean that's what I appreciate about this process, is all of us were saying like, hey, these are things we're interested in. And also, Eric, you're the one who has to make it. So like, tell us what you're interested in also.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: And you know, now we have a fun mix of like, Eric kind of gave us the broad strokes. And we all said, love it. And now we get to hear details about what this world's gonna be.
Eric: Yes. So bringing together all that stuff, the pirates, Amanda's like idea, you know, like, here's the thing, cowboys are just dry pirates.
Brandon: That's what I’ve always said.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Famously, famously, yeah.
Eric: Yeah. Because it's like, you have a caravan, or you have a ship, and you have stuff that you can move around. But I think Amanda brought up that idea of like having a home base. And what does that mean necessarily? I think we've had like, ambiguous home bases before especially campaign one and two, campaign one was like the castle in Fidopolis and then Dr. Morrow’s house in campaign two, but like, that wasn't like, there weren’t any mechanical things behind it. It just was kind of the clubhouse, the place where you all hang out. So I started thinking about all that stuff. So would you like to hear the introduction to our world here?
Julia: Yes, please.
Amanda: Yes, please.
Eric: Okay.
Brandon: I was gonna make a joke about me thinking that Julia met internet pirates. But the moment’s been lost.
Eric: No, Brandon edit it in, please.
Julia: Gone to time.
Amanda: You can say internet pirates, are just 2D pirates.
Eric: Brandon, you wouldn't download a campaign.
Brandon: That's what I was waiting for.
Amanda: Our listeners would.
Julia: Aye.
Eric: They’re downloading a campaign right now.
Amanda: Right now.
Eric: Okay, here we go. Welcome to Verda Stello. V E R D A S T E L L O, the great green ringed world.
Brandon: Ooooh.
Eric: This fantastical land is populated by approximately human size plant and bug people.
Brandon and Julia: Yaaay.
Eric: Of course we can give or take the two foot tall little fruit folks who are running around, and the giant vine greats that are beeping and bopping and all over the place. You know, I think 2 to 10 feet, anything within the medium sizing of Dungeons and Dragons. We're also playing Dungeons and Dragons, but we're gonna come back to that in a second.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: The plant and bug people, we're calling them the Greenfolk.
Brandon and Amanda: Yay.
Julia: Greenfolk, yes.
Eric: Greenfolk.
Amanda: Julia, I think we went to highschool with Verda Stello.
Julia: That's such an Italian name. Go on.
Eric: Yeah, she lived [laughs] she lived near the tracks. She—she hosted us all for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. There are four species of Greenfolk, flowers, produce, greenery, and bugs. Just to give a quick description of what these folks might look like. The flowers might be a bunch, or a bloom of flowers, maybe something like a wild flower like phlox—
Brandon: A bouquet?
Eric: Either like a bouquet or a bush of it.
Amanda: A cluster.
Eric: Yeah, cluster, or it could be like the sunflower from Plants versus Zombies. It's just kind of like, flower stem body. You know, everyone I think has-- is vaguely humanoid in this way, like two hands, two feet, upright. But again, we can—we can be incredibly flexible on this. This is just like general ideation of this. So flowers can be a bouquet or a cluster, or just one flower. Produce, I think in my head was mostly the fruit or vegetable. It's not head, it's like full body. So like imagine like a big apple person with like a little head, and a little hand, a little foot, little foot in the face.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Somewhere on it.
Julia: Oh my gosh.
Amanda: Big melon, big melon, big melon.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: But now I just imagined a man with an apple head, and it's very funny.
Julia: Also very funny.
Amanda: It's like saying, don't think of an elephant, like now Brandon is just gonna think of a man with an apple head.
Brandon: Exactly.
Eric: But what if a man was full apple?
Amanda: Even better.
Eric: What if he was only apple?
Amanda: Even better.
Eric: And I know that's, that's what haunts you.
Brandon: Oh, Eric, that's much better.
Amanda: There's that painting you can look at. That's like that.
Eric: When Brandon gets sleep paralysis, there's a big apple with a face sitting at the edge of his bed.
Brandon: That's true.
Eric: So yeah, it can be fruit, veggie, anything that has some sort of I mean, I—I'm not gonna—there's no distinction. There's no gender of fruit and vegetable. It's just it is what it is here. Greenery is truly all over the place. You can slap some limbs on to whatever plant you envision, whether they're vines, or grasses or anything, just put a little face on there and you're good to go. And then of course, the bugs are based off of bugs themselves, though they can have plant like features with sprouts or grasses or any sort of greenery kind of coming out of them in this way. I want to make very specific that these four species are even within the society of the green folk. I wrote down that in the creation myth, when the planter grew the first seeds of everything, one seed went off to see the world when it kept its seed on its back and it walked around that became the bug people.
Julia: That’s so sweet!
Amanda: Like a Bulbasaur.
Julia: It's so cute.
Eric: Yes, just like a Bulbasaur, Amanda.
Amanda: Sorry, Eric. If there's not fantasy racism in this non-race hierarchy. I don't know if I can play this campaign.
Eric: We're gonna come back to it, Amanda, we're gonna put a pin in this, we’re gonna put a pin in that but yes, so like, I am only dividing it by I think what the frequency all of these other different species of Greenfolk. I think it's just evenly distributed. But really, it doesn't super matter other than what they look like, and how many limbs maybe they have, you know, maybe you'll have six if you're above, but really, that's the only difference, but we're gonna come back to that.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So Verda Stello is set in a massive ring. There is nothingness outside of the ring, but it's just like imagine one big circular landmass.
Brandon: We're talking flat? We talking donut?
Eric: Yeah, It's like a donut.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: There's—there's nothing on the outside. It has heft, but you can fall off the end of the world.
Julia: Oh, no.
Eric: Like that way. You can follow it when you go out off the donut. You can fall off the end of the world.
Amanda: Guys, it's a bialy. A bialy.
Eric: There is a hole in the middle. There are various environments spread throughout. It's been rather equally throughout the four quadrants. But some of the different countries that occupy the four quadrants of Verda Stello might have different environments associated with the type of people they are. So they kind of like have their theme, as it is.
Brandon: Love it.
Julia: Cool. Cool.
Eric: But there's—there's everything. There's deserts, there's mountains, there's forests, there's plains, there's maybe there's some Arctic thrown in there as well. There's all types of environm—environments in these places. If you're envisioning the—if you're envisioning this like land mass donut with four quadrants is kind of a combination of two Mario Kart 64 battle stages. It’s like the donut, and then there's that block fort which is the one with the four different colored squares everywhere. That's how I combine them, smoosh them together in my head.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Gotcha.
Eric: Now ringing the center of the land donut, of Verda Stello, is a massive waterfall called the Cascade.
Brandon: Yeaaah.
Amanda and Julia: Ooohhh.
Eric: It kind of comes out of nowhere, there's no peak of the Cascade. It just fall—there is just like a wall of water that encircles the inner donut.
Brandon: Is it like a circle of a waterfall? Or does it have like a 2d sort of plane?
Eric: No, you're—you're correct, Brandon, it is a circle, it is a waterfall circle.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Now is the water coming from above or it's falling below or both?
Eric: It's coming from above, falling below, however, like it is too tall to see the top. It kind of almost comes from the sky.
Julia: Gotcha.
Eric: From the clouds, because of the massive cloud cover. For those of you that have been near Niagara Falls, or whatever big waterfall is in your neck of the woods. You know what I'm talking about, this is massive just fogginess around there, so it's hard to see. And of course the thing is about the Cascade is that it is the heart of Verda Stello, it provides the water that gets turned into food and drink all over the land. The thing about it because we are all—and here's the other thing why we're doing plants is that all three of my friends here love plants dearly.
Julia: It's true.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: You can't water your plants too much or they'll flood themselves, and they'll get sick, much like you can't-- the green folk cannot drink too much pure water or you'll die. Like you can't subsist on pure water alone so it's converted to sugar water or alcohol, or sap or whatever other things that are for the various foods they eat all over the world.
Brandon: Love it. Love it.
Eric: That's also the reason why you can't-- people have not investigated the Cascade all that much because it's— it's a ton of running water you would get destroyed real hard and would be bad.
Brandon: So like, to us on the ground, it's almost just like there's a column—giant column of water with no beginning, no end.
Amanda: I’m picturing like a shower curtain. But yeah, it's solid water.
Eric: Yeah, It's a giant—exactly Brandon, it's this giant column of water. It then feeds into this massive almost a moat, but it's like a lake that where it all leads to and then it kind of comes out, it's the head of all rivers and lakes. Is this water cascading down that people then you know-- someone bust in and talk about agriculture and irrigation for like five minutes. You know what I mean?
Julia: Remember that picture from your like Earth science textbook from like sixth grade, it's like that.
Amanda: Yeah, that's where all tributaries stem from.
Brandon: That's true. Remember in the theatrical trailer for the movie, The Eternals.
Julia: Brandon, no, I don't.
Eric: I also don’t.
Brandon: It's like that.
Amanda: Guys, I fucked up. It's not a Bialy, it's a Flagel, it's a flat bagel.
Julia: Ahhh.
