Live, LARP, Love

We cover a bit of non TV and non movie geek news. Then Jonathan interviews Ariel about her history of LARPing!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Large nor John Collider Podcast.
The podcast that's about all the geeky things in the world,
and oh my goodness. You know I take a break
from our intro for one week and it gets horrible.
The podcast it's all about the geeky things in the
world that we love and how excited we are about them.
I'm Ariel Caston, and with me, as always is the
wonderful co host and even more wonderful friend, Jonathan Strickland.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I am full of fluon.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Fluon's that man, I rock that.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
That relates to That relates to part of what we're
gonna talk about later. Also, Ariel doesn't know this, but
I'll be quizzing her anyway before we do.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Our quist fans will be happy.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yes, well, I'm not gonna go full quizzer mode. I mean,
he only shows up on ridiculous history, but uh well,
we'll do a We're gonna do some news, which we
haven't done.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
In a while.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
This news is not related to TV or movie projects.
The strikes are still ongoing and we wish to continue
to respect that. So we do have some some news
about stuff what isn't movies or films starting off with
a disappointing conclusion to a Broadway show.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, Once Upon a One More Time is a jux
jute juke box man.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
It's a jute box musical. It's about the jutes who
came to England in the early Middle Ages.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
It's based off of Britney Spears music, or built around
Britney Spears music, and it's about all of like kind
of the classic fairy tale princesses getting learning how to
live healthier lives, I guess, and more empowered lives, which
you know, seems like a great concept. I never would

(01:59):
have necessarily picked Britney Spears to build a jukebox musical
off of. But you know, there have been some good reviews. However,
there has not been enough of an audience.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, apparently. Some of the more recent performances were to
half full houses. Anyone who has ever looked into what
it costs to mount and maintain a Broadway show will
know that it is not a cheap endeavor. It's incredibly expensive,
and in order to recoup the investment made by the

(02:36):
producers to launch a show, you need to perform really,
really well. It's one of the big reasons why Broadway
tickets are so frickin' expensive. It's because it's really expensive
to keep a show running on Broadway. You've got all
the staff, you're paying both on stage and behind the
scenes as well as in the house. You have residuals

(02:58):
that you have to pay for, the people who did
design on the work, you have you know, rent to
pay for the theater itself. Like, there's just a ton
of expenditures that go into keeping a show running. And
if it's if it's one of those things where you're
getting diminishing returns on the on the house size, yeah
you can. You could discount ticket prices, which would allow
more people to see the show, but it doesn't solve

(03:19):
the problem of bringing in enough revenue to cover the costs.
So it's not a big surprise. I will say they
they had something like I think it was like one
hundred and twenty three performances or something, or that's how
many there will be when it closes. That still puts
it well ahead of tons of other shows, like more
than two hundred Broadway shows closed with fewer performances than that.

(03:43):
So Britney Spears's musical did a lot better than say,
oh I don't know a Broadway musical which had one
performance in nineteen seventy eight. I had fourteen previews but
only one performance.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, yeah, you know, and from what I've heard, I
haven't seen it. Honestly. I My drive to see it
is more big curiosity alone. So if it comes on
a touring show, maybe I'll consider it. What I understand
about the Broadway show is that it was a little
rough at the beginning. The costumes have changed over time.
I think they've gotten better, you know, And the performances

(04:19):
have started to gel over time. And that's that happens
with any show. Usually about the time, especially in like
community theater, usually by about the time that you're ending
the show, you're like, oh man, now I feel really good.
We've really gelled.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
And we well. And often it will lead to things
like you'll see a remount of a show where they'll
go ahead and make changes to the show. Then too,
where the remount will be like you'll get different songs,
things will be rearranged. Sometimes different characters are assigned different
music to sing. All that kind of stuff like that
happens all the time. I mean, like shows like Wicked

(04:52):
underwent changes while they were in previews before they went
into full production. And that's not, like Ariel was saying,
not unusual, Like it may be that a show gets
a short run, then later on it gets retooled for
a touring group, so that maybe there's some few changes there.
Some of them might be necessary because the houses you
play aren't equipped to do all the stuff that you

(05:13):
would do on the Broadway stage. Beatlejuice is a great
example of that, because there's an effect in that show
that is done on Broadway that cannot be done in
a lot of houses in that it was touring in.
So that's the sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
So they've just fully changed that, like it's a lyric
in a song they fully changed too.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah. Yeah, so sad news for once upon a one
more time. Like you, Ariel, I was more like kind
of morbidly curious about this. I'm not a fan of
jukebox musicals in general, because I don't like trying to
fit already existing songs to support a story, or writing

(05:53):
a story around already existing songs in an effort to
make it coherent. I don't I've never like that. I
don't that the ones that are closest to ones I
would I would imagine watching are more like the biopics
where it's telling the story of the artist or band
or whatever. Those I could probably get behind. But stuff
like we Will Rock You all that kind of stuff,

(06:14):
I don't think I could do.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan for the same reason.
There there are some that I have kind of wanted
to watch. There was the one that was I can't now,
I can't. My my theater acquaintance, Susan Shocked was also
in the mount of this musical, and it was a
jukebox musical I want to say by the ARRHYTHMX, but

(06:37):
it probably wasn't a EURHYTHMX jukebox musical.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
But yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
It was though, hold on, sorry, everybody, either Jonathan's going
to cut this out or you're going to have to
stick through me doing this real quick.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Oh you'll be sticking. Yeah, I'm sticking. I'm sticking in
this in this very hot office. They'll be sticking with
us as you quietly google whatever it is that you're looking.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Look look at me, I'm it's head over heels.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Was the name of the musical, right, that's the Go Gos,
The Go Gos. Yeah, not that your Yeah, not the
rhythmics would have been like, listen yourhythmics. Their music is
really theatrical. I don't know that you could make a
good story out of it, but Annie Lenox and the
rhythmics music is very theatrical anyway that I could see.
Like the Go Gos, when I heard about Head over Heels,
I was like, well, that's weird. Although you know, some

(07:27):
of the the Go Gos have appeared as actors in
other stuff that I won't mention because you know, there's
still a strike going on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, and like the Head Over Heels was kind of
like a like a medieval story, which appeals to me,
not that fairy tale princesses, don't. I watched some of
the numbers from Once upon a One More Time. Maybe
this is how this news article ended up in my
feed on TikTok, and they were good. The dancing was good,

(07:58):
the singing was mostly good. Britney Spears loses something when
somebody else takes on her song, which is interesting to me.
There are certain times where people are really dancing their
hearts out, and for some reason, maybe because it's just
not post produced as much because you're watching a live performance,
it falls flat in a couple of places, figuratively and literally.

