Well, we can’t have summertime fun, experiences, growth without a summer camp! So let’s build it from the ground up, using some worldbuilding games and our own fond memories.
Housekeeping
- Check out RPG City Planner by Eric Silver here and i'm sorry did you say street magic by Caro Asercion here.
Sponsors
- NordVPN. Exclusive - Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/jointheparty Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!
- Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com/jointheparty for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, use offer code JOINTHEPARTY to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
- BetterHelp, a secure online therapy service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod
- twitch: twitch.tv/jtpsidequests
- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod
- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod
- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com
- merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch
Cast & Crew
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Julia Schifini
- 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 the Camp-Paign, our Monster of the Week story set in a weird and wild summer camp, or marathon our D&D games with Campaign 2 for a modern, sci-fi 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
Eric: Hello, summer camp enthusiasts, today we are doing something new. We are kicking off the Camp-paign with a camp world-building episode. Look, we made it all the way to the end.
Brandon: Yay! We're done?
Julia: Yeah, we're not playing anymore.
Eric: No, we're done.
Amanda: We graduated from Dungeons and Dragons?
Eric: We haven't graduated. We are doing a new thing, like leaving school and getting on the bus to summer camp. We're gonna be playing a different game here on Join the Party. We're playing a campaign of Monster the Week.
[everybody cheering]
Eric: Yay! We did it. Now, hey, why are we doing this? I don't want to play Dungeons and Dragons for a little bit. I want-- I want Wizards of the Coast to go cool their heels and sit over there. I need like, a summer away from Wizards of the Coast.
Brandon: Like six weeks, maybe?
Julia: And just like doing like, extracurricular activities at summer camp and learning new skills, we're going to learn a new game.
Eric: Oh, this is the equivalent of like archery or like learning cricket at summer camp.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Did you learn cricket at summer camp? Did you go to summer camp in England in the UK?
Eric: There was a guy who was really obsessed with cricket and he taught a bunch of campers how to play cricket, 100%.
Brandon: [in an English accent] Was he from foggy London town?
Julia: Oh, god.
Eric: Well, he was in Canada so like, there's Canada is like a little bit of-
Amanda: In some ways, the England in North America.
Eric: Someone put like a tablespoon of England into a country and then that's what we got in there.
Brandon: They're still a territory or whatever, right? Isn't the Queen still their Queen?
Eric: They still love the queen. And here's the thing, the Queen's been dead for five years.
Amanda: No.
Eric: That's my conspiracy theory that I'm-
Amanda: Eric, much like you naming a robot Omicron, this is not going to age well.
[everybody laughing]
Eric: That's fine. I'm okay with that. That's totally fine. Okay, so this is what we're doing here. So we're going to play a small campaign of Monster the Week. It is going to be set at a summer camp which we are going to talk about for the rest of this episode here. We are going to come back to Dungeons and Dragons after we do this. Don't worry everyone who likes that game only. But we wanted to, you know, truly we're learning archery at summer camp and we're taking the time. Julia, you want to see what the name of this campaign is called?
Julia: It's the Camp-Paign.
Brandon and Amanda: Whoooooo!
Eric: Streamers are coming down, confetti cannon. When Julia came up with that, a confetti cannon somewhere went off.
Julia: Yes. It was in my brain. My brain all of a sudden was just full of confetti for days.
Amanda: As it should be.
Brandon: Julia's officially earned her keep, she has to no longer do any work for us. She's done.
Julia: Yay!
Eric: Julia, nothing says-- Brandon says is law, is bound, bound by anything you still need to do work.
Julia: Damn it.
Brandon: Nothing I say is canon.
Eric: Yeah. Brandon's asleep right now. He's actually sleep talking, so that doesn't count.
Brandon: That's true.
Amanda: Oh my gosh, what happens if you sleepwalk at camp? Do you like, step on frogs and like go to the-- get wet in the lake and stuff?
Eric: Yeah, then everyone else has a really good story that they tell for the rest of life.
Amanda: Gosh.
Julia: You– you always are the girl who stepped on a frog.
Eric: Oh, yeah, you're that girl who's stepped on a frog while you were sleepwalking. It's very funny. So yeah, we're gonna do this set at a summer camp. We're very excited about this. The beginning of this episode, I'm going to talk a little bit about what the difference between Dungeons and Dragons and Monster the Week is and how that's going to kind of touch what we're doing here and how we're going to be playing the rest of this game. And then we're going to be doing a world building game that I came up with to kind of flesh out our summer camp here.
Brandon: Yeah!
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Can't wait. And as Julia said, If you don't know how to play Monster of the Week, don't worry about it. We're going to teach you.
Julia: Yeah!
Eric: Join the Party is extremely devoted to the thing that we always did, which is teaching you how to play a game when other people don't have the time to teach you how to play said game. Okay, so Monster of the Week is a standalone action-horror RPG for three to five people. This is actually from the product description of Monster the Week. So it's kind of interesting how they message it: "Hunt high school beasties a La Buffy the vampire Slayer, travel the country to bring down unnatural creatures like the Winchester brothers of supernatural, or head up the government investigation like Mulder and Scully." So if you are making a comparison between the kinds of media that Dungeons and Dragons and Monsters of the Week might be, D&D is a fantasy novel, it is Lord of the Rings, right? You go on a big journey. You are fighting things you are like all tactically working together as I mean, remember this used to be a war game where you're defeating monsters and you have we get weapons and all that cool stuff. While Monster the Week is inspired by these Monster the Week shows that you might know like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural or The X Files.
Amanda: And Lost Girl, everyone's favorite queer Canadian drama.
Julia: For the like, 100,000 people out there who have watched Lost Girl, which is not a lot.
Eric: I do not know any better Canadian queer monster-based show that came out regularly that also Multitude made a podcast about.
Amanda: It's true.
Eric: I don't know another one.
Julia: Checks all the boxes.
Eric: I think the main thing you need to remember is that while D&D is governed kind of by quests, like in The Witcher, or in your favorite fantasy novel. Monster of the Week is governed by mysteries. So it all revolves around the players figuring out the mystery, what's going on with this monster in this particular timeframe. A lot of Monster the Week is kind of dictated by like, what time it is outside, in the way that like the monster, and the mystery progresses, regardless of what you're doing, you just need to track it down. And then you need to figure out what to do with that monster in the end. And like, kill it. Yeah, like Monster Hunters do, but like, do something about it. And try to like, get it out of the place where it is, you know. You've all been- X Files, Supernatural, Buffy. And the– the episode happens, they do something about the monster, and then you go on to the next one.
Brandon: Colloquially, if I'm correct, I think in TV terms, the Monster the Week episodes are the ones that are like the in-between episodes that aren't serialized story arcs. So they're the ones that like, are one-off episodes where Dean and Sam go hunt down a vampire and then it's just all contained in that one episode, right?
Eric: Right. So that idea definitely will help like the way that you all play. But there's obviously like, there are still messaging like themes of larger arcs here and there is going to be a larger arc through here. But I wouldn't want to do a game of more than like 10 to 15 episodes of what we're doing. Because like I- you know, after a while you end up being like episode Season 4 of Buffy, where Buffy died for the fifth time and Buffy is upset that she got taken- No, Season 4 is when she goes to college. Season 5 is when she is upset that she got pulled out of heaven. So you know, it gets to a point where you need to wrap it up.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So yeah, all the players are Monster Hunters. You are hunters who have devoted their lives to killing monsters. We're gonna change this a little bit because we're gonna to be a summer camp. We're gonna get there and later episodes as we talk about it. I am playing the Keeper, as in the keeper of monsters and mysteries. The Keeper is in charge of designing the monsters and mysteries that the hunters will encounter, bring the world to life and portraying the monsters and the people the human- the hunters meet. The rest of you will decide how the hunters work together to investigate the weird situations they find, slay the monsters causing the trouble, and save the people in danger. Your hunters are not normal people, not even normal for Monster Hunters. You are the ones who stand out, you're larger than life, twice as badass. This was written in the 2010s would badass was a really good adjective. You can change the world, save it, destroy it, or alter it forever, one way or another you will make a difference. The hunters here are very much our main characters in a way that-- similar to D&D and the way that the player characters are always going to be like heroic, but not that you're betting more than human. You're just very important and you will do action-packed things as you all act.
Brandon: We’re super cool. We’re just the coolest, baby. We're the coolest.
Julia: The coolest.
Eric: You have to be the coolest. Amanda, are you going to be cool?
Amanda: It's why everyone plays RPGs, to be cool. For once, here, in this universe.
Eric: In this, in this specific one. What I really also like about Monster of the Week is that they have an agenda for players in that I can tell you: When you're playing a hunter, act like you're a hero in the story because you are, make your own destiny, find the damn the monsters and stop them and play your Hunter like they are a real person, think like your hunter would think, do what your hunter would do.
Amanda: So nice.
Brandon: Cool. My hunter is hungry.
Julia: Go eat something.
Eric: Then you're gonna spend a lot of time eating, Brandon. Brandon's hunting monsters just to eat them at the mess hall. A really interesting thing about this is that the fighting sequences is that it's a lot more fluid and you will be putting yourself in harm's way and we're going to talk about this later. If for those you don't know how much of the week works, you like you don't stop and go to initiative, you kind of just do different things. But monsters are a lot harder to kill than humans. Even like the little minions that go along with the super- the larger supernatural creatures are very difficult to fight. But of course, monsters have weaknesses and they can be defeated once you figure out those weaknesses. If only we had a podcast that demonstrated that monsters have weaknesses and ways to defeat them and stuff like that. So there's going to be a lot of like, figuring things out, figuring out the monsters weaknesses, and then confronting it, but also not dying. Like if you take damage, it's going to be a lot easier for your character to die. If you like- you can't just run in with an ax over your head and you're going to swing down on it. You need to figure out plans and strategies. I think that's going to be a lot more of this kind of this kind of game, which I think is gonna be really fun.
Brandon: I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.
Eric: You can die if you want.
Julia: I don't think it'll be a choice.
Amanda: I think a lot like the Monster of the Week media that we all enjoy a lot, you are rarely kind of like PvP with the monster, you know? Like you, you're not going to just kind of go up to it and do hand-to-hand combat and you're gonna figure out how to entrap it or use its weakness against them or you know, from behind a tree or a building or a car, figure out how to take them down.