Eric: Ohh.
Amanda: It's a flat bagel.
Eric: And if you fall off the flagel, you die.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: No.
Amanda: Just like in real life. Those things are sharp.
Eric: To give all of you of course, some food world building immediately. I feel like—
Julia: Thank you.
Eric: The way that people consume neutral nutrients, how they eat and drink. It's usually through liquids. I have this idea of like people putting their root feet into liquids, into like little bowls that are low on the ground. And that's how tables are made.
Amanda: So cute.
Julia: That's so cute.
Brandon: I love that. I was gonna ask, is there like a hydroponic city and like everyone else is soil or like, how do you?
Eric: That's a good question. I think everyone has the ability to walk around, you know, dining room tables are like a foot off the ground. So everyone kind of like lifts their foot and puts into it.
Julia: And then it just pours in whatever the quote-unquote “dinner” is.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: That’s awesome.
Brandon: When we'd like reproduce, so we grow new little baby seedlings, I'm sure there's one city that does this hydroponically.
Eric: And 20 minutes into this podcast, we already have our first slash fiction, congratulations.
Julia: Yay we did it.
Amanda: No, but it makes a ton of sense, like if you leave your plants standing in water, they'll die, they can't like sleep in that water. But for babies just like they have to you know, have milk constantly. The baby seedlings have to—have to live in their little pots till they're ready to go.
Brandon: I just wanted to give you that little thing to chew on, and put in your world if you want it, Eric.
Eric: Yes, there are cities--I haven't figured out exactly how these cities kind of like look. In my head they kind of—they all wear clothes in so many ways and like have shoes. So I wonder if there's like a ritual between like taking off your shoes when you go into someone's house, because you assume that there's going to be a food eating. You know, like I don't necessarily—I feel like we're crossing the plane into like it's not all plants, but the people are plants you know in a very Redwall situation is like you—what are things made out of? We're still kind of figuring out, but I don't know if like the row—I don't think that they're every—maybe like when you go to sleep you just got to root yourself into some soil that you have. But I don't know—that's what I'm thinking is like I feel like the people wear—they definitely wear clothes. I wasn't sure about shoes, but I could assume if it is an adventure story that we're doing they wear like boots, and shoes and stuff.
Brandon: You don't want us to be nude, Eric?
Eric: If you want our second piece of slash fiction, that’s fine--
Julia: So quickly.
Amanda: Yeah, that makes sense to me like normally, you know, the roots are vulnerable and like that's what you use to like take in nutrients, and so it makes sense to be clothed if you're going to be out and about mobile outside of soil, whereas plants normally would be in our world. And then I love that idea of like, you know, for hospitality sake, there's maybe like a washing ritual and then you know, you have at least like mild, you know, commonplace drink available to people when they're at your house if they need sustenance.
Julia: Cobblers make so much money off the bug people though, because they have to have so many boots.
Eric: But they look tight as hell.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: The bug people are the fashion people—
Julia: Hell yeah.
Amanda: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.
Eric: They love fashion.
Julia: Not the flowers, the bugs.
Amanda: I'm picturing like butterfly club kids with like, all kinds of like cool strappy, you know, material for the wings to shine.
Julia: Yes. Incredible.
Amanda: Oh, my gosh.
Brandon: Just to be clear for my pedant brain as well, like you're including all types of numbers of feet. Like arachnids are not technically bugs. But like they're included right, Eric?
Eric: Correct. Yes. But I think that—
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Like, again, I really— I know that I set this up that it's like there's a bunch of plant people and then there are bugs. I thought it'd be cool to include bugs as well, because I know, bugs look tight as hell. So I do think that yes, any sort of insect or what I—oh, I don't know enough about--
Amanda: What a kid would call a creepy crawly.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You know, if you showed something to a fifth grader, and they tol— actually know that fifth grader might tell you—tell you what for.
Julia: A five year old. You showed a five year old.
Eric: And you said, Is this a bug? And they say yes, it counts.
Amanda: Nice.
Eric: And then of course, they have the plants expressions.
Brandon: I did just imagine showing it to a fifth grade Julia, and that Julia being like, no, you dumb ass.
Julia: Arachnid.
Eric: It's an arachnid.
Julia: Count the legs. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Arachnid.
Amanda: They both have thoraxes, but that does not mean it is a bug.
Eric: Okay, so the Cascade, as Brandon said, it is perpetual. The Cascade has fallen perpetually for a long, long time in this column, of this 360 column of waterfall. But then it began to slow down.
Julia: Oh no.
Eric: The waterflow trickled off, and then it slowed down more. And then it started going--- like it stopped on particular days.
Amanda: Nooo.
Eric: And then it would came back. And now it's like, like a faucet that sputtering. The water would fall slowly every day. And then every other day, and then weekly. And now it is a random trickle.
Julia: That seems bad. cosmology wise.
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: Yeah. Seems like a thing that someone's got to figure out.
Eric: Now, here's the interesting thing. Once the Cascade had stopped, the Green Folk saw what separated the inside of the ring. It was a great salt water sea, dotted with incredible, weird, and wild islands, as far as the eye could see.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I completely forgot about the pirate part. I was so excited about the donut.
Eric: As the cascade slowed, the green folk found 13 carvings into stone, left at the bottom of the moat of the— carved—[laughs] Sorry, Amanda is gestating too fast, she’s distracting me.
Julia: It's so cool, I don't blame her.
Eric: The Green Folk found 13 carvings into stones at the bottom of what was—what was once the cascade basin. I don't know if anyone has seen, if you've looked at like the current droughts that are happening in our world.
Amanda: Ohh. Ohh sure, Eric, everyday.
Eric: There are like drought stones that were left by pre-civilizations or early civilizations in like, you know, on the Danube near France, and in Europe specifically. And there are these like things called—I think they're called drought stones or famine stones. And basically, like people have carved into it and said, If the water gets below this line, we have a problem, basically.
Julia: Oh no.
Brandon: I did not know that, that's cool.
Eric: Yes. This is what I was im—imagining when I was doing this. Like literally someone carved this into stone. And then all of a sudden the water receded, and you see it and it's like, you see this terrible thing in here. And this is what's carved onto each one of the stones. The water will slow to fall, but the tides are turning. Find the infinite lake to replenish the world and the salmon who will grant you a wish of whatever you desire.
Amanda: What?!
Brandon: Magic Salmon, magic salmon.
Julia: Salmon of knowledge.
Julia and Amanda: Salmon of knowledge.
Eric: I want to make a point. No one knows what a salmon is.
Julia: They’re all like what the fuck is that word?
Eric: What’s a salmon? There are like cryptozoologists and linguists trying to analyze what salmon means in this like pre-common language. This marks the event called the ships that ride the tide, or better known as the Tide. And what do you call folks who go out onto some saltwater and boats and look for adventure? Well you call them pirates.
Brandon and Amanda: Yeaaaah.
Julia: Arrghh.
Eric: This story is set 50 years after the beginning of the Tide, as everyone is continuously looking for the infinite lake and the salmon that grants wishes, and the 50 years that happened after the Cascade stopped running.
Brandon: Fucking love it.
Julia: Oh my gosh.
Brandon: Is the— the—the what did you call it, a Flagel?
Amanda: Yeah, a flagel. It's a flat bagel.
Brandon: Is the Flagel and now the ocean in the middle of it so large, like if you were on one side you couldn't see the landmass on the other side?
Eric: Exactly.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Yes, it is--saltwater sea, even if you're standing on the side of it. You know, even if we're standing on the side of the Mediterranean, or a really— or a great lake, or anything, it's like you can't really see the other side. It's very large. And no matter where you're standing in the center of the donut, you cannot see the other side. After 50 years, no one has found the infinite lake, and the salmon that grants wishes. So people are still looking fervently as the water from the Cascade is starting to finally, all the reserves are drying out.
Julia: Oh no.
Brandon: Is there a heated debate amongst the green folk, whether it's pronounced sallmon or salmon?
Eric: Brandon, now there is.
Julia: It must!
Eric: Let's write that down, different people say salmon or salmon, a 100%.
Amanda: And a couple, Salmon.
Eric: Sal—salamon, people think it's a god.
Amanda: That's true. I mean, we haven't mentioned any marine creatures. So how could you possibly have a frame of reference for what that is?
Brandon: Exactly.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So yeah, this is the setting.
Amanda: Oh my god, I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my mind. I'm losing.
Eric: This is the introduction. This is where we’re starting this story.
Brandon: Very Good.
Eric: Now I have more to say. But I would like to take a pause here for all of us to kind of talk about why we're returning to Dungeons and Dragons. And what we're doing that's different, now that we're returning to the game.
