Episode 7: Table Top Games

In episode 7, Dani and Ify discuss table top games. They break down the history, the first ever table top games, how the table top game came to be what it is today, how RPG's got started, why it's maintained it's popularity, their own favorite games, and much more! They are also joined by Emma Fyffe to discuss her own experiences with RPG's, table top games, & more. Find Emma on Twitter and Instagram at @EmmaFyffe. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to My deficit. I am one of
your hosts, Dan Fernandez, and sitting across from me as
always is my co host. Anyway, how's it going, how
are you doing? Doing good? Filling a freshened up ready
to go rage to talk about tabletop This is a
fun subject. There's so many This is going to be
very interesting episode. I mean all our episodes are interesting,

(00:32):
but I like that it's going to have turns and twists, betrayal,
u so death, resurrection, and then we wrap it up
with a fun talk with our guest or good friend,
Emma five who you know. You can watch your playing
tabletop games almost yeah, every week on hyper ADG where
you and I. You and I played a live table

(00:55):
top game for that was a Valiant that's a Valiant comics.
We if you and I were on a show, and
we also, yeah, Valiant banquished pretty cool because we were
made into comic book characters and we actually this is
just some notificent lore. If you and I ended up
in a Valiant comic. Yeah, so that's certain that I
sent to my grandparents. Remember these I used to read,

(01:17):
I'm in it, I'm in it, I'm in it. So
today we are talking about table top games, which is
very broad subject iffy that we chose. Oh yeah, it's
super broad and and really this is a good time
to kind of like really nail this idea of the
show and the future of it, because I know on
past episodes people have been left wanting more and why

(01:40):
we didn't cover this or something we might have missed,
And really, I think our first past and a lot
of these subjects are going to be very general and
then we jump in, we zero in, like this is
a tabletop episode, but I already have a chess episode plan.
It's going to be all about chess. For all my
chess heads who are like yeah, you know, they just like, yeah,
did you get a check? Bank? Know, I just heard

(02:00):
that they're going to talk about chess, and I do.
I met a professional chess player, and I'm going to
have her on yes, her, which which I don't know
this might be just catastrophizes because I saw it on
like the front page read it, but apparently that's like
a big deal, like female chess players and in the
ins and outs and like the separation of genders and chess,

(02:21):
which we can talk about with her at that time.
But this is just a general kind of scope of
tabletop just to talk about it, talk about some fun
stories that happen within it, and just even you know,
if you don't even know what people are saying when
they talk about tabletop or when you see Will Wheaton YouTube. Yes,
I mean you literally had a game. It's called tabletop games. Yeah, alright,

(02:44):
show um. Yeah, so tabletop games are literally games that
are played on a table or a flat surface, such
as board games, card games, dice games, miniature war games,
which we are going to cover heavily tile based games.
So and a lot of these can be categor arises
like adventure, paper and pencil games. Role playing games, which

(03:04):
we're going to get into is probably the most famous
role playing game ever. Yeah, and and pretty much yeah,
that's that's probably where we're gonna zero in the most,
mostly because as of now, tabletop games are synonymous with
RPGs and games with heavy RPG elements, which is role
playing games. But you know there are like other games

(03:26):
like Katan. You know, Dominion was the game I was
thinking of Dominion, Yes, yes, to cut you off, You're
deep into moving on, and I was like, I'm not not.
It's Okay, Yeah, we'll get into war games, which are
kind of my favorite, but let's talk about the history.
Deep deep. We still don't have our sound. I know,

(03:49):
I look, I just like repeating deep dive. We'll just
clip that for next time. The earliest it looks like
known tabletop game was a series of forty nine small
carved painted stones that were actually found at the five
thousand year old I think this is Yuk Burial Mound

(04:12):
in southeast Turkey. Um and those are the earliest gaming
pieces ever found. Yeah, and similar pieces have been found
in Syria and Iraq and seemed to point to a
board games originating in the Fertile Crescent and other early origin.
Dice games were created by painting a single side of
a flat stick. These sticks would be tossed in unison
in the amount of painted side showing would be your

(04:34):
role Mesopotamian dice were made from a variation of materials
including carved knuckle bones, would painted stones, and turtle show.
You know what this kind of adjacent to this reminds
me of cornhole? Do you know the history? Of course,
this is according at least to my ex who religiously
so he's from He's from Ohio, which that when dating him,

(04:57):
I was exposed to cornhole. I didn't know. I up
in southern California. I don't know if it was a
big thing or not. Um, but I wasn't aware of it.
And then they would like, literally the kids in his
town would make their own corn holes and paint them.
That sounds so bad. So if you don't know what
cornhole is, it's like it's like a flat surface, um
ramp that has a hole in it that you then

(05:18):
toss bean bags into. And what my ex told me
was that the history of it is that they used
to throw corn cobs into our houses. I don't know,
we might need our researcher to look into that, but
that's the history. I like that history though. I think
I think I'm down with the corn cob and to
an out house. Yeah yeah, No. I learned cornhole from

(05:40):
the white improv community that I'm a part of out
here because yeah, grow I don't know about you, but
growing up and sow our big thing was like, uh,
what was our big nothing? Pong beer? Yeah yeah, that's
the big like party game I'm aware of, But cornhole
seems way more like a backyard barbecue. Throw a little

(06:01):
sack into a hole through a toilet bowl. But let's
jump down this timeline. So thanks to our researchers, we
have a brief time line of game history and it
starts in b C E with SENA. It's s A
N E T, which is either senate or Seney. I'm fancy,

(06:22):
so i'mnna call it say. It's discovered in the pre
Dynastic and First Dynasty burials of Egypt. Senate is believed
to be the world's oldest board game, meaning game of passing.
Seney consisted of a grid of thirty squares arranged in
three rows of tin and two sets of ponds, though
the exact rules are the source of much debate. A

(06:42):
copy of the game was found buried with Tuton common,
which is funny because I feel like that's tabletop to
a t which is arguing over what the rules actually are.
Yeah yet with him, yeah yeah, yeah, all of his
animals and I think like friends also that thing always
keep that yeah. Okay, So moving on the fourteen hundred