Eric: Absolutely. Specifically about this game, because it's outside, we're using the Powered by the Apocalypse system, and that we use just two 6-sided die for you to roll all times. You do 2 D6, and then you add your various stats, there are five stats, Cool, Tough, Charm, Sharp and Weird. And then according to that, we're going to figure out what's happening. 10+ is a very good success. 9 to 7 is kind of like a mixed success, or a success, a limited success. And then 6 or less, you're going to have a problem, and I'm going to do something to ruin your day.
Brandon: Eric, can I make one request?
Eric: That you roll better with a D6 system?
Brandon: That, okay, can I make two requests?
Eric: Okay.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Great.
Brandon: Can we make 10 or higher, a great success?
Eric: Great success! My wife! I will say that I think 12 is a crit. If you roll two sixes, then it's like extremely, extremely good.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: The pluses and minuses are going to be like -1 all the way to +3 if you're very, very good at something. And we're gonna go into that more when we look at our character sheets and what y'all are doing.
Amanda: If– if triple 6 is the devil's number is double six the devil's titties? And therefore-
Julia: Amanda.
Amanda: Great.
Julia: Yes. 100% I'm with you.
Amanda: Brandon and Eric had their little fucking Borat joke or whatever the fuck. But you got- you got two monster queers on the show with you. And Julia and I have to bring that energy.
Eric: This is why we're doing this.
Jula: That's true.
Eric: This is why we're playing Monster of the Week.
Brandon: That was the– that was the literally-- if I had to guess that would have been the last thing I would have ever guessed. If you had 1000 million monkeys in the room on typewriters-
Eric: I want to say that like, we fucked around for like 10 minutes before we started actually recording, because like, I don't know how to start a campaign again, I started- the last campaign that we started was before the pandemic started. So I'm just like, I guess we'll begin. Let's talk about stuff. So all of this is on the table. I think the only other thing that we need to talk about here is that this game, although we do this in Dungeons and Dragons, Monster of the Week is a lot more of a conversation between the Hunters and the Keeper. In that like, there are moves you do, you don't just like try to roll the specific things that are on your character sheet. It's a lot more of you exploring the space, and then us figuring out together what exactly you're doing. So this is an example from the book. So you do things called moves, which kind of like, instigate the dice rolls, right? Tabletop RPG is storytelling + dice rolls = fun, right? But if you want to do something that's like, quote, unquote, superhuman, you have to roll dice for it. Everything else, we can kind of like negotiate and figure out. A key element--this is from the text, a key element of the use of moves is that quote, you have to make the move. If you want to, for instance, manipulate someone in the game, you have to describe your Hunter doing that. How do you ask, what do you offer to make them do what you want? Why would they believe your offer is genuine? I think that a lot of this stuff. And we ended up doing this on the show when I asked you like, what is this look like? Or what are you doing? But I think that like, I wouldn't necessarily call for a roll here unless you did get to a point where you would be persuading, right? Like you don't lead with the persuasion check, you need to do the persuading and then you do the move, which is called manipulate someone which is the– that particular one. So here's a really good example of this. There's a move called 'Kick Some Ass', which is explicitly about fighting, right? It's like I want to punch, you're gonna do Kick Some Ass, but you need to explain what it is you're going to do. If you're running in and you're like, I'm going to run out the vampire so that Mr. McGregor doesn't get hurt, right? It's like, well, there is another move that's called 'Protect Someone', right? So you would rather do that instead. Only if you are explicitly, like fighting do you use the move, Kick Some Ass. There's also more of a general move called 'Act Under Pressure' where that if it doesn't fit any the other ones you do an Act Under Pressure move, which is kind of just like an action move. It's the action button, if you will.
Brandon: So they're almost like describing your actions as opposed to sort of like instigating your action, action?
Eric: Yeah, describe your action or do your action and then I will tell you what move it is. But if you want to change it because your stats are specific to one thing, then we'll be like, well, how do you-- how can we negotiate this so it fits your move?
Brandon: Oh, cool.
Eric: These are also general Hunter moves. These are things that all of you get to do. And then there are specific moves for classes where like if you want to make sure that one of your moves, like pops off, you need to put yourself in that specific situation and we're going to like, have a conversation and narrate how you get there.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Which will be very fun. So we ended up doing a lot of this anyway and inserting this into Dungeons and Dragons. But it’s kind of like explicitly baked into this game, which is why I also kind of, I want to get away from Wizards of the Coast Academy where I spent all my school days and I get bullied. So–
Brandon: So it's like all the good shit that we already do from D&D, but baked into the game this time.
Eric: Exactly.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Eric: And you don't have to buy D20, you can just use two regular dice. You can go into like, a Yahtzee or Candyland, or whatever you use, and just grab 2 D6, you know?
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: But I think that-- let's go into the world-building here. We are going to do a summer camp. I want all of us to kind of be on the same page of what themes we're talking about when we're talking about a summer camp. Because sometimes we say things about Long Island and then Brandon does not know we're talking about. I would love it if we all went around and shared our experiences with what we understand of summer camp, both from personal experience and pop culture. Ghoulia, well, tell me about your experience with summer camp.
Julia: So I only did like one year of sleepaway summer camp, which was a Girl Scout sleepaway summer camp–
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Julia: –that Amanda attended for one day and then had the flu and had to leave.
Brandon: Oh, no!
Amanda: That's true.
Brandon: That's so sad.
Amanda: I attended long enough for some older kids to teach us what sex was.
Julia: That's true.
Brandon: That's what camp’s for, baby.
Julia: They demonstrated with a stuffed dog and a stuffed cat. The dog's tail was the penis.
Amanda: Both of us were there.
Eric: So which of you…? Which of you are the dog which are you are the cat?
Julia: So that's my only like real experience with that. I remember having to test for how good a swimmer I was. And there was camp songs. And the different cabins were like Port and Starboard I think.
Eric: Love that.
Julia: And yeah, so that I had like, very limited, like sleepaway camp experience. A lot of the camp experience that I had throughout my life was more day camp stuff, like not daycare for you know, the summer. More like, I did a lot of science camp.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: That's fun.
Julia: It was fun. It was a good time.
Brandon: Space camp.
Julia: Yeah, I didn't do space camp. But I did like, learn how to– Actually, there might have been a Space Camp element there because I remember like, how to build a rocket and then launching the rocket and that kind of thing.
Brandon: That's fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: That's very good.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Alright, Brandon, what about you? Do they have camp in not the Northeast?
Brandon: Yeah. They have a lot of camps. I did one year of sleepaway camp, it was just sort of like a lot of crafts. I remember making like out of plastic threads like a little keychain bobble thing.
Eric: Classic.
Brandon: And what else do we do? I remember a pillow fight, like a cabin pillow fight that we had.
Amanda: Oooh!
Eric: Sounds about right. Yeah.
Brandon: And I don't think we actually did any pranks, but we definitely talked about doing pranks.
Eric: That's half the fun is just talking about the prank. So you almost- you're like 95% of the way there.
Brandon: Yeah. So I remember as a, you know, as a young kid with anxiety, it was both fun because of all the cool activities I got to do. But also the social aspect of it was rough. But I also was in Boy Scouts for many years. And so I did a lot of like, sort of like that day activity that Julia described of like archery and whittling and we did a lot of camping and cooking burger patties in foil and that kind of stuff, you know?
Eric: For sure.
Amanda: I was mostly conscripted into childcare in my summers as a kid myself, I did serve as a CIT, Counselor in Training at the daycamp by my house which they ran in the elementary school. But just during the day, so I like you know babysat other kids for no wages, by the way, except for tips that some parents like gave you $10 at the end of the summer. So I ran, you know, a day camp for kids in that way. But I was always so jealous of all of my friends who went to like four or six or eight weeks of sleepaway camp, and people would come home with like camp boyfriends or girlfriends, they would-- it felt like they all had kind of Camp-sonas and like the streams never crossed if I never met any of my friends’ camp friends, and it felt like such a sort of exciting and like, in the way that when you go away to college, you can kind of reinvent yourself or like go by a new name.
Brandon: Totally.
Amanda: You know, or like not talk about the niche you were in– in high school. That was always the fantasy to me of like, gosh, I wish I had that chance and all like, oh, I have no idea who my friends are when they're at camp. Similarly, the city that Laketown City is based on, sort of like Adirondack area where my grandparents live and where Eric and I go on vacation had a sleepaway camp on an island in the middle of a lake. And it was just a bucolic like nature sleepaway camp–
Brandon: That's awesome.
Amanda: –for kids and you got there on a boat and we would occasionally like, drive past it. I could see it on the horizon and be like, oh man, if only I got to go to sleepaway camp that I can only get to by a boat. So that's my like, face against the window sort of yearning experiences of camp.
Brandon: I love that.
Amanda: Oh, that's really good.
Brandon: Oh, one important point I forgot is that my camp was definitely a Christian camp.
Julia: Oooh, boy.
Eric: Brandon, that's a perfect transition considering how I went to Jewish sleepaway camp for 14 years! Man, I, yeah, I did the full Monty from 8 years old until I think I was 22. I went to this sleepaway camp, a Jewish sleepaway camp up in like, the woods of Ontario, Canada.
Brandon: That's awesome.
Eric: So I met a lot of kids from like, Ohio, and Michigan and Pittsburgh, and Toronto, and Ottawa. My camp was part of a, like a network of summer camps. And like, that was the– the area in which they pulled people from was like that whole area of the Midwest and the North.
Amanda: Ah, the Rust Belt, nothing like it.
Eric: No, then there are a few Jews there, and they all went to that camp.
Brandon: I was gonna say it was like a thing of like, you actually have other people who are also Jewish in the United States to hang out?
Eric: Definitely for some! So my dad went there because he grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, which is between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and there are no Jews there anymore but there used to be. So like, I think for the kids in like Toledo and in other places, that was definitely important, but they're always Jews in like cities. There was a one summer camp that was just for like, the people who lived in like the New York, Connecticut, New Jersey tri-state area, which I didn't go to because that's not the one that my dad went to. So I just thought that was very funny. Yeah, it was very much a very wide reach of that whole northern part of the United States and– and of Canada. I spent a lot of time out there. I made a lot of friends. The camp-sona is 100% true. Especially because like, literally I would go like 10 hours away in the summer for four and then quickly eight weeks. I was also a summer camp counselor for a very long time. I was summer camp counselor for 15 year olds, and 16 year olds my entire time. I think that our summer camp was pretty old, is was what I what I realized, like some most camps ended around 14, but 15/16 was kind of like age that I did.