[theme]
Eric: Hey, this is Eric in the present tense. We actually recorded this episode at the end of September 2022. Even before we recorded the One Shot Derby episodes, if you can believe that. That means that this episode, what we recorded, happened before the open gaming license debacle with Wizards of the Coast, as well as their move to change the word Race for Species. But it was not really like a full change of what it meant. It was more of like a find and replace in all of their books. What's funny is that this doesn't really change anything that I or the rest of the Join the Party folks say, other than I'm like, oh, it's really novel that we're gonna use species for our upcoming game. Wizards of the Coast has been a bad steward of Dungeons and Dragons for a very long time. And the corporation that owns them, Hasbro, only is using them to make gobs, and gobs, and gobs of money. Even as we use it to express ourselves with storytelling. The game they're selling you is not the game that we play at our tables, both me and you, the listener. And it's imperative that we keep this corporation's feet to the fire, which you know, I will be doing on social media and on this podcast, and I know that the rest of the Join the Party folks will be doing as well. I'm only here to point that out, to say that there might be a little bit of dissonance, but not a lot because Wizards of the Coast continues to fuck up. Now listen to the next part, and it will all make sense. Back to it.
[theme]
Eric: I did miss playing D&D, to be honest, I miss—I miss me rolling dice.
Amanda: I have missed that too. When we started Monster of the Week, I bought you two big D6, because you have a big D20. And you're like, that's very sweet of you. I don't need these.
Julia: That's very sweet of you. I don't do any rolling. It's all on you, motherfuckers.
Amanda: You rolling, protecting the roll from me, you know with your hand and then giggling is the thing I definitely missed.
Julia: We—we also missed that.
Eric: Yeah. And I think that like you know, as much as I love Monster of the Week, and I love powered by the apocalypse games. Dungeons and Dragons is the best game that we've seen so far, obviously, in the mainstream of it, to tell a very large story, a very large campaign that goes in various directions. And we're doing a ton of stuff here. Like we're going to be doing pirates, but there's some other mechanics we want to throw in here. And there's things that we're going to push in different directions to make this turn into the story of what we're looking for. Like definitely there's going to be ship combat, like you're gonna have your own ship, for sure.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And the PCS is going to be interacting with the stuff. But obviously, we're laying out this homebrewed stuff. You might have heard me say species and not race, because I've made some changes that I really want to address here. And It's Important as we're playing Dungeons and Dragons in 2022 and 2023, and beyond.
Brandon: First of all, the Greenfolk, all Jewish.
Eric: Yes, especially-- I also really wanted to come back to a fantasy world. I missed it from campaign one, I avoided it because I wanted to tell a human story, which felt very important in the world we were living in, in 2018, 2019, talking about like people in a— in a city and figuring out what exists, but now it's like, you know, I want to go tackle a fantasy world because I don't trust a lot of the people making it right now, with how Wizards of the Coast is putting out OneD&D, which is like their continuous, games-as-service version of Dungeons and Dragons are going to be continuously updating, and still all the problems that people have been talking and asking for change for years now. It is happening incrementally and almost not at all. And there are a lot of issues that I want to make sure that we address. I'm gonna include this link in the episode description, but I sent this out. There was a wonderful article on io9 called Why Race is still a problem in Dungeons and Dragons, written by Linda Codega, who interviewed a ton of POC Dungeons and Dragons creators about talking about specifically, all of these like half or even quarter measures that Wizard of the Coast is making to address these problems. I would just want to cite some of the stuff. All the way back in June 2020, Wizards of the Coast issued a statement about their commitment to diversity in Dungeons and Dragons. They identified commonly cited pressure points, and said throughout the 50 year history of D&D, some people in the game, orcs and drow being two of the prime examples have been characterized as monstrous and evil using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real world, ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. End quote.
Julia: Damn.
Eric: That's what they—that's what they wrote. That's what—
Amanda: I wouldn’t say reminiscent, it's taken directly from Black people in the world, but okay.
Eric: Yeah. And like the whole-- and the like the high fantasy, pastiche, Dalit all this stuff is based off of like the races of people. And basically, D&D has been struggling with this quite a lot. But I think that there are some inherent issues here. Like there's a really great quote from a creator named Rue V. Dickey, one of the problems of having people choose their race first in D&D, when making your character, is that it makes— becomes a defining trait within the world regardless of intention. Making race a core tenant of your character can be really uncomfortable, especially as a person of color. I think it's really interesting that the first thing you do when you make a character is like, I'm playing a Dragonborn. And like now you—nothing else, not even your class, not even your name, you need to—you need to put that down. And I think that's really, really interesting and very important.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I never thought about the fact that D&D just stripped the orc of context, like as a first maneuver.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. And it, it really smacks as a thing created by white people right? Where—
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: —Race, when you're white is experienced as a thing like hair color, or eye color, where, you know, we walk through the world, and choose to engage with race, when to do it, if to do it at all. And when you're talking about making a character in D&D, you think like, oh, yes, I'll choose my characters like name, and eye color, and hair color. Like it's— it's not the same, and moving through the world where somebody first perceives you by your race, and then makes assumptions that the game holds up as true based on that, is not a thing that a lot of people are excited to replicate in a fantasy environment.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: A thing D&D can choose to stop, and they haven't.
Eric: I want to be very clear, just going forward. And I don't—I'm not correcting you two. But I think that this is part of the insidiousness of big companies tying themselves to the products that they make. I want to be very clear, this is like the people who work at the company Wizards of the Coast.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: And Hasbro, and they, to their own benefit, tie themselves directly to Dungeons and Dragons the game.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: And that is something I wanted to touch on, is that there is an essential tying of Forgotten Realms, the standard issue land that they create the one with the dwarves and the elves. The dwarves who are stocky people who don't have a land, and the elves who are blond and beautiful, and the humans who just kind of shrug, and the monsters who are bad and dark coded, et cetera, like they intentionally put that in their game system. Like that is in the player's handbook, that's in the DMs handbook, those are things that are inextricable from the game itself. And it's to their own benefit, because they want to sell you books that they wrote. The other issue is that all the books, they keep hiring all these people, and again, I don't begrudge those people to get those jobs, they need those jobs. It's the biggest—they're the biggest job offerer in the tabletop RPG space, you want to put it on your resume, get paid, and then be able to do your own thing later, or hopefully make change. And then the same three dudes are rewriting everyone's stuff before that stuff comes out.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So like, there is no possibility for change. Then there are articles and quotes from various places where it's like Wizards of the Coast wants D&D to be D&D, whatever that means. And that means that the same people are just going to do it. I want to touch on there was a really great summary of all of the issues that all the people that--that Linda Codega summarized all this stuff-- all this summarized stuff. The critical points of game design that would help remove inherent bio essentialism, and move away from racial coding, the removal of prescriptive skill packages. So think about how only specific races are allowed to be brave, or know how to use certain weapons, or are smart, or have these bonuses, not even like the bonuses that we've talked about the like, Orcs get plus two to strength and are dumb, but like, hey, only this race knows how to use archery equipment, essentially, is really odd.
Amanda: It’s not even implicit, it's explicit.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: It's co— It's not even coded. It's in the coding. Like, gosh.
Eric: Or who know certain language-- that only a certain race knows a certain language is wild. The decoupling of traits from race as we talked-- as we just talked about better mixed race mechanics. So half elves, half orcs, half dragons, half Aasimar, are all like exoticized, and how—how it's cool for people to be like, it's cool, you're multiple races. I love that for you, is wild that that's in there. And then, of course, the elimination of racialized language, only specific races between each other specific languages. All these can be done. And players have already done so at their own tables.
Brandon: Yeah, it's so funny to me that I like I feel like D&D, like Wizards was originally like, oh, if we combine or attach these, these few things will make it easier for the player to like, get started. When the reality is like, one, it comes with the problems that all you just described, or Linda just described. And then two, like, it's not easier if you just gave like, a character sheet where it's like, check one from each of these lists. Like, you would get away from these problems. And it would be an easier character creation process than like, having to be like, oh, I want to be this but like, oh, it has to have that. And then blah, blah, blah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Like, yeah, that's ridiculous.
Amanda: Of course, race contextualizes how you move through the world, and perhaps more importantly, how the world perceives you. But it doesn't inherently limit what you're capable or interested in doing. And that's the thing that's so frustrating, like, yeah, Wizards of the Coast thinks that this is betraying the game system in some way or you know, would make things incredibly complicated. And I feel like that's not giving players enough credit, like we—we understand a lot more than they think we do. Just give us a like, let us do it. People are doing it like, like, Codega said.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Well, here's the thing, especially because of what we've seen with OneD&D. Here's some d&d history for y'all. As people went from 3.5 to 5. The fifth edition is the one we're currently in. 3.5 was the one before, 4 was a disaster. It was like there was— you had to use a board and there were cards involved. It was really weird. It was really weird.
Brandon: So we're playing D&D Fourth Edition for this season of Join the Party.
Eric: We are. So d&d lost a ton of people to Pathfinder, which were people who moved, who basically made a new game that was based off of, it was another D20 System. Burnt Cookbook Party currently runs Pathfinder. That's the podcast that Jenna Stoeber is on. And like, listen, it's very popular, because people wanted a D20 system that while Wizards of the Coast was fucking around with what Dungeons and Dragons was supposed to be, they lost a ton of people to Pathfinder. Wizard of the Coast is worried about that happening again, which is why they've turned fifth edition into the ever— the ever edition, whatever OneD&D is now going to be this like changeable, movable database that they're going to poke and prod at, to hopefully get these things by very, very tiny quarter measures and even less.
