How did we like making so many characters? Which games are really our favorites? And how are we running Campaign 3 in response to what’s going on with D&D? All that and more on the Afterparty!
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Upcoming Schedule
- January 31: Worldbuilding episode 1
- February 7: Worldbuilding episode 2
- February 14: Worldbuilding episode 3
- February 21: Worldbuilding Afterparty
- February 28: Story episode 1!!
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into 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
Amanda: Welcome one and all to the One Shot Derby doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo I am suddenly a turn of the century carnie.
Brandon: That's a circus.
Amanda: Brandon for one weekend a year, the derby overlaps with the carnival. It's me, the proprietess. I'm like a proprietor but I get paid less because I'm a woman.
Brandon: I like your staff that you have.
Amanda: Thank you. My—my uniform should have pants but they won't let me wear them.
Eric: What's uh—yeah, what is the head of that animal on your staff? I've never seen that one before.
Amanda: It's a melange of many. See it in the cryptozoology tent.
Eric: Wait a second. Wait a second, I pull off the proprietress’s mask. It’s Dr. Bertha Bones!
Julia: Noooo.
Brandon: AAAAAAAH.
Amanda: The secret is that the animal is pistons.
Eric: Noooo.
Amanda: Hehehe.
Julia: The animal is made out of pistons.
Eric: Pistons.
Amanda: Welcome one and all to the end of the One Shot Derby. A little experiment that we did that from my perspective guys, incredibly fun and may or may not have revealed to me that I think the height of comedy is sickly Victorian children in our audience's reactions, have anything to teach me about what's successful in entertainment.
Brandon: I think that is true. Did you know the MCU, entirely based around sickly Victorian children?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I mean, Steve Rogers, pre-serum is a sickly Victorian child.
Brandon: Sickly Victorian child.
Amanda: Come on.
Julia: And you know, in phase five, Timothee Chalamet is gonna play all of the characters.
Eric: Tony Stark canonically sickly Victorian child inside of mech suit.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. Black Widow, is sickly Victorian child in a Russian orphanage.
Julia: Yep.
Brandon: The Hulk.
Eric: That's—
Brandon: Sickly Victorian child.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: On the inside.
Eric: Comparatively.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah.
Julia: Emotionally.
Amanda: It's very true. No, but players, Eric, you're included, because you also were a player in the derby—
Eric: It was me.
Amanda: How—how was this experience for you? What's it been like? And how have you enjoyed seeing our wild-ass creations, ™, make it into the world?
Julia: As I've talked about many times, character creation is one of my favorite parts of tabletop RPGs. So this was a good month for Julia.
Amanda: Yay.
Eric: It revealed a different secret that Julia thinks about all by herself.
Julia: Yep, that's true. 100%.
Brandon: And as I've revealed previously, I'm lazy as shit. So when Mischa edited this—edited these episodes, it was a good month for Brandon.
Julia: Yay.
Eric: Oh, I thought you were gonna say, and that's why I stole directly from a Batman comic.
Julia: It did happened.
Brandon: Just—just the names.
Julia: And—and the job—
Brandon: And the job—
Eric: And the backstory—
Brandon: —Actually, I came up with the job first, and then I was like, oh, this is just—
Julia: Yep. Yep.
Eric: I agree with Julia. Character creation is the best, especially when you're not playing Dungeons and Dragons. Man, D&D character creation is really hard. And every other system makes it a lot more fun just to like, come up with a little guy who you're going to play with.
Brandon: Totally.
Eric: And Monster of the Week is at least a little more fun because I feel like you pick the playbook first. And then you kind of like reverse engineer based on the archetypes that you're coming up with. So that's my personal opinion. So I'm glad that we got to do a bunch of like, just character creation processes, whether they were very established like in Fiasco, or just like a little handholdy like in the other two.
Amanda: And it's being processed, and what Brandon brought up in his classic tongue-in-cheek way, but actually is really important. This is the first time anybody but Brandon has ever edited a story episode of Join the Party. What—what was that like? I mean, we wouldn't have trusted anybody, but dear Mischa, Mischa Stanton, senior editor at Multitude, a friend of the show, voice of God in campaign one, to come on board and do this. What was that like?
Brandon: Oh, I mean weird, but like, I—you're definitely right. Like Mischa was the only one I would trust doing this. Because not only is Mischa, the best editor I know. But also, Mischa has listened to, unless I'm mistaken, every episode of JTP.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: And they're also very good at like, knowing what I want out of a thing before I asked for it. Which is very nice. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't trust it, well, except for Julia of course. But um—
Julia: Thanks, Brandon.
Brandon: Well, I—you're on the team, so I forget you're here.
Eric: And Julia has been a ghost for only a few months now.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: So we're still trying to get used to that.
Amanda: Yeah, that's true.
Brandon: So yeah, I mean, I think outside of those two people. I don't—I don't think I would give it to—oh my god Julia, you're going into the Ring!
Julia: You summoned the ghost!
Eric: Julia's webcam is currently making it seem like she is a 90s ghost.
Amanda: She is the Ring. Yeah.
Julia: I am.
Eric: We can only see her through CRT TVs, and it's scary.
Amanda: Yeah. But it's so intermittent, it's not predictable. So it's not like we can say oh, Julia disappears into the void every few seconds, or minutes. No, no it's just every so often.
Julia: It hasn't done this in a while. So
Brandon: Julia's a digital sickly Victorian ghost?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Maybe.
Brandon: Cool. But yeah, I don't know.
Julia: We got to stop saying ghost, it keeps flickering.
Amanda: It does, it basically flickers only when we say that word.
Eric: We got to check—we have to check the cathodes. If we check the cathodes, than we can make sure that Julia's scary TV will work.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: The Scottish play, that help—that help.
Julia: Well, it stopped now Amanda, So I think you fixed it.
Amanda: Yay. It was incredibly nice, A for us all as a team to like take some time off. We all like did things for the holidays and for the new year. And Mischa was a huge part of giving us the opportunity to do that because we recorded a bunch in advance, but then also could take time off and not spend our time off doing all these episodes. But also we've been hard at work on campaign three. And Brandon has been spending lots of time figuring out the theme song. We've been refreshing the art. We've been playing games and doing world-building, so don't worry, we're going to give you real concrete details and even more teases on what's happening next week at the end of this After Party. So stick around people.
Julia: Yeah, I find it ironic, Brandon, that you're like yeah, I'm lazy. So it was nice to have Mischa edit these episodes. Meanwhile, I know how much work you've been putting into the theme song. Like you haven't just been working away at that whole project.
Brandon: Yeah, but that's fun, Julia. So like, you know, editing just has to get done and is work.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: You know, you go— you know, you know.
Julia: I got it. I got it.
Amanda: And don't worry, we will have a Party Planning episode on the Patreon in February where Eric and Brandon talk about how this went from a—wouldn't it be funny if we made a blank as the theme song, to help—
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: —Eric, Brandon, and many others have made the theme song happen. It's— it's our best yet. I'm gonna just go ahead and say it.
Julia: It is.
Eric: I—when Brandon had said, we should do a blank. I'm like, a blank? A blank?
Amanda: And then in classic Eric fashion, 12 hours later, he had a pretty fully formed blank. So.
Eric: I did. We were working on this. Here's the problem is that I reveal my creative process to Brandon. We visited Brampton in Seattle, and we were working on the blank. And Brandon was like, oh, we gonna have to make these changes because of blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, and then I sat down in front of him and did it in five minutes. And I'm like, oh, I shouldn't have revealed that this is how—this is how I do it.
Brandon: Yeah, you don't make any notes. We know it. This is like a—the world's worst madlib.
Eric: I know. I don't write down any notes. Or I write down a lot of notes. Whatever the audience thinks is more interesting and good, I'm doing that.
Brandon: Yeah. Exactly.
Eric: Whatever gives me more praise from the audience, I am—that's my DMing style.