(08:18):
But yeah, I couldn't tell or follow a story from
those musical numbers that I was able to see, exception
of Toxic, which the evil stepmother sings appropriate and she's
got a great voice. It's very different from Britney and
at the end she just rips it. It's brilliant, But
the middle of the song, I there's something about it

(08:40):
that just I'm like, this feels like they're not singing
it right. And so maybe that's part of why not
enough people have seen it. Maybe it's a rising COVID,
Maybe it's everybody has the same response as us, which
is really a Britney Spears based musical.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Maybe it's the people who maybe it's the people who
would most want to see the show can't afford to
see the show, because, like I said, that's very it's
an ongoing problem with Broadway where like a lot of
Broadway shows and we've talked about this before too, end
up having to toe a line where they appeal to older,
often more women than men, audiences, and so like there's this,

(09:19):
you know, there's this perception that there's a lack of
risk in a lot of Broadway productions. But part of
that is again because it's very expensive to mount a
Broadway production. So part of the beast is that you're
trying to attract the audiences who can afford to go
to Broadway and who do frequently go to Broadway, which
means a lot of the shows end up appealing to
the same demographic. And when you stray away from that,

(09:42):
the danger you have is that you don't attract the
people who can actually afford to see your show.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, and then you do. You have companies that will
get you discounted seats because they basically poach the box
off poaches the wrong word. They are legitimate com but
like some of them are not. Some of them are
where right before show they'll be like, oh, these tickets
are not sold, let's get them cheap to people.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, it's so like and and a lot of people,
including New York locals, do that because if you want
to go see Broadway shows, again, it's very expensive and
sometimes you can get a a one hundred and fifty
dollars seat for seventy dollars. If it looks like it's
not going to be sold.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
You know, you can go to the like the tickets booth,
either in the Lincoln Center or at Times Square, and
they often will have seats for decent and sometimes really
truly significant discounts where you can you can start to
see shows like That's probably the only way I would
go see Gutenberg the Musical, because even though I love

(10:49):
that show, the tickets when I was looking were so expensive,
and I'm like, this is a two person show. It's
a two person show. There are no costumes really except
for truck her hats. Yeah. Yeah, there's prop costumes. There's
trucker hats that have names on them, but that's like,
there's no like elaborate costumes. There's no sets, like it's

(11:09):
it's almost like it's a black box theater style show.
And that's when I saw that. I was just like,
I don't know that I can justify spending like three
hundred bucks for a seat.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
You're partially paying for the names in that, I would
guess because it's Josh Gadd and Andrew Reynolds.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yes, that's true, were.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
The titular characters in the original camon of Book of Mormon. Yeah,
and then Josh Gadd is in a lot of television movies.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, our audience doesn't get to hear where
the enthusiasm carried Ariel away there.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, sorry, I told it.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
I did the same thing. I said, the name of
a musical that's also the name of a movie. But
I think I kind of get away with it because
it's the name of the musical I was talking about.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
We'll just be more careful the rest of this episode
in future episodes.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, we have another Broadway story. This one's really cool.
It is it's already happened now, but it was that Hadestown.
The Broadway Musical created a special performance of the show
that was an autism friendly performance where they took the

(12:20):
show and they examined the things that are most likely
to be sort of sensory overload issues and they toned
all that down, and they also offered safe spaces for
people who are autistic or somewhere along the autism spectrum,
that kind of thing where they could go and sort

(12:41):
of recollect themselves before coming back in. And I just
think this is a great idea.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, I do too. And the safe spaces were also
staffed so if you needed help, you could get it.
I think it's a great idea, you know, we just
talked about how Broadway is not always very accessible to
many people, and I like that, at least on this level,
they're really trying to make the arts enjoyable to all.
I know that other like there are venues in Atlanta

(13:09):
that do autism kind of targeted performances, and I just
love that it's becoming more of a thing me too.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, I anything that makes theater more accessible is something
I like to see, and for it to be something
all the way up to Broadway a place where you
associate theater with at least some level of spectacle, right
like it again and shows like like Gutenberg the Musical,
there's not really spectacle on that scale. The performances have

(13:41):
to be spectacular because that shows very hard to do
with just do people. But it's but it's not like
it's not like, you know, big flashing lights and all
that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's great to see
that extend all the way there. I'm sure you know.
I have a feeling that the fact that we're seeing
more and more shows and break things like TikTok, like

(14:02):
not all of them do, but some of them have,
I think that that means that there's been a wider
awareness of some of these shows that you normally wouldn't get, Like,
there are eras of Broadway shows where I can't like.
While I was looking at the list of shows that
had closed after only a few performances, there were so
many that I never even heard of, including ones that

(14:23):
were adaptations of other works into musicals And I'm like, oh,
I didn't know they even made a musical about that,
and like, you know, and something like Alan Minkin was
part of it. I'm like, what Mincoln, Like, I know,
I know a ton of his work I didn't know.
So like, I think that TikTok has broadened people's awareness
of the shows, and that, in turn has been a

(14:45):
lot of these shows who have recognized that their fan
base includes people who might have trouble sitting through a
normal production, like a typical production of the show, and
I like that they're making the adjustments so that those
folks can come in and joy theater.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah yeah, speaking of enjoying things, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
You're gonna take it away, Ariel, because this is this
is getting into stuff that I just don't have any connection.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
To, Okay, I mean Dungeons and Dragons.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, that part I do have connection to Okay.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
So Matthew Lillard, who's an actor from.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Lots of Stuff that you can't talk about.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yes, is also Dungeons and Dragons fan the game and
has decided to make h He's a co founder of
the company. Oh gosh, I just lost it. Find familiar spirits,
which I think is great because you can have familiars

(15:48):
in Dungeons and Dragons, you can familiar in their spirits
usually that you summon, and then you know, spirits are alcohol.
He's he's they're making a quest and a whiskey called quests,
and and I think that's cute. That's really all I
have to say. I just if you like the alcohols
and you like whiskey. I like whiskey. It's one of
my favorite spirits, you know, and you like Dungeons and Dragons.