Amanda: And Eric, do I have to keep paying them a subscription fee instead of like, I don't know, buying one book that I can reference forever?
Eric: Oh, baby, you know it. So the reason why-- the issue of why these things ever happened is, because they're trying to quote-unquote, “keep old Dungeons and Dragons players”, which means, you know.
Julia: Old white guys.
Eric: Yes. Not telling old, old white, straight male nerds that things are different than what they want in their world, and as into their fantasy world.
Amanda: Which hey, isn't a true representation of their existing fan base. There have been Black players, woman players, queer players from the beginning. But hey, sure shows you whose opinions they value.
Brandon: I would also assume that, I mean, I don’t know, but I would assume that today right now, like the majority of their fan base is not that anymore, you know?
Eric: Yeah, it is weird. I wonder if there's like a purchasing power argument with it. And the thing is, we're talking about economics, because it's a business decision. You know what I mean?
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: It's an important, it's important to say.
Amanda: It's not about what's right. Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. So, I have made some changes, to simplify this stuff. And also, so we can feel better about playing this game system that I like. I really like the skeleton. I've talked about how Dungeons and Dragons is an interesting and flexible system that lets you play epic stories that involve kicking ass. And that's fun to play on a podcast. But there are changes that need to be made, that Wizards of the Coast will not do for business reasons. And I think we can do, to demonstrate that you can do it. I have summarized all of these changes that I'm about to describe, you can click the link in the episode description, and you can refer to it going forward. I'm going to keep it in the episode descriptions of all episodes going forward. So all of you can just click this link and be like, hey, want to see the changes that we made in campaign three? Click here.
Brandon: I just clicked. Oh.
Eric: No Brandon, don't read ahead. I have to show it to you, no! Also this is ahead of time, and I haven't written it yet. But it will be written, I promise. Okay. So I— there are four changes we're making here, one of which isn't even a change. Okay?
Julia: Okay.
Eric: The first is initial bonuses. The first thing you are going to choose when you are making your character is something called traditions. Traditions are your—your initial bonuses and things you know inherently as a person, because they are from what country, your character and your character's family is from in Verda Stello.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Eric: Now, these are mostly just stat bonuses plus some traits that you have inherited from like cultural osmosis. I really wanted to tie these two countries, because it's like, you know, when you think about countries, whether in Europe or maybe regions of the United States, there are like value systems and skills that most people know that have been passed on from living in that area. Not you necessarily as a person, but from like, the relationships, the principles that are upheld by the country, whether through like culture, or through governments. And I find that way more interesting, which is kind of something we've been prodding and poking at, with campaign two, about like, what is the value system or the people of a city? What do they care about? I feel like this extends larger to a country in a fantasy setting.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And I'm going to describe those countries for you, right after this.
Brandon: Cut to commercial.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda. Aren't you enjoying that new campaign smell a little salty, super fresh. There's nothing like it. And it reminds me of the feeling of matching my shoes to my outfit. This is something that I have been trying to do more and more this year, is wear something with a pop of color that I can accessorize with one of my very cool pairs of sneakers. And even if I don't see anybody that day or have any in person meetings, it's still a little, you know, secret, something that I know I can have powering my day. So welcome to the mid roll. Today's shoes are Uno branded, and my pop of color is red. Thank you so much to our newest patrons. There are a lot of you. Wow. It's almost like you enjoy business analysis or something. Nerds love it. Welcome. Thank you specifically to Cyan, Timothy, McKenzie, Jake Fisher the fake Discher thought that would fool me, didn't you? Nope, I said it. Adam, Q4, Blake, SJ Jonas, Kristen, Crimson, Julia, Max, Anna, Jet and SKH. Thank you so much. We are so excited to have you on board. It's never been a better time to support us over on Patreon, because you along with our other patrons will be the first to hear about the winner of the One Shot Derby. We are hard at work tabulating the results and we will announce soon what the winning one shot is. Remember if you want to hear the full game once we play it, you got to be a patron. That's all at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. By the way are you following us on social, Eric and Julia are absolutely killing it lately, dropping teases about campaign three and that includes character art baby. Follow at Join the Party Pod on Twitter and Instagram which is run by our own Eric and tumblr which Julia man's to make sure you see all of the goodness as it comes out. We are far from over dropping teases and getting you excited about the new campaign. This week at Multitude, Pale Blue Pod is an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but really want to be its friend. Astrophysicist Dr. Moiya Mctier and comedian Corinne Caputo, de-mystify space one topic at a time with open eyes, open arms and open mouths from all of the laughing and jaw dropping it off. By the end of each episode, the cosmos will feel a little less scary and a lot more cool. Check out their new episodes every Monday wherever you get your podcasts or at palebluepod.space. We are sponsored this week by Witchy Cakes, the brand new project from our friends at Mage Hand Press. In this game you play witches competing to make the tallest most enchanted cake possible to deliver unto an unsuspecting wedding reception. Witchy cakes is an adorable and savagely competitive card game that anyone can learn in under five minutes. They timed it. Yes, it's true. Throw cakes at your friends and build an occult culinary masterpiece in the most colorful card game of 2023. Eric and I were lucky enough to preview the game at PAX Unplugged and it is so, so gorgeous and genuinely took us less than five minutes to learn, even standing in a very sweaty expo hall. It made me smile just looking at it and I immediately thought of so many people I wanted to buy it for. So support the Kickstarter now and make sure this goodness actually happens back the project before February 16, 2023 at 11 AM Eastern time. Just click the link in the description or search for Witchy Cakes on Kickstarter to find it. We are also sponsored today by Brilliant. Let's say just for argument's sake that you're an aspiring pirate who wants to learn how ships float, why police work, and how on earth that medium size wheel turns an entire dang ship. Or excuse me, how on Verda Stello, that wheel does not quite the same ring to it. Okay, I'll work on it. So you go to brilliant.org the best way to learn math, science and computer science interactively. I imagine as an aspiring pirate, you'd be kind of embarrassed to be like, umm, how exactly, is it that ships float. But hey, you can learn about that on Brilliant, because one lesson that they offer is about classical mechanics. This is all about Newton's fundamental principles of modern day physics, which has a ton to do with how ships float and sails actually work. Ships are filled with pulleys and ramps and other simple machines, all of which have to do in one way or another with the Principia and classical mechanics. To get started, for free visit brilliant.org/jointheparty or click on the link in the description. The first 200 of you will get 20% off brilliants annual premium subscription. Once more, that's brilliant.org/jointheparty. Finally, the show is sponsored by BetterHelp. When you're at your best you can do great things. Let's say that you are feeling great. You're all about yourself. You're all about your hobbies, you're all about your adventures, you're like, hey, pirate crew, I really want to join you. And no matter you know, if you decide that you want me or not, I know my inherent worth. I'm a badass babe over here, and I want to be a pirate. I don't know why this part is becoming a girl boss role with me. But sometimes life gets you bogged down and you feel overwhelmed, or like you're not showing up at work, or in your relationships, or for your fellow pirates in the way that you want to. So one fantastic option to help you get back to what you want to do, and figure out how to be the best you can be is therapy. And finding therapy near you, maybe you're out in the middle of the sea. And there are no therapists on the open seas with you right now, try BetterHelp. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com/jointheparty today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterHELP.com/jointheparty. And now back to the show.
[theme]
Eric: The second thing, as you might have noticed before, instead of race, we have species. Race doesn't really matter in a fantasy setting. Again, like it's wild that people use this word, which means something very specific in our human current world right now. But in a fantasy setting, you made it up from your brain. I am also moving away from the high fantasy pastiche that is Tolkein and everything that's been taken from that, as I referenced the Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings industrial complexes that exist after that. You know, it's like there's no point in it. There's no elves and dwarves and stuff. So like, I get to do whatever I want. And I'm excising us from the Forgotten Realms and from this idea, and so we have species and those species really don't have any bearing on the game mechanically other than how you look and how many liens you—how many limbs you have. And this is not to say that we're not going to be talking about as I like to do when most of my stories, power and who has power and wielding over each other.
Brandon: The answers are me, and my player, and my, my character.
Amanda: It doesn't have to be--
Eric: Brandon, like you don't hold me hostage with you being like I rolled a 14 and I'm going to poop in this bear's face. What damage do I do?
Brandon: Eric, what have I ever done that to a bear?
Eric: To a bear specifically.
Julia: Never.
Eric: Everyone just imagine the things that Brandon's done in your head, you can just take a second. Anyway, so yeah, we're just going to be having species, it's going to be— they're all from the same progenitor. But of course we have the greenery, the produce, the flowers, and the bugs. Like I said, these are mostly just stat bonuses that you're going to give yourself plus two traits to inherited, going off of the thing that, that Linda Codega pointed to before. I'm taking all that skills bullshit out, you know, it's like you don't know how to use a gun better because you're a plant you know, you're greenery, right?
Julia: Or do I?
Brandon: You clearly haven't met plants, Eric.