(07:04):
b C. We see dice. Actually, so Sophocles claimed that
Palamedes invented dice in about four and sure enough, they
found cubicle stones and clay dice during that period. But
in truth, it's possible that dice were actually developed independently
by many ancient cultures around the world. I believe that

(07:26):
did you know that alcohol was also developed independently around
major cultures? I took a history of This was in
my deep weep phase when I was in community college,
but I took it was Japanese, but I also took
like the history of Japan, and they were talking about
how Korean in Japan and almost every country found alcohol

(07:46):
on their own. So there had to be that one
weird guy and every culture who was like, let's taste
this rotten juice. It might also be I mean, I'm
sure someone will correct us, but I imagine also it's
just like their limited resources, where like if something did
go wrong or it was like fermented, it was like,
we don't have the resources to just throw this away.
Now that sounds like a very educated guest. And then

(08:08):
and then eventually what ended up happening was that the
water supply was so bad that they just ended up
having to drink alcohol, which is something we should cover.
We should cover nerds getting drunk, well, well, we should
definitely cover um the science behind not even that. But
remember when everybody was making their own beer like like that,
I mean still yeah, people are real nerds about that.

(08:29):
Like I was like, oh man, I made my own beer.
Micro Well, let's dip over to C for a game
that sounds kind of familiar. Snakes and Ladders. I love it.
I wish they had kept that name. Snakes and Ladders
originated in India as a game based on morality, where
the progression up the board was to teach children about
good and evil, with climbing up ladders representing good and

(08:51):
sliding down snakes representing evil. During the British rule of India,
the game made its way back to the Assures and
it was taken the US as Shoots and Ladders inte
by Milton Bradley. Should have been snakes. That's gentrification one
on one right there, Like all right, I'm gonna take
the snakes out, We're gonna add some shoots. We're gonna

(09:12):
move on to the first board game, Millionaire. This is
one of the most fascinating stories that we encountered coming
across this topic. In nine we got Monopoly and a
lot of people wrongly credit Charles Darrow as being the
soul designer. And what actually happened is Charles and his

(09:33):
wife Esther actually went in nineteen thirty two to the
home of his friend who was a Philadelphia businessman named
Charles Todd and his wife Olive. So he went over
to their place and they played a real state board
game that they had recently learned, and they became fascinated
by it, and Charles Todd his friend made the Daros

(09:56):
a set of their own, and then the other Charles,
so many Charles in this. Okay, So Charles Darrow, listen
this because this is where the sneaks. That sounds like
a character from Downton Abbey. By the way, Charles d Charles,
Charles Daru, and I've made some board games for you. Todd.
I gotta say, on paper sounds hello, whack uh. You

(10:17):
know it was like, hey, on paper sounds really whack.
Like to be like, hey, you guys wanna play a
real estate board game. I'm like, na, son, let's bring
out the magic the gathering. Why are you bringing this trade?
Win was prohibition? Let me see if they were bored,
very good, quesne Um, Let me see if they were

(10:39):
bored with their lives and no, okay, listen, because this
Charles Darrow is sneaky as hell. So he asked Charles
Todd for like a list of the rules, and Charles
Todd was like, I've never made them. I guess I
should sit down and write them. So, in fact, the
rules to the game had been invented in Washington, d c.

(10:59):
And N three by Elizabeth Maggie. Wow, but she's often
forgotten in this story. She's the one that created the
rules for Monopoly. And Charles Darrow in his uh, I mean,
I guess he might be respected, but in his sneaky way,
he sold the version of the game to Parker Brothers

(11:21):
and it became a phenomenal success. And my girl, Elizabeth Maggie,
she was forgotten. That's just wild. But also I'm sure
there's it made him millions. It made him millions. Well
did you know that famous Amos, the black guy on
the actual cookie, doesn't own the cookie like you. He
was like, they just snapped a picture and we're like, you,

(11:42):
well know, they paid him like a trash amount of
money and then made millions off of it. And then
he was on Shark Tank making his own cookies. Brand.
Did he get it? I think so you don't bring
famous amous on just to deny him, that would be
And to answer your que the prohibition era was from
ninety three, so that's why they Yeah, that's where this

(12:08):
came from. But um okay, So it looks like one
journalist after another asked him how he managed how Charles
Starrow managed to invent monopoly out of thin air, and
he said, it's a freak. That's what he told Germantown Bulletin,
Philadelphia paper, entirely unexpected, in illogical in quotes, that I
stole this idea from somebody else. I know. That's that's

(12:31):
so funny, Like this is a time before Twitter where
someone would just retweet that and be like, na, this
is a week explanation. He probably stole that from Elizabeth Maggie.
But that's our I think you had a trivia on this, right, Yeah, Well,
is about monopoly in general. Basically, humanitarian groups sent escape
kits disguised as monopoly games to the Allied prisoner of

(12:54):
war during World War Two, which also says something nice
about the soldiers keeping them prison. It was like, all right, well,
we don't want to be monsters. Let's let him play Monopoly,
you know this game that like never ends. Yeah, like
that'll keep them occupied while we keep them prisoner. But
that was real cool. But you know, we're not here
to talk about your Monopoly sorries, your your bomb. Don't wait, daddies,

(13:18):
we're going to talk about you know, RPG. So, like
we're going to dip into the history of RPGs. So
the exact moment when the RPG was born as debatable,
particularly as the hobby of war gaming, which was a
big influence on early role players, had been around in
some form in another for hundreds of years. However, the
first instance of what people today would recognize as a
modern RPG came into being with the development of the

(13:40):
tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Dungeons and Dragons nineteen seventy four. It actually came in
a brown box with a wood grain pattern. It was
ten dollars, which was a lot at the time. That's
about fifty dollars, so it was like the most expensive
tabletop game. It is still, I mean it's not if