Brandon: I'm just imagining driving to summer camp myself-
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: –it's very funny.
Eric: It was- my brother and I, we would drive from New York to Toronto, like over the summer.
Brandon: Well, yeah, but you were a counselor.
Julia: I think it's truly wild to me that you went to another country to go to summer camp.
Eric: Yeah. I also want to say Brandon, to your point, my dad would drive us and then we would plug our GameCube into like the yellow, red, and white wires into the car and we would play like Super Smash Bros melee on the tiny screen that would pop up in the back. I have very fond memories of that GameCube getting incredibly hot as like we would be on the car-- There was a ferry that would go across like one of the Great Lakes if you drove to a specific place and then that went to Toronto. I specifically remember playing my GameCube while on a giant car-
Amanda: In a car on a ferry.
Eric: In a car on a ferry. Yes. And a lot, yeah, lots of pranks, lots of running around. We also- it was like really was in the middle of nowhere. So I saw a lot of bears and moose especially when we would go on a camping trip.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Which would you be for like a week at a time. It was pretty wild.
Brandon: I have yet to see a bear in real life. I would like to.
Eric: Yeah, I, Brandon. I've been five feet away from a bear.
Amanda: That's too close. It's too stinky.
Brandon: There are two animals in this world that I want to hug–
Eric: Yeah
Brandon: –and will never get to.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: And they are bear and tiger.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: But Brandon, here's the thing both of them very dangerous.
Brandon: That’s what I’m saying!
Eric: I love bears. Bears are my favorite animal but I still do not want to get close to a bear. A bear wants to eat your face.
Brandon: I want to snuggle though.
Eric: I– same but also then your face will get eaten.
Amanda: That's why we all have to as our next Patreon reward buy those Snorlax is that our dog beds.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I just want a person-sized one, fuck the dog.
Amanda: It’s a big dog bed so I think it's about a Julia-sized bed.
Julia: There you go.
Brandon: It's Julia. When you say your height, do you just say like dog height?
Julia: Yeah, dog on back legs? My height.
Eric: I'm taking out my conversion chart right now and large dog equals, one Julia. Alright, so do you want to get to your world, our world-building game here?
Brandon: I do!
Julia: Let’s do it.
Eric: For our world-building game, I've kind of rejiggered the stuff that we did with RBG city planner, which we use to birth Laketown city but now we're going to figure out our summer camp here. I've taken parts RPG city planner, which is a hack of The Quiet Year by Avery Alder and I've also combined parts of I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic? by Caro Asercion, which is has the best title of all tabletop RPGs. Congratulations.
Julia: Truly.
Brandon: Incredible.
Eric: So we're gonna- we're going to like kind of figure out the larger themes and ideas of our camp. And then we're going to get into the question, the rolling on a table of questions like we do before, and also we're going to do what we usually do. We're going to go around in a circle when it is your turn, you're the one who gets to like, answer the question. But of course, everyone gets to contribute and see what happens here.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Alright. So let's assume that we're at a standard summer camp with standard buildings kind of as our basic building block here. Like, unlike a city, which can be anything. There's usually the same stuff at a summer camp, right? There are cabins for a good sleep away, which I think we're going to do for girls and boys is like a girls hill and a boys hill. There is a nurse's office, there's a mess hall, there's a place where the staff hang out, there's a basketball court, et cetera, et cetera, right? But the first part about creating our camp is establishing the tone, the color, and texture of the setting that we're going to explore. As a group, we're going to decide on three adjectives that will set the mood of our camp. I have a list that we're going to start with here, and we can pick at least one from this list, but we can-- we don't have to limit ourselves just the option. Here are some ones to start with. Ageless, bright, warm, spooky, elegant, drowsy, adventurous, intense, memorable, magnetic, overwhelming, tense, freewheeling, loud, innocent, new, faded, volatile, vivid, tranquil, sprawling, creaky, eclectic, gritty and grand. Again, we can- we can add on to this list but I do think we should start with one from the list and go from there. Like what do we-- what if you were going to describe this summer camp, what– what adjectives would you use to describe being there the people there the experience of it? Maybe we can even look at Think about this like we are now like looking back at our times at the summer camps. Let's pick some adjectives.
Brandon: Hmm, I'm immediately drawn to a couple of them but I think 'adventurous' would be fun in that, like we could make this summer camp be like, the purpose of it is to like, build you as a person, right? So like, you know, round you out, learn bunch of new skills, challenge yourself in a way that you haven't-- you can't do in like your normal, everyday city life kind of thing. That could be fun.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Grand stood out to me for the same reason. I like the idea that it's sort of a place for adventure.
Eric: Adventurous and grand are very good. Grand also means that there's like, a lot of big and cool buildings. And also adventurous to me, Brandon means that like, there's not a lot of oversight.
Brandon: Oh, completely.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: There's a lot of like you getting into trouble without anyone seeing you get into trouble.
Brandon: That's the point, you got to get in trouble. So you can, you know, learn to fail and get in trouble.
Eric: Yeah, exactly.
Brandon: In a safe environment.
Eric: I really liked that.
Julia: I'm drawn to either, like faded or creaky. Because I like this idea of it being like, probably the brochure for this place is like, "Come on down, teach your child how to be adventurous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And it's like, way past its prime.
Brandon: Do we think it's been here since like, the 1940s and 50s? Or it was like, I don't know, "Well round your kid." you know, and now it's like-
Julia: “Have your child forget about The War.”
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, I thought ageless, too jumped out at me not in the sense that it's like, perfectly preserved, like we're, you know, Steve Rogers or something. But that it's as if it could be, you know, 1940 as you're in the camp, and partly because, you know, many camps, no cell phones and I think that-- that really puts you in a different frame of mind. But especially coming out of Laketown City, where so much it's about technology, and how we change the environment, I sort of love like, analog idea.
Eric: I wonder when I'm looking at ageless, creaky, and grand, I feel like two out of three of those fit together. But I don't know if like, reusing adventurous that we got to pick one out of because I think adventurous stands. But I feel like, ageless and creaky and grand like something about those conflicts. Is there or is there another word that like encapsulates both ageless and grand? Or do you want to do creaky?
Amanda: I'd also be down for adventurous and creaky because that kind of means like, I don't know, the camp’s there, like figure it out and is sort of like the– the sense of sort of seeing a seasonal house just after the end of winter is something that I have done a lot of where you walk in, it's like wow, it's fully 30 degrees in here and like the weather-- like the woods been really beaten and there's no heating or insulation because it's just for the summer that really says creaky to me.
Brandon: Cool. Yeah. So yeah, should we cut grand then?
Amanda: I'm fine with that.
Eric: I think ageless touches grand in a different way, which fits with creaky. I'm worried that grand and creaky like are conflicting.
Julia: I don't think so. Like I'm picturing almost like a almost like Gothic Horror, you know? Where you have this old grand building that has not stood the test of time. So like, yes, these buildings are grand, but they're also like peeling and falling apart.
Eric: Okay, I understand now. There are lots of place in the-- as Amanda said in upstate New York like in the Borscht Belt, where that used to be they're all still like the-- what would you call them?
Amanda: It's the grand old hotels?
Eric: Yeah, they're not like country clubs.
Amanda: Summer resorts.
Eric: They're like, yeah, they're like weird resorts that were very popular in the 50s that are still there, but haven't been updated at all since the 50s.
Amanda: Did I go there for Key Club Executive Leadership summits in high school?
Julia: I bet you did.
Amanda: Sure did.
Eric: Yep.
Amanda: Did we sleep in sleeping bags on top of beds because they were so gross? We sure did.
Brandon: That so- it's funny to me that you guys have that reference because for me grand is like, in the south, it's more like, they're not like Country Club style buildings, they're more like huge, beautiful log cabin style buildings, you know? Where it's like the same idea, exactly the same idea of what you're describing, but like, it's this like, vibe of we are maintaining old history, you know, like almost like the Alamo kind of thing, you know?
Eric: I do like that. In terms of a summer camp. I always feel like if something is made out of metal in a summer camp, it's like new– the new building. And like the real buildings are the ones that are made out of wood. Like you're saying, Brandon.
Brandon: Yeah, like the quote unquote, real buildings.
Eric: Yeah. Like all of the buildings are like all of the cabins that I'm envisioning are like, made out of wood with like a tin roof.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: And all of them have like the same red tin roof. But like, there was a new building, like they had a new office building and that was the one that stood out like it was just like an office building and that's where like the admins work. So I think that that's how adventurous and creaky and grand fit together. I like that I wanted I think of those three definitely fitting together.
Brandon: I think like going up Julia like American Gothic is kind of the vibe.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Oh, for sure.
Brandon: Which is cool.
Eric: This is actually going to help us because we are going to have a very small conversation about what themes we're touching here about big picture ideas. What does the landscape look like? What time do you want this to be set in? Is this based off of real life? Or a real-time or real life? Or something stranger and more speculative? Do ghosts exist? Do– are ghosts just around? Do robots exist? Do talking animals exist? What do we want to do here? I think American Gothic is exactly on the nose of what we're talking about. Kind of like this timeless America. I really don't want there to be computers. There is a thing of my time-- in my head of like 2007/2009 like before the first iPhone came like, you had a flip phone and maybe a Gameboy. But like–
Amanda: I think you're right on the money in 2005 is a great sort of compromise period.
Eric: But like you had to give in your cell phone and it was easy and fine to do because you just shouldn't be like texting when it's like a dollar a text.
Amanda: You just get SMSs, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, like $1 a text in the middle of nowhere. And like, I don't want it to be 2005, I just want that technological vibe to be 2005.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Great.
Eric: Like it should be any– any age.
Amanda: Well, I am a sucker for a magic system that conflicts with technology and magic systems that have to kind of reckon with the presence of that. And so maybe everyone has found that technology just doesn't work all that well. And so the camp, you know, like, a place has a generator, if the power grid isn't that reliable. Maybe the camp does rely on the landline or they have a telegraph or they have a, you know, a satellite phone when they need it because stuff doesn't really work that well.
Julia: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to be like, hey, in this very rural location, your cell phones don't work.
Eric: Yes, agreed.
Amanda: I think regardless of the time that we choose, there are a lot of really real reasons why tech wouldn't work that well and maybe the camp doesn't make it a huge part of daily life.