(16:10):
This is a fun one.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah. Says that each bottle of alcohol will have a
different name attached to it. So there's the Paladin, the Rogue,
the warlock, and the dragon.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, and paladins. For pre orders starting October fourth, and
it launches in November. They have this thing where it's
set the scene and you can like adjust your soundscape
and then roll a dice and listen to like a
storm raging and minstrel's playing in a firepit crackling and
mirth and merriment, orcs fighting and bar keep toiling toiling,

(16:50):
bar keep toiling? What it's a thing?

Speaker 2 (16:53):
I mean, I feel like a lot of barkeeps do
feel they toil quite a lot.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, So if you go to the quest End Whiskey website,
all you can do is put your email into get
Notified and look look at the ticker and then play
with this soundscaping. But yeah, I'm this is going on
my list of geeky alcohols to try.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
I wait, I can't wait to hear about anebriated D
and D sessions.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
I mean, you know what, I do have a lot
of my friends who I played D and D with.
About half of my friends who I play D and
D with drink, but not to any large extent. I fun,
fun little side story when my husband and I were
paying for our wedding venue and they're like, you have
to prey pay, you have to pre pay this many

(17:40):
drinks for the bar, and we're like, our guests will
not drink that much, and like they eventually I think
can like conceded that if if they they they're like,
they're definitely going to drink that much, but if not,
you'll get a refund. And we got a huge refund
because like only ten people got drinks at our wedding.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
So yeah, yeah, I famously do not partake, so I
was not one of the drinkers at that particular event.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, speaking of D and D, are you still enjoying
balder Skate three?

Speaker 2 (18:12):
I've taken a break from it only because I don't.
I dove into it so deeply that I was worried
I was going to burn myself out, So I'm taking
a little bit of a break before I go back in. Also,
I was getting frustrated because I think, well, one, my
party makeup was not ideal, Like I had characters in

(18:32):
my party because I liked the characters, not because they
they complimented each other really well. And so I was
getting that in mass effect. I was getting my patuity
handed to me on a regular basis by enemies that
I did not think we're going to be that tough,
but turned out to be extremely tough. And it also

(18:56):
doesn't help that I chose Barred as my prime character's
class and I was running with a cleric who I like,
but the cleric is a like some clerics are decent fighters,
this cleric is not. And so I was like, I
gotta switch this person out. I gotta get a different
I gotta get a fighter in here. And I also

(19:19):
realized that when I backtracked, because I was, you know,
pretty far into the game. When I backtracked, I encountered
a whole bunch of areas in the very first like
section of map of the map that you open up
that I just didn't see when I was going through
the first time. And I'm like, ah, man, there's all
these other quests that I didn't even touch. I should
do these so I can build up my characters a

(19:40):
little bit more, get them a couple more skills, so
that I'm not struggling so much. So that's kind of
where I'm at now. But the reason you bring it
up is because you came across some videos from Amelia Tyler,
the voice actor who does the narrator voice in Bulder's Gate.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, they've released multiple videos of her outtakes as narrator.
They're really really funny, yes, And some of them are
in such a narrative way that I'm like, did they
purposefully plan these or was she just like sleep deprived
and bonkers in the recording studio, whether at home or

(20:26):
I'm guessing that this was recorded in a sound studio
and not.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
It sounds like it sounds like a sound studio because
it's a very very clean audio and there's like no
extraneous noise or anything, and it's it's also the other
thing that I think is funny is that when she
messes up, which you know that this is all these

(20:49):
are just bloopers. It's just the mess ups, so you
don't get to hear any of the stuff that she
got right. It's just like and this is this is
the actress herself who has released these videos on her
YouTube channel, because I would in checked it, but uh,
like when when she messes up, she stays like in
the world of D and D and a lot of

(21:10):
these where she'll make references to other D and D stuff,
which makes me wonder like, oh, did she just did
she pick up on all this just because she had
to do so many voiceover lines that are you know,
related to dungeons and dragons or is she also like
schooled in D and D outside of her work as
a voice actor. I don't know the answer to that.

(21:31):
But the point where she said she said I'm a bard,
I seduced the door. I laughed so hard.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, yeah, you know it's interesting you you are curious
about that. I was curious about that for the voice
actress for Lazelle Lazel, because she was on TikTok doing
doing words in that characters. Uh racial language? Is that

(22:02):
the way you say it?

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yankee?

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, get Yankees, but it's a new version of dann Yankees.
But yeah, so she was also doing fun stuff with that.
I don't know if it didn't look like it was
a paid promotion, it looks like she might have just
been doing that on her own fund. So yeah, I
do wonder how many of these voice actors are also

(22:26):
fans of the content.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, it's either way, whether they're fans or not. The
bloopers are a ton of fun to listen to, so
you should definitely check those out. They do. They do
include swears, and you should know that Amelia Tyler is
English and as such, she swears with a level of

(22:51):
sophistication and frequency that is probably not appropriate for younger ears.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yes, for those people who are too late to google
these things, but not too wazy to go to our website,
which I'm guessing is a very small portion of people.
They will be in our show notes. I've only got
one in our current notes, but I'll add both of
them or all of them or whatnot. Yeah, we're going
to continue on the video games line. So this is