(14:01):
you get your group to chip in, it's not super expensive,
but it is when you consider, like a DM needs
his DM guide, a Monster manual. The player needs players handbooks.
I mean lots of people were not saying this is
the way to go, but a lot of people have
been downloading the pds of it. But really, like Magic
has been finding ways to where you can actually look

(14:21):
up your character sheet and download it for free from
their website. The startup cost is heavy if you're trying
to go all out, because you need the mats. The
mats the like it's like usually a two sided mat
where it's like hexagonal or cut I want to say cubic,
but it's not cubic. It's like uh squares, and you'll
have that that you need your small figures. Every player

(14:42):
needs to pick out a figure. Lots of times you
gotta buy the paint to paint that figure, but really
you could just do it without any of that, with
all your imagination or even for if you want to
be more forward thinking. There's a lot of apps and
programs you can use now where you can like digitally
have in your characters. You can have a digital map.
It's real cool. There's lots of ways to go about it,

(15:03):
but really all you need is a pen, pencil, paper,
your imagination, your imagination. Yeah, good improv skills, yes, anding.
I think we should talk about miniatures just a little bit.
So those are essentially your game pieces. With a tabletop
war game, you often play with miniatures and you're moving

(15:23):
them across a battlefield based on a set of rules
and instructions. You're like making tactile choices, and you're you're
choosing the composition of your own army, and then you're
like fighting out over a tabletop and the miniatures are
often painted by hand, most likely by yourself, And I
feel like that's a whole other side, Like people have
made like a living by painting commissions for miniatures, and

(15:49):
a lot of people, I feel, take a lot of
pride and enjoyment in this actual aspect of the game.
Like that's an entire part of a lot of these
war games. Yeah, but before we dip to deep in there,
let's talk about Dungeons and Dragon. It was originally designed
by Gary guy GaX and Dave Arns. You both aren't
with us anymore, Thank you for everything you did, and
it was published in nineteen seventy four by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc.

(16:13):
Then the game has been published by Wizard of the Coast,
which is a subsidiary of Hasbro, which is like the
you know, one of the main hubs of tabletop because
they also produced Magic the Gathering. Uh. And it was
derived from ministure of war games, as we said earlier,
with a variation of chain Mail serving as the initial
rule system. D and d's publication is commonly recognized as

(16:34):
the beginning of modern role playing. As we said, as
a matter of fact, we're gonna say chain Mail was
the popular game that was like right before this one. Yeah,
so yeah. Chain Mail was medieval miniature of war game
created by Gary Guy GaX and Jeff Parent. Guy Gets
developed the core medieval system of the game by expanding
on rules authored by his fellow like Geneva Tactical Studies

(16:55):
Association member parent hobby shop owner with whom he had
become friendly. Guided Games released the first edition of chain
Mail in nineteen seventy one as its first minto war
game and one of its three debut products. So chain
Mail was a war game. Then from there they created
D and D and then it was all and then
from there they ruined children's minds with their demonic worships.

(17:17):
Dungeon and Dragons was accused of fostering demon worship and
a belief in witchcraft and magic, and by politicians and
moms and dads. Yeah, because there was a real this
was an air of like the devil scare, where like
you know, metal music was turning your kids to the
devil and they were trying to find like all these
different things to basically use fear to drive people. Uh

(17:38):
sound familiar anyway. Yeah, And my my family is very Catholic,
and I know that my aunt wouldn't let my cousin
read Harry Potter still doesn't. I don't know if to
visit the Wizarding World, but it's seen as witchcraft. Yeah,
that's actually why I never got into I got into
tabletop right around when I started working with Geek and Sundry.

(17:58):
I did some Dungeons and Ragons a little bit before that,
but that's when I really jumped into the world, which
is hard to you know, to avoid when you work
for the same company that produces tabletop. But yeah, when
I grew up, I went to a Catholic school, so
they were always like they said, we couldn't listen to
k rock because oh my god, I couldn't listen to
kiss FM if you had to listen to the oldies

(18:21):
radio okay or at one oh one, I wasn't allowed
to listen to I had to listen to Sinatra, and
I have a deep love for music from the nineteen
forties and fifties. Another thing that I couldn't listen watch
was The Exorcist until I was like out of the
house because of that. But yeah, well, let's talk about
the history of playing cards. For a symbol of international

(18:42):
harmony and cross cultural cooperation, look no further than the
nearest pack of cards. Playing cards in their present form
are the results of ideas and refinements from the last
eight countries and four comments over the course of twelve
hundred years. The concept and the technology to make the
paper they are printed on probably originally in China around
the end of the first millennium during the Tang dynasty.

(19:03):
Of the ninth century a d, a princess to Shang
is said to have played the leaf game. This is
probably a paper form of dominoes rather than true cards,
But a hundred years later, the Emperor Mussuan is recorded
as shuffling and dealing the real thing. Yeah, and cards
actually didn't arrive until Europe until the mid fourteenth century um,
either in Islamic Spain or as a result of trade

(19:26):
between the Mamlocks man Luke's man Lukes of Egypt and Italy.
So by this time they were already in something like
their current form that we have today. Uh So it's
reasonable to assume that the basic mechanics of cards that
we still use, like the four suit system and royalty,
and perhaps even like the concept of like taking tricks
and stuff, were either established in India or the Middle East.