Brandon: I love that. As a second option, I'm also totally down to like, do like the mid-1970s. I love the sort of dichotomy of like, a camp that was founded in 1940, 1950. And then when you go just 20 years later to the 70s, like, the camp can still exist, but the culture has changed so drastically in those 25 years. But yeah, that's just another- another option.
Julia: I think that's super interesting because then you kind of put yourself in the beginning/height of the kind of slasher at the camp counselor genre.
Brandon: That's true.
Brandon and Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Which I don't know if that's the direction that we want to go in necessarily to go kind of Friday the 13th. But that does provide that option. I guess.
Eric: All I want to do, I don't want to put a date on this. I think that all those vibes are 100% on the money. I just never want to say what date it is and I never want there to be like, we can choose if we want to make references or do whatever reference we want. I just never wanted to be like, oh, fuck this, did Sputnik happened yet? Fuck.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That's, that's all I want. And I think that we can encapsulate all that.
Brandon: I love that. I mean, I would love a 14 year old boy wearing fucking, like multicolored tank top and short shorts with a Gameboy you know?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, like, that's anytime that's any time.
[Midroll music]
Eric: Hey, it's Eric. I did not do the midroll for a little while because I was out and I was at my bachelor party. So my recommendation for the midroll is having very good friends who care about you and know exactly what it is that you like to have a good time and then we'll kind of like do a bunch of planning to execute on that. So Heddy, Nara, Kenny, Jeff, Tyler, I really appreciate all of you. You're the best. I hope you're listening to this podcast but I don't- I don't viewed as they really are, but that's okay. Welcome to the Midroll. I ate so much locks over the last few days. First and foremost, thank you to all of our newest patrons. Monica, Becca, and Scott and Ruth Zuka. Welcome welcome. We hope you've been enjoying your benefits like our patron-only Discord, our merch discounts Party Planning, which comes out every other week, or other bonus episodes that are already on the RSS feed, our blooper reels and much, much more. There also may or may not be some cool merch coming your way in the next few weeks. So this is a great week to sign up and get access to that special discounted patron merch portal before that big day. Join us at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. We are also excited to be starting the Summer Camp-Paign. Here's the scheduling reminder that you need. You're getting three story episodes over the next three weeks, then we're going to have an Afterparty all about this world-building episode and the beginning of the story. This is also a great time for new people to join the show, especially if they don't want to consume content about the dragon game and you want to tell them about a different game. So if you have friends who you've been dying to get into Join the Party or co-workers or family members or like crushes, that's worked a lot people have talked about Join the Party on dates and it has worked 100 out of 100 times. Send them the link to jointhepartypod.com/start That is jointhepartypod.com/start. I also got to tell you about all the cool stuff that we're doing here and Multitude. You know about the Multicrew, which is our membership program that supports all of Multitude to try new things, launched new shows and keep the independent podcast engine going. But did you know about our newest exclusive perk for Multicrew members? It is our brand new Multicrew pen pal exchange. Are you looking to make new friends and connect with others? You want to bust out that pen and paper? Or maybe you're in the market for a virtual buddy to brighten up your email inbox, whatever it is you're looking for, we want to make that happen. This is a perk for every Multicrew member to use regardless of the tear, you will be paired with a handpicked paa and fellow Multicrew member based on your interest, your location, availability and most importantly, your taste in shows. Join the Multicrew for as little as $5 a month at multicrew.club and get signed up for a pen pal exchange right meow. We are sponsored by NordVPN, it is an easy-to-use VPN that lets you browse the internet safely and freely. You connect with just one click or enable auto connect for a zero click protection. They have more than 5000 servers in 60 countries. So you can either find a server near you for better speed or connect to a faraway location to freely explore the internet, maybe I don't know, there's some sort of thing that locks things towards specific countries that you're from and changes the content accordingly. Maybe you want to access that. I would know that was I'm making up a hypothetical and empathetically Nord VPN can help you with that. It's the fastest VPN out there and works on every major platform, Windows, Android, iOS, Glaxo Tron, Mac OS, and Linux. And I only made up one of those things. Even your Android TV supports Nord VPN. So grab your exclusive Nord VPN deal by going to Nord and nordvpn.com/jointheparty to get a huge discount off your Nord VPN plan plus one additional month for free. It's completely a risk-free with Nords 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. Nord VPN.
Eric: We are also sponsored by Squarespace. It is the super to use and beautiful tool for building your brand and growing your business online. You might have heard a kajillion Squarespace ad if you're been into podcasting. Or maybe you just follow the New York Knicks and you think that that image is fun when it's on top of the backboard or it's on their jersey. But I'll tell you right now, I've been using Squarespace for years to run various businesses. Like the Join The Party website, and also when I had to build a website for my personal, or for what's your favorite Pokemon, and then I say something nice about you WYFPATISSNAY, RIP. I went to Squarespace because it was easy to do and looks really pretty. They have beautiful custom templates, easy-to-use SEO tools, and online stores if you want to get on that physical or digital product sale. If you're launching a podcast, a brand, a business, or anything else, let Squarespace be your toolkit. Go to squarespace.com/jointheparty for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code JOINTHEPARTY to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Finally, this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Relationships take work. A lot of us will drop anything to go help someone we care about will go out of our way to treat other people well, but how often do we give ourselves the same treatment? This month BetterHelp Online Therapy wants to remind you to take care of your most important relationship, the one you have with yourself, better help online therapy offers video, phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist, a real live sanctioned therapist, so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't have to. Here's wild. Again, real therapist, not a fake therapist, but it's still way more affordable than in-person therapy. And you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours and you can also switch therapists, which is the hardest thing to do finding a therapist who's right for you. Give it a try and see why over 2 million people have used BetterHelp Online Therapy. This podcast is sponsored by better help. And during the party listeners can get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty that's B E T T E R H E L P.com/jointheparty. Bone Witch, and now back to the show.
[Midroll music]
Eric: Hell yes. Okay. I feel good. I- in terms of the weirdness, and of ghosts and robots and talking animals. I think that we American Gothic is on the money, we are playing a Monster the Week game. So there is going to be some weirdness. But I think it will find us as we play.
Brandon: Cool.
Amanda: That makes sense.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Here's one little note here, you might have noticed that I did not ask you what the name of the camp is. This is intentional. At any point, if anyone feels moved, you we can name the camp. But I think that as long as we do it sometime before we end here, we'll figure it out.
Julia: Alright.
Eric: So only when you feel inspired by maybe what we do here. Anytime if someone has an idea, I'll write it down and then we can make sure that by the time- by the time we end we'll have a name, but I'm not never going to call for what the name of the summer camp is going to be.
Julia: Okay.
Brandon: I just want to put this out here for the world to know about me, is I did write a short story in second grade, third grade, maybe?
Eric: Hell yes.
Brandon: That I sold to my classmates and it was a rip-off of a Goosebumps book that I called. Welcome to Camp Die. So we could just call it Camp Die.
Eric: Great. I'm gonna write down Camp Die. How do you spell that?
Brandon: D I E, like death.
Eric: Wonderful, great I'm gonna write that down.
Julia: I mean, that can definitely be the nickname of the camp, we can figure out how to shorten it.
Amanda: The double entendre with– with a D6 is excellent, too.
Eric: That's incredible. Alright
Amanda: Eric, I sent you a Slack message.
Eric: Oh, Amanda showed me two 6 as the Devil's titties. Thanks for sending me that photo.
Julia: Thanks, Amanda.
Amanda: You got it.
Eric: Wonderful. Alright. So we're going to go into some questions here. Does everyone have their D6?
Brandon: Yep.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: Alright. Let's all roll and see who goes first.
[dice roll]
Amanda: Devil's Tit.
Julia: 6.
Brandon: We all got 6's.
Julia: Oh my god.
Amanda: Wait, really?
Eric: I–
Amanda: WHAT?!
Eric: I rolled a 2.
Amanda: HA-HA!
Eric: So I'm gonna go first.
Julia: Hey!
Brandon: So, we are, we are the triumvirate of the devil's number, us combined makes the devil.
Julia: Hmm. This is good energy going into this campaign.
Amanda: I love it. 2 that Eric rolled x 3 players, equals crit.
Eric: WHAT?! And what is this? This is the Declaration of Independence, it’s right here?
Amanda: Eric quick, squeeze lemon juice on a historical document!
Eric: Oh, my eyes! I squeezed it to my own eyes. I was wearing Ben Glasses, glasses. Oh, I called him Ben Glasses. His name is Ben Franklin.
[everyone excitedly talking about Ben Franklin's glasses]
Julia: No, his name is Ben Glasses now.
Brandon: Camp Ben Glasses.
Amanda: That’s pretty good.
Eric: Benjamin Bifocals, our Founding Father. I'll go first and then we'll go Julia, Brandon, Amanda, in the order that we told our camp stories. So here's we're gonna do, I have 6 questions over 3 tables. The first table is called ‘The Space', we're gonna talk about the things that are in the camp. The second is called the 'New Changes'. And the third is called ‘The Stories' about more specific things that have happened that you would tell stories about or people in the actual camp, each of us are gonna go around, we're gonna do four questions from each table, and I'm gonna write them down and then we're gonna kind of use all of this to build our camp out. And of course, whenever you have an idea for a name, just say it when you feel moved. Alright, I'm gonna roll first. [die roll] Hell yes, I got five. What represents the boundaries of the camp? Is there a fence or a wall? Are there landmarks that are divided or a combo of both? This is very interesting for me, because in my summer camp, because it was a Jewish summer camp, there was a rope that went all the way around the camp. Because it's like there are some Shabbat rules about like, being able to carry things on Shabbat basically, in a- the whole work that's revolved around that you also like can't carry, that counts as work. So like there are stories of people like as soon as it becomes sundown on Friday night, where they park their car, put got their wallet and their keys, like in their wheel well and then walk home from wherever they are. So if you put a rope all the way around the camp, it kind of counted as its own building. It's like one of those like life hacks you figure out when you're into religion. So I really felt that there was always a very like, plausible boundary to the camp. Also, there was a lake, there was a lake of the camp. So that was kind of like always the thing at the end, I think the boundary of the camp, are one, at the front, is there's a highway that kind of leads into the camp and then it turns right, so like, there's literally a boundary of a highway. Like if you reach the streets, you're kind of like at the end. And that might be like where the front gate is. Or if there is like an actual fence. I wonder if there is an actual lake as well. And then there's like, our woods, but there's a stone wall in the woods, that is just like, truly no one knows where it came from. And that is like the de facto–
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: –boundary of the camp.