Julia: And the truth is the opposite.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, it's like how in podcasting, we say picture your childhood kitchen. It's like that, but picture your creative process and that's what Eric does.
Julia: There you go.
Brandon: So Eric, I do just want to plant in the listeners' minds. So you know like anytime you watch like a music video or something, where like they're saying like behind the scenes footage of studio, like making—making of the song, so like imagine me and Eric like on a couch, like chilling in the back of the studio or like, smoking or something. And we're just like, yeah, man, that that's a vibe, yeah, just like imagine us doing that cool shit.
Eric: Yeah. Rick Rubin is standing over there.
Brandon: Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Eric: He looks like big cool Socrates.
Amanda: Amazing. Well, folks, the audience, I think, enjoyed this One Shot Derby, because we have a ton of questions about the process as a whole, and about these individual worlds and characters that we made. So let's turn first to our sweet, sickly Victorian children for Battle of the Brontes Plus, which you've souped up with some of our own mechanics.
Brandon: It's $6.99 a month!
Amanda: Exactly. I’m glad we all agree that the height of comedy is sickly Victorian children. This question comes in from Soup Dumpling, lovely parent and steward of Huck and Rusty. Amanda, I'd completely wiped the memory of Quints from my brain. Please tell me how much the movie healed or exacerbated your trauma of being the older sibling to twins.
Brandon: What is Quints?
Julia: It was a Disney Channel Original Movie about an older sister, who is the older sister to a set of quintuplets.
Brandon: Oh my god incredible.
Amanda: Five babies.
Julia: Came out in 2000.
Amanda: Yes, at which time I was eight and had newborn twin siblings merely, and my reaction was, this is better, that sounds worse. And I was greatly relieved. But no, it was incredibly funny to play siblings and sickly Victorian children. This is also our second time playing the game, as we mentioned at the top of the episode, we played it with a patron G, and it was so much fun. Team, how did we enjoy playing it the second time round?
Julia: I think now that I like knew what to expect of gameplay, it was easier for me to form a character off the randomization of the character creation process. I'll be honest, I usually don't like kind of randomized character creation because then I feel like I—I'm forced to like fit inside a box and that's not the ideal, like letting my brain go wild kind of thing. But—
Brandon: Nobody puts Julia in a box.
Julia: You can't put me in a box baby, but because, one the fact that we rolled twins was extremely funny, Brandon and I, and that helped me form the character a lot better and also knowing what I would have to do in gameplay was the biggest thing for me. So that made character creation easier because I could figure out what path I could go down once we started playing.
Amanda: Very well put.
Brandon: Amanda I'm gonna let you finish real quick, but I was just looking at the Quints movie, and at the spoilers, I guess sort of it's I think it's a joke, but the very end of the movie. She jokes that her mom is now pregnant again with septuplets. And the list sounds like someone you may recognize. Anne, Billy, Carrie, Danny, Emma, Freddie, Grace.
Julia: It’s got the same cadence!
Amanda: No way.
Eric: There it is.
Amanda: That's amazing. Eric, I also want to know about Welcome to the Sensibility Dome, which is the—what would you call it like a, like a souped-up or an added to and—
Eric: I called it an expansion.
Amanda: Expansion at the Battle of the Brontes?
Eric: Yeah, I mean, like, the best part of our game with G, was the character creation part. And like inhabiting characters while we were actually playing the game.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: So I just felt like doing something that was a little more formalized, based on all this stuff. And then there was also something about like, being able to choose the birth order. I saw somewhere that someone said, like, the best part about making a tabletop RPG is coming up with a mechanic that will never happen, but you really want to make sure that it's codified.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And that's how I felt about the twins' section, where—
Amanda: I can't believe that happened.
Eric: —where you immediately call out if you're the good twin or the bad twin.
Amanda: And you guys did.
Julia: We did.
Amanda: And you said different things. It was amazing.
Eric: Yeah, so I really—I was really excited about that. And just being able to work on some of this stuff was fun. And there's like formalizing the silly Victorian or Austenian, stuff was always nice and like, you know, if someone gives me an idea, I will just write a tabletop RPG about it. So it was fun, kind of just like fleshing it out around it. And like you know how like powered by the apocalypse is the game system that like Monster Hearts and Masks and Monster of the Week is based off of. I feel like I'm taking the mechanics that I came up with in Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, and expanding in so many different ways. And that's kind of what the main part of the gameplay is going to be. Where like, you play out a situation, and then you do a scene and the mechanic that I came up with is that everyone votes if it went good or bad. So I mean, I'm very excited to do this, just use the gameplay that I kind of, this gameplay system that I came up with for Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, but honestly, I would play all three and just—although this is the one that I like created the most for, I—I love it just as much as any of the other ones.
Brandon: Well, I think I was, like had the most room for expansion than the other ones did. Like this one was definitely sort of like a blank canvas for you to paint upon.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah for sure. The one pagers I—you know, when I was coming up with what we were going to do for the One Shot Derby, we're probably gonna have a question about how that all came together.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Was like, I want to do a bunch of one-pagers, but inherently one pagers are not about character creation. You can't write all that stuff down there, Grant Howitt is like you're a bear, roll a D6.
Amanda: Figure it out.
Eric: Get the fuck out of here. And so I'd really doing this expansion was trying to formalize it on the same level as Fiasco, and Inspectres, which has like a formal character creation process.
Amanda: We, of course, then played Fiasco, which was for me, the game I knew least about, the only one that I personally had not played before. And the one whose fan art I must say, I enjoyed the most. So thank you, Lefthand for doing that, but—
Eric: Once again, I'd love to say, I will love you the most if you make fan art of things that I'm a part of.
Amanda: We have favorites, we have favorites, and it's the people who make fan art. No, just kidding. We love you all intensely equally. The fan art is the thing we text to our parents like, hey, our jobs are real.
Julia: Yeah. I can't send my family fanfic. But I also won't read it. But I will appreciate that it's there.
Eric: I want to give a special shout-out to Pale Blue Pod, Moiya and Corinne's podcast about space, because they had a recommendation of the show in the New Yorker that came out like right before Christmas time. And I saw my dad and I'm like, oh, yeah, one of our shows was in New Yorker. And I was able to just send him that. He was like, oh, yeah, this came out tonight.
Brandon: And we had the Forbes article too, Eric. That's the only time my mom is like, oh you actually do work.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Brandon's mom, clowning around as usual. The joke for people who watch us on Twitch. twitchtv/jtpsidequests.
Eric: Yeah, every Thursday.
Julia: She's not allowed to judge, she's a clown.
Amanda: Alright, folks, what was our experience of Fiasco? This was I think one of the more collaborative character-creation exercises we've gone through. And for me a pretty unique way to make characters. How did that feel, how did that go?
Julia: I really liked the collaborative nature and being able to suggest to other people or also pose to other people their relationships, and the ties that we have and stuff. Like I don't think we would have gotten to penguin smuggling if it hadn't been a creative endeavor. We were like there's a—there's a dead sick penguin in this box and why is it there and why are we concerned about it? And it was just very fun, it was a really fun time
Brandon: I'd loved it, I'd like I—it felt like almost like a formalized “yes, and” exercise, like where it's like you're forced to say “yes, and” in a good way like you can't disagree with someone's thing that they rolled and decided, which is wonderful, because yeah, then we ended up in the weirdest spots and the—the most interesting spots I think, but yeah, I had a blast doing this one. I think that was probably my favorite creation one at least.
Eric: This one had my favorite moment, which was Brandon making me and Amanda exes.
Julia: That was so good, Brandon. I was so happy.
Eric: And Brandon was like—Brandon was like, oh you fuckers, you're gonna— your—you have a bad relationship. And the card was like because something weird has happened. I'm like, yeah, because the guy I hang out with all the time is being a real fucking weirdo. That's you, you're doing that to yourself.
Brandon: That's the thing about it, it was like a weird, like trust exercise of like, do you want screw over your compatriots or like, give them a gift or what you want to do?