Eric: Right. Or you're from a specific country, you're not, you're not better at heavy weaponry. You know what I mean?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That's—I really want to make that clear again, and just what Brandon just said, this makes it so much more complicated by adding all this stuff. Everyone has the same walking speed. Like everyone can see in the dark. Like, I don't care. I just don't care.
Amanda: Yeah, I was just gonna say I can like cut through a sidewalk in Midtown at rush hour. Not because of some inherent bonus to me, because I'm a white Irish woman from New York. It's because if I don't, I'll get swept aside, and my parents knew how to do that because they're from New York and they taught me, like it's a skill. It's a tradition. It's not something inherent about my biology.
Eric: Right.
Brandon: Yeah, Julia talks like she's from Long Island, cause she's from Long Island.
Julia: I don't talk like I'm from Long Island.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: Very rarely does it come out.
Amanda: And I value bagels.
Eric: I value bagels because they're delicious and I like bagels.
Julia: I love pizza.
Eric: Pizza's good. Okay, the third one is the one that's the same, backgrounds are the same. Honestly, I really like them. When we talk about languages, I always like turning that into jargon. We had—we're very successful with Milo's ability to speak to eBay. And Aggie’s ability to know construction stuff, I think it has been really fun. And I think that we're kind of leaning on something that we don't—that I think backgrounds are getting at, but are ignored very quickly. When people are in a campaign, but like, y'all probably weren't pirates to begin with. Or like, you know, people were not pirates to start with. It's this adventure you undertake on behalf of yourself, or someone else, or your, your country or a principle you uphold. So I think you will have skills that you did before you got on a pirate ship, which I think is very important to the campaign on the Tide.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Love it.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Love it.
Eric: I don't have backgrounds in front of me. If there's another piece of racial essentialism that's in there, I'm taking it out. I just haven't looked at it specifically because I've been focusing on the species and the tradition stuff so much.
Brandon: What's this one I haven't— I haven't listened, and it's of backgrounds. And it just says white?
Eric: It says bounty hunters own are— it says bounty hunters are only allowed to be Vietnamese. Really odd. Strange, I don't know why that's written there. I'm taking that out. I’m pulling that out.
Brandon: Okay, good. good.
Eric: And finally, because I think we want to stretch our legs a little bit more after playing our third campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, we are going to be using classes and subclasses from Valda’s Spire of Secrets from Mage Hand Press.
Brandon: Yaaay.
Amanda: Weeee.
Eric: We talked about this a lot in the end of campaign two, when this Kickstarter was running last year. But we got our hands on the PDFs, the classes and subclasses are absolutely incredible. There's some really great expansion on classes, spells, feat, and more. We're going to be linking to it in our episode description. And we're talking to Mage Hand Press to see what we can do to make sure everyone knows about it, both on their side and on our side, so everyone is self aware of this. But we're going to spend another episode with just the characters, introducing the classes and subclasses and all the other good stuff that you've done. So no one is going to be behind, even though we are using homebrewed classes and subclasses. Remember, we've been using homebrewed subclasses for a very long time. So y'all are already on top of it.
Amanda: It's true.
Eric: I'm very-- and I also I don't know what the characters are doing yet. I'm super stoked. So what—you—you are all going to surprise me at some point.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: What's the like lifespan of folks here?
Eric: That's a good question. I think it's about human size. I think that there's-- pirates are interesting, because you die easy. You know, like, right, like you're, you're putting yourself in intentionally a dangerous situation by living on a boat in the middle of the sea.
Brandon: Are they like lobsters, were like if we didn't catch them and eat them, they’d live forever? But they're still easily pierced by a sword.
Eric: I know, I know what you're talking about. I think that Greenfolk have similar fragility, in terms of both their bodies and their age, as humans do.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: I also think it might be pretty interesting to see an old person on a boat. Like if you're old, there's a reason why. You know what I mean? Like you've survived. You are, you're a crafty guy. Well, that's what I think about in terms of age.
Brandon: Gotcha.
Julia: Also, Brandon, you want to know a sad fact about lobsters?
Brandon: I guess?
Julia: So what you said is true is that they can basically like live forever if we didn't catch and kill them, except for the fact that eventually they like, are unable to molt, and they continue growing inside their shells, and it just crushes them to death. And it's very sad.
Brandon: Yeah, that's very sad. I don't like it. I don't really like lobsters either. They're kind of gross. I don't.
Eric: Julia, Amanda had to take out her ear bud, because you were saying a sad fact about lobsters.
Julia: Oh, I'm sorry, bud.
Amanda: It's okay, I protected myself.
Eric: To be more specific, Brandon. I think this is like, turn of the century people. Because it's like, people aren't living to 120, I don't think. I think it's like, if you saw someone who was 70 It would be, wow, oh my god. If you saw especially, if they were on a boat, that's even wilder. I think there are probably people who are in like very posh living areas on land, who are like 80-85, but probably no more than 80-90. It'd be like, wow, the oldest person in the world is 100, is definitely like written in their Guinness Book of World Records.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Brandon: Cool. And you already said this, but remind me, the ocean is saltwater?
Eric: It's saltwater. Yes, that's actually very important. The ocean is saltwater, which makes it even worse to swim in. I don't think that the Greenfolk swim. I mean, don't put salt water in your plants, you know what I mean? Like that’s bad news.
Amanda: They don't like it.
Eric: Listen, I know the least about plants out of all four of you,so I'm gonna be throwing stuff out and I’m gonna--
Brandon: Eric had like a panic attack. He was like, do you— do you do that? Are you supposed to do that.
Eric: I know people are gonna be like, perky, someone just kicked in the door of the recording studio and said some plants love saltwater. I know, not in my fantasy world.
Julia: Just get out of here. Get!
Eric: So swimming, if you fall on the water, I think it's dangerous on top of the ocean thing, how ocean currents are really scary. There might be things in the water. It's bad if you fall in the saltwater.
Julia: That makes sense.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Cool.
Eric: Like even more so than, than the pure water of the Cascade. Okay, you want to hear the countries that you can pull your traditions from?
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Now I want to entreat all of you to keep your minds open. Because although we're going to be focusing more on the—on sea life, at life at sea in the islands, as we investigate the adventure of the Tide. But if you choose one of these traditions, I would love your help kind of building out more about these countries, and where you're from and what's going on with these people.
Amanda: Cool.
Eric: Because I have—I have the name, I have like country and tradition words, I have phrases for each one.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: The only good thing that George R.R Martin ever wrote, was the house words, they were tight as fuck. We're gonna be working together on building this country out. So keep your ey—your eyes and ears open on all this stuff.
Julia: Hell yeah, dawg.
Amanda: Love it.
Eric: The first one is the Hothouse. Their traditional motto is, why suffer when we can strive. If I were to come up with a banner or flag for this, I think it's a little like a construction of a hot house with a— with an abstract sun off to the side. I also think that we have similar weather patterns in Verda Stello, as we do on our world just because they're plant people. So that kind of fits together like that. So the Hothouse is known for construction and ingenuity, their traditions and their principles are about finding the best way to do something, is its own greatest reward. They also prize letting people know that you did it with a plaque, or a statue, or a signature, or something like that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That's very important. Their government is put together, the main figure is called the Builder, who is kind of a God King. The builder embodies everything that the Hothouse believes in.
Amanda: I mean, that would be the biggest boon right, is building the society that builds everything else, right? Like you are making the template for the society that values templates above all else.
Eric: These are large countries. So I think these kind of spread all out around the area, again, regardless of environment. But I think that you know, you're in the Hothouse, when you cross into a land that has actual houses that are built like a hothouse that are all glass, or they incorporate windows or a solarium. There's always like a glass area of your home because sleeping in your solarium is supposed to like do more for your body, and makes you grow and like we have the ingenuity to make ourselves as good as possible, which is something that the Hothouse prizes overall else.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Eric: So yeah, the main figure of government, I have government's for each one of these. The main figure of government here is the builder who is kinda like a God King, a la Pharaohs in Egypt. They reigned for long stretches of time, because once you're, once you're designated the builder, everyone kind of consolidates around you and there isn't a lot of like palace intrigue, it's just like, yeah, well, the Builder’s the smartest and knows everything. So we're going to do—they're going to lead us in whatever direction we're going to do. It's kind of like, it's not like a religious monarchy, like a divine right thing. Because in between God Kings, there is a series of challenges that people do publicly to determine who is the Builder. And then there is a final voting and every single citizen of the Hothouse gets a vote.
Amanda: It's like the civil service exam, meets the electing of a new pope.
Eric: Yeah, it's some—it's actually a lot like that. And then, if there's a lot of tumult in between, and you know, I'm not saying that there isn't like, political intrigue of getting the Builder you want into this thing and training the next series of Builders, but I think once they're in there, they're reigning for 50, 60,70 years.
Julia: Wow.
Eric: Yes.
Brandon: It's too long. I'm gonna say that's too long.
Eric: I agree. I 100% agree, but they think it's the right thing because there's a real belief in objectivism in the hothouse.
Julia: Right.
Eric: You get stat bonuses, you get initial stat bonuses, you can decide whether you want to do plus two to one stat, and plus one, do the other stat, or flop them and do plus one and plus two.