Julia: I was also exactly thinking those like a dilapidated stone walls–
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Julia: –that farmers would use to mark the boundary of their farms. That's 100% exactly what I was picturing when you pulled up this question.
Brandon: I love that.
Amanda: When you're tilling soil, and you come across a rock, make a wall with that rock.
Julia: Yeah!
Amanda: Easier than carrying it somewhere.
Brandon: Maybe there's tons of like those little like, hiker stone statue things around the wall.
Eric: Oh, fucking I know the word for these.
Julia: Cairns?
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: Yeah, I remember there's like a whole system of communication between those two of like telling people like where to go like you got to turn left and turn right on them which just like activated in my brain.
Brandon: I know they're not spooky because of that exact stuff. But in my head, I call them Witch Towers because when there's lots of them, I feel like I'm in a witch's backyard.
Amanda: The Boxcar Children use them to communicate with like the railway you know, migratory people.
Eric: That's one for– okay so I'm gonna write highway in the front.
Brandon: Can we though, on the highway, can we say it's like a Farm to Market Road highway like a country ass highway?
Julia: Right.
Eric: Oh, yeah. No, I didn't think it was like a– like a four-lane. I thought it was just like a road.
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: Like it's the road, though they still call the highway–
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: –even though it's not true. It's definitely just like a road. In my camp, there was a, you could see the road go up to the front gates. And then like it took a hard left to go around it and I'm always just like, where does this go? Where does this street go? It was called Fish Hatchery Lane because like there were– there were a ton of fish hatcheries where like, they grew fish. And I'm just like, I guess that's all that's there, but you never knew where the road went. So I like the idea- there's like a road like a country road at the front.
Brandon: Fish trees is what happened in my brain.
Eric: Fish tree.
Brandon: Fish growing from trees
Amanda: Love a stone wall of unknown providence, yeah!
Eric: A stone wall with cairns.
Amanda: One of my favorite art pieces. A Stone Wall at Storm King in Westchester. So good.
Eric: I love it. Yeah, I also love it's just like it starts somewhere and somewhere and like, it wiggles, and it's not straight.
Amanda: Oh, are there implications for the monsters we've run into? Probably.
Julia: Who can say?
Eric: But I definitely want there to be a stone wall in the woods. Alright, Julia. Go ahead, roll, roll D6 for me.
Julia: [die roll] Bam.
Brandon: I just, there's a story, a National Geographic article about stacked stone statues. Just call them cairns, piles of rocks, or stone johnnies!
Eric: Stone johnnies it is, Brandon.
Julia: No.
Eric: Stone johnnies.
Julia: This is gonna be the mountain lobster of this campaign.
Eric: This is exactly how mountain lobster. Yeah, exactly like mountain lobster, stone johnnies it is. Thank you, Brandon. You get 100 points.
Julia: I rolled a 1.
Eric: I am under--, hold on I'm underlining italicized like a bolding stone johnnies. I'm also doing a strikethrough because it's spooky. I heard you- it's a one. Julia, you're gonna have more providence for this because I did pull this, but is there a lake? Or is it a pool or something else? Describe the water with three adjectives.
Julia: I like the idea with-- of a lake for sure.
Eric: Okay.
Julia: But I also kind of like the idea of kind of like a natural spring.
Brandon: Oh, I like that.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Not necessarily a hot spring but like a like source of water for the area. Thinking of like, adjectives, so I'm thinking of, I don't want to like go right away, like mysterious and magical. But like you know that way when like, sun hits moving water in such a way that it looks like a portal to another dimension.
Eric: Dappled.
Julia: Dappled. Yeah, that's good.
Eric: I very much have memories of looking at the lake near where I went summer camp.
Brandon: Maybe the legend is that like the spring was discovered after someone went to the– what did they what do they call the water finding sticks?
Eric: Oh, the dowsing rods.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Dowsing rods. Yeah,
Eric: I like that. I wonder if it was- it isn't large. If it's a natural spring leading to something maybe it's something like a swimming hole in that like, you know where you go to like a quarry that was filled in with water and it's massive, but like relatively small, like you can't kayak but you definitely swim in it? So there's something about like a natural spring that flooded into a-- some sort of like pool.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And maybe it was an old quarry or whatever.
Julia: Like there's- the spring is up on a certain level and then there's like a stream or a waterfall that leads into this larger pool of water that the children use to swim.
Brandon: And it's clear as hell.
Eric: Clear as hell. I like clear. Can it also be deep, then?
Julia: Yes, I was gonna say if it's very clear, I like the idea that the bottom seems very close, but it's actually much deeper than it is.
Amanda: It's a metaphor.
Julia: It's a metaphor.
Eric: I also love– I love there being a natural waterfall because that's something even if it's like tiny. It's like yeah, my summer camp has a waterfall.
Julia: It's magical.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Julia: Truly.
Brandon: That's where– that's where the kids go, they go behind the waterfall to kiss.
[Julia gasps]
Eric: Brandon, you know for a fact they do.
Brandon: Yeah!
Amanda: And you definitely skinny dip in the quarry.
Eric: Kissing under the in- in the waterfall is a 100% something that counselors do all the time.
Amanda: I feel like I definitely have kissed under a waterfall. I haven't, but the memory’s in my brain.
[everyone laughing]
Eric: Hell yes. I love that a lot. Alright, so we got natural spring leading to a swimming hole of some other providence, there is a waterfall. Adjectives are dappled, clear, and deep.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I like that a lot. Frampton, what do you got?
Amanda: Peter Frampton?
Brandon: Oh, I also got 1, should I reroll?
Eric: No, we'll just go, we'll go to the next one.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Two: Brandon, can you describe the front gate?
Brandon: Oh, yeah, I can, and I will, and I'm about to do that.
Julia: Whoa.
Eric: And it goes a little something like this.
Amanda: Hit it!
Brandon: As I'm talking right now. Um, I think the front gate is- I'm stuck on the city of the Alamo. So I don't know if you guys have ever been to the Alamo before in San Antonio?
Amanda: No.
Julia: Can't say I have.
Brandon: It's– in Texas history, it's like this big event that's like super important and like super well respected and regarded and blah, blah, blah. It's all bullshit, of course. But when you go to there, as a kid, you hear these grand stories and you go there and it's just like, this sad one side of the wall where it's like three bricks high. And like, it's the only thing remaining from the Alamo. So in my head, maybe the front gate of the place was like an extent building, maybe it was a farm. But like, it was something that was like well known and maybe that's what the campus named after. But over time, it's just sort of like, been worn down and there's just like some pillars and then over the top of that they built with wood, the actual like camp sign and everything.
Amanda: Eric and I just had ideas at the same time, you go first.
Eric: No, you go first.
Amanda: Okay, I was thinking of the camp could be called the Locks because it could be locks in interlocking river systems, they have a little kind of hut or the garden lock operator is, that's what preservers job was based on is a lock attendant, where you have a little cabin, you live there with your dog all summer long, and you help boats in and out. And maybe the river dried up, or the quarry disrupted it or you know, things moved, they didn't need it anymore. But that could be a name and a sort of inspo.
Eric: That's really interesting. I really like that. I also think, Brandon, when you said that there used to be a thing there that then became the front gate. I don't know if you've ever seen like, a old covered bridge.
Amanda: Ooh.
Eric: Like the if the gate was like a unused covered bridge–
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Eric: –that then became the rest of the camp. Like you literally need to drive through the covered bridge. And now it's been reinforced. I also think that now that Julia has introduced the natural spring like there's like a little bit of water, but there used to be a lot more, and now whatever it happened with the– with the natural spring or whatever to go through, like imagine driving through a covered bridge to get to summer camp. And like–
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: –screaming that, in the being like a truly liminal space–
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Eric: –to go there.
Brandon: And maybe there's a lesson that you have to like hold your breath as you go over the bridge.
Amanda: Yeah, pick up your feet--
Eric: Yeah, you hold your breath or you-- you have to like scream the entire time like, yes 100%, fuck.
Brandon: Julia, what were you saying?
Julia: No, I was- I had another name idea. I like Amanda's a lot, but I wanted to just say it for the record.
Amanda: Do it.
Julia: Kind of going off what you said, Brandon? I like the idea of like, Camp Diogenes who is like a Greek philosopher which we could shorten to Camp Die and also makes me think of like, before this was a camp, it was like some like, spiritualist society or something like that in the middle of the woods.
Brandon: Oooh, that's good.
Amanda: Oh yeah.
Brandon: So here's– here's what I'm thinking right? So like and Amanda just sent a photo of the covered bridge which I love. So like, originally it was– it was this American maybe like gold thing like maybe they thought there was gold there and it didn't pan out right.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Or quarry or whatever it is and then because there's infrastructure already there once it was abandoned by the– these gold miners, it was taken over by this like-
Amanda: Spiritualist encampment.
Brandon: Spiritualist people.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: And now it's been converted into a camp. I love that.
Amanda: And I don't know if that's how you mined for gold but that would explain a quarry if we fudge this sort of industry of it all.
Julia: That's true, that's true.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I'm very into that.
Eric: Was Diogenes, he's the one who said that a chicken was a man because it had it stood up on two legs.
Julia: Gosh, I hope so. I know that he was like, chief in creating cynicism as a philosophical concept.
Amanda: Incredible.
Eric: He was the, I feel like he was the philosopher who was shitposting all the time. Yeah, Plato defined a human being as a featherless biped and was praised by a clever of-- the cleverness of the definition. And then Diogenes plucked a chicken, brought it to Plato's Academy, and declared, behold Plato's human being!
Julia: Yeah. Fuck yeah
Amanda: Killer.
Brandon: I love that, that’s great.
Eric: It's even funnier remembering that like Plato was a fucking wrestler. He was- like Diogenes just shit posting this ripped man who was also the smartest person in town, that's pretty good.
Amanda: Love it.
Brandon: I think in my head though, the bridge because it's been so long. It's so dilapidated that it's been built on top of. So it's like, reinforced by like, chain link. And like-
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, like new lumber and stuff.
Eric: Oh, for sure. It's like, there's definitely like a road that's now on the covered bridge with the covered bridge still stands.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I love that. I'm also writing down Camp Diogenes.