(23:20):
not something that I can necessarily take advantage of because
I don't have a record player. But one of my
favorite games and also a separate game that Jonathan really likes,
are both issuing their soundtracks on vinyl, and I think
that's pretty dang cool.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, so you must be a big fan of Bastion, oh.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Man that I love Bastion and I love the soundtrack,
like to the point where I've tried to get my
band to cover some of the songs from it.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, they're releasing a double LP album and that's going
to be forty two dollars in ninety nine cents. And
then the other one is Hades, which is the game
that I really really liked, like it a lot, also
has a great gat a soundtrack. That one's a four
LP set and is at a whopping eighty nine dollars
ninety nine cents. You get a lot of artwork too,

(24:09):
so it's not just like the albums, you get art
as well. That's pretty pretty hefty price for soundtracks, but
for collectors, I'm sure that'll be something that they would
be really into and interested in. As much as I
like the soundtrack the Haites, I do have a turntable
so I can listen to records, I just don't know

(24:31):
if I can bring myself to pull the trigger on
an eighty dollars purchase for a soundtrack. Yeah, and that's
more than I paid for the game.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, another game is incredibly expensive. I'm gonna have to check.
I haven't played Hades yet, and maybe I should. I haven't.
I haven't gotten into a whole lot of road lights.
I guess maybe Bastian is no Bastian's a storyline, but
anyhow it is. I'm sure I'll like the Haiti soundtrack
because it's the same people who did the Bastian soundtrack.
That's why they're both vinyl releases, Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett. Yeah,

(25:05):
it's I'm excited for this just because again, the music
is really good. The price points high, but the music
is really good. And I am always happy when it
comes up in my playlist.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Away yeah, like delighted and like. And I don't want
to come across as saying it's not going to be
worth the money you pay for it. It's just hard
for me to get past the hurdle of I only
paid like twenty bucks for the game, which has all
the music, and it already I just don't I can't
play it on a turntable. But if you are someone

(25:35):
who likes to collect stuff and if vinyl like really
is your thing, then I totally get it. Like, it's
no shade on anybody who goes after that. It's just
my own mental block that I have to get past.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah. Yeah, And yet we're still not done with video
game news. So people who are I knew how I
was going to start the sentence, and then my brain
and mouth stopped communicating with each other.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Well, there's a there's a video game company called BioWare.
They are known for some really big titles, including things
like the aforementioned Mass Effect. They also, like way back
in the day, did Star Wars Nights of the Old Republic.
They've done tons of different titles, and now some fans
of those various franchises are a bit worried because some

(26:28):
of them are some of those latest you know, titles
in the franchise are under development right now. But the
company also has just had a restructuring and laid off
a bunch of people, including senior members of the team,
people who were instrumental in establishing these franchises in the
first place. So it's got a lot of people worried

(26:48):
that the company itself could be in trouble, or if
the company it is okay, that the titles could be
in trouble.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, yeah, because they were supposed to. People were expecting
them to talk about both Dragon Age Streadwolf and the
new Mass Effect game whatever it is at EA play Live,
and that's not happening. Byware has announced it that they
won't be giving any updates on those, and I you know, honestly,

(27:19):
if it's just a matter of we needed to restructure
and we're still working on these and they're not at
a point where we can announce them, but we're still
working on them, I'm fine with that. Too many games
get released before they should.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Sure, Yeah, when you're when you're looking at like the
games released, it's going to be one hundred and thirty
three gigs to download and then you're going to have
a twenty seven gig patch. Like that's that's tough.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, and one of those games, you know, so like
Cyberpunk was one of the games that released that just
was notorious for being black horrible upon release, and then
Mass Effect and Drameda, which was after the trilogy all like,
I enjoyed it fine, even with the bugs, but yeah,
some people found it near unplayable, So I guess another

(28:08):
part of it is they did outsource Star Wars Old
Republic to Broadswords Studio in twenty twenty two, so you know,
that's I can understand how someone could see all of
these different things and be a little worried. I've got
too much to worry about in my life to put
worry towards this. I hope that I like some of
their games, and I hope that they continue to put

(28:30):
out awesome games, and until they do, I will just
live my life.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah. I mean, I'm mostly hoping that the folks who
are laid off are able to land somewhere and get
a gig with another studio. Like we're talking about people
who who have had a very long history in game development,
game writing, that kind of stuff, and they are responsible
for some of the more like compelling narratives in video games.

(28:57):
It would be a shame if their talents were not
put to you somewhere else. So hopefully they all find
gainful employment elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, the being in the game industry is hard work.
It sounds like a lot of fun, I'm sure it is,
but it's a lot of hard work. One of my
friends is pitching their game at a games conference this
week and it's yeah, exhausting. Awesome, but exhausting. Okay, last

(29:27):
little bit of news. This is just weird to me.
There are people who are pretending to be geek Squad,
like Best Buys troubleshooting team, geek Squad as a scam
to get your personal information. I guess be careful of that.
I'm assuming they're not like camping out in Best Buy
stores or coming to your house. I'm assuming that they're

(29:48):
calling you or emailing you.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, They're sending like texts and email. This is so.
This is called social engineering. It is like when you
think of hackers, like often the vision that comes to
mind is some person in a hoodie sitting in a
dark room, their faces lit up by a screen and
they're just tappity tabby tappy typing away. But that's not
really how a lot of hackers work. A lot of

(30:09):
hackers work through social engineering, which is convincing someone to
hand over access to something that you want, typically by
tricking them. So in this case, posing as a troubleshooter
who is saying, hey, you need to give me access
to your machine because it turns out you've got this
inactive subscription and if you don't do this soon, you're

(30:31):
going to get charged, you know, hundreds of dollars, so
we want to make sure that we take care of that.
None of that makes any sense, but if you create
that sense of urgency and that sense that someone's going
to get hit financially if they don't act very quickly,
it can often be a motivator, and that's why a
lot of people fall for these kind of scams. So
it's not like this is in particular a new approach.