Amanda: And It, it struck me as a really good exercise for some, like we have, you know, many years of collaborating together under our belts, and like know each other well. And we also have the almost like, shared mission of we're here to make interesting entertainment, not to like extract all of the personal fun I can out of our play sessions. And I think this is a really useful way to see physically how your choices impact the fun that all of you are going to have together like you see, you know, on Games and Feelings, another great Multitude podcast you should listen to, there are questions sometimes, it's like this person, you know, feels like they're acting selfishly at the table, or, you know, the thing they're trying to do and like wrench the whole game in a different direction, like grab the steering wheel and turn it to where they want to go, versus saying, where are all of us trying to go together? And having that limited pool of days, knowing that my choice necessarily takes something away from somebody else. But I also have a chance to like, discuss, make a good move for all of us saying, no, no, I really care about this or hey, Julia, you know what would be really funny, was easy to me. But I can see that being a really eye-opening experience for others.
Brandon: Totally.
Amanda: If you know playing a game of Fiasco as a prelude to some other kind of like longer form, less structured campaign, a different game, you know, could be really useful.
Eric: Fiasco was interesting because it was the game that I think has the most fun of what if you did this, which we cut out a lot because it's not fun to hear someone float an idea and have it get shot down or changed, and maybe it only stayed 20%, or just accepted and someone else's idea is then become someone's own character. Like hearing that out, I think when we figured out whether or not whale-- it was funny-- if it was funny enough if whales killed people or not, like, I'm glad we had that on the microphone, and-- but Fiasco was the only place where I would have wanted to keep that necessarily, because it's like, hey, do we think this is funny? Is this enough to put in our character? Is government, like black sites funny enough? Is radioactive penguins or sick penguins, is that funny enough? It feels like only something you could do in Fiasco.
Julia: Yeah, like me begging Brandon, Brandon, please have the DVD of the thing you did. Please. Which it didn't end up happening, but it was funny to talk about, it was funny to have that conversation about whether or not we wanted that DVD of the crime.
Brandon: It was so good. I forgot about that until just now, Julia.
Julia: Yep.
Eric: It's almost like it was two sides of the same coin. Like Fiasco was funny for what we wanted to do. But I think we were very much on the same page, just from the vibes of Inspectres and Battle of the Brontes, in that it's much more focused like we're being some Victorian children, and we are being some fucking 90s, early aughts slackers, being ghost hunters. You know, like sometimes tabletop RPG just make you make the specific type of media, and sometimes tabletop RPGs is make you figure out something in a genre milieu. And those are the two differences that I think we were looking at.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. And that started with, you know, choosing our setting for Fiasco, which we did together and like read through some of the options that the game presents and decided together on this one setting in Antarctica because it felt like the most interesting complement to Inspectres and Battle of Brontes. So that, that begins from then, where nobody—I mean, I guess you could have a campaign where somebody just says like, this is the one we're doing, but we got to choose that together and then really, you know, lean into the genre tropes that the game is asking us to pursue.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That's true.
Brandon: Yeah, which we did. I don't think we did on mic, right? When we look through like there are hundreds and hundreds—
Julia: So many.
Brandon: Of settings for Fiasco, which is very cool.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: The issue with Fiasco, I think we touched on this was like, you know, you got to just take the prompts as they are unless you make up the whole thing yourself.
Julia: Right.
Eric: It's like there's so many homebrewed ones which are like, not great, and then you're locked into it. Also fucking watching Tabletop, the YouTube video was so funny.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: It is like, it's like, no, I don't want to do Wil Wheaton’s 1970s New York City one, I'm sorry. But so it was like wading through and finding the thing we actually wanted to do with like, the prompts that are written in this playbook, is that you really are locked into the suggestions that are written down. I feel like we were all on the same page there.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, there's no like trade two roles for a homebrew, like you could, but that's not what the game was asking you to do. And I think this whole derby is sort of like a trust fall into the mechanics of different games, which, hey, different game mechanics create different kinds of stories. And it was super fun to do.
Julia: I mean, we also did kind of mush the options for the Ice a little bit. Like, for example, we were like, we don't wanna do any of these drug ones like, let-s
Eric: Oh, yeah, like the fucking hoodlums.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Man, this is what we got for playing turn of the century to tabletop RPGs, right?
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: [laughs] Turn of the century.
Amanda: Yeah, it worked.
Eric: Yeah. but they're all steam powered.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Didn't we all talk like this in the early 2000s?
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: But speaking of Antarctica, we got some Antarctica hot goss, from listener Miriam. Eric, do you want to share this?
Eric: Yes, this was a wonderful set of messages that we got from Miriam, who knows quite a lot about Antarctica and McMurdo Station because they're in the Coast Guard. Their first unit out of training was an icebreaker that breaks a shipping channel into McMurdo every year and escorts the supply ships, which is wild. So we got some fun, fun facts about McMurdo Station in Antarctica. There are three bars in McMurdo, a wine bar, a karaoke bar, and a bar with bar games. So we will be doing a scene in a-- Man, isn't there a fucking Coen Brothers movie with karaoke in Antarctica? Like, come on, come on. Absolutely incredible.
Julia: If I remember correctly, Miriam also said that's the only place they've sung karaoke. And I was like, imagine—imagine being like, hey, someone invites you to karaoke. You're like, hey, the only time I've ever done karaoke was in Antarctica.
Amanda: Two truths and a lie.
Eric: I was just gonna say that, Amanda.
Brandon: Yeah, me too, I was thinking the same thing Amanda.
Amanda: Two truths in a lie of I've never sung karaoke. I have sung karaoke. And I've sung karaoke in Antarctica.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: What's the most Antarctic—Antarctic tour groups don't actually make it to McMurdo. So I think that made sense, because of all the military stuff that we were touching on. Or the government science stuff. Miriam affirms that penguins stink, but they're also adorable.
Amanda: Yay.
Eric: The 24-hour sunlight is very disorienting, and there is preserved seal meat and blubber from Shackleton's exploration, which was still in his hut.
Amanda: Wow.
Eric: The first—first dude who went to Antarctica, some of his supplies are still there.
Julia: That's wild.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: No. And of course, we got some messages from folks about the ecotourism of going to Antarctica.
Julia: Don't do it.
Eric: People should not go.
Amanda: Don't do it.
Eric: Don't do it.
Julia: Watch a documentary. It's fine.
Amanda: Visit it in your brain, and visit in on your television, visit it here in Fiasco.
Eric: Oh, I forgot to ask, but Miriam, we will need the selfie of you in the penguin on the ice, so please send it to us.
Amanda: Yes please.
Brandon: Oh my god, Miriam, why didn’t you send that?
Eric: I forgot to follow up. I'm going to ask.
Amanda: We had a couple more comments questions from Discord. Tattooed-N-Tall says I'm here for the super niche 684 corridor content. Can we expect more in campaign three?
Eric: Yeah, we'll talk about what it's like to drive on the highway outside of New York City.
Julia: I was gonna say, I don't know what that is.
Brandon: Me neither.
Amanda: And Julia, I'm pretty sure this one was from this episode, but Hakuna asked, how do you not think googling butt dice would end badly?
Julia: You know what, I wanted to find a set of dice where on the one on a D20. It had someone's like little butt on it, right? I don't think I ever told you what I did find. And I'm not going to—
Eric: That's fair.
Julia: Not going to put you through that, but it was a little scarring.
Amanda: Spare us, spare us.
Eric: I'm surprised that there isn't a D 20, where the one is like a cat from the back and you see the butthole?
Julia: Oh no, that—that exists.
Eric: Yeah, I know that's a 100%.
Amanda: Classic. Of course. Well, folks, let us go ahead to the canteen and grab a quick refill before we talk about Inspectres, the derby as a whole, and what's next for Join the Party.
Julia: Let's go.
Brandon: Do you want to do a quick karaoke while we're there, just in the break? Just do a quick something.
Julia: Yeah, let me grab a penguin.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah. Brandon, you go first. You go first.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda: Then I'll go, I promise.