Amanda: The image I shared was a restored covered bridge in Jay in New York.
Eric: That’s what I was thinking of, yeah.
Amanda: It's like beautifully restored, but there are lots of non-restored ones that it feels dodgy to drive over.
Brandon: And I love the idea that like as you are, maybe it's fairly long but as you're like entering the bridge and going along the bridge, there's like signs like almost there.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: You're nearly to camp. Keep going.
Julia: May I suggest the Society of Diogenes.
Brandon: I like that.
Amanda: I love the idea of a cynical commune.
Brandon: So that was the name of the commune and now it's just like shortened to Camp Die?
Julia: Yeah. Camp Diogenes, Camp Die by the kids.
Eric: That's very good.
Amanda: I love it so much.
Eric: We're going to keep the Locks for something.
Julia: No, I really liked the Locks, Amanda.
Eric: The Locks sounds like something I don't know if it's the name of the camp, but it certainly feels like something that's in the middle of somewhere.
Julia: Maybe that's like a bordering area or something like that, where they take the kids when they actually want them to do like real tent camping, they take them to the Locks.
Brandon: Love that.
Amanda: That's a good idea.
Julia: Is that cool?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: There were definitely places like, around the corner that we use-- that the younger kids would do like overnight camping that you could like canoe to or you could drive to. So it's entirely possible the Locks is like a rental woods area that like someone has rented out to the camp. That’s very cool.
Brandon: I just also want to every time I think of Locks, I think of also like the chain link fences in France where you put the padlock so maybe there's some tradition. When you go and you spend the night in the Locks, you bring a padlock, you write your name on it.
Julia: Oh, that's cool.
Brandon: Like I was here.
Amanda: Or that could be a kind of graduating camp tradition.
Brandon: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: That's cool.
Eric: I like that. Like the kid there were also you would always put a padlock on your lockbox where like you kept like your personal stuff. So everyone would have at least one lock for sure.
Brandon: Yeah. So like right before you go home, you take your padlock off, and-- I love that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That's very cool.
Amanda: I rolled a 2.
Eric: A 2, we're gonna go to number 3, then; What activity or building is in an incredibly inconvenient place? So remember, we're going with grand, creaky, and adventurous as are adjectives. For example, the tennis courts that were installed in my summer camp was all the way up on the Girls' Hill. And then you had to go up two more hills. And it was like next to like the water treatment for the camp.
Julia: Wow.
Eric: And then the road just like- it was like at the top of this hill, and it was so hot and had no tree coverage because it's tennis courts. So it was like really in the middle of nowhere.
Brandon: There's like shaming people for actually wanting to play tennis.
Eric: Yeah. So like you would see kids like walking with their tennis rackets like, slung over their shoulders back. Ugh! I have to walk all the way up there.
Amanda: Well, I had a thing that I wanted to put on the map, so to speak, and I'm trying to think of this as the best place to do it. I think any camp worth its salt has some kind of summer show. They have some kind of pageant, or thing that they put on for the parents or celebration of for whatever holiday falls over the summer. And I really liked the idea that there is a like half-height crawlspace under the main sort of auditorium or assembly hall.
Eric: Sure.
Amanda: Where all of the like theater sets and costumes and props and also just like old you know, gym supplies from, you know, some outdated sport that people used to use, or 10 years ago, they replaced all the volleyballs and all the old squishy ones, they're like, oh, I'll figure it out for the pageant and throw it under there. In our high school we called this The Pit. And I would like to propose The Pit having a sort of like an entrance that maybe it's like a cellar where you have to kind of open up cellar doors.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Amanda: The cellar doors are like under some seats in the auditorium, but they're like in the orchestra pit or like, like it's just it's not easily accessible at all. And the crawlspace is like maybe you know, 4 foot 10.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Love that.
Julia: Perfect for a small child.
Amanda: Perfect for a small child.
Eric: There were also plenty of plays and stuff and like you do stuff for when for Parents' Day.
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Like when people come up.
Julia: You could also just like make up a holiday being like, oh, it's Founders Day or whatever. Eric loves making up holidays and is looking at me like angelicly but also demonly?
Eric: I love waking up holidays, you know I do.
Julia: I know.
Eric: Hell yes. Alright, perfect. Yeah, I think so I wrote, theatre and sports storage. It's like a cellar in a main auditorium, but then it leads to a crawl space.
Amanda and Julia: Yeah.
Eric: It's like how do they get some of the stuff in there? There's like a full set from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat in there. Like, how do they get that in there?
Julia: Yep.
Brandon: Ochre and ochre and ochre and ochre and ochre and ochre and ochre and ochre.
Eric: And blue and violet and ochre, and ochre and ochre. Alright, cool. Let's go to Table 2 these are the ‘New Changes’. This is a new stuff that's happened to the camp over the last few years. I'm gonna roll to start [die roll] I got a 2. A group explores more of the campgrounds and find something that had been previously been overlooked. What is it? I'm going to officially put in the thing that we said about the Locks I think that they found that there were some truly abandoned campgrounds, like there were fire pits that they didn't see or like you know I- for those of you who go camping you look for it's been maintained so that it's very flat so that you can easily put down your tents and stuff and maybe there's like stumps that have been arranged in seating. They went on a hike just to like kind of-- the people who run the camp during the year went on a hike found the spot realized no one owned it and then they're like hey, we're gonna do did your overnights are going to happen here. So I think these are– these are the Locks because I think that there is a-- maybe there was a dried up waterfall that was supposedly part of the spring but it was locked up because of dams or whatever so they call it The Locks.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: And I think they've now done this overnight tradition for the oldest campers well I think might be like 13 or 14 depending on what age that like every cabin signs a lock and they put it in the lock so there's there's a few there but it's kind of like seating new traditions about like, I don't know how many cabins are over maybe there's like only six locks there because there was like the boys cabin and the girls cabin for each of the last three summers have– have done this and people are gonna keep doing this.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: Love it.
Amanda: Into it.
Eric: Hell yes. So I'm going to say, I'm going to write that.
Amanda: Maybe it's like a winter cross-country skiing zone that isn't used by anybody in the summer.
Eric: Probably yeah. I also want this to be it this could be in any place like we should. I don't think we should think that this is in like the Northeast or wherever. It's just like somewhere in the United States in my hand.
Amanda: Insert your pastoral summer landscape.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: That's where it is.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Okay, Julia. Buddy, you can go ahead.
Julia: Oop 6.
Eric: 6. Oh! The camp got a new "attraction", and I put "attraction" with quotes. What is it? Now specifically an attraction would be something that's like very only for fun for funsies. An example that I had is that it was a very big deal when the camp got a water trampoline.
Brandon: The blob? We have to have that.
Eric: Yeah, you'd like- like the blob or something. So it's something that they got intentionally new.
Julia: I love that. The first thing that popped into my head and it's been kind of like scratching in the back of my brain is-- you guys know Adventure Park in New Jersey? The like notoriously like the class action lawsuit park is what they call it.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I feel like some kind of ride from there.
Amanda: That's very good.
Julia: And they like didn't tell anyone like oh, hey, we've got this on sale from this terrible awful-
Amanda: Got it for $1 at an auction.
Eric: Julia, isn't it if there is a very deep pool it has to be the loop de loop waterslide, right?
Julia: It sure does.
Eric: Holy shit. Like it's a module, incredibly intense waterslide. The loop de loop is notorious and hurt a lot of people. But I like the idea that it's like Lego blocks almost, that there were other ways to put the waterslide together only four incredibly dangerous beings.
Brandon: Oh my god why, why did anyone ever make this? This is so dangerous!
Amanda: Well, especially if it drops off into an extraordinarily deep pool.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: You can just make that above ground in New Jersey like this is kind of– it's site-specific.
Brandon: I love this. I love it. I love it. I love it.
Julia: Alright, good. I'm glad– I'm glad we're all on the same page with this.
Eric: The Action Park Waterslides–
Julia: That's it.
Eric: –loop de loop.
Julia: Class Action Lawsuit Park.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Incredibly intense. I love that. That is awesome. Brandon, why don't you roll.
Brandon: Cool. [die roll]
Brandon: Uno.
Julia: Dos, tres, quatro.
Eric: 1. Oh, this is a good one. Something dramatic or unbelievable happened to a camper who's coming back this summer. What is it?
Brandon: Well, we'll get more into this when I actually unveil my character but I think one of the– not the newest kid, like second or third-year kid, you know? Definitely got abducted by aliens.
Julia: Hey, hey, Brandon, what?
Amanda: Hey, Brandon, what's your character bud?
Julia: Hey, Brandon, what's your character? What's going on?
Brandon: They uhh, yeah, let's just say they needed to go out to the bathroom. And there's a detached bathroom and one of the cabins because it's the oldest cabin.
Eric: Cool.
Brandon: And so they went out to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and now they're claiming that they got abducted by aliens.
Amanda: I love that.
Julia: Just flipping through the playbooks to see what the fuck you might be talking about.
Eric: Where, okay, here's my question here. What proof do they have that something changed them? Because I think that there needs to be something tangible that this camper can do now, like, are they noticeably smarter? Like, can they do like really low-level telekinesis that people just think is ma- is like stage magic? Like is there a way to explain that stuff? What happened to this? What can this kid now do that we can rationally explain away?
Brandon: I think maybe they're like tuned in to something, right? So like they can easily find like, radio frequencies. Or maybe they can easily find like, mineral deposits.
Amanda: Magnetic North.
Brandon: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Maybe they just don't get lost. Maybe they never get lost because they can find Magnetic North. They don't need a compass.
Eric: I really liked that, kid claims they were abducted. And now they have like, a low-level power.
Amanda: I was gonna say they came back like three inches taller. By the time they get home, the parents were like it happens.
Brandon: And they just grew up over the year.
Julia: Yeah, they just hit puberty.
Amanda: Like they measured everybody yesterday and then he's 3 inches taller.
Eric: I want that very badly. I love that. Kid claims they were abducted by aliens and now they can never get lost and they're three inches tall.
Brandon: Can we say it's like an inch and three quarters though?
Julia: Sure.
Brandon: I want it to be so like barely on the edge of plausible.
Amanda: Like everybody maybe measures their heights, you know on the cabin doorframe at the start of the summer. It was week two, they could not have grown almost two inches in the course of two weeks.