(30:54):
In fact, it's not even new for scammers to use
geek squad as they're way of trying to get in.
But it is good to be on the alert so
that if you get a message like an unsolicited message
from geek Squad and you're like, I don't even remember
having anything that's covered by this, Then there's a very

(31:15):
very very good chance that that's just scam artists trying
to target you because maybe your information came up in
some data breach or something and they're just going through
the database one name at a time, because it doesn't
take many hits for it to be a success, right, Like,
that's the really tragic thing is they can have lots
and lots of misses, but they just get a few

(31:36):
hits that can be enough to pay for the whole scam.
So just be on the lookout.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
And I assume most of our listeners would be savvy
about that kind of a thing, but yeah, yep, you
never know when you're just not going to be in
the right mind to catch it.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, So that's the news, And we got a little
bit time left, so we're going to do something fun
where I'm going to interview Ariel. We had talked about
doing this before, about one of us interviewing the other
about different stuff. We've kind of done it a little
bit in the past, and this time I wanted to
talk to Ariel about live action role playing LARPing, I

(32:13):
do my best. So I had mentioned earlier just this
is just a fun little bit. I had mentioned earlier
that I was full of flune. Flun is a reference
to the world of LARPing. Ariel, can you give a
kind of explanation of what flun means?

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Basically means excitement for like this specific thing you're about
to do.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
There you go, Okay, well, I'm going to now quiz
you on some supposed some supposed larp terms. Now, first
of all, we should say not all LARPs use all
the terminology. It's not universal. And just because Ariel may
or may not have encountered a word that, there's no
judgment here. It's just kind of I'm trying to see

(33:02):
if the list I found is at all representative.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Cool, because like I've played a few different LARPs, but
especially like in the past for minillion years, it's mainly
been with one larp company. So we'll see how much
I remember from my old olden days.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Okay, do you know what it means within LARPs to
go smogging? Woo?

Speaker 1 (33:35):
You know what? I feel like? That sounds familiar to me,
but I don't know. And as soon as you tell
me I'll probably would be like, oh, shoot, yes, that's it.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Well, according to this word press blog boast that I'm
pulling this from, it means to share LARP war stories. Oh,
when you're engaged in smogging, you're talking about your war
stories from various LARPs. Okay, how about this? Do you
know what lit form is? One word lit form?

Speaker 1 (34:07):
If you're any of my larp friends or game designer friends,
please don't judge me. I've only had one cup of
coffee today.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Well and again again, these terms may not be universal.
This is what I think is interesting is sometimes you
come across these resources where it's supposed to be like
a you know, like a kind of a definitive glossary
of terms, and then you find out, oh, no, this
is just really relevant to one specific group.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
And it might be it might be more broad. I
definitely got into rules more once I stopped, Once the
breadth of LARPs that I played got narrowed down, I
became more into the rule system of that one game,
that one company which has changed. The different games have

(34:53):
different rules. But no, again, it's another one of the
ones that I'm like, that sounds super familiar and I
should know.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
So again, According to this definitive resource, lit form references
a style of LARP characterized by long form pre written
character sheets and often other long form written materials, such
as descriptions of various elements of the setting.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
So pregenerating characters.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Basically, I think it's I think it's more like people
who have gone overboard, like or like the whole game
is for people who go overboard on like creating character
backgrounds and motivations and things. This always see I'm not
a LARPer, but this makes me think of certain people
that Ariel and I have worked with at the George

(35:42):
Renaissance Festival, because we were all encouraged to come up
with backgrounds for our characters and motivations and what makes
them tick. Some people took that idea and ran with
it so far that we haven't seen them since.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
I mean, like, okay, so here's the thing. My very
first LARP character. I was brought in to LARPing when
I was like eighteen nineteen or something like that, and
I went to a festival and there are a bunch
of LARPs like doing like little half days, not even
a full one day, but like a little half days.
And I joined the larp I was gonna play, and
I played another one, but my characters were not fleshed out.

(36:19):
They were not fleshed out, they weren't well thought through.
So I just kind of randomly chose some stuff and
came up with less than a paragraph of background. My
most recent LARP character in the game that only has
I think like two maybe two and a half games left,
maybe three games left that I'm playing, she's got like
five or six pages of character history that I developed before,

(36:42):
like submitting the character for approval to plot, to make
sure she fit within the world and that it was
a story that they were interested in telling, you know,
and then when you get to and then like we
give in this particular game I play now and some others,
we give basically like feedback, So we do like an
event summary for our our personal experience and our characters experience,

(37:02):
so they know what we liked, what we didn't like,
what we encountered, how we're viewing the story they put
out there, because a lot of times we miss it.
And I know people who end up with like twelve
pages of event summary. Sometimes I do, because like you're
putting in all your character thoughts and all your personal
thoughts and going through not only the plot things that
you encountered, but the interpersonal things that you encountered. And

(37:24):
then when you are on plot and you're writing up
summaries for people to go play the NPCs, a lot
of times you will give them, especially if it's an
important NPC, several pages of write up so that they
understand their character's viewpoint on the different things that are
happening in the world to support the story that the
plot wants to tell. So that I hadn't heard it

(37:44):
called litform necessarily, or if I had, I had forgotten,
but it is a very real thing.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Well how about this this we'll find out if this
term actually expands beyond this person's own list. Again, this
is no reflection on you, Ariel. Do you know what
might be? Do you know what a hook is in LARPing?

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yes, it's when you send like an NPC or a
PROP or something out. Really usually it's an NPC because
you've got a module, which is like a small quest,
like when you're playing World of Warcraft and you go
meet the NPC and they're like, go do this thing
and bring it back to me. A lot of times
to you've got the overall plot in the game, and

(38:27):
then you've got like little adventures that happen that have
like small groups of people that get pulled to do it, like,
oh no, my farm is being attacked by wolves. I
need five people to help these wolves kill these ten
wolves or whatever. Right, So the hook is the person
who gets sent out to get those players to go
on the adventure.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Very very well done. The definition given here is an
NPC whose job it is to deliver information to the
PCs with the intent of them following up on the
information by taking some form of action, which is exactly
what you said. Okay, how at Yeah, but you had
to you had to walk through it like you're being
you're being uh by these questions. Okay, how about the

(39:11):
term boffer?