Brandon: Okay, cool.
Amanda: I promise I will go after you. But only after you go.
Brandon: Who are you, me?
Eric: And coming up to the stage Eric Silver singing Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield. Hold on, I actually, I—I called ahead of time and I put my shit in.
Amanda: Sure, sure.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda. Normally, you know I say something a little bit unrelated to the the content we're doing today, but I'm just really ticked by the idea of drinking like, you know, a tequila soda or whiskey ginger in a bar in Antarctica. And, you know, I'm never going to visit it for ecological responsibility reasons. I'm gonna go ahead and hold a little image in my heart. So, welcome to the midroll, drinks for like $3 here. Thank you so much to our newest patrons Henry, Marie, Adam, Alyssa, and Kiara. I am so looking forward to the stuff we have coming for campaign three. And we're going to tell you a little bit more at the end of this episode. But we have put so much work and time, and dedication and like trying things to make the campaign as good as possible. And the reason we have the time to do that is because of your support on Patreon. I cannot overstate the amount that your support on Patreon allows us to make this our jobs. Both this being Join the Party, and this being like all of us having careers in audio. Doing Join the Party, having your support, seems our work resonates with people, were so instrumental to starting Multitude and starting our whole thing. And we are so grateful for it. So if you can find room in your budget to support this independent podcast endeavor, check us out. patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Now for all of you who listen to the midroll, and don't skip it, I have great news, which is that you are the first people to vote for the One Shot Derby winner. You can click the link in the description now, and go ahead and vote for your favorite, but also your second favorite, and also your third favorite because this is ranked choice voting baby. Basically, for voting between more than two things, rank choice voting is what you should be voting despite what the government says. So you essentially select your first favorite, your second favorite, and your third favorite, then we add it all up with some pretty simple math to figure out which one shot will win. Everybody can vote, but only patrons can listen to the One Shot that will end up playing. So click that link in the description. Vote for the One Shot that you want to see us play. And just—just wait in a few minutes later in the episode, you're going to hear me say this, to everybody else who did skip the mid roll, you'll be special and you'll know in your heart that you and I had a special time together in the mid-roll, where you already knew how to vote. It is always busy over here at Multitude and this week, I just wanted to say, have you considered the $10 tier of the multi-crew before, this is—okay $10 a month for the multi-crew, which is the membership program that folks just like you join to support the work that Multitude does, let us do new things, try new stuff, pay our staff pay, you know for the cool events and software that we use to put on those events. All the goodness that goes into making our community such a great one. And at the $10 a month tier, you get exclusive access to a bonus behind-the-scenes newsletter, our crew-only Instagram account which is high quality, and first dibs on any and all updates coming down the Multitude pike. And I gotta tell you, we're making some enhancements to the multi-crew soon, adding in more stuff for you to enjoy. So it's a great time to join. Just saying, plus of course, you get access to Head Heart Gut, our friendly weekly debate show, special channels in the Discord, so much more. If you value the work we do, the—the space we take up in the podcasting industry, the work we do on behalf of creators. This is the most concrete and most helpful way you can support us if you can afford to. Join the multi-crew at multicrew.club. We are sponsored this week by our good friends at twenty sided store, who have a very exciting announcement which is that they're expanding. They are moving their retail shop which is of course, my go-to local game store for dice games, notebook base bags, accessories, mini painting kits, gifts for the friends who have kids in my life, etc. All of that they are moving the retail space to 18 Grand Street in Williamsburg Brooklyn, which is just one block away from their current original location. And they are turning their original space into a dedicated events space in February, next month. They're going to be hosting live events like podcasts even more than they used to, which was where in case you're curious, one of the very first Join The Party live shows was hosted in the back of twenty sided store. So we could not be more excited for them. And if you would like to visit twenty sided store. If you're in New York or visiting New York, multiple of you have made pilgrimages by the way when visiting New York, to twenty-sided, as a fixture in the Join the Party universe. They love it and we love it. So when you go you can mention Join The Party for a discount off of your order. Or if you are ordering online, they can ship right to you and they put stickers in there sometimes. Use the code CAMP. This is the last instance by the way of the code CAMP, for 20% off your order online at twentysidedstore.com. We are also sponsored this week by Battling Blades, they design and sell high-quality swords, axes, machetes, and knives. They strive to design and create products with the highest quality metals, bone, wood, and leather, and let me tell you, Julia has a sword, Eric has an axe, and Brandon and I have a mezzaluna like a pizza cutter, that could clearly be a weapon. They are truly incredible, and they also offer customization options. So you can like engrave the sheath or the blade of the thing that you're ordering. And by the way, they have so much more than weapons. They also have armor, shields, and helmets. So whether you want to decorate or look badass or just own a cool thing, we're really getting to character, they're a great place to do it. For 20% off your Battling Blades order, go to battlingblades.com and enter code, Join The Party at checkout. Once again, for 20% off your Battling Blades order, go to battlingblades.com and enter code Join The Party at checkout. Finally, the show is sponsored by BetterHelp. When you are at your best, you can do great things. But sometimes life gets bogged down and it makes you feel like you're sinking into a quicksand. God, I thought quicksand would be a bigger part of adult life than it actually is. But that is how it feels sometimes and it means that when I'm overwhelmed, I can't show up in the way I want to for my friends, and loved ones, and work and creative projects. And I hate that makes me feel worse about myself and it becomes a bad cycle. So I rely on therapy to help me in those times. When I see my therapist and I talk about the things that are bringing me shame, or bringing me down, or making me worried, I have someone else an ally to kind of help me deal with that and figure out how to move forward. BetterHelp is convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. So if finding therapy near you is a hassle, seriously, try BetterHelp give it a go. So if you want to live a more empowered, life therapy can help get you there. Visit betterhelp.com/jointheparty today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterHELP.com/jointheparty.
[theme]
Eric: [singing] TAKE ME AWAY, THE SECRET PLACE
Amanda: Guys, they have astronaut ice cream on Antarctica, I brought some back for you.
Brandon: It's freeze-dried. Do you get it, because it's cold?
Julia: Badam, pshhh.
Amanda: That's a joke.
Brandon: Shout out to Dippin Dots.
Amanda: Good job. While you were karaoke-ing, I got this Brandon, but now I have— I have brain freeze. I can't sing.
Julia: Oh okay. I think that’s not how
Eric: [mumbles lyrics of Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield]
Brandon: I thought that was Rihanna in my head for a second.
Eric: I mean, it was all ki—
Amanda: It has some Umbrella vibes. Yeah.
Eric: It was all that melange in that time that was—that has real like Pon Don De Replay vibes, yeah, it’s fine.
Amanda: Alright, folks, let us turn to our most recent Derby entrant. And I think kind of my favorite. Well, we'll talk about if we have favorites. But this one---
Brandon: Wow, Amanda pulling a favorite.
Amanda: I know this one really, really stood out to me.
Eric: My favorite is still fan artists.
Julia: Can confirm.
Amanda: This is of course Inspectres, where Amelia Ashes, Claire McCloud, Ben Reeves, aka Beevez, and Gray Dickson are ghost hunters together in our newly franchised ex-mom and pop shop, ghosts.net
Eric: Just got to live out loud, bro.
Brandon: Julie just shook her head. And I don't know if it was about my character's name. But if it was, I'm offended.
Julia: It was. I also had to ask you recently how to spell it for the transcript, and I was like, please, please maybe say D I X O N, and he was like nope, it's just Dickson. I'm like great. Of course.
Amanda: We did have lots of requests for gotta live out, bro merch. Eric, do you care to comment.
Eric: No, I choose not to comment.
Julia: I will say I don't like to toot my own horn. But my joke about the Catholic Church, Our Lady of Perpetual Moments really stood out to me in that episode.
Amanda: And it had—I think my favorite moment on the show, perhaps all year, not 2023 but like the last 12 months, which was again tooting my own horn, PIPNE, pre iPhone post 911. [laughs]
Julia: I thought you were gonna say love you Claire, hate your dad.