Eric: Oh, you think they got to know I was thinking they got abducted over the summer- over the year?
Amanda: Oh, okay. I was saying they it happened like they were like abducted overnight and then returned.
Brandon: It's a legend, right? So like they– they're talking about it from last year. It's like I say they are at the camp now because they're returning to the camp. But last year, they tell everyone to tell them when they got abducted in the middle of night.
Eric: How about they got six inches taller. Like they got like a major- major growth spurt, and it's only been explained away. Right because then like, they got abducted last summer. And now this summer, they be like, yeah, I can never get lost in mice in the city that I'm from and also now I'm six inches taller.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I love I love that. Like we maybe it needs to be even more dramatic. Perfect. Amanda, give me one last roll here?
[die roll]
Amanda: 5.
Eric: 5, they finished work on one cabin. Which cabin is it and why is it better? So they've only done construction on one cabin?
Brandon: Okay, can pitch some ideas?
Julia: Indoor plumbing.
Brandon: Indoor plumbing is definitely one. They could do for the older kids, they could have like, a couple of actually separate rooms as opposed to like one big room–
Julia: Privacy.
Brandon: –for everyone. Yeah.
Eric: Or maybe it's just like, in my head, it was like maybe this one was like twice as big.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Like for no reason because they had to build it again, right? And then-
Brandon: Maybe they added a second story.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Maybe the cabin that the kid was abducted from allegedly, there was just enough kind of whispers of liability that they're like, You know what we'll just– we'll just do a little breezeway, connecting it to the outhouse. And so now there's like a breezeway, mudroom where people can keep things and also a bat sometimes, but the cabinet is much bigger because they basically added on an extension connecting it to where the bathroom was.
Eric: I really like that.
Brandon: That's fun.
Amanda: Maybe it's like a screened-in porch or like, you know, I love that.
Brandon: Because the cabin is still the oldest on the property, but now they have the most brand new–
Amanda: Extension thing. Yeah.
Eric: Right. The cabin that is closest to the bathrooms, like the shower house. Got like, twice as big. It also is connected to the shower house and that way. That's so funny.
Julia: Wild.
Eric: It's like you know what you need not to get rained on when you go take a shower.
Amanda: But now, I mean, any noises you hear in the cameras like oh, so I must be showering. So really, it's not safer at all.
Brandon: Mm-hmm.
Eric: Cool. We are going to hop down to Table 3. These are the stories.
Julia: Here's how we go. That's how we roll.
Eric: This is our last one. Our last one. oh no, I dropped this one. I do another one. [die roll] Here, 6. ah, a new elicit item is a new fad. What is it? How do the campers get it? Or one of the counselors got everyone into a new game? What is it?
Amanda: Cricket?
Eric: It's not cricket
Julia: I was gonna say my immediate assumption was like someone figured out one level of technology that works at the camp and now that's like the thing that is traded, where it's like-
Amanda: What if they all learn Morse Code?
Julia: –someone managed to get their- like their Gameboy finally to work and so now everyone kind of like passes Gameboys around.
Eric: I like that a lot.
Amanda: Did they do like a ham radio unit and now they have like a radio channel that is local to the, local to the space.
Julia: Like a private radio but for like 12-year-olds.
Brandon: That's fun, maybe it's like walkie-talkies like someone brought one walkie-talkie to the camp. And now they can like, communicate with each other. And also, like plan pranks better and like so it's like a real hassle to the camp counselors.
Eric: That's good. Those are all good. Okay, here's what I'm thinking. I'm going to do I'm going to set one further on the Gameboy.
Julia: Great.
Eric: Right, one of the counselors brought their indiscriminate game console to the camp, and they found an old TV, and then you can like quote, unquote, rent the game console as like a nighttime activity for your campers from this guy, and you got to give them like 10 bucks.
Julia: Check that, I love that.
Eric: So I'm going to keep that one in terms of the counselors got everyone into a new game, they have a video game console, if you roll a six again because this is an or we can also be elicited item is still on the table.
Julia: Great.
Eric: How about that?
Amanda: Is there a specific game?
Eric: I think he only has like one specific game, it has to be some sort of like stupid fighting game or stupid like multiplayer game that everyone that a bunch of kids can play at the same time because they think it's for the all the controllers. I like distinctly remember trying to get like an old TV to work as someone like snuck their the GameCube or something into encamp. And I really want there to be something like that, that a counselor is charging other counselors, because they want to be like, yeah, I don't have to plan anything for tonight. We're just gonna have fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: First thing that popped in my head was Amongst Us, the knockoff of Among Us.
Eric: Yeah, I like that a lot. I'm writing down Amongst Us. Alright, Julia. Go ahead.
Julia: I rolled a 4.
Eric: A 4. What is the best food in the mess hall? Or what is the worst food in the mess hall?
Julia: Okay.
Eric: And when does it come?
Julia: So, I've never been to a waffle house. But I feel like, like one of the best things that comes out of this camp is the like, I assume that they like hired a cook, right to like, make all the food and stuff like that.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I feel like she just gets fucking wild with her waffle iron. And we'll make like, you know, hashbrown waffles or just like regular really good waffles and stuff like that. And there I just had this image of there being like, a barter system with her. Where the kids will go like pick berries and shit and then bring her berries and like for a cut of the like jam that she makes out of them. Like they– they get like free. I don't know, like extra fries and stuff like that.
Brandon: Chocolate milk.
Julia: Yeah, exactly.
Eric: Exchange for forage.
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: That's very good.
Brandon: Hashbrown waffle day is my favorite day.
Eric: I just wrote waffle iron biz.
Julia: Fuck yeah.
Eric: I'll make any big waffle iron. Julia, this is incredibly important. Is this a once-a-month thing? Is this like a weekly thing? When is waffle iron day?
Julia: Oh, I think waffle iron day happens all the time. But what is the like rotating is what is being made in the waffle, you know?
Eric: Okay, so for breakfast, she– she always uses a waffle iron?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Or like, Sundays if you get there before 8 AM You know, you can have the Waffle of the Day Special.
Julia: Like it's fried eggs, but it's in a waffle iron for some reason. What happened? How did that happen? How did she do that?
Eric: Everything in a waffle iron.
Amanda: She must have a fleet of them. I'm just imagining her like an omelet station–
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: –at a buffet, you know, like four in a row.
Julia: I mean like it has to be that a Waffle House closed down nearby and she got them all on sale.
Eric: I love that breakfast is made with waffle irons and it's great, is that what you're saying?
Julia: Not even just breakfast. Everything's made with the waffle iron.
Amanda: I'm mean, I'd eat a steak on a sweet potato waffle. Like, that sounds great.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Okay, I'm gonna say everything is made on a waffle iron-
Amanda: Waffle Wednesday.
Eric: –to varying degrees of, to varying degrees of success.
Brandon: My favorite thing at the cafeteria in school was the breakfast pizza. So like I'm imagining her like just like throwing a biscuit dough with mozzarella in the waffle iron and then throwing bacon on top of it and that's the breakfast pizza and everyone fucking loves it.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I can't believe that once again, I have world built but with food.
Amanda: The dice told you to.
Eric: That’s true. Frampton, give me what you got.
[die roll]
Brandon: 2
Eric: 2. It's time for Color War. For those of you who don't know what that is, Color War is kind of the inter-camp battle of everything where you do plenty of sports and games. Some sort of arbitrary theme is called there's colors. Basically, the whole campus divided up into teams and they compete against it, but there's usually one very large event that looms large in everyone's psyche and the entire day. What is the big event that everyone is pointing to?
Brandon: So you're saying like It's like Team Blue versus Team Red versus Team Yellow kind of thing?
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon: Okay, so I'm gonna throw some ideas out there. I want to hear your opinions. So I in my head immediately went to tug of war immediately went to water balloon fight immediately went to Freeze Tag hide and seek.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Oh, what if it's like flashlight tag? Maybe that's the big thing at night like the final thing is like this big flashlight tag at night. Where it's like camo Hide and Seek freeze tag flashlight tag thing.
Eric: That's interesting.
Amanda: I love that I was thinking scavenger hunt for the same reason but something where there's like lots of people kind of roving around the grounds. I love that idea.
Julia: Especially creepy at night.
Eric: I love the idea that it's hide and seek and it transitions into flashlight tag once it gets dark out.
Julia: Ooh, like it's an all-day thing.
Eric: Yeah, like or it's like the entire time if you're designated as either the hider or the seeker it's like a very big deal.
Brandon: It's kind of start at night, right? Because they got to start at– at the bonfire like it's the end of camp.
Eric: Oh okay.
Brandon: Bonfire, right? And then like they do the some of a ritual at the bonfire. And then they like, say, "1-2-3 Go." everyone disperses and it's like sardines where you're you hide, but you're allowed to move.
Julia: Man hunt.
Brandon: Yes, man hunt. So it's freeze tag with flashlights. So like your hide and seeking. But when you move around, if you get caught with a flashlight, you have to freeze and then get tagged by the other team.
Eric: I like that a lot. I think it's cool. I wonder how they're able to tell if you get tagged by the flashlight. There must be like, oh, man, I maybe there's like a philo- what do you call it a nature things that respond to light? Like-
Julia: Like bioluminescent?
Brandon: Bioluminescent. Yeah.
Eric: Something it's like, it changes when it sees light, it does something different. There must be like a part of a tree or like some sort of mushroom or lichen or like in that, like you need to put on your body. And like when you're tagged with a flashlight, it glows and that's how you know you're out.
Julia: Yeah, that's really cool.
Brandon: Yeah, I like that
Julia: Or just like little glow-in-the-dark vests, you know?
Brandon: Yeah. I love that and I think there's a word they say when you get caught. And that's the name of the game, but I don't know what it is.
Eric: I think that's very cool. I like that a lot. I like the idea that there needs to be some sort of way to adjudicate that it happened. You know what I mean?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Because like flashlight tag is so subjective.
Amanda: Do you know how- do you know how in fencing, like, there's like a contact between the tip of your foil and the vest and it like dings when you hit it? Like it's not, it's not about the pressure, it's about like the two things hit and then like an electrical connection happens.
Julia: Sure.
Amanda: There's a vest that's like, very lightly solar powered. And so it's like a special flashlight, or it's a UV light or whatever. And like when you– when you hit it, it like absorbs a little bit of light enough to glow. Make the person glow.
Eric: It's like a reverse glow stick, right? Like it only responds when you flash light on it.
