LNC Rolls for Initiative

Ariel and Jonathan talk about some of their favorite board games and computer games and get real geeky in the process.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Large nerdron Collider podcast, the
podcast that's all about the geeky things happening in the
world around us and how very excited we are about them.
I'm Ariel Caston, and with me, as always is the
striking not really striking, but striking Jonathan Strickland him by striking,
I mean beautiful.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yes, hi, Jonathan, I am happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
You had to you had to roll a die. You
weren't certain of that.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I mean, you know, I'm just just trying to get
the mattic and what we're going to talk about.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Today, gotcha, gotcha? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, Faning Glory.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Okay, thanks, Yeah, I mean I wanted to strike out
and talk about things, uh like strikes. Let's talk strikes
real quick.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah. The WGA did not come to an agreement last
Friday we were talking about. I think they're going back
to the table again today. It looks like, according to
some reports, that the big stickler points are residual pay
for streaming writer room sizes and then the amount of
time writers have to work on a TV show. I'm

(01:23):
sure there's a lot more, but those seem to be
like the biggest sticking points.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, we're hopeful still that the studios will end up
giving more for the writers and also obviously for the actors.
There have been tons of stories that have come out
that have talked about like how much money these studios
are making, especially how much the executives are making in

(01:48):
comparison with the people who are actually creating the stuff.
There have been a lot of discussions about how the
leaders of these studios are not the same people who
like built up those studios. So there's a lot of
there's a lot of like shade being thrown, like these
are not the people who make the things. They just
they kind of came in to lead the company, but

(02:09):
they don't make the stuff, and yet they're taking home
way more money. So, like the narrative is still going
on strong about how, you know, there needs to be
more support for the people who are actually doing the
work on the ground level. And yeah, we're obviously still
very much in support of both the writers and the actors,
and we're going to continue, you know, being a little

(02:33):
a little more uh loosey goosey with our our podcast approach.
We're not talking about working for the Renaissance Festival this
time though.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, yeah, I will say one other little bit of
geek news. Dragon Con is still happening and they're still
getting guests for the convention because actors need to do
something right.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Well yeah, while.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
They're waiting, but they can't talk about their shows. And
I've worked backstage for dragon Con and I've also like
worked the line of the like the the moderate, not
the moderator, but the assistant who holds the microphone, and
actors are not allowed to talk about certain projects, which

(03:18):
means that the questions that people ask need to be
vetted and to help, and that doesn't always work. I've
seen actors get asked for things when I wasn't holding
the microphone that they've specifically said I don't want to
answer this question, and then the person holding the microphone
will let it go through or the person who's asking
the question will change it last minute. You can't control,

(03:38):
you can only you can only guide it so far, right,
uh So dragon Con is helping out and as they're
posting their different guests, they're offering things like, uh, so
and so is going to be at the convention to
find out what their favorite donut company is, or so
and so is going to be at the convention. Who's
the better queen Beyonce or Freddie Mercury, you.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Know, right, or or like you know, cable knit sweaters
yay or nay.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, So they're they're helping kind of prime people's brains
for fun questions that they can ask that are not
AMPTP project related. Yeah, and I think that's really cool.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
And of course you can always still ask things like,
you know, what is your process? You know, what what
do you what do you find enjoyable about finding a character?
That kind of stuff, like for all the actors writers
also obviously like what is your process? All that kind
of stuff, those sort of questions are still totally fair
game because they're more about the craft and less about

(04:40):
specific projects. This is a bummer still because obviously, like
I remember when I first started going to conventions, which
was back in the eighties. You know, back then, we
didn't have the web, right, we didn't have all the
different tools that are at our disposal these days, and information,
especially behind the scenes was in d adomly limited. So when

(05:02):
I think back to my experiences as a kid going
to these, it's mostly about stuff like finding about those
cool behind the scenes stories that you couldn't find. I
guess the nice thing is these days, a lot of
that behind the scenes stuff is like already out there.
You know. There's so many different interviews that were given
through the promotion of stuff. There's like there's like extra features,

(05:24):
there's entire videos about it. So that's a little nicer
in that you don't have to, like it's not like
there's this big vault of stuff that you just are
not going to get to hear about. But I can
imagine it's still pretty frustrating. And yeah, I like to
your point, Ariel, Yeah, you can't control people. And sometimes

(05:45):
there's going to be that person who thinks they're they're
really clever, or for some reason believes that they are
like their curiosity is more important than the constraints that
are up there or whatever, or maybe they're just not
sympathetic to the unions, whatever it may be. And don't
be that person. You make things uncomfortable for every single

(06:08):
other person in that room, and you are not more
important than every single other person in that room, especially
put together.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I will actually be at Dragon Con briefly this
year because with things being quite I decided to do
the artsy show.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Oh, I will ask me, I will not be at
dragon Con this year, just as I haven't been a
dragon Goon for the last like five years.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
So yeah, I mean it'll be It'll be pretty much
just for the shows. I don't plan on sticking around.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I enjoy people watching, but you do have to find
like a fairly secluded spot to do it from if
you want to be comfortable. Otherwise you're just like shoulder
to shoulder with everyone else, which is not necessarily a
bad thing. It's just like I get really anxious in
big crowds, especially if I'm not close to an exit.
So for me, like it just got to a point

(07:05):
where just just navigating around the convention was triggering my
anxiety so much that I wasn't getting enough enjoyment out
of it. I felt like ninety percent of the time
I was spending at the convention, I was just trying
to find something to do that wasn't going to overwhelm
my senses, and that just I was just like, I