Amanda: That—Julia, that's a run-of-the-mill funny. Pre-iPhone, post 911 is like a graduate thesis. Incredible.
Eric: Yeah, this is the most as the kids on Tumblr say unhinged one we’ve done, the most chaotic.
Julia: I don't know, I think Battle of the Brontes was pretty chaotic.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Amanda screaming, mommy, they're fighting again.
Eric: I just want to go back really quickly to Battle the Brontes, the funniest thing that happened on the show, was Amanda saying to me, Angel saying to Mary, remember when I got an orange for Christmas, and you got the rinds of the orange for Christmas, did you feel bad about that or not? And I’m like, what the fuck?
Julia: You said no.
Amanda: Good shit.
Eric: But Inspectres, I really like Inspectres. I think it has the best premise, out of all three of them just—I— I love the time that we're in, Inspectres also a relatively old game as we talked about. So like there's a lot that we can bring it up to speed in 2023, but there is that like reality show element to it, The Office element to it that I'm very excited to do, which even when we played the Amanda, Eric, Julia, Jake played—
Brandon: The one where it was just y’all four and you excluded me intentionally. You sent me like a postcard in the mail that said, hey, we're playing this game, but you're not invited. Which I thought was kinda rude.
Eric: Yeah, we took a Polaroid and sent it to you.
Amanda: It's also like May 2020, so Brandon, there was a lot going on. In our defense.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Oh it specifically said, Brandon, fuck you. You're bad at Mario Kart?
Brandon: Right. Exactly.
Eric: So we—I feel like we didn't even use that mechanic. So I'm interested in just like the premise and the time period of PIPNE.
Amanda: Thank you.
Eric: So I really want to see what we end up, what ends up shaking out. Even though it has kind of like the clunkiest game mechanics. Like I want to play in the world the most, I want to play the game the least.
Amanda: Sure.
Brandon: For —for the listener, Eric is—is using verbiage that makes it seem like we've decided to play that one. That's not— that is up to you. That is just--
Eric: I know, I'm not using verbiage. I'm just talking about the game. I'm just talking. Again. My favorite, Brandon, are the fan artists and the fanfiction. I don't have a preference of the game.
Amanda: Should this one win, that's how I will feel, but listen word—word. This is a popular ranked choice vote, which we will get into in just a little bit.
Brandon: Actually, I think I felt that like I enjoyed it. But I felt like Inspectres had the—maybe clunky is the right word, -est creation process. Like I don't know that I really like vibed with that process particularly. I liked the other two much better in terms of mechanics. I loved what we created together because we are weird and unhinged. But yeah, as a game system. I think I liked the other two a little bit better, or more.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: It was more fun at least.
Julia: I think with Inspectres, it's much more open-ended, as to like what the character you end up creating is because really, the only thing we kind of decided on in character creation for Inspectres was stats, like the number of dice that you have, and then everything else was just like from your brain. What's your character? What are they doing? That kind of thing.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: So it was very open-ended.
Eric: Yeah, there's no “class” quote-unquote, in Inspectres, while at least you feel like your mechanics and your personality are enmeshed in a lot of the other games that we've played, including Battle the Brontes and Fiasco.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Very true. Very true. We did have some really fascinating questions about the world of Blighton, Ohio though, which might be my favorite, my favorite town. From TJ, what's the name of Blighton's high school football team? May I suggest the Blighton Geists, or if it's a blight, possibly the Blighton Potatoes? And then add, this will impact my final vote, FYI. I know. I know. TJ, I laughed darkly as an Irish person. Maureen, by the way, who says well, Blighton, Ohio is basically my hometown. So for localization, I suggest the Blighton Tires or Blighton Steel Beams.
Julia: Okay. I—I was thinking Blighton Scarecrows would be very funny.
Eric: Sure, that’s good.
Brandon: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Julia. Real quick. Me and Eric, we're both— I guarantee you, we're both thinking that jet fuel can't melt Blighton Steel Beams.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Fuck.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: We can't keep making 911 jokes in these episodes. We simply can't.
Amanda: Julia, it's in the zeitgeist, it's PIPNE period.
Brandon: Before! It’s before 911.
Eric: Get it? It’s in the zeitgeist, like the movie, that said that you can’t melt steel beams. I think that TJ got it in the first message. I'm just gonna build on it. It is the Blighton Fightin’ Spuds, you're right.
Brandon: Oh, that’s great.
Julia: Nice.
Eric: Listen, as the sportiest person here, you got to be able to render out the single-syllable name.
Amanda: Oh, sure.
Eric: So I feel like potatoes doesn't have it. So it would be Spuds but we can add fightin’ to it.
Julia: Spud. Spud. Spud.
Brandon: Spud. Spud. Spud.
Eric: Exactly.
Amanda: Spuds is just incredible, I love that.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Now that we've discussed all three of our One Shot Derby candidates, it's time for you to vote. So you can go ahead in the description of this episode, episode description. Go ahead and click the link to a Google Form, that will allow you to vote for your favorite One Shot, your second favorite One Shot, and your third favorite One Shot. As well as a spot for you to say nice things about the One Shot Derby, should you wish. This is ranked choice voting, and it means that we get to choose with some very simple math, the one that most people are most excited about, instead of being like, oh, you know, this one only got X percent of the vote blah, blah. Basically, if you're doing a vote between more than two things, rank choice voting is the one that you should use. So again, hit the episode description. Click the link to vote, and vote for your favorite, your second favorite, and your third favorite One Shot. Voting will be open for one week. That's until January 31, 2023, let's say midnight, eastern time at the end of the day on January 31. And then we will be announcing which one won. Again, everybody can vote, but only patrons will be able to listen. So if you want to listen to whatever wins, if you want to become a patron.
Julia: Whoo, yeah, go vote.
Amanda: Well, this is a great segue into the many general questions folks had about this process, about the worlds, about choosing. CatOwl, specifically says, how are we supposed to choose between one, Julia as the bad twin who invented/predicted Victorian flower language in the Regency era, who's benevolently haunted by sickly good twin Brandon? Two, Amanda and Eric as ex-spouses trying to expose a bird flu epidemic with a dead penguin in a tri-walled cardboard box.
Julia: Also very good.
Amanda: Three, literally everything about Amelia Ashes. I want all of these so much. I know it's cruel and unusual what we're doing, CatOwl, and we apologize.
Brandon: I make no apologies. Choose your favorites. Kill your darlings.
Julia: I was—I was telling Jake about the character that I made for Fiasco. I told him about it all the characters, but specifically, I was explaining like, the character of McKenzie Newport to him. And he's like, she sounds bad. I was like, Yeah, she is.
Eric: It's like, yeah, Jake, you know all the movies you love. It's like that.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Yeah, I tried explain it, I'm like, no, it's like a movie. Like, you know, she's a very like, complicated character. He's like, she's—she's smuggling birds. No one should own a bird. I'm like, you're right, baby, no one should own a bird.
Brandon: No one should own a bird.
Eric: Did you tell Jake it was a Coen Brothers movie? Because he would get that.
Julia: Yeah. No, I did.
Eric: He's very cinema, cinema literate.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Julia, can you please cross-stitch the phrase no one should own a bird?
Julia: We'll see.
Amanda: Julia said that in an upcoming episode of Spirits. And I was like, Julia, you're so right. It makes sense. This has been on your mind.
Julia: Well, because he's been saying that for the past 10 years.
Brandon: No one should own a bird.
Julia: Jake's like, it's just wrong. It's like against nature. They should be free. I'm like, you're right, Jake.
Amanda: You're right baby, you're right. Oh, so good. SneakySloths would like to know, out of all three characters you made, which was your favorite, and which plot was your favorite?
Brandon: Hm. I mean, I loved our twins. I can't—I can't not choose twins. But I think my favorite plot was probably Fiasco. I just think it's just so—there's so much juicy potential in it, you know? I just— I just want to explore it.