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, boffer means that you hit each other with plumbing
supplies wrapped in open cell or soft foam or latex weapons.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
There you go. It's a it's a type of larp
where combat is live meeting what players actually tap each
other with padded weapons and or strike one another with
with projectiles which one go ahead, Oh, I was gonna say.
It just makes me think of I remember watching a
larp I wasn't part of it. But I just remember
watching a larp where someone had especially little like handkerchiefs

(39:44):
filled with corn starch that they were throwing it just
yet like lightning bolt, lightning bolt light Just that's the
vision I always get what I think of larp. It
makes me laugh so much.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yes, there's this thing where if you watch a lart
being played, it's very different from being involved in it
because you aren't immersed in the story. You aren't your
character is not about to get injured or die or
whatever you know, or save somebody. You're just watching these
other people from outside their imagination use their imagination. So
it definitely looks super dorky from the outside. Sometimes it

(40:17):
looks super dorky from the inside. But if you find
a really good game that you like, really jive with
the story and the other players, you forget all that.
That being said, yes, when you do like certain spells
or things like that, you do throw packets because you know,
I fight with a sword, so I can have a
latex weapon that's basically like a NERF weapon or Boffer arrows,

(40:40):
which are arrows of foam on the tips that don't
hurt when they hit you. Or you know, in the
case of my current game, modded out nerf guns that
are painted to look like old wild West guns but
usually have like a stronger pull and look really cool.
I'll post some in our show notes. You know, with spells,

(41:00):
the only way that you can tell that someone has
actually hit you with the spell is if you get
hit with something. And so that's why you use the packets,
because if I just pointed, you can say you didn't
point at me, and large sanorious for people who don't
notice that someone has targeted them or don't want to
accept it.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Well, it gets it gets to like that thing where
kids would be playing, you know, like like guns, like
gun style pretend games when they be out, Like I
think about when I was a kid running around and
we'd be playing like we're all in a big shootout,
and it just comes down to the I got you, No,
you did it, you missed like that kind of like
if you don't have some method of actually creating a

(41:38):
harmless impact, then you know, it comes down to the
honor system, and some people are more honorable than others.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yes, and so cornstarch was used in packets so that
it would kind of leave like a light a white
mark on you that would wash out of your clothing
so you could see that you got hit. However, sometimes
weather happens when you're at a larp.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
And maybe you have a non Newtonian liquid inside of
your inside of your spell.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
It's basically getting hit with rocks. Yes, so bird seed
is much better to use. Other types of LARPs that
don't use boffer are like salon LARPs. Well, they'll they'll
use like rock, paper scissors, or role play or flipping
a coin or something like that.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Gotcha. Okay, this last one, I don't know if you've
ever heard it in connection with LARPing, but I know
you know the term because I know it's a familiar
one with another activity you have done. What is a
dead dog.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
My guess, is a plot line that is finished but
the players don't want to give it up.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
No dead dog. Dead dog is when you all.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
An after party. Yes, okay, yeah, I don't know. We
just call it a post game stake and booze up.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Yeah. Well, well, and like a Dragon con, there would
be like the dead Dog party after which the staff
would attend after the convention's over. It's for all the
staff who have been working so hard to make the
event happen, and then they just kind of get together
and allow their bodies to deconstruct while they they have

(43:23):
conversations until they're so tired they have to go home.
So but yeah, in this case, they this person says
a gathering for a meal at a restaurant following a
LARP or a LARP convention, during which players and staff
commonly discuss the event. I think they actually do mention
that this term is common in the New England theater community,
which may mean that this particular person is also located

(43:45):
in New England, which again could explain why there are
some terms that are not that common down here in
the Southeast. And in fact, to be fair to the
author of this piece, she actually does say LARP terminology
is far from universal and lots of different communities use

(44:06):
these terms to mean slightly or very different things, So
I want to be fair to her as well. She
wasn't trying to pass this off as the definitive glossary
for LARP terminology.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah. The one that I thought that you were going
to ask about that you didn't is turtling, which is
I guess it might be specific to only certain LARPs.
If you have a shield and you hide behind it
so that no and a combat so that no legal
targets are visible, and the only place that someone can

(44:38):
hit you is an illegal target like the head. That's
usually no, because it's unfair if you've got a shield
big enough that you can just hide behind anoint only
put your head out, and people aren't allowed to like
flank you and go around you because it's not necessarily safe,
and they aren't allowed to like charge you because it's
not necessarily safe. You know, that tends to be poor sportsmanship.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
So yeah, well that makes me think of someone I
used to watch fight in the SCA the Society of
Creative Anachronism, which makes me think that maybe we do
a future one of these where you can ask me
questions about the SCA uh and all of my answers
will be thirty years out of date because I've been
out of it for so long, but I will at

(45:21):
least be able to talk about what it was like
when I was a teenager and the participating actively in
the sea. That's that was what my kind of scratching
my itch before I got involved with the Renaissance Festival.
It's also how I knew some of the Renaissance Festival
dances before I actually joined fair But okay, well, let's

(45:42):
I want to ask you just a couple of questions
that are specific to you. No longer the quiz part
is over, okay, And that is like, so, how did
you get into LARPing? Like what was your first larp
and how did you how did you join.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
My Oh gosh, my first larp was so like I said,
I went to Uh. I went to like a little
LARP convention with some local and alarps. One of the
actors in Hamlet with me was a LARPer and he
was like, I think you'd enjoy doing this. Hey, let
me I'll accompany you to a LARP or I'll take

(46:18):
you out to a LARP that I play, right, and
because I think you'd really enjoy it. And he was right,
And I'm super glad that he did, because I've I've
had some of my LARP friends for half my life essentially,
and UH, and I've been playing and telling stories with

(46:39):
these people for half my life. It's really kind of
phenomenal when you think about it, you know, you're a
similar friend. And so before we went to the actual game,
we went to this convention and there was a game
called with the with the company that I still larp
with that has gone through some name changes. I think

(47:02):
at the time the game was called Kingsgate, and it
was kind of like like a European kind of fantasy larp.
I played essentially a French elf edeshane elf called Paulette d'avriere.
She was the daughter of some jewelers, and so I
wore like super glue jewels to my face in my