(19:50):
But yeah, that it wasn't long before cards were influenced
also by tabletop games like D and D, which created,
uh the cardboard crack game known as Magic, the Gathering
your Home and Love. Oh my gosh, I've spent so
much money. I think we talked about But Mark ellis
who was on our spoiler review for Infinity War, so
I'm not kidding. If he at his mom's house, he

(20:12):
still has all of his magic the gathering packs, some
of them are worse three thousand dollars three thousand and
five thousand dollars for some of his stuff that he has. Yeah,
so just to get some magic was actually created sooner
than we actually, I think so Magic was first published
in by Wizards of the Coast. Magic was the first

(20:33):
trading card game created, and it continues to thrive, with
approximately twenty million players as of two thousand and fifteen.
Magic can be played by two or more players in
various formats, which fall into two categories, constructed and limited.
Limited formats include players building a deck spontaneously out of
a pool of random cards, with a minimum deck size
of forty cards, and constructed players created decks from cards

(20:53):
they own, usually sixty cards, with no more than four
of any given Magic card. Magic has played in person
with printed car or using a deck of virtual cards,
through the Internet based Magic the Gathering Online, or on
smartphone or tablet, or through other programs because Magic has
spun off and done other games like Magic Arena, Magic Origins,
and Uh. But Magic the Gathering Online is the closest

(21:16):
online proxy to the actual game because it's just been
going on for so long and the cars actually hold
value the same way. I didn't really get into Magic.
I was extremely into Pokemon and Dragon ball Z, the
trading card games. Uh. And I know someone else who's
also super into those anime games, Our guest and the

(21:39):
five and she's going to be joining us right after
the break, and we are back, and we are joined
here with our good friend. You've seen her on Collider,
on hyper RPG. She is a broadcaster, a podcast host,

(22:00):
a entertainer of all sorts, our friend m F five. Thanks, yeah,
thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for popping by. You know,
this is a topic that's very near and dear to
my heart. So are you literally playing an RPG earlier? Yesterday?
You were? I was playing a couple yesterday. I was
not playing an RPG earlier. I was recording some content

(22:21):
that revolves around the series My heir Academia because I'm
as well. But yes, I I wasn't. I was doing
too RPGs yesterday, a digimon RPG and also a Jeopardy RPG.
Don't even know how that works. Oh man, Well, let's
talk about the evolution of RPG just really, because you know,
a lot of people think RPGs, they think Dungeons and Dragons,

(22:42):
but role playing games takes several forms. The two main
ones are tabletop which are the direct descendants of the
original Dungeons and Dragons, and video games, which have also evolved,
albeit along a different path from tabletop Dungeons and Dragons.
This shared ancestry to its root of many of the
tropes that have come to define them to this day.
Yet despite the common ancestor, there's usually been a great

(23:03):
difference between how tabletop and video games rpg play, and
as such of the two types of the game have
by necessity evolved along the separate path in many ways,
each adapting two different technology and different markets. Yeah, I
forget about the video game market because that's for our
video game. Yeah yeah, yah, I will say. I just
want to say on the side now, I am not
as big of a fan. I don't like doing quests

(23:24):
and things. I just want to fight. Wait you wait, Emma,
you were on our Crillon at episode where we played Yes, Zenoverse,
we're playing Dragon Ball Verse. Yeah, we're playing Zeno Verse
and the whole time, like, I just want to fight people.
I don't want to go on these quests. He It's
interesting to me because I think that what initially attracted
me to tabletop RPGs were video game r because I

(23:47):
played video games from the time I was a very
very little kid. And when Final Fantasy seven came out
in seven, that was the first like j RPG, so
Japanese developed RPG. Yeah, I had ever played, and it
was this very heavily story based game, and that was
what I always had wanted out of the video games
that I was playing. I mean, my mom always jokes

(24:08):
that when my brother and I were growing up, if
she never had to fight with us to go play outside,
because you know, we'd sit inside and we'd play Sonic
the Hedgehog for a couple hours and then we go, Okay,
we're gonna go outside now and play Sonic the Hedgehog
in real life. Right. I think mine the two that
I that I loved so much, we're Super Mario sixty

(24:29):
four and Silent Hill. Sure I would. I don't even
know if those are considered I know, super Mario probably,
I mean, because you have like on a quest to
like so yeah, I mean in certain you know, additions
of Super Mario, certainly, Super Mario Ark J and Paper
Mario are more sort of considered to be role playing games.
I think when it comes to video games, typically and
and and this is prevalent in tabletop role playing games

(24:50):
as well. There has to be this element of UH
leveling up. So basically by participating in this story and
going on all of these quests, so you are gaining
experience points that then allows your character. I don't want
to do homework, I have to do that. But yeah,
let's let's talk about our tabletop. Yeah, the tabletopps. Just

(25:11):
like you heard me say earlier, a lot of RPGs
kind of stem from the same idea of Dungeons and Dragons,
where you build out a character using different stats, and
there are so many different systems, and when we refer
to systems, it's basically the heart and soul of the RPG.
So you know, a lot of games can be a
different story than Dungeons and Dragon. It can be more

(25:34):
sci fi than than fantasy. It can be more present
day than like a simulated medieval time. But the if
it used a Dungeon and Dragon system, then it uses
that same kind of setup using the twenty sided die
for all the same similar stats. But then you have
other systems, Like for Valiant Vanquished, we used a different system. Uh,

(25:55):
the system we used Instead of using a D twenty
role for allmo every action, we would use a level
deup dice in system. So like your strongest ability, you
would use a D twelve versus your weakest one where
your three or like, your charisma might be like a
D six. Um. Yeah, and then you would just roll

(26:16):
the you know, assigned die versus like and D and D.
If you have high charisma, then you might have a
modifier where it's like plus four plus three to your role,
but you're still rolling a D twenty. I did want
to go back a little bit and talk about because
when I had tweeted out from our account about, you know,
asking people what some of their favorites were, we had
so many people write it's about Warhammer for d k um,

(26:39):
which that was created by Rick Priestley that back in
seven actually by Games Workshop. Uh, it's another tabletop war game. Again.
It's a one that has miniatures that you choose a
composition of your army, and then you're fighting the same
thing people are designing and painting their miniatures, which I
actually it was never. Our friend Joe Star is super

(27:03):
into that, and I'm I'm sucking never. Okay. So this
is a funny thing is I never really got into Warhammer,
but I was super aware of its existence because I
used to go to this comic book and game shop
in Newtown, Connecticut called Cave comics, and they had Warhammer

(27:23):
miniatures on one side, and then they had the D
and D miniatures on the other one, and it was
and I would always go look at the war Hammer miniatures,
and I felt like I couldn't buy the war Hammer
miniatures to be my D and D character miniatures because
it was a different game. You don't cross the street,
you can't do family Guy and Simpson's well fun fact,
the writer H. G. Wells invented the concept of recreational