Julia: Yeah. I really liked the relationship and plot in Fiasco, specifically between Brandon and I too, where it's like, we're bird smugglers. And that's, that's our thing. What a wild relationship to have with your coworker. That's definitely like up there, in terms of my favorites. I can't pick a favorite though. I don't know. It's hard.
Brandon: Please Julia, if you could refer to me as your bird smuggling colleague, it would be great.
Julia: Cool. No one should own a bird though, Brandon.
Eric: Fiasco, I—I don't want to give it to Fiasco, because Fiasco inherently has the most plot already.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And it's going to break so bad for all four of us.
Julia: Uh-huh.
Eric: In Fiasco, which I am interested in figuring out. My favorite character that I made was Beevez.
Julia: Of course. Naturally. As the minute you—
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: —said his name, I'm like, well, that's an Eric character for sure.
Eric: That'd be— I'm really excited to play like a disaffected retail guy, live life out loud. It's something I've been going to embody the whole time. So but you know, again, like the genre of the Victorian sisters writing novels, was just so funny when we played it before. So I want to do it again on mic.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. I think actually, Inspectres would be the most fun for me of like figuring out what sort of banal hauntings you know are happening in his hometown, and how to balance that against like corporates desires, which I find very funny, but I just-- playing Angel came so naturally to me.
Eric: My God.
Amanda: It was so funny to do. So as much as I love Amelia Ashes, I feel like Angel would be like Amelia Ashes's niece in another universe. She's like, you know, really judging Amelia. So I really like Angel.
Brandon: Amelia just lives in your heart at all times, in your actual Amanda heart.
Amanda: Yeah, when I enter a bagel shop, who orders is Amelia Ashes's, that's who orders.
Julia: I also just very quickly want to shout out JFactorial, who made a very funny meme of the the line I said we're like, so there's this ghost that sucks blood. It was extremely funny. Can I have the corporate credit card now, please?
Amanda: Incredible. Library Chick wanted to know, did you prefer any of the derby character creation systems to D&D or Monster of the Week? For me, I think I settled a little bit about how I like how the Fiasco collaboration, like most of the time in D&D and Monster of the Week, you check with your GM, but then you show up to the table and like surprise your colleagues with your character. And that is how Inspectres felt. That's how you know kind of we, you know, Brontes led us to the conclusion but they all already fit together because of the system. And so in Fiasco, I feel like you got a chance to choose something you wouldn't normally have chosen. And I think that is really fun and gives a lot of inspiration to people like me, who when told, come up with a character, I'm like, I've never had an idea and I'll never have one again. Like, it's—it's—it's very, you know, overwhelming.
Julia: I think also the thing is about something like D&D, or Monster of the Week is that, or at least this is how I do character creation for those kinds of games, where it's like, I pick the class that like has the thing that I want to be able to do when I play, and none of these games have that in any sense, where it's like, you know, I'm not getting a special power because I—I'm not getting a special power in any of these games, you know, like, I gotta get certain skill set or anything like that, and I am choosing for Inspectres, I'm choosing like what I think this character would be good at, and would not be good at, but that's the extent of it in terms of skills. So I think that's what is very different and makes it easier to do on the fly character creation than something like Monster of the Week or D&D.
Brandon: Couldn't you like speak to cows or something and, or was that Eric?
Julia: Amanda picks to speak to cows.
Brandon: What was your—you had a power? What was it?
Julia: I had Sherlockian deductive reasoning, obviously.
Eric: I added that in just for fun.
Julia: Thank you.
Eric: This whole Battle the Brontes is so rules light, I’m like, yeah give it a justification. You could reroll, that’s fine.
Julia: Thanks, bro.
Brandon: I agree with Amanda. I think like, I like Fiasco because it sort of gave us an opportunity to come up with a character that yeah, you might normally not think of and you can play against type, or play just a personality of a person that you probably would not even conceive of previously, which was—was super fun. And yeah, I think like a lot of the other game systems like D&D and—and Monster of the Week, whether or not you think about it, they definitely have stereotypes and like slots that you're playing into. Even if you—you have to like consciously decide to not do that and try to work against it, as opposed to just like having an open playing field. So like if you play D&D, you're gonna be playing some type of fantasy character even if you don't mean to. You're playing Monster of the Week, you're gonna be playing, you know, some kind of kid on bike kind of thing, even if you don't mean to. So like, that was the difference for Fiasco, I feel.
Eric: And yeah. Well, Fiasco, the thing that we're playing are broken people who have wants and needs and are gonna be screwed over by the world, you know?
Julia: Yeah. Right.
Eric: It's diff—much different experience to play that instead of like, you're going to play the trope of the monk.
Brandon: Right, exactly.
Amanda: Eric, how was creating characters for you in these rules, and also versus Monster of the Week, or D&D? How you think about making NPCs to fit into that world?
Eric: I am so much less precious about NPCs because I will just make them constantly. I am like, so precious about my little PCs, and I feel like I always make them too regular, like Mary, Mary is by far the most boring out of the four sisters. And I feel like I came up with someone who was a little more straightforward for Fiasco. So I'm like, fuck it, I'm playing Beevez. So it's hard. It's definitely hard for me to play someone who like I'm going to embody for the entire game.
Brandon: I don't agree that Mary is boring, first of all, but I do—it is interesting that knowing your wildly creative brain, you come up with like, just like dude, like dudes. You know, a lot of the time.
Amanda: You’re often like the men in the room, in the comedy sense.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I did this on Foxtrot Squad, too.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Now, I play the like, quote-unquote, “straight man”, but the only difference was like, I was fucking a computer, which was funny and didn't give me the high ground at all.
Amanda: You were tenderly in love with a computer.
Eric: Which didn't give me the high ground? But because which was funny, but I definitely was like, alright, well, what are we doing next? Let's go to the next plot point, please.
Julia: I was gonna say I could see the through line between Chef and Beevez for sure.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Yeah for sure.
Brandon: Which, to be clear, I love all your characters. I wouldn't change them. I'm not critiquing them. But it's just funny to me to see you like not play like an anthropomorphic, like tree or something, you know?
Eric: I don't know. And like, I don't think we do this. But you know, I've seen so many actual play stuff now. It's like, either you play a team player, or you play someone that you think everyone's gonna make fan art of. It feels like how you do is like I'm gonna play the time in a play to the genre and the game, or I'm going to do something crazy. And I think it works, and when you can do both at the same time. For example, Rick Diggins, Man of Mystery, the Lego man from that one toy thing that they did on Dimension 20. Incredible. Justin McElroy crushed it by doing both at the same time, but I feel like you do one or the other, and I, I cannot-- when I'm being a player. I just don't want to do that. I want to do the thing that makes the most sense for the world. Which is like Beevez or Mary.
Amanda: Totally. Carlz actually wants to know, will any of the chosen or not chosen One Shot character shrubs NPCs in campaign three?
Eric: Absolutely not. They're dead. Anyone you don’t choose dies.
Julia: You don't vote for them, they die.
Eric: Listen, this is a creative exercise for all of us. You really need to vote. If you want something to be seen, you got to vote. Kill your darlings. I'm with Brandon.
Julia: I will say all of the Bronte children will die because that's kind of the point of the game.
Amanda: Oh yeah, all that we're gonna die in game for sure, should we play that.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And also in the character creation process, Jaya wanted to know, as somebody who hasn't played any of these RPGs, how much of the character creation that we heard was in the game, versus how much did we kind of either plan out ahead of time or change on the fly? For example, Eric, you did describe in the Brontes game, you know, what you added versus what was on the page. How does that stack up for Inspectres and Fiasco?