(47:23):
chest and I didn't really have a good grasp on
the game, and so I like I made this character
who ended up getting into a lot of the trouble
and by the end of the game, like the game
had a couple of campaign arcs that lasted years. But
at the end of that game, like the definitive end
of Kingsgate and Kingsgate too, I had my character was

(47:49):
married and then she also was like bonded with the
King of the Fairies separately and had to like house
his power in her body to get through an apocalypse,
which meant that I had could like throw some really
powerful spells for a while. So that was fun. And
she was also an actor, so we had an in

(48:09):
game acting troop called the Gilded Lilies, and we tried
to do like some Comedia del rtape, but none of
us were classically trained in it, so it.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Becomes like the rude mechanicals of a Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah, we were basically the rude mechanicals.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
So we had we had done some like Midsummer Night Dreams.
Some uh some uh Rosenkranz and gilden Stern are dead.
We did some original stuff. We did an episode of
a medieval property that Rowan Atkinson was kind of the
head of.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Oh I gotcha, I know what one, the one the
one about the dark Snake.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Yes, that that and the particular story was kind of
a Twelfth Night ish sort of a story, and so
we did that and it was a lot of fun.
The other game that I was playing at the time
was wild Lands, which was a derivative game of wild
Land South. There was some other Wildlands, like an offshoot
of Nero, which is a big LARPing entity. There's many

(49:12):
neuro chapters all over the States, maybe outside the States.
I don't know. I haven't played Nearro forever. I was
briefly on plot for them. But wild Lands was the
other one, and I played a little fire Elf and
the two. The two game systems were vastly different, and
I hardly understood one of them went off of like
hit points, and so like you had spells that you
could use, and you had armor you could wear, but

(49:34):
ultimately you had like twenty nine hit points, and once
you got hit twenty nine times or for twenty nine
points of damage, you were down. And that took a
lot of math, and it was very hard for me,
not because I was bad at math, but because you're
you're trying to remember point values to everything and then.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Yeah, while you're also like actively in a situation, right,
Like I've only ever participated in a LARP once. It
was an extension of a science fiction convention, and I
was essentially in pcing. So the game master was telling

(50:10):
us what to do. Really, all he was telling us is,
here's how much your hits do in damage. So this
is the number you yell as you're attacking, because that
indicates how many hit points. If you make contact, the
person will go down. And it was only in retrospect
that I realized this was a very very bad game master,

(50:31):
like a very bad game master, because like he had
the attitude of let's kill these guys. You're going to
hit for twelve points of damage or something like that,
and we're just like, well, we're just doing what we're
told to do. But it came across as a game
master who had a kind of a power trip. And
that can happen on in LARPs, it can happen in
paper and pencil campaigns. It is the worst. Don't be

(50:53):
that person.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, Kingskate is a hit location. There's still a little
bit of math if you've got like armor or toughness
or something like that, or like protective shields, but it's
a lot less and it's generally like if you're not
wearing armor on an arm and you get hitt in
an arm, you can't use that arm anymore. If you
gain the leg, that leg is injured. If you can't
get hit in three limbs, you're unconscious because you're losing

(51:16):
too much blood.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
So see seeing how I'm bad at doing like maths
super like super in the moment while a lot of
stuff is happening. I think my character in that game
would be known as Nolan the Naked Gnome, and he
doesn't have any armor, and if you hit him he
just knows that part is gone. Now.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
In my game Calamity that I'm playing right now, which
is Horror Western alternate history kind of a thing, I
have toughness. I have two points of toughness, and that
can get renewed. But I can get hit twice before
I have to take damage.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
That's so easy, way easier having to having to say like, oh,
I need to subtract this amount from the amount they're
saying or whatever it may be.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, but when I do my volunteer monster time, if
they give me too many stats, I'm like, cool, cool,
I'm going to try to remember it. In worst case
I get hit three times and then I fall down. Yeah,
but yeah, like it is. It is hard because sometimes
you have players who just do not take their hits,
and you can't stat a fight to be challenging because
they aren't playing fairly. And then sometimes there really is

(52:16):
like the temptation to send something out to kind of
teach them the lesson, but it is bad. It's bad
sportsmanship again.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, what you're trying to do is
the same thing you're trying to do with a pen
and pencil RPG, which is well, I shouldn't be so
universal what a lot of RPGs are trying to do,
which is to tell a story. Not all RPGs are
like that. Some RPG sessions are more about like people
are more excited about the you know, testing their character

(52:45):
against stuff, Like they're not really thinking about story as
so much as can my character accomplish this the statistical task. Like,
you know, we've the difference between rule playing and role playing,
and it's not that one is necessarily better than the other,
but if you have people who are on different pages,
that can be a real that can be a challenge

(53:07):
to work through. Where you know, if you've got a
group of people who really want to tell a story,
or another group of people who are just like I
want to mend max my character to make them as
powerful as I possibly can so I can defeat any
situation that's in front of me. There can be a
problem there, and it can unless it's very carefully addressed,

(53:29):
it can really ruin a game.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and storytelling is part of the
reason that I have stayed with the same LARP group
for so long. There are lots of phenomenal LARPs, and
there are LARPs for all kinds of different people who
like different kinds of stories and gameplay. And this is
not to say that the LARP group that I do
stuff with is better than other LARP groups. I have
lots of friends who from that Lark group who play

(53:52):
other LARPs with other companies. It's just a lot of
the people in the game system that I've been playing,
we've been playing forever. We super comfortable with each other.
There's a high level of trust. And there are new
people who come in, but because there's already this high
level of trust in storytelling built in there, it's phenomenal like.

(54:14):
And then a lot of them are artists, and so
they really are focused on that storytelling aspect and making
props real and cool and creating immersive experiences and sets.
At the Calamity at the Western Larp, I play, the
entire mess hall of the group camp we use is
transformed into a saloon with like a bar and whiskey bottles.