Julia: So you can either do plus two to strength, and one two intelligence or plus two to intelligence and one to strength. Correct?
Eric: Correct. Correct.
Julia: Gotcha.
Brandon: But I assume the stats change per country?
Eric: Yes, it changes per country.
Brandon: Cool.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: Yes. This is the tradition variation I'm talking about. These are the stat bonuses that come from that. So if you're from the hothouse, you get bonuses to strength and intelligence, and you can decide if you want to do plus two, or plus one to either one of those.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: You also get, you can choose a field of study, something that you are super into. And if you make a history or investigation check on your field of study, you can add your proficiency bonus to it.
Julia: Oh, I like that.
Eric: Yeah. It would probably be something a little bit more like hands on. I don't think it's like philosophical, necessarily or idealistic.
Julia: Like pottery.
Eric: Yeah, like pottery or construction, or something. We can talk about what it—what it is your field of study is, but you can add your proficiency bonus straight up to that. And then you get one extra jargon or language.
Amanda: Okay, nice. My name is Aggie O'Hare and I speak paperwork.
Brandon: Amanda, you’ve already done that character. You can't do it again.
Amanda: Uhh. Damn.
Eric: Oh, no.
Brandon: Come on?
Eric: Does anyone have any questions about the Hothouse?
Julia: No, I love them.
Amanda: I love it.
Eric: The—the Hothouse was—was fun envisioning like a fantasy world that had just like a ton of glass houses everywhere. Either you're looking out on the horizon and seeing like, the glass houses reflect all the light at sunset.
Julia: So cool.
Brandon: It must be some kind of like special glass too, because like they're good builders. So they wouldn't—
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: —be able to break a glass house with a rock or whatever the saying is.
Julia: Don't throw stones in glass houses.
Amanda: And that it makes sense too why they would prize leadership that goes on for so long. Because getting an infrastructural project done takes a long time.
Eric: Absolutely. You're not allowed to say something mean about someone else while inside of your house. [laughs] Okay, the second country you can choose from, are Open Fields, their traditional motto is reap what is sown. Open Fields, there's a lot more flat area or irrigated and agricultural area to like, hoe and sow and make fields out of which is kind of self explanatory. But I think that there's a—there's a relationship with the world itself. Maybe it's a little bit more religious in the way that like maybe, maybe you're assuming that like, everyone who's around Vatican City is like, yeah, I believe in that guy the Pope. Like it's kind of like a prevailing thing like everyone believes in this kind of relationship with the world itself. And you know, the relationship of the harvest and of the agricultural cycle.
Brandon: Is it—would you say it's more religious or more like spiritual, mystical kind of thing?
Eric: I think it's more religious. I think there's a codification here. Instead of feeling, it's kind of like revolving. You go, you farm, and you, you believe in the farm and you do your prayers thing. I don't know if there are churches in that way. And I use church specifically, but I think that it was like there's a prevailing like, relationship with— actually no, there probably are churches, I think that there's a real like, the three places I go, I'm either on the farm or at the church, or at the family relationship place, you know, my community center.
Amanda: Well, it sounds like the real like lived reality of the agricultural calendar. That's like a thing you do over, and over, and over again, and it would make sense that like, a practice of worship or making sure that the economy, and you know, meteorology are what they have to be. Makes sense that they would go hand in hand.
Julia: Yeah, the word ritual keeps coming to mind.
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Definitely, definitely rituals. I also don't want to tie this to Christianity necessarily. It just kind of like a pervasiveness throughout the community that like we all do this together. We all do this in the—in the country, that like, we all kind of believe in the same thing because we live in the fields and we work the fields. We're in—we're in with it. We care about the earth, and the earth provides for us. Now, you might be asking yourself, what are they farming?
Julia: What are they farming?
Amanda: Hey, Eric? What are they farming?
Brandon: Eric, what are they farming,
Eric: There is a real Goofy and Pluto situation happening here.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: Because they do farm produce.
Amanda: Okay. Okay. But some is sentient, and some is not.
Eric: Yes, exactly. Thus, the big ones are sentient, the small ones are not. I don't know if you've played like Betrayal at the House on the Hill. Or maybe there are some shades of this in like Call of Cthulhu games, but I want to give them perseverance in that like they're fine with looking at the strangeness of the world, and not having your brains break in half. There's a stat in Betrayal at the House on the Hill called sanity, which is your ability to like look at a horrible thing and be okay.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And I feel like people from the Open Fields are okay, like, staring at the strangeness of the world and like dealing with it.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: What do they do with the produce? Does someone eat it?
Eric: Yeah, you eat it. It's part of-- or you juice it.
Brandon: I guess you juice it. Yeah. Well, because we talked about yeah, their—the roots, eating out of bowls before, so I didn't know.
Julia: Right.
Brandon: Do they have forks and knives, and tables and shit?
Eric: Yeah, I think so. I'm not saying that you can't put things in your mouth and eat— and eat them. I just think that my—it might be easier necessarily to drink with your roots or have low, low slung tables, I thought was fun. But yeah, I think that people eat with their mouths as well. There you have two options.
Amanda: Special occasion.
Eric: Yeah. Another thing that I thought would be really interesting about the Open Fields, is they named themselves after virtues, which I really loved. Like, I don't know, there's like a tradition of naming yourself after a virtue you want to embody, you know, in the way that like, old like revivalist Christian communities did. So it's like, hi, this is my son, Responsibility.
Amanda: My daughter, Temperance.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. And but like, you know, it's definitely separated from those things. So I think those ideas of virtue, people are named those things but I find deeply fun that you run into someone whose name is Love, or Friendship, or Kindness.
Amanda: Or like, I mean, even there are ones that have been very normalized like Earnest, you know.
Eric: I think that there's also a level of artisticness in a certain way, in like expressing your your feelings and being able to have your, your relaxation time. There's like an artis— I wrote artistic in a Renaissance sort of way. And I also tied this of the cities there are very old, it's like, they built the cities, and then they were like, alright, we're done. We're gonna go farm for the rest of time. And it's very regimentally maintained in the way that like, people would hope that like maybe Venice was or when you go to Europe, and you're like, wow, this building has been here for 1200 years. Jesus Christ.
Amanda: I'm picturing a big old state fair, you know.
Brandon: That's been here for 1200 years.
Amanda: The butter sculpting, no, no, in terms of like, the artistic disciplines.
Brandon: No, I understand what you're saying. I just thought it was funny.
Eric: They're also not afraid of fertilizer. I'm not sure what the fertilizer is necessary, but it might be another thing of like, bodies decomposing and using it.
Amanda and Julia: Yeah. It's compost.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Hey, Eric, I hate to tell you, but soil does have human bodies in it too.
Eric: No, I was like, oh, there's no animal poop. But then I'm like, oh, wait, their bodies decompose into compost. So again, it's looking at the horrors of the world and being okay with it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And incorporating it into your world.
Amanda: No, that makes total sense.
Eric: Yeah. Their government system is oligarchy. It's run by “The Few” quote-unquote, who is kind of as an executive, a military, a money, a culture, and a religious figure, a la maybe the council, the small council in Game of Thrones, but there is much like in France, there is an obligation to rise up and demand the head of someone at any time because the many can always overcome the few.
Julia: That's awesome. Hey, Eric, that's slaps,
Eric: Thank you. There's a real like tradition of revolution when things aren't going well.
Amanda: That's metal as fuck.
Eric: Mechanically, that means you can put your bonuses and wisdom and con, you have advantages on being charmed or mind control. And you know, one instrument very well. We can expand that to any other art, but I just think that playing an instrument on a boat is always helpful.
Julia: It's true.
Eric: It's like hey, I do oil paintings. I do frescos.
Amanda: Weaving
Julia: They never dry.
Eric: Anyone have any questions? We’re good to go to the next one?
Brandon: Can—Is it possible that could someone be born in the Open Fields and then live, grow up in the Hothouse or whatever?
Eric: Great question. This is not about where you're born. I think that's very—from what we understand about ex-patriotism and moving and traditions of those things. This I think is where you grew up the most—
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Is where you gain this stuff.
Amanda: Yeah, like what does society teach you, you know, what does society teach you is important, what does society punish you for being or not being? I think it's really interesting.
Eric: This is also not the end all and be all obviously of like, Greenfolk experience in the world. This is just the mechanics I've written for our game.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. No, I know. Yeah. Yeah.
Eric: So it's like, if someone asked that question, I'd be like, you're 100% correct, but I would like to give you some bonuses.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Before you started my Dungeons and Dragons game.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah.
Eric: Alright. Let's go to the next one. This is the Kingdom of the Crags. Traditional motto is we cover all.
Amanda: Moss, moss, moss, moss, moss, moss.