Eric: Great question. Battle of the Brontes was the added stuff that I did. But everything else was baked in for Fiasco and Inspectres, which is why we played it. And then I had to get Battle of the Brontes up there, to kind of soup up a one— a one-pager. But very good question, because y'all should play these games.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: And the question surgeon, Michelle Spurgeon. Dr. Spurgeon, I'm sorry, I neglected to say your full title in the last After Party. You've not been demoted, your license has not been stripped. I was merely too familiar and I shouldn't be as a lowly orderly. Dr. Spurgeon wants to know which of the characters we made is most like you. The character most like me is Mary.
Brandon: Oh my, good question.
Julia: I guess it's Mackenzie Newport, but that doesn't bode well for me, does it?
Eric: Mine was definitely Marty Beans, I think.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Definitely the most likely me, but I'm excited for Marty Beans to like, you know, he's gonna be the one who is like crusading for the truth, and bad things are gonna happen to him. So I'm very excited about that.
Amanda: Should we play it?
Eric: If we play.
Amanda: I like that you use, that you use like present tense for all these games, like these worlds are right now poised, continuing until we choose to close them you know?
Eric: Hello, it is me, Mr. Dr. Strange. I am holding all three portals open and any of the three can happen.
Julia: I was gonna call it a Schrodinger’s One Shot, but okay Dr. Strange, whatever.
Amanda: You know, Julia, we didn't consider making that the name of the derby. And I feel like we fucked up.
Julia: Yeah. Then we all would have had to make Ru—Russian? German accents? Where is he from?
Amanda: Oh, that's Benedict Cumberbatch doing an American accent.
Julia: Oh no, I mean Schrodinger. [laughs]
Amanda: Oh, okay.
Julia: I think German. I think we would all have to do German accents, anyway.
Amanda: Sorry, Brandon, you go.
Brandon: I don't know. I don't know myself. So y'all pick, who am I most like?
Eric: I don't think that’s how Brandon does character creation.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Brandon never makes a character like him.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Like Milo was like, a fan cast of himself, you know?
Amanda: In an anime, yeah.
Eric: But yeah, like anime. But like I don't—that's not how Brandon does character creation.
Julia: Brandon, it's Amberjill. There you go.
Julia: Thank you, thank you.
Eric: Oh, sure.
Julia: Because you're famously very sickly and cough into the microphone all the time.
Eric: Another funny thing, how everyone has A names. And then Mary, I forgot about that until I saw the fan art. And I'm like, that's really funny that we did that.
Amanda: Yeah, the one name for the Virgin Mary, then we move on, you know? Amazing. And finally, before we transition into some campaign three chats, this comes from Aidan, what was the process behind deciding to do the Derby? Why those three games in particular? And then I'll add on a question that a few people asked, which is what were the other games we considered. So we talk a little bit from a workflow perspective, we were getting our ducks in a row for campaign three, wanted to take a little bit of time off. We love character creation. It was so much fun to do. And we wanted to like, try different systems after the fun, and lovely experience of playing a whole mini-campaign in a new system.
Eric: Do you just want me to say it was my idea, and I came up with it?
Amanda: Sure.
Brandon: Well, yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, yeah, Eric just showed up one day, metaphorically in the slack or wherever we were doing and said brain blast.
Julia: Brain blast!
Eric: I was listening to Friends At the Table. And, you know, they get so deep in the weeds of some of these games, and they record for like, 10 hours and divided into like three episodes, and only the first episode is like character creation. I'm like Jesus Christ. So but I'm like, oh, it'd be so much fun to do tabletop RPGs after, like we did Dungeons and Dragons with campaign two. We were going to do Monster the Week, but like it was smaller, but I did want to spend some more time not doing D&D. So it would have been fun. And I know how much Julia and all of us love character creation. So I thought we could do something like this and then play it out, and have y'all everyone's voting. Every single person is going to vote, every single listener is gonna vote. And I'm very excited about all this. It was just, just a fun thing that we came up with in terms of choosing the ones I had just alluded to it, but it was having like a structured character creation segment, was something that I really tried to lean on, which is why we want to do Fiasco specifically, Inspectres, we remember that had a formal character creation thing and then I kind of souped-up a one shot, because I wanted the game mechanics of a one shot to be on the table at least as well. And we ended up choosing that and a few things that I listed out. I found the Slack message that I sent. So I divided it into three sections which we ended up touching on a little bit. One was one pagers so like Battle the Brontes, we could have done other one-pagers, but I would have had to soup it up in terms of like character creation like I did,
Brandon: It would have been so funny to have to create four bears.
Eric: I know.
Julia: Make those bears.
Eric: They would have been funny. I feel like if we ended up doing honey heist. We could have like done like flashbacks, like getting the crew together as like a character creation episode. That would have been funny. I feel like I would have had to put some stuff together. We might have done some powered-by-the-apocalypse games. I suggested Monster Hearts Two, which is about playing teenage monsters. I don't know if we're ever gonna play that on a mic, because a lot of it is about being horny if I remember correctly from the last time we played, and I don't know how I feel about saying that on a microphone.
Brandon: I don't love playing horny, horniness on microphones.
Julia: Why the fuck not, guys?
Eric: Well like--
Amanda: Not our specialty.
Eric: Like the move are like turn on, and I'm like I respect you, Avery Alder. Do that, I just did we—I don't know if we can do that on our mic. I'm with you. We could have played Masks. If you wanted to do a teen superhero drama that would have been fun. Something like Arrowverse-y. If you want to do arrow verse in Laketown City, it was a little too close to this. But if we do this again, maybe we will end up touching on that one. And there is a very complicated Powered by the Apocalypse game called Action Movie World, where you are doing an action movie and controlling for like your character and the actor at the same time. And then like the GM is actually the director. So there's a lot of like push and pull of movie stuff happening. It's very complicated, though.
Julia: Sure.
Amanda: It still sounds cool.
Brandon: That's fun.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: But perhaps not great for this setting.
Eric: Yeah. And then we could have played some other games. Like there was one called Lunch Rush from Doikayt, which was the Jewish tabletop RPG anthology that I had. That one is a game about running a Jewish deli. Again, it kind of has a pretty light character creation, maybe we could have souped up some of that for a full episode. That would have been fine. And of course, Clear Eyes, Full Hearts. The game that Mischa and I created. We could have done that too. But we ended up using that for Battle of the Brontes.
Brandon: It was such a hard, like vote for me with the deli game in there, because that's kind of like so much fun.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. But if we do another Derby in the future, we have lots of excellent options available.
Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Amanda we just play one of the games we don't choose again, it's like we—we've never played this before, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Julia: No, I don’t know. I never played it.
Amanda: We wouldn't gaslight our audience into thinking that a thing we said will never change in the past, is definitely changing and will probably impact your ability to make a living here in the vibrant third-party marketplace around a game, that has become a cultural phenomenon because of those very people who have dedicated their lives and creations into making this a thing, many people care about. But then suddenly, a major game company buys a smaller publisher, which itself was bought out because of copyright disputes with its co-founder, and a legal battle with Lord of the Rings that they don't like to talk about. And then says, what are you talking about? No, no, we've always owned the idea of elves. And furthermore, now own your property. Would we?
Julia: Amanda breath, Amanda breath.
Brandon: I think you blacked out, Amanda.
Eric: That was a pretty good segue. It's pretty good.
Amanda: Thanks. Eric, what the hell has been going on with Wizards of the Coast recently?