(27:46):
war games. They kind you experienced in games like Warhammer
and games which were brought, bought, and enjoyed by a
wider population, not just military professionals. But yeah, Warhammer was
cool in the sense that you built this army. It
was super expensive. It's it's proba I want to be
most expensive for Hammer and time consuming and it is
very dependent on actually having maps and miniatures on like

(28:07):
if you were talking about earlier how Dungeon and Dragons,
Yes you can have maps and miniatures, but it's not
actually necessary for playing the game, and you need multiple
miniatures for Warhead. You're building an army to play out
this war game. And so that's where the kind of
like painting and minister design comes in because as an army,
you choose colors that you paint all of your figures

(28:28):
with and you kind of build it out that way.
And lots of times you're doing orcs, so you got
to get the color of the orc skin. It's it's
wild and yeah, So, Emma, what was your first introduction?
I guess, So, as I mentioned earlier, I was really
into video game RPGs, and I had a friend who

(28:49):
I knew from like an acting camp program, and she
also was really into anime and video games and her
dadd had been super into Dungeons and Dragons from the
very very beginning, and it was in the early days
of eBay being a thing. So this this was around,

(29:11):
and it was right before third Edition of Dungeons Dragons
came out, because that didn't come out, I think till
two thousand. So he had put bids on a bunch
of uh Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or a D and
D second edition books like Character the Player Manuals and
the d m S Guide, the Bestierry UH and modules

(29:33):
because that's that's one of the things, is it to
make tabletop role playing games a little bit easier and
more accessible for people who are daunted by putting everything
together themselves. They do actually sell modules, which are basically
these pre written little kits of Okay, so this is
what this adventure is going to be. Here's all the
creatures they're gonna come across. These are the non player

(29:53):
characters or NPCs that can be either helpful or hindrance,
sometimes depending on how the characters roll. Uh. And so yeah,
my friend Cassie, her dad Chris, was he had gotten
all of this Dungeons and Dragons material and he didn't
really have a group of friends that was as reliable
to play with as you know, a group of teenage girl.

(30:14):
So yeah, so he basically asked us if we wanted
to play Dungeons and Dragons and learn how to do it.
And I had been so fascinated by the concept because again,
I used to always play these video games in we'd
go outside and play video games in real life. So
to me, this was the opportunity to create a character
and tell these stories in a new way that I

(30:36):
previously was just kind of like playing make believe with
my brother and never um. Yeah, so so yeah, we uh,
we started our first campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, and
it kind of has moved on to what you do
now with your Star Wars show because I know that
somebody had responded in that tweet, um, with the Star
Wars RPG that they play? Is that the one that

(30:58):
you guys play? Yeah, we do. We play on the
Star Wars RPG that I do over at hyper rpg. Uh,
I do a show called Pencils and Parsecs and we
play the Fantasy Flight Edge of the Empire Empire system. Yeah.
So Fantasy Flight has been the publisher of Star Wars
role playing games since two thousand and twelve. Prior to that,
there were a couple other companies that published Star Wars

(31:19):
role playing games. So the first one was West End Games,
which was just Star Wars the role playing game. That
system was eventually retooled to be just a generic space
opera RPG, probably when West End Games lost the rights
to Star Wars, which then went to Wizards of the Coast.
So the Wizards of the Coast and both of these

(31:41):
systems used actually numbered dice. I think the West End
Games used mostly like a D six system, so the
same kind of dice that you would find in pretty
much any board game. And then I've never played the
Wizards of the Coast one, but Wizards of the Coast
tends to use that D twenty system, so it's probably
a little bit more reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons. But
the thing that's really cool about the Fantasy Flight games is,

(32:02):
as you were mentioning with the Valiant Vanquished, it's not
a D twenty system. There's not even numbers involved in
their role playing system at all. It's all just dice
with symbols, and so certain symbols cancel each other out,
and depending on how skilled your character is at a thing,
it just affects the number of kind of good dice
that you get to roll against the bad dice. And

(32:23):
then if you have skill ranks, there's like a leveled
up version of the good dice that's basically a proficiency
dice that's like, yeah, I'm good at this thing, and
so then you roll that dice. It's it's it sounds
way more complicated than it is, Like once you have
played it and rolled those dice a few times, you
learn it really really fast. And the thing that's really
fun about it is that you can succeed at a role.

(32:47):
So let's say that you know the character that I
play on Pencils and Parsex. Her name is Killer Fay.
She is the captain of our our ship, the Yojobo,
and our little crew, and she's not very good at fighting,
but damn she charming. She's she's gonna talk in her
way in and out of situations. So let's say that,
I mean, that's required fee. It's so to me, And

(33:09):
what I was gonna say is so fascinating that this
has become so popular, like the style of RPG because
it requires a level of storytelling and yes and sure
and collaboration with other people, and liked, it involves some
type of like talent to be able to I feel like,
get with at least with this type of what we're

(33:30):
talking about, this type of RPG in order to get
your character, you know, the charisma or whatever, in order
for them to live. Is it like it requires so
much storytelling and and I have I find that playing
characters that are more you know, the kind of talker
characters or even some other kind of support character, there

(33:51):
is something really fun in that challenge of when you
do find yourself in a combat situation or go Okay,
this is not my four day. What am I gonna do? Yeah?
So yeah, And I think that's one of the interesting
things with coming into like RPGs from like a video
game standpoint, where I feel like in video games you're
usually always fighting your way out and always able to

(34:15):
where and I feel like, you know, the the exception
to the rule would be games like Fallout and Skyrim,
which are basically built almost very similar. I would say
they're built on a Dungeons and Dragons system since there's
like charisma checks and stuff like that. Yeah, you get
that a little bit in uh, like some of the
Star Wars games to like Knights of the Old Republic