Eric: There is a lot of moss and lichen happening.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Although this is not solely mountains, because again, this isn’t where the dwarves live in the mountains. There is certainly a thing about living in places that are less inhabited, that the people of the Crags are more than happy with. Living in deserts, living in bogs, living in mountains, if there's any sort of like, permafrost area that would might more likely than not be in this place, where so—where there is a thriving community instead of like a small outpost there. The Crags, they love dealing with adversity, they have formed into houses and territories. I think this is another thing that I pulled from Game of Thrones. I really—the house system is interesting. I don't know if anyone's looked at a map of Westeros and Essos and saw how the houses are spread out. But like they're wild as hell because there are sigils everywhere over like small territories with like, almost like small territory. People own these like small territories are feudalists. They're not feudalist, obviously, but like, you know, duchies, or whatever, or counties. And it's kind of divided in that area. They believe in sacrificing comfort for something greater. Usually, it's for their own enrichment. They explore the land and they find the great thing that it does and work with it. Whether this is pulling obsidian from lava near a volcano, or looking for a fruit that gives you the strength of 10 Greenfolk buried deep within a one specific place like an oasis in a desert, or on a mountain, or a glowing mushroom that is in a crevasse.
Julia: Metal as fuck.
Eric: They are like this is my thing. I live here because this type thing exists here.
Brandon: Do they call it the Earth, do you think?
Eric: That's a good question. Probably or the gr-- they probably call it the land.
Brandon: So when they say the earth, they mean the land, not like the planet that they live on or you know, whatever they live on?
Eric: Yeah, because like the planet and the land is Verda Stelllo. So when I say Earth I mean like soil.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: But I'm going to try to take that out of my language because I'm a fantasy writer now and I can't have that shit.
Amanda: Terra, who’s she?
Eric: Their government is the Constant Royalty of the Crags. A phrase that people throw around is called, everyone has a purpose, and the royals are ruling and dying. Getting back into House of the Dragon and thinking about Game of Thrones again, it was so funny how, like, no one really cares about whatever is happening on King's Landing. Like how much does that affect like everyone else living in Game of Thrones, I think that was the whole point of winter is coming, that like everyone in Westeros needs to get their shit together. Because something bad is happening. Everyone's too busy squabbling or doing their own individual territory thing to work together. And I think that there is some embodying that similar thing is very interesting that like, people have their houses, and their territories, and they kind of care about themselves because they're preserving the cool thing that is in their territory. And they have like, they forego being comfortable to pursue that cool thing instead.
Julia: Hell yeah, dawg.
Brandon: So is it almost quasi-like British Monarchy kind of vibes?
Eric: Um.
Brandon: Minus the like colonialism.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. It's like there are kings, but do the kings— How long does it take for a decree that a king makes or a royal to make, comes down and actually affects someone who lives on a land out in the House Gemini or whatever, which is like, all the way out on the other side next to a volcano? You know what I mean? And like there is definitely like a royal seat, like in King's Landing. I don't have the name for that yet. But yeah—exactly. Like who's—who said that something you did is going to affect my life all that much?
Brandon: Cool. So they try to like exert some kind of control but like the average focus, like eh, okay.
Eric: Yeah, they care more about the person who's ruling their territory--
Amanda: Yeah it doesn’t like affect their life that much.
Eric: The house who controls their area.
Brandon: Sorry, I've never seen Game of Thrones or House of Dragon so I don't have of these reference points.
Eric: No, it's fine. That's fine.
Amanda: Maybe like the kind of like benevolent ages more or less of like the Greek empire where it's kind of like, yeah, I pay taxes to somebody, and like, I don't know, they I keep living my life and like, whoever I pay taxes to you. It's the same guy in my neighborhood. Who he gives it to, I don’t know. But you know.
Eric: Yeah, it's very— it's definitely similar to that.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: I also think that though this since there was a constant changing of royalty, people will do—will try to exert power in this way of making sure that they stay as royal for as long as possible before they get assassinated or, something happens. So I think there's a lot of change over but also there's like big power struggles of trying to enforce especially as you get closer and closer to the royal seat. If you're from the Crags, you get bonuses to charisma and strength, you get resistance to one type of elemental damage. Because wherever you grew up in your territory, you spend time next to a volcano, you get fire elemental damage, just explain that to me. And you are good at playing one game and you are very good at it. When you have downtime in the Kingdom of the Crags, you play your games and you play for keeps.
Julia: Dang.
Eric: So I think this can be cards. This could be some version of chess, this could be something—something that everyone knows how to play. So this isn't like a regional thing. It's not like you walk up and be like we're playing big fish and everyone throws you off the boat because no one else knows how to play.
Amanda: I'm imagining a bunch of like people from the Kingdom of the Crags who meet you know when they're like in some envoy and some other land, and they decide to like hustle everybody at pool.
Eric: And find our fourth and final country is Overstalk. Overstalk's traditional motto is carry your roots. You know you are in Overstalk because of the vertical cities. This is like some solarpunk, neofuturist idealist quixotic world, in that like they're doing something else from everyone else. There—this is where we're getting to spiritualism because they are investigating the sky, and where the original water and planter came from. Is kind of the thing there is because they go skyward, they get closer to the clouds. And of course, there's rain and snow. And they are very fascinated by that as a country at large. I think that this is also a very philosophical place. Everything kind of revolves around this investigation of the—of the world and the place in which the greenfolk live, which also leads to the fact that they are incredibly merchant-- while there's a lot of trading and merchants running around going from Overstalk everywhere else because they're so busy philosophizing, they just buy what they need. They're just like I'm doing stuff. You make money to deal with your needs so that you can go back to examining the questions of the universe.
Julia: Gotcha.
Eric: Overstalk is actually a giant city-state, stemming from the stacked city of Skyreach, which is their capital. I don't know if anyone has seem outside of people who play Civilization four or five or six a lot, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: But imagine it's like the it's up and down very green. There's like this classical style. There are columns everywhere because again, it's like vines snaking up and down. It's not—it's not a skyscraper. It's more just like stacked. Everything is stacked and growing upwards. Maybe it's more like the Tower of Babel where people build it just to go high, not to dominate the cityscape. But just to go up.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Love it.
Julia: Interesting.
Eric: They have a lot of representatives, much like aldermen for those of you from Chicago. But it's more like your—you have mini mayors of your neighborhood or your outer town and they form coalitions of government and parties, much like we see in Parliaments across the world.
Brandon: So they're democratic.
Eric: Yeah, there they are. They are representative democratic. Yes. Because they're like, I don't want to think about voting, I don't want to think about shit, you do it. Like being an alderman is like you're taking the burden of policy off of people. And it's very is like, thank you for doing this, so I don't have to. So I can think about and work on other things.
Amanda: I’m picturing everybody as like an absent-minded professor who lives in this neighborhood.
Julia: I love that.
Eric: Yeah, very idealistic, very quixotic. But again, they're just chillin', I think they're— they're probably the least-- like they cause the least amount of drama out of all the places. That's because they're insular and they're thinking about other things. But I think that that then allows people who want to do bad, to do bad because there isn't oversight, people are off doing their own thing. So I think that there—there's like, there's a cultish element to some things when there are fragment groups who go off and do their own thing. There are like, not terrorist organizations, but like radical, like radical groups start doing stuff all over the place. And it's like—
Julia: Sure.
Eric: Stop.
Brandon: You wouldn’t expect that if people who are, yeah, who are like so philosophically minded, you know.
Amanda: Yeah, thinking all day with like, time and income to do whatever they choose.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. If you're from Overstalk, you get bonuses to Dex and con. You personally have confronted and are unafraid of one common fear. That can be drowning, that could be like getting snuck up on in the night, that could be death. And we’ll factor that into your bonuses as you—as you do that. This one's a little more amorphous because the mechanical benefit of Overstalk is much more specific. So that's why this one is ambiguous because if you're from Overstalk, you know how to fall. You've probably fallen from 10,20,30,40,50 stories before and are very fascinated and are okay with that, and know how to deal with it. So you have an ability to, whether you have this inherently if you have wings, or you're one of those, like seedlings that are helicopter-y, or you have big leaves, or you have some sort of mechanical way to protect you as you fall. Because you have 10 feet of hover.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: You can only hover if you're going from a higher place to a lower place. This is more like a modified slow fall, you roll one D6, for the number of rounds you can fall. And you can fall for like 30 seconds max, and that comes down to five rounds. If you roll a six, you get plus one to your next falling round next time, but you can only get five rounds of being able to hover, it's 10 feet, and you have to go from a high place to a lower place, you can only do it for 30 seconds, so you can't fall forever. Because eventually, it would be impossible.
Brandon: That's cool.
Julia: Fair enough.
Brandon: You mean like 10 feet of hover, meaning like you can hover at 10 feet, or—
Eric: 10 feet of distance.
Brandon: Oh, like vertical—er, horizontal distance.
Eric: Horizontal distance is 10 feet. However, because you can't go fast. However, when you're falling, you know there's like a gravity—in Dungeons and Dragons, your falling speed has to do with like your max-- gravitational pull, blah, blah, blah, because you can also use this to reduce the amount of damage on a fall by half up to 50 feet. So that can—that we can—if you're not moving and you're just doing it not to get hurt, we can just do that mechanically.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: So this is kind of like you always have a mini slow fall in your pocket.
Brandon: Cool. Cool. Cool.
Julia: Kind of nice.