Eric: Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about campaign three a little bit. We had said before, we are going to play Dungeons and Dragons but on our terms. Back in campaign two, I ended up reworking the whole thing. Because even back then, Wizard of the Coast, I found was not a good steward of the game. The one that we all fell in love with when we started playing back when fifth edition started popping off, and we're like, oh, wow, this is cool. And then oh, this company's fucking this shit up. So since that time, you might have seen on the internet that Wizards of the Coast, I can get into it. I—Amanda and I are gonna get into the nitty gritty on Patreon, on Party Planning, where we're going to break down everything. We also touched on this a little bit on Games and Feelings, that was right at the last episode of 2022. Right before all this happened that like Hasbro, the company that owns Wizard of the Coast is incredibly profit determined like corporations are and are making choices to give themselves the most amount of money regardless of what they're destroying. We saw this coming in December. It is now happening with the open gaming license here. Basically, very short: The open gaming license allows third-party people to make d&d content and sell it, so like the stuff that I did for No Capes for example, or Valda’s Spire of Secrets, or any of the people that you might have supported on Kickstarter or buy anything else that's not on DMs guild like that is what is being debated right now. And Wizards of the Coast wants to squeeze everything really hard because they want more money to validate the purchase. Hasbro wants to validate the purchase of Wizards of the Coast. And they also want to validate the existence of D&D beyond, which was a separate company that they bought for a lot of money, that allows you to play D&D online quote, unquote, “officially”. And they're trying to like soup that up and make sure that is a profit center. So instead, they're destroying everything else to allow that to happen. To that point, how does this affect us? First of all, Join The Party is not affected as a podcast, it is under a separate policy. It's still under the corporation and stewardship of a large corporation—
Amanda: Which is always dicey in the world, but you know, we—you don't worry about us being in immediate danger. If it comes to it. We can be a podcast about imagining things with nobody's proprietary rule set or a different game. There's—there's lots of options. So we're not going anywhere. But we do find it important to talk about the ethics and rules about this industry, and what we're choosing to do in using this game to power future stories that we tell.
Eric: So with campaign three, we're not going to stop being critical of Wizards of the Coast. Like I've been doing this since the show started since, remember, all the way back in 2020. When like, they were like, hey, we're finally changing the slurs that are in Curse of Strahd. They're called Romani people. And remember, like this has been happening for a very long time. There were tons of workers issues. They were selling a game called Oriental Adventures for a really long time. This has popped up a lot in a lot of newspapers, just Google D&D racist. Like, you'll see all of the major newspapers that have been writing art—like NPR covered this, this week, about this, which is wild like this has been happening a lot. And it's coming to a head with the OGL, with a lot of people mobilizing and saying that they can't be pushed around by a corporation. We're going to continue to be outspoken critics of Wizards of the Coast. We are playing dungeon & dragons because no corporation gets to take away the game that we want to play just because they own it. It is to the benefit of the company if we think the D&D, the brand, and D&D, the game is the same. They want you to think that they own it, and they can do whatever they want with it. And there's no other way to play it other than the official way that you will have to pick—give them like $30 for the beautiful opportunity to play in the way they want you to play it, right?
Amanda: There are PDFs all over the internet baby. You can—you can play D&D, make it your own, queer it, trans it, fuck it up in all of the ways that you want to without giving them a dime.
Julia: As we like to say yo ho, yo ho, pirate's life for me.
Eric: We're, buca— we're buccaneers and I truly don't remember the last time that I've paid for Dungeons & Dragons content.
Julia: I don't think I've ever paid for dungeon & dragons content.
Amanda: Yeah. Maybe one player's handbook from twenty sided store, but that's more about supporting a local business.
Eric: Except we were supporting twenty sided store and go visit it if you're in Brooklyn, New York, but other than that, I have not paid for it. We have not paid for it. Because you know, fuck ‘em.
Amanda: Yeah. That to me from a business perspective is what is so frustrating about like, listen, it's-- I talked about it in Games and Feelings, but like it's in the hat like Hasbro says, you know, we want to extract more money from the people playing this game. And we are the ones who give it cultural credence, us caring about it. And, you know, explaining to our friends what this is taking them on an adventure, building beautiful worlds for them. You know, they don't get to claim that all of that work is giving their company value. It doesn't. It's our thing that we made our creative value, our heart and soul, and life and memories and tattoos, and like all the things that we love and pour into these games that we make for and with each other. And that's why it's important to me that we don't like cede our ground here. And that we can keep saying like, no, no, this is the thing I use to make my world, and I'm going to keep using this tool and not paying you.
Eric: Yeah. There's a lot of people who are saying just like, learn other games, play other games. Totally agree. I don't know if you noticed, we just did Monster the Week. One shot Derby introduced three other games. So we agree. And we want people to play different games because different games give different storytelling experiences. The epic long-form campaign that we want to do with campaign three is best with Dungeons and Dragons because it allows for long storytelling, epic capital E Epic storytelling, and ones with violence, you know, action, action sequences, and stuff like that, which we love to do just as much as we love doing intrigue and palace drama and all that stuff. So to that end, we are collaborating with a third party creator, partner for campaign three. And we were planning on doing this for months before this.
Amanda: But it in the works baby. A good six or eight months. It's a long way back.
Eric: And I made structural changes to fifth edition, to bring D&D into the 21st century that I'm really happy about. Like we're using the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons that was published in 2017, that underlies our game, but the classes, the moves, the creativity, is about us and the independent creators that we're working with to make this happen.
Julia: Hell yeah, dog.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Let's fuck some shit up.
Eric: Absolutely.
Brandon: I love that Eric was like, we love violence.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I think listen—
Amanda: Action, conflict.
Eric: If you don't want to play a violent game, there are so many other games, do not play a violent game. In Wander Home, if you kill someone, you need to immediately retire the character. Immediately.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: And the only person who's allowed to do that is a veteran of a war. Like different games have different feelings about violence.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: No, totally. But we have put so much work, and love and investment, and new partnerships with new collaborators into campaign three that we are so, so excited about. So I thought a fun way to kind of give a final tease to last folks for the next six days, until the new episode comes out, would be a piece of media that's inspiring you or your character for campaign three.
Julia: I'm very inspired for this campaign by A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers.
Eric: Good choice. Good choice. That's one of the sad ones.
Julia: They're also sad.
Eric: They get progressively sadder after the first one.
Amanda: True.
Brandon: I'm just gonna say James and the Giant Peach.
Amanda: Alright, that's true.
Eric: Good choice. Good choice.
Amanda: Eric, how about you?
Eric: I'm gonna say Cult of the Lamb. There's some mechanics in there that I'm very interested in, and we're going to incorporate it into this campaign.
Amanda: And for me a lot of character inspo from Our Flag Means Death.
Eric: Hmm.
Amanda: What could that mean? Oh guys, we're so stoked. So we'll see you next week with the beginning of campaign three. We have three juicy world and character-building episodes for you and an after party all about this world-building. And then we're getting on into the first story episode of the campaign.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Julia: Hell yeah, dog.
Amanda: Alright.
Eric: It's pretty wild. I can't believe it.
Amanda: I can't believe it.
Eric: We're starting a big fuckin campaign again.
Amanda: Every campaign is my favorite art, my favorite music, and my favorite characters but oh boy, I think you guys are going to enjoy it. So we can't wait to see you. Come on over to the Discord and get hype with us. We will be there and until next time.
Brandon: Bye guys.
Julia: Later.
Eric: I forget what I say.
Amanda: You say bye.
Julia: Just goodbye.
Brandon: Every time.
Eric: I forgot what I say! Bye.
Amanda: May your roles turn ever upward.
[theme]
Brandon: Rolling.
Eric: Wait, what was the name of the guy? What was the name of the host of the One Shot Derby.
Julia: Scoot McGarry.
Eric and Amanda: Scoot McGarry.
Julia: Don't worry guys. I edited so many of those transcripts, I had to make sure Scoot was spelled the same way every time.
Amanda: Yes. Son of Jeremy McGarry.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Okay. Let me—
Julia: Jeremy Jr. and Jeremy Sr.
Eric: Amanda wrote a note—I'm looking at Amanda's notes and it's Eric is Scoot McGarry, Jeremy McGarry's son.
Julia: And also the—the father of Jeremy Jr. which is not how juniors and seniors work.
Eric: Father of Jeremy Jr. They're both dead in different wars.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: Yeah, Julia that came later in the canon—
Julia: Sorry.
Amanda: So my notes are sequential. Okay, let me count for Julia.
Julia: I forgot that this was the thing.
Brandon: I know, I had it in my brain and then I forgot--
Amanda: I gave you guys 48 hours.
Julia: I know but I forgot!