(34:36):
and the MMO or multi Massive Multiplayer Online sequel which
is just the Old Republic. Yeah, but you know, you
have that option where it's like, yeah, you can build
a character around just talking your way through things, but
sometimes you can't avoid it, and now you have to
use your wits because you know, everything is so linear
I think with a lot of video games because you

(34:58):
are held down by the technology g or the engine
that the game has built for you to have the combat. Whereas,
like you know, there's been lots of games where we've
accidentally one shot a whole room of enemies because like
we had a like a wizard or a mage who

(35:18):
like turned the ground into ice spikes, and then the
the DM was like, well they're all dead because I
didn't realize that they're in a pile of watter. So
it's just and that is the beauty of tabletop role
playing games is, as you say, if you are not
limited by a game engine and what the game engine
has been pre programmed to do, it is just whatever

(35:40):
your imagination can come up with. And and Danny brings
up the idea of improv. It's a lot of yes
ending and so in my opinion, a good GM will
go okay, oh my god, what happened Zack? Who was
Zach who was on our Twitch episode. He was our
GM for IFFI and I show um, which is a
game master. So they're essentially act as like the referee,

(36:03):
the narrator. They're kind of like they oversee uh and
often try to kill you and zas uh I was
very disappointed. I GMed a couple sometimes on pencils and
Parsex will do side stories because you know, in in
regular Star Wars canon you're getting these side stories with
Rogue one and the Young Han solo movie, so we
we also do them and we have players GM those episodes,

(36:26):
so like Hector Navarro, who I know was on your show,
GMed one of them, Joe Starr who we mentioned earlier
on this show, jamed an episode, and I've jammed twice
now and I was a little disappointed that nobody died.
I just think it's such a huge undertaking to GM, Like,
can you talk about what that's like to kind of
be the leader in it? I mean, I think for me,
I actually benefit a lot from the fact that I

(36:49):
have played a lot of Yeah, well, I mean obviously, yes, yes,
I have played as a player a lot. And we've
been doing Pencils and Parsex for a about a year
and a half now, so I feel very very comfortable
with that edge of the Empire system. Yeah, and just
to clarify, Pencils and Parsex is a live show, so

(37:10):
you can watch Emma and her castmates playing this game live,
so their storytelling live, They're like having these actions of
their characters. Yeah. I want to touch on that too,
because you know, I am uh subscribe to the D
and D subreddit and that's always interesting because you get
to hear real people complain and talk about their own

(37:30):
campaigns that they're having with their friends, and there seems
to be like a debate, and I think it's balanced
at both these things where you know there's generally two
types of d m s. There's the d M who
wants to work to tell the best story, but then
you have some d m s who are like playing
against the players, and there's a huge debate whether or
not you want to do that. And I think you
know there's something about the mix of the two because

(37:51):
you also don't want to be a pushover GM where
it's just easy and you're just because you're like, this
will tell the best story, But you also don't want
to make it grueling for the players where it's just
so challenging when they're trying not I hated it, but
I was going to say one time I did accidentally. Um,
I just was like I walked somewhere and he was like,
you were in a car, so I like stepped out

(38:13):
of a moving vehicle. My character day. I feel that
Bert Jennings, who is r g M for Pencils and
Part Sex, he is great and he really does strike
that good balance of he is working with the players
to tell a compelling story, but he's not going to
make it easy for us. And sometimes that's in the
form of we do encounter enemies that are extremely difficult

(38:37):
to overcome and we have to resort to extreme measures
to do it. I know that my character personally has
taken some very extreme measures to overcome foes, but a
lot of the time it is you know, emotional obstacles
as well. I think I think that's one of the
things that's so fun is is everyone's creating. And this
goes for all role playing games. You have the opportunity

(38:58):
to create the characters and these backstories, and you know,
you send the GM information about what has happened to
your character in the past and what made them who
they are as a person, and then when the game
master or dungeon master however you're referring to them as,
brings those elements in. It's so so satisfying as a player, uh.

(39:21):
And so you know, for me when i've GM before,
it's it's again number one, being really really familiar with
the role playing system. I think that it does help
to have been a player, uh, and also having a
real love of video games and the idea of Okay, well,
in order to make this thing happen, you need to
do this action to trigger it and whatnot. And so

(39:42):
I just basically create a handful of scenarios and go, well,
any of these things could happen based on how the
players attempt to approach this challenge that they need to overcome.
All of the paths ultimately for me lead to the
same general conclusion. But I mean, you really think on
your feet. It takes a lot of improvisation. So I

(40:04):
had created this character who I had intended for them
to meet in this medical research facility that these characters
were in. They were on this rescue mission. And again,
we're doing the show live on Twitch for an audience,
and we have basically a three hour time period in
which to do it. Our sessions tend to last about
two and a half hours, and so I was at

(40:25):
that you know, two hour and twenty maybe thirty minute mark,
and I went, I'm not going to get a chance
to do this this character. I'll just scrap him. Uh.
And then as we were wrapping up the session, I went,
oh wait, I'm gonna have these guys meet him at
the very end and then on a cliffhanger that you
know what I mean. So it's uh, it's it's really fun.

(40:47):
I really enjoy it, yeah, you know. And I had
a chance to d M for the Black Panther RPG,
and it really is funny how it flips where like
I don't know, as a player, sometimes it feels like
you've been going a minute, but as a d M,
time goes by so fast you just kind of you're
building the goal post and you're pulling it back. And
it's easy to understand why most typical uh RPG tabletop

(41:10):
RPG games can last four or five hours. I don't
want to stay on RPGs too long because I know
there's some tabletop heads like it's not just it. So
we'll jump onto some of these games that some people
tweeted at us well, and I was surprised a few
of these I've actually played, like one of them. Have
you guys ever played um Mysterial? So Mysteriums are really

(41:34):
fun game. It's set in the nineteen twenties. I'll just
read like the blurb and then tell you so in
the nineteen twenties. Mr mcmcdowell a gifted astrologist immediately detected
a supernational being upon entering his new house in Scotland.
He gathered imminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary
seance and they all have seven hours to contact the