Eric: And finally, even if you're not from the four countries, you can be Unmoored. Unmoored is our version of variant human, where you can do plus one to two stats of your choice, and a feat. This is what we did for all characters in campaign two. But if you don't feel attached to any of these countries, you can always choose to be Unmoored, but then I want to investigate why you don't— you don't feel close to any country. Maybe you are pirate born, you've only—only learned and lived in the Tide. Maybe you're an expatriate, we got to figure out what you care about, and how does that fit in your feet? And how do you feel about the other countries?
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: Eric, what if I'm really tied to all of them and also being Unmoored?
Julia: What if I want to do everything?
Eric: I cannot give you all, you can only choose one tradition, unfortunately.
Julia: Is that cool? But I want it. Give me. Give me.
Eric: I'm sorry. A quick summary you can be from the Hothouse, which is about construction and ingenuity. Whose traditional words are, why suffer when we can strive? You can be from Open Fields, where you reap what is sown. You can be from the Kingdom of the Crags where they cover all, or you can be from Overstalk and the great stacked city of Skyreach, where you carry your roots, or you can be Unmoored.
Amanda: Damn.
Julia: So many choices.
Brandon: What is— This might be something we explore in game, but is there sort of like patriotism to these places? Are they just sort of like places that people are from?
Eric: That's a good question. You know, it's funny, I spent all this time making up countries, and we're probably not going to spend any time in them specifically. I think that you can decide your level of patriotism, and how—how tied you feel to certain places. I don't know about your PCs, you may or may not. It's definitely the variant of why you're out there on the Tide, is important. But yeah, your level of patriotism is allowed. It's allowed. I mean, some people really love being from the Kingdom of the Crags. Because again, it's not just about the government. It's like whether or not you believe in the principles that are from the place that you're from.
Julia: And I mean, as you pointed out for Open Fields, they're doing revolutions all the time baby, we chopping off our government's head all the time.
Eric: Yeah. I gave you pluses and minuses from all the places about why someone may or may not like or really dislike being from this place. But I don't think that has anything to do with your character's level of patriotism.
Amanda: No, it's like what we all have to do, right? It's like, like you said, identify what we were raised to find valuable, and then decide what we want to keep of that.
Eric: Absolutely. So yeah, those are the changes we're making. Remember, we're doing traditions, we are doing species instead of race, backgrounds are the same. And we're using classes from Valda’s Spire of Secrets, as created by Mage Hand Press. I want to tell you two things. Two last things before we go, about something I'm just adding to this campaign that I really want us all to start thinking about.
Julia and Amanda: Okay.
Eric: The first is, remember when Amanda said she didn't want a home base?
Amanda: Sure, I mean, home bases, fine. I just don't need to like a city to go home to.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: Do you remember when Amanda said that?
Eric: I think that the crew is already pulled together on your ship.
Amanda: Great.
Eric: The PCS and the NPCs who are on the ship already all know each other, because I want there to be a base-building element in this campaign.
Amanda: Yay.
Brandon: Fortnite. Fortnite. Fortnite.
Eric: No, not that big—
Julia: I refuse to play Fortnite in my D&D.
Eric: They don't even do that in Fortnite anymore. I have played a lot of Cult of the Lamb lately, which is a really interesting indie game, basically smashed a lot of different types of genres together, there's like a base-building element. And like there's the Hades-style fighting. And it's like, cartoonish, and there's some farming involved. But I think it's really interesting. And I think it's something that I really want to investigate in a D&D campaign of balancing going out on adventure. And then dealing with the pirate base, you all have together. There's something about being out on the Tide, there are tons of islands, that people then turned into their homes, which they're only doing for the time being, as they try to find the infinite lake and the salmon of knowledge. So I think that you, you have to invest in your island, as you go out and go do adventures and figure out what it is you want to do next, and follow the riddles and the mysteries, that is finding the infinite lake.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So I would love it, if there was a base building adventure. I would love to do a world building game where we build out our island and the things that you want to have to start with at the beginning of this campaign, as you start pursuing things that you're interested in. For those of you who have played these games before, whether it's Stardew Valley, or Animal Crossing, or another game that has a base involved, you know, like, there's going to be like a skill tree that you're going to put XP in it, that happens either over time, or if you're pursuing something particular. There's gonna be like people living on your island that aren't part of your crew who do stuff on the island, there's gonna—there's gonna be a lot of that stuff. And I'm very interested in-- I feel like every time you go out on an adventure, you'll get like one XP boost that you can do to either like build a new building, or soup up a building, or further a thing, like really adding a base building element. And we can like do that in our downtime episodes, like you tending to, tending to the village as you try to do like your regular people things that isn't like explicitly on adventures. So maybe like arcs might be shorter. Because you go out and you go do something and then you go do something else. Like it might be more like chapters in a story. Instead of like 9-10 episode arcs, maybe there'll be shorter, maybe there'll be longer well—we'll figure it out as you all pursue your adventure as you leave the island. Maybe you'll even have to move your island to a different island and start over because it's closer to where you think the infinite lake is. There—there's really very large possibilities everywhere,
Julia: But I already love my island. I don't want to move it.
Eric: Well, everyone, you'll move it together, it will be a big thing everyone does. And finally, because I want to make this as easy as possible in terms of currency. I know they'll still be like gold doubloons and everything. You all watch John Wick how there was like assassin currency? Yeah, like those specific assassin currencies? I would love it if there is some sort of currency that only exists through pirates that you do in exchange for favors, and more of it is big favors. So there is a currency called Amber which are crystallized pieces of amber the size of your fist.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: That you can use to trade in for a favor from someone else. Or you can use it to trade it in as like another XP bonus. You give it to someone who will then trade it and then boost something.
Julia: Oh, that's cool.
Eric: Like you'll get an XP bonus just for doing stuff but you can turn in amber everywhere. There is a limited number of amber throughout the tide. People have it, you can look for it as you do adventures and you go other places. You're pirates, steal some shit. Like there's plent—there's Amber everywhere. And also maybe someone might offer you Amber to do something in exchange. So we have this extra currency. I know we've always been like mushy on how we deal with gold or dollars because I don't super care about that, this isn't Oregon Trail.
Amanda: But I do.
Eric: But I think that Amber might make it more interesting as a piece of-- as a tradable thing that you could want to pursue and might distract you and your mission, whatever you end up doing. As you try to find some stuff.
Amanda: Eric, would you say that our party is on the Amber Standard?
Brandon: Eric, I'm going to do this once so it's out of my system. It's the color of my energy. Alright, we're done, never going to make that joke ever again.
Julia: Not going to do it any more.
Amanda: So good.
Julia: You're good.
Eric: Waaah oh, amber is the color of your energy. No Brandon, Brandon keep doing that. I entreat you to keep doing it.
Amanda: God I can't wait.
Eric: So yeah, that's-- that's everything that we're doing. This is Verda Stello, the great ringed land. I'm very excited for all of us to get into it. Again, everything that I've said here, I can write up into a document, it’s going to be linked in the episode description below. I'm also talking to Mage Hand Press. So hopefully when we figure out our classes next week, everyone will be on the same page including listeners about what classes and subclasses we're choosing from Valda’s Spire of Secrets.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Oh, god it's gonna be so hard to choose. I can't wait.
Julia: Oh, I already picked, baby. We're here, this solidified exactly what I was thinking about and I'm just like, mwah chef's kiss.
Eric: Julia, can I give you one Amber for you to tell it to me early?
Julia: I will take it. I'm writing it down, one Amber for—
Eric: No no, no, I don’t want to give you that-- I don't want to.
Amanda: Incredible.
Julia: But you promised.
Eric: No, I was making a joke. I'm sorry.
Julia: No.
Eric: What do you think? Is this good? Is this what you wanted?
Amanda and Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: It's good.
Eric: Good.
Julia: Hell yeah, dawg.
Amanda: Thank you, Eric.
Julia: Thank you, Eric. Thank you daddy podcast.
Amanda: Amber please.
Eric: No, I'm not giving you all.
Amanda: Amber, please.
Julia: Amber, please.
Brandon: Amber, please.
Amanda: Amber please.
Julia: No more jokens, only amber.
Eric: No.
Amanda: What's the joken to Amber ratio? Like 10 jokes into one Amber?
Eric: I don't know.
Julia: If I make enough jokes in the podcast, will Eric give me amber?
Eric: Oh god yeah, instead of inspiration I'm giving you jokens. It's five jokens for one piece of amber.
Amanda: Alright.
Julia: Pretty good.
Amanda: Eric, I know I for one cannot wait to explore Verda Stello even more. So folks, stay tuned for next week, when we are going to talk all about our characters and classes. We'll see you then.
Brandon: Hey, Amanda, would you say it's time to sail away?
Amanda: (sings) Sail away, sail away.
Julia: (sings) Come sail away. [laughs] Amanda and I went with different sail away songs, and I love that for us.
Amanda: (sings) Sail on down the road about a half a mile or so. Try to make you stay, but I [hums song].
Brandon: Bye guys.
Eric: [Mumble sings The Wellerman]
Amanda: Bye.
Julia: (sings) Say well and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Say well and adieu you ladies from Spain. I'm going to stop recording now.
Transcriptionist: KA
Editor: KM