Julia: Right.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: That's cool.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Like, like any sort of glow-in-the-dark material, when you put a flashlight on it, and you turn it off that specific light is gonna glow, right?
Amanda: Yeah, it has to charge. Yeah.
Eric: Oh, it has to charge.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Eric: Oh okay, I forgot that existed.
Amanda: That's okay.
Eric: That'd be cool if that existed. I'd love that.
Brandon: It's also kind of hard to cheat when someone tags with a flashlight and you're like-
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: I'm in literally in a spotlight, you know?
Eric: Brandon, I care about the rules of the fake game you just creating. I need to make sure that there is proper judging.
Julia: We are all invested now.
Brandon: But what's the word? I think it's gonna be something made up like you know-
Eric: I do like that someone that you need to call something out. What do you– what do you think it?
Julia: Bojangles!
Amanda: People.
Brandon: Like like boom, whack, or something. But like-
Julia: Boom, whack!
Amanda: Bop it.
Brandon and Julia: Twist it.
Everyone: Pull it.
Eric: Dadadada. [drum noises]
Julia: Pop it.
Eric: We'll definitely come up with a name for this game at some point. But we'll- we'll put that in for sure. Amanda, you have the last one here.
Amanda: Oh, right.
Eric: So you can roll a 1 a 3 a 5 or a 6 for the elicit item.
Amanda: [die roll] Got a 3?
Eric: Hell, yes. The camp has a rivalry with another camp, who is the camp and where is it?
Amanda: Oh, man. I think that this rival camp should be called like, Wolf Hill or something.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: They sound tough.
Amanda: And they howl annoyingly at you and I think that it's- is it a sports rivalry is it like a you know once a year there's like an inter-camp volleyball game or softball game or like capture the flag match?
Julia: Yeah, I really like a inter-camp capture the flag, that seems very cool.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: That's really cool. And like you always went there and they looked exactly the same as he was like look at these fucking assholes. I hate them.
Amanda: Yeah. No. Exactly. And all the little things like where their mess hall is we're like, oh, they don't have waffles. They do pancakes like the worst. But you know you just have a real kind of mentality that makes anything the person does feel terrible to you. And there must be some kind of stealing of an object back and forth or just victor has a you know, a trophy or something that like has pride of place in the camp if you were the victor last year.
Eric: Where is the camp? I think that's important. Like how far away is it? Is it like kind of just these are very close by so that you can hear them howl?
Julia: Maybe it's on the other side of The Locks.
Eric: Oh, that's interesting.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, it's because the locks and then will be unclaimed, but now they're like, it's kinda like budding right up against it now.
Amanda: Yeah, and like different elevations.
Julia: I also was going to ask whether or not you think that Wolf Hill has like a specialty like if it's like, I don't know, a science camp or a like Boy Scout camp or something like that.
Eric: Julia, while I was writing this down on my fingers took away from me and I wrote down the Wolf Hill camp for Learning and Enrichment Center of Good and Upstanding Children.
Julia: That sounds like a like pre-military camp and that's what I was picturing. So muah.
Amanda: Oh, like pre-ROTC?
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, for sure.
Amanda: I'm sure that's the thing.
Eric: No, I like that a lot for the– it's like the Citadel. Do you guys know about the Citadel?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That's like where Pat Conroy went based off of where like the Prince of Tides are a different novel that he wrote. Basically, The Citadel is a college that acts like it's the army or like, he'd sell at West Point or something. But it's 100% not they just like did it willingly. They're like, what if we pretended we were a military school? And it's not it's just straight up is not. And of course, then it has like all of the problems that comes along with a military school but they willingly just chose to do it. Like you don't go there and then immediately go to the Air Force. You just like went to the Citadel.
Brandon: Weird.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: It's very weird. I like that a lot someone willingly going to that place.
Amanda: Yeah, and I believe a lot of money and everything's very new. And so they come to our shabby ask him and have a lot of snobbery about it, which makes the rivalry all the more intense.
Eric: I do love the fact that they howl all the time and then so you need to tell the little kids that are staying over the Lock for an overnight they're like, there aren't wolves. It's just kids from the other camp.
Julia: It's just them.
Brandon: Yes.
Eric: That's very good. I like that a lot. And also, they might be werewolves. So [wolf howl]
Amanda: Who can say?
Eric: There you go. Who can really say?
Brandon: I have a thing for the game.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Yes.
Brandon: So I think the game is called How Doth the Little Crocodile which is a poem from Alice in Wonderland.
Julia: Okay!
Brandon: And when they stand around the fire, they chant the poem, which is, "How doth the little crocodile; Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile; On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin; How neatly spreads his claws–
Brandon and Julia: –And welcomes little fishes in; With gently smiling jaws!
Brandon: And then they scatter.
Julia: Sorry, that's one of the few poems that I have memorized.
Eric: Brandon, you're reading but Julia's eyes went back and she turned blue. You missed it.
Amanda: It's great.
Julia: That's like if you started reciting the Raven at Amanda, you know, she'd join along.
Amanda: Don’t activate me.
Brandon: And then maybe they yell like corkscrew when they hit you with a flashlight like a crocodile would you know?
Eric: Oh, I like that a lot.
Amanda: Love it.
Eric: Please send that to me. That is– that is very good. Hell yes. All right. Those are all my questions.
Amanda and Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So let's review what we have here. We're talking about Camp Diogenes.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: This was originally for the area was originally settled by the Society of Diogenes, which was like an offshoot of the most shitposting ass Greek philosopher out there.
Julia: That's true.
Eric: The nickname is also Camp Die. We're kind of going for like an American Gothic style like real weird Americana. It could be anywhere from like the 1970s to 2005. But we don't really know the time there's just like, not a lot of tech around. Especially the we're in the middle of nowhere. There's no service. The adjectives we're going off of are adventurous, creaky and grand. On Table 1 talking about the space, there is a natural spring that leads into a very large swimming hole with a waterfall and the adjectives we chose for that were dappled, clear and deep. Like, imagine a very small creek leading into a very deep water quarry. Maybe it was maybe there was gold pan there. Maybe they were looking for stone. Maybe there was mining who knows? Who really knows what's happening.
Amanda: We're 13, we don't know.
Eric: What is the front gate look like? It was a old covered bridge, then now is the front gate of Camp Die. What activity or building isn't an incredibly inconvenient place? There's a feeder in sports storage-like area that is in a cellar of the main auditorium. But the only way to access it is by opening like very, very weird doors and going through a crawlspace. The boundaries of the camp there is a country road that leads up to the covered bridge. There is the lake which we talked about the swimming hole. And then there is a in the woods there is a wiggling stone wall with lots of Karnes, but we're calling them stone johnnies, you better bet your ass we are. Table 2: New Changes. something unbelievable happened to a returning camper. A kid claimed they were abducted last summer and over the year they grew six inches and now can never get lost. Because now they access magnetic waves. You know what's funny when I came up with this, I felt like one of the kids got famous because they were in a movie. That's wat I thought it was going to b but this is much better. A group explores more of the campgrounds they found The Locks which are some abandoned campgrounds like you know full with flat places to put tents and stuff. The little kids go out there for overnight camping trips, and the oldest kids go out there and kind of do their like last night activities there and they put Locks kind of on trees or whatever they have as a new tradition of being the last campers and graduating.
Brandon: God, that's so creepy to walk into a Whereas this locks all over the trees
Eric: There is one cabin now that is twice as large it is closest to the shower house and now it's connected to it by a breezeway, which is very funny. The camp got a new attraction, which is a waterslide from an action park style, very dangerous amusement park, notorious for the loop de loop. But there are also other things like in storage where you could change the– the waterslide into something else ridiculous, like a very large jump, for example. And then finally, the stories Color War, the Big Event is a flashlight tag Batman hunt combination. We're at this final bonfire, they read this poem from Alice in Wonderland, and it's very terrifying and very, very important. It's like 30% of Color War and usually determined to win.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: The camp has a rivalry, Camp Die as rivalry with the Wolf Hall Camp for Learning and Enrichment for Good and Upstanding Children who howls and it's like, kind of like a pre-ROTC sort of thing.
Julia: That sounds like such a Series of Unfortunate Events bullshit. I'm so here for it.
Eric: I'm gonna have to come up with the name I keep like, moving the fucking prepositions around.
Amanda: Keep it I love it. And Wolf Hill. And that Wolf Hall, which is a book series.
Eric: Yes. We're not talking about like the– the people who married the kings of England, we're talking about something else in the mess.
Amanda: There's some overlap, Eric, probably.
Eric: Both the best and the worst thing about the mess hall is that everything is made with waffle irons, which is very wild. And the woman who runs the mess hall live will give you something in exchange for foraging berries and bringing them to her.
Julia: Also mushrooms, probably.
Eric: Anything, anything that you can find. And finally, one of the counselors got everyone into a new game. They smuggled a game console in, they found an old TV, and then there's some sort of like multiplayer game that all of the campers are getting very into. Brandon pitched Amongst Us. Something like that. We're gonna figure out I'm interested I'm interested in this shit. This is good?
Amanda: I'm stoked.
Brandon: This is fantastic.
Eric: This is a wonderful. So here's what's going to happen next we're going to have a kind of session zero for introducing how to play Monster the Week a little bit more and introducing the characters. There's like a very formal introduction session for Monster the Week characters. So we're going to do that and then we're gonna hop right into the campaign and we're gonna do a few episodes of this.
Julia: Camp-Paign.
Brandon: Fuck yeah.
Amanda: Camp-Paign.
Brandon: Why- guys, why don't we– CAMP PAIN, P A I N.
Julia: Oh, we've made a mistake. Oh, well.
Amanda: That's what Camp Die campers call Wolf Hill,
Julia: Camp-Paign.
Brandon: Camp-Paign. That's true. That's good.
Eric: Brandon, the reason why is that you didn't write a short story called Camp-Paign, that's why.
Brandon: Because I wasn't smart enough in third grade.
Eric: Alright, well, listen, it's lights out you all need to go to bed. The staff need to prepare what's happening next to this- in the campaign.
Amanda: But I have a sugar high and anxiety.
Brandon: Booo!
Eric: No, I'm gonna go make out with my girlfriend of a waterfall. Fucking peace, nerds!
Julia: Rude!
Amanda: Bye!
Brandon: Bye guys!
Julia: Later
Transcriptionist: KM