(41:56):
ghosts and investigate any clues that can provide to unlock
an old mystery. So and then there's like unable to
talk and amnesiac ghost communicates with the mediums through visions,
which are represented in this in the game by illustrated cards.
The mediums must decipher the images to help the ghost
remember how he was murdered, who did the crime, where

(42:17):
did it take place, which weapon caused the death. The
more mediums cooperate and guess well, the easier it is
to catch the culpriate. So this one is really fun.
So basically one player is the ghost and it's almost
like a cool version of charade. So one players a ghosts,
all the other players are these mediums, and you're trying to,
like like they said, you're trying to find out the murderer,
the murder weapon, in the place they were murdered in

(42:38):
the house. And so you have a board with all
these different places in the house and everyone is assigned
a different murderer a different place and a different weapon,
and you're trying to help these players with these art cards.
Now I read that before cracking it open, and I
chose to be the ghost, and I was like, oh,
this shouldn't be too rough. But these art cards are
very abstract, like it's it's it's really doesn't show you anything,

(43:01):
so you have to use clues, like I'm trying to
see if they have any pictures of the art cards.
Like they're very like it's like a like flower in
a in a ring and like it looks nothing like it.
So you'll have to do things where like because you
can give them any number, like there's a number of
cards you can give them, so like sometimes I will
give them all red cards because it took place with

(43:24):
someone who murdered them had red hair. You have to
do tricks like that, so it's very complicated. Those are
like tabletop board games that I feel blend the like
heavy Nerds stuff like D and D, but also like
it's not something that you know Grandma's gonna pop out.
Like another one like that that our friends Christopher Smith
Briant and Ryan Leslie Fisher have every month, they have

(43:46):
a werewolf party. It is the most fun game ever.
I love it for anyone that hasn't played Werewolf, it's
very similar to that if you wear you have I
think it's four maybe werewolves, four or five werewolves and
everyone else is kind of like a villager and everyone
has to put their head down so you don't know,
and people are ratting each other out, and then there's like, oh,

(44:08):
there's so many cool characters in it, and like they
just really get into it and then you see friends
turn on each other. It is I highly recommended. It
is just so much. I always thought like, man, I
don't know, like going to go play a game, and
it is like the most fun game, especially if you're
good at line. But yeah, we're gonna get into some
more of our favorite games and once if you're a beginner,

(44:29):
ones that you want to check out right after this
and we're back. Yeah, I where Wolf so much fun.
You know what. I've killed a couple of people. There
was a couple of times I fooled people. I was

(44:51):
also like, h killed people and that's going to be
your legacy. Um, so what are some other ones? Uh?
If I'll start with you that you would recommend to people,
either just starting out, or ones you know that might
not be RPGs that are just yeah, I think the
perfect one that's for someone just starting out really trying

(45:12):
to dip their foot into tabletop is Star Realms. It's
it's it's like twenty bucks for a deck that's big
enough for two players, and if you get real like
gung ho about it, someone else can buy a deck
for twenty bucks and you can use two decks to
make it a four player gain. But it's a very
similar deck building game like Dominion, and it's very simple.

(45:33):
It's I think it's on just a sheet of paper
that kind of teaches you how to play it. But
it's easy to learn, difficult to master, and it's and
it's fun because it's just a deck of cards. You'll
have um, you'll have a buying space. So basically the
way the game works is you have life and then
you have currency that you get from the cards you draw,

(45:54):
and you use the currency that you get from the
cards you draw to buy other cars. It's from the
middle of the um of the field will say, and
you use those cards that to either attack or to
get more currency to buy other cards. And there's different
factions within those cards that kind of combo together. And

(46:15):
what's cool about it is you're balancing your ability to
attack versus your ability to buy cards, because you know,
obviously the more cards you do that do damage, they
might not be able to afford you stronger cards that
may be more expensive. It's a very fun game, very
easy to learn, and super cheap, very easy entry the game.
I think the other side of the rules is the

(46:35):
play Matt too highly recommend if you're looking for just
a nice, fun deck building game that that will be good.
If you're also into trying it out but don't really
want to play it. They actually have a free app
on the app store um on I think both Android
and Apple. Look up Star Realms. You can drive the
game out for free just with an app, and then
buy the deck of cards on Amazon for twenty bucks.

(46:57):
Another fun game that I like to play super Fight.
A lot of us have played, um I remember they
had a super Fight. Normally they have something set up
at like the cons and stuff to play. They'll pull
in you and I played, didn't we have? Yeah? So
super Fight is basically it's kind of like a card game,
like you're given cards where you have to Fight as

(47:18):
this like character so the ones I'm looking at now
or Abraham Lincoln writing a segue with a long metal claw.
Uh yeah. Yeah. It's a very fun game. It's like
it's it's a party game that you can play. You
draw a character and an ability, and then you're the
person next to you does the same thing and you

(47:39):
argue to the rest of the players why you're ye Fight.
You can be absurd as hell. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically
like a cool more adult apples to apples. It is, Yeah,
but again, it relies on your wit and improv I
feel like to be able your charisma as It's just
so fascinating to me that it's like it relies so
much on you, like being able to win people over

(48:02):
with your storytelling slash arguing abilities. Absolutely no, I I
love super Fight and there's all kinds of expansion decks
to It's like, if you're really into anime, their anime
super Fight decks and it's a it's a very good time,
I think in terms of if you did want to
get into tabletop role playing and are intimidated by the

(48:22):
many many dice involved in playing Dungeons and Dragons, which
is also another cost of it. There's a really great
role playing system which is called fung Shui. It's by
Atlas Games. You can actually download all of the stuff
for it, and the concept behind it it is is
it is an action movie RPG. You only need six
sided dice to play. So just go opening. Yeah, just

(48:43):
go open any of your your don't wake daddy, okay,
And I don't know if he had any crackers in
my bed, you know, all those good ones. I'm gonna
go on eBay and order that, right, don't don't definitely
died when you mentioned that. She's laughing. I remember. It's
so well anyway, Uh yeah, it's really fun and and
on there they have different modules you can download. There's