(54:36):
Even though you can't drink alcohol in site, they're filled
with iced tea, and then like a player piano and
we change out all the light bulbs for Edison bulbs,
and it's like just the amount of effort people put
in to create this collaborative world is really it's really fantastic.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Yeah, and that's really cool. I love the thought of LARPs.
I don't know how well I would do in one.
I thought about the Calamity one, like when that was
first just being talked about as a concept, I was
really interested. I even talked to Ariel about a character
concept I had who was essentially a snake oil salesman

(55:13):
type of character who's kind of sort of sort of rogueish,
you know, more like a you know, kind of a
fast talker type, not necessarily the best person to have
in a fight, And I thought that would be really
interesting to play. But I never really pursued it beyond
just some ideas. I mean, apart from the fact that

(55:33):
I do have a cowboy hat and boots here that
I've never gotten a chance to really break in.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
You know, there are two more games if you want
to NPC, but a.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Little late now, I mean a little late in the
game for the snake oil salesman to show up.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Yeah, yeah, I will say. Like it's also there are
LARPs that are a lot of younger people, and you know,
as a person who started LARPing as a younger person.
There's so much energy and excitement and exuberance and like
creativity that happens there. And then you know, like Calamity is,
there are young people in it, but a lot of
us have been playing for over ten years, some of

(56:11):
them over twenty, and so like they've gotten to a
point where like, I'm gonna go to bed at a
semi reasonable time and.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Yeah, I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be staying
up till two in the morning singing songs of my homeland.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, I mean I still do, some people do, but
you know, there's a little bit more temperance there. There's
also and there's still stuff that happens. Like one of
the plot people for Canilamity loves cabin raids, and so
when she plays a game, if you cabin Raiders, she'll
be super super happy. And that happens usually like three
or four in the morning with the diehards who are
willing to stay up that late and then sleep in

(56:48):
a little bit later instead of getting up for breakfast.
But you know, also like an occasional hell grinder kind
of a battle is okay, But I'm fine if that
happens once every two years, and I don't have a
four hour field battle every event.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
You know, especially when you are playing in a state
where the current temperature is in the upper nineties and
humidity is almost one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, yeah, we I have played. There was an Eclipse game,
which is another game in this system that you said
it's like a futuristic sci fi game. We've used Andromeda
as like a storytelling tool where people can pilot a
spaceship because it's an outer space kind of a thing
with aliens, and it's really cool and it's really fun.

(57:34):
And there was one game that we played where temperatures
got up to like.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
One hundred and five yikes.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
It was miserable and we all tell like war stories
about this.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yeah, I tembature. It can be hard to even get
some sleep because most of the time you're at some campgrounds,
maybe you're in a cabin, but it's almost never like
anything that even has a fan in it, let alone. Yeah,
any control.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, we were in cabins. The tavern had some level
sometimes has some level of like AC. Usually they have
heat for the winter time, because I've also larped in snow.
Most of them don't have great AC units. Or at
least if they do, they don't have like good insulation
to keep it into the building. Cabins don't have AC.
They might have a ceiling fan. They do have electricity

(58:24):
usually though.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
So you can bring a box fan or something you
can you.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Can bring a box fan. I know some people who
kind of tarp off windows and bring a like an
AC unit in some of the bigger buildings if they've
been placed in one of the bigger buildings, But that
doesn't always work, you know. And yeah, so it can
get pretty hot. We again, being a more seasoned LARP group,
try not to larp during the hottest or the coldest months.

(58:51):
Cold is usually easier.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, because it's usually like a month and a half.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Maybe, yeah, yeah, all right, Well.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
I mean there's obviously tons of other questions I could
ask you, and maybe we'll follow this up in a
future episode where I'll dive more into details about things
like favorite moments and LARPs, things that were particularly funny
or really like gripping or emotional, all that kind of stuff.
I would love to dive into that more, but we're

(59:21):
right up at an hour now, so rather than drag
this out any longer, you've got other stuff you got
to do. I think it's the time for us to
conclude our story.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Sure, as we conclude, I just want to say thank
you to everybody who's written us, all the people who
who have given us mashup ideas or have said, hey,
we miss your mashups. We hear you, we love you.
As soon as we can talk about strict and work,
we'll get back to it. But thank you for encouraging
us to do that. It is helpful to know that
that's something you like. If there is anything else that

(59:53):
you like that you wish that we'd bring back, something
you wish we'd stop, Jonathan, how can they write us?

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Well, you can go outside if it's not too hot,
and if it's not too cold, and if it's not
currently pouring down rain or hailing, if it's any of
those things, stay inside. Whatever you're wondering isn't important enough
to be answered. It's more important you stay safe. But
if it's nice outside, go on outside, find a nice tree,

(01:00:22):
sit down at the base of it, Sit there and
ponder the thing you want to communicate to me or
ask me until you just sort of nod off, and
when you wake up you'll be in the land of
the Fay. Do not accept any presence from anyone who
offers them. Do not trust anything that anyone tells you.

(01:00:43):
You will quest with the Fay for what feels like
five earth years, but then turn at the end of
your quest, once you have found an iron horseshoe which
will protect you against all Faye magic. You will come
across the she and you will defeat eat the Shee
and return to the mortal realm. And they're under the tree.

(01:01:06):
You're gonna find a note that says I stop by,
but you weren't here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Here's your answer, and if you are smart enough not
to mess with the fairies, I almost dropped an exploitive there.
You can reach out to us on social media on Facebook, Instagram,
discord threads. We're Larger Nurdron Collider on Twitter, We're llenc
Underscore Podcast, and as always you can find our show

(01:01:32):
notes and I will endeavor to put up some pictures
of my larm weapons for people who are just to
see what I work with, which is not as cool
as some other people's at our website Largen droun Collider
dot com. Oh, you can also email us at Largenerdron
Pod at gmail dot com. We super love hearing from you,
and we're super grateful to have you a part, to

(01:01:53):
have you as a part of our geek family. And
until next time, I have been aerial dodge castings.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
And I have been Jonathan Fay around and find out.
Strickland the Large Nurdron Collider was created by Ariel Caston
and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted, published again. Cursed at

(01:02:20):
by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin McLeod of incomptech dot
com