(49:05):
like a two hour starter pack, there's a twenty minute
just like quick game, and and it's designed for just
everything to be super fast. They have all the character
sheets for you on there, so it gives you whatever
little like modifiers you have. But literally it's just like
constantly rolling D six. You're you're making up your attacks again.
It's it's all that idea of collaboratively telling us a story, yeah,

(49:27):
rather than focusing on doing a lot of math. Holy crap. Y'all.
Don't Wake Daddy unopened is fifty dollars. That reminds me
of like, yeah, whenever I keep going back and I'll
buy my N sixty four, then I'll sell it, then
I'll buy another one like I did that in college, um,
after I sold my original one from like middle school

(49:47):
or elementary school. And the games, some of them are
still so expensive, especially I think, but they're not fifty
dollar Don't Wake Daddy. Okay, Yeah, I was gonna say,
I just a to pitch Storm, which is a lot
like Super Fight. Yeah, it's a very fun concept. Yeah,
it's super fun. These are all like just fun ones

(50:08):
to play with your friends. I think you're you're dealt
card where you essentially have to like pitch as writers.
You're pitching essentially to like execs and getting them again
with your charisma. So if you're not a very um,
if you're not able to win people over, I don't
know that these games can actually help. But yeah, that's
what I can help to try. And I think that
that that in of itself is what is so great

(50:32):
about tabletop games, particularly table top role playing games, because ultimately,
if you're playing dungeons and dragons and you fail a role,
it's teaching you how to cope with and adapt to
failure in a very safe setting. Oh yeah, that's very
true because there's there's no long term consequences for you,

(50:55):
you know, missing when you swing your sword at an orc.
But if you know what I mean, even throw your
characterstead well, there is that. There, there is that. But
you can roll a new character the dragons, or they
could use a resurrection spell on you. There's there's so
many ways to to creatively adapt to your failure, and
that is a really important life lesson I think. Yeah,

(51:15):
but all my big ballers out there who are like, nah,
not expensive enough, you definitely check out Warhammer, take out
a loan for the house, and then with that you'll
be able to get If you have painted your miniatures,
even if they're not from Warhammer, UM, send them to me.
I kind of want to see them. I'm not like
our friend Joe Starr. He has a whole set up
in his house and he just like paints them. He

(51:38):
posted on his Instagram and stuff all the little dudes
that he's painting. Um, all the little dudes and do
debts that he's painting. It was more important for me
when I was playing Dungeons and Dragons growing up to
draw artwork of my characters. That's a big thing. That's
like just flooding the D and D subre artwork of
people's character. When if he and I were at hyper

(51:59):
at hyperp G and I think someone probably did this
for you too. Someone made miniatures of us. Yes, yes,
we have them, the hero that have been clicks figures. Yeah.
So um. But even that I was frightened by. I
was like, I don't want to paint me. I'm not
good at it. I need to paint mine. Mine has
um a couple of Because I'm well known on the

(52:21):
internet for my love of porks, there are some little
teeny miniature porks that are like on my character's a
little hero clicks. Yeah. I was like, this is such
a We're definitely gonna revisit this topic again because there's
so much to color. Obviously, we're going to have to
do a D and D episode, have to do a

(52:41):
Warhammer episode. We're gonna have. Don't worry y'all, this is
just the basics. Yeah, you get into the deep stuff.
That's what I like to think about. With a lot
of these is, uh, we're covering the basics and then
we can go further like for a Comic Con one,
We're definitely we're gonna do an E three episode and
an anime Expo episode. So but definitely don't let that
hinder you from telling us what you would like to

(53:03):
see in the Warhammer apps. What do you want to
talk about, some personal gripes you might have with the game,
or you know the depth that you may be in
because of the game, because we love the game, guys.
If you didn't get it by now, Warhammers expensive all right, y'all?
Em Where can people find? You can find me all
over the internet wherever m A fives are sold at

(53:24):
my name. I'm at m A Fife on Twitter and
on Instagram that is where I mostly am. Also be
sure too, since we are talking about role playing games
here check out Pencils and Parsects are Star Wars role
playing game where we use the Edge of the Empire
system on hyper RPG every Wednesday night at eight o'clock
pm Pacific time. And yeah, I'm doing lots of other stuff.

(53:46):
You can find me hanging around the showdown a fair
amount over on Collider I pop up every now and
then on stuff at screen junkies. So yeah, I am
a woman about the internet. Stop that business. And we
have a new uh anime show over on Hyper's YouTube
channel called Anime Club where we are. It's basically we're

(54:06):
treating it like a book club. So we're just picking
anime series that we like and we're talking about in chunks.
So right now we're talking about combob which is super fun. Um,
I'm at MS Danny Fernandez M S D A and
I F E R N A N D easy you
can catch me play and don't wait, daddy, I'm gonna
order it right now. If you, if you and M

(54:27):
L you guys come over and play it with me.
Should definitely come over and play. I'm going to be
the nostalgic nineties kid. What else did we have during
this time? This? That? What's that? Mouse trap? Mouse trap trouble? Oh?
There was this great game called thirteen Dead and Drive
where you can just get killed by various objects in
the house scoring like coming after you, not in an

(54:48):
enchanted way. It would be like a chandelier falling kind
of thing. Um gosh, what else? Many many versions of
the clue I've played a lot of Clue with a
kid same. You can find me if y w A
d I W E on Twitter and Instagram, and make
sure you follow Nerdificent on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram on all

(55:08):
those platforms. And if you're really enjoying the podcast, please
give us a five star review. I've already laid down
the rules of what you're gonna get when we get
certain amounts of reviews. I'm gonna put that on paper
so I don't forget, but definitely definitely tweet at us
what you'd like to hear. What where did you like
us to zero in on in future episodes which you liked.

(55:30):
You can keep what you didn't like to yourself, but
you know I love y'all. Thank y'all. Stay