(07:26):
should probably let people who really enjoy this just take
up that space instead of me.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
I one hundred percent agree. I enjoyed doing shows at
dragon Con. It's fun, but attending it. I don't attend
because it's the same thing. I don't like the big crowds,
especially now that we're living in a world with COVID.
You know, that's I've got, I got a friend with
it right now. It's not gone, you know, yea. And

(07:54):
as we get further away from the inset of that,
you know, everybody knows that people are getting more and
more lax with their including you and I, with what
precautions they're taking mm hm and so but I don't
want to I don't want to catch COVID. I'm going
on vacation later in the month. Yeah, I'm going out
of stacasion. And so that's one thing. And then the

(08:17):
other thing is like, even if I could find a
spot where it wasn't triggering my anxiety to be around
so many people, like exception of one year and the
times that your schedule and my schedule have matched up,
I largely end up walking around the convention by myself,
and that's boring.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, no saying I like, like, there was one year
where I did a little bit of cosplay for one
day and that was a lot of fun because it
was just fun to be on that side of it.
Where I was I was kabuki mask and that was
a fun time. But I otherwise like I like to
look at all the different costumes and stuff and see

(08:57):
all the creativity, especially the mash up stuff. I mean,
I like, I like like screen perfect style costumes too,
but I love the mashups where people are getting really
playful and creative and meta. I mean, to this day,
one of my favorite cosplays ever didn't come from any
genre property at all. It was the people who came

(09:17):
dressed as like camouflaged army guys, but they were wearing
the Marriott's carpet pattern as their costumes, and this actually
ended up creating a whole stink with Marriott where they
wanted to. I think it was Marriott, not Highatt, but anyway,
it was one of the iconic carpets, and there was

(09:38):
actually a stink about Supposedly there was like a trademark
on the pattern. They were real upset the cosplayers, but
I just thought it was a very clever thing, like
they were camouflaged with the carpet and I loved it.
I was like, wow, this is this to me is
something that is really special about fandom, and that fandom
is this love for stuff, and it's not just the

(09:59):
actual shows and comic books and movies and stuff. It's
it's the love of the convention itself and the love
of community, to the point where you will see people
dressed up in costumes that are, you know, an homage
to an iconic carpet pattern, or they'll cosplay as a
local restaurant tour and then they'll go to the restaurant.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, you'll you. This year's gonna be weird for
cosplay too, because you know, certain professional cosplayers will not
be doing and PTP property cosplays. But I think that's
great because it's more room for creativity, like the Marriotte
carpet guys, which is very dangerous if you're crawling around

(10:44):
on a carpet and you blend in at dragon Con,
but it still very clever.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
You might have a big Daddy from from the BioShock
games step on you, yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
By accident or not. Also, I think I saw that
the high it is trying to start a new carpet cult.
They've got a new carpet maybe.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah. There was definitely one of the hotels where they
were specifically kind of making fun of that whole brew
haha from before where they said, you know, they were
essentially embracing this idea of people incorporating the patterns into
their stuff, and they were like welcoming it as opposed
to what we saw with the Marriott.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah. Yeah, so fun times. That's just I don't know,
it was a little bit of local geekdom. I just
wanted to talk about.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah, I mean, dragon Con is one of those really
big fan conventions. It's not an industry con like Comic
Con usually is. I mean this past year Comic Con
was definitely more of a comics convention than it has
been in the last several years. But yeah, this is
a time where at dragon Con it's much more fan
oriented and to the point where there are people and

(12:01):
there's no shortage of these. There are people who will
go to that con and they only go to hang out.
They don't go to any panels, they don't go to
any events. They might you know, they might dress up.
There are a lot of cosplayers who are like they'll
bring like fifteen outfits and they'll have strict times on
when they need to dash back up to the room
and change into their next one. So it's it's really

(12:23):
interesting I've often said that, like at Comic Con it's
like maybe one out out of every four people are
in cosplay, and in dragon Con it's like three out
of every four people are in cosplay. It's pretty phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. So that's all the news
I got.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well let's uh, let's chat about the stuff well we
were gonna talk about for this episode. So you know,
we were battering around different ideas for things that we
can chat about that are, you know, more generally generally geeky.
And one of the things we had chatted about or games.
And originally we were thinking board games, but we actually
expanded that to not just board games but computer games because,

(13:06):
as it turns out, I don't I don't get to
play board games very often. And it's been a little
while for Ariel too. Although like I think your house,
I think you guys own significantly more games than I do.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
We have, we do, and I've played. I'm not I'm
not playing board games like every week, but I do
play board games.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Well, well, let's start off with you, Ariel. What's what's
one of your favorite board games? Like, what's something that
you look forward to playing when you've got the right
group of people with you.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Okay, So my favorite board game to play is it's
I'm trying to figure out how to describe it without
breaking strike rules.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh so it's it's it's IP related.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Then it's IP related. One of the characters' names has
to do with a coffee chain.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
And okay, all right, got it. You are talking about
a up a battle beyond the stars type of thing
going on that are yeah, okay, Like it's it's of
a isn't a human, it's a it's of a galactic nature,

(14:23):
Like there's a there's there's a battle. Uh, there's a
there's a solar body or star you might say, and
it's of a galactic nature.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
There you go. Jonathans always is more quickly clever than I.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
So this board game, if I'm not mistaken, does this
board game have elements of like Werewolf as well?

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yes? Yes. So everybody starts off as everybody gets some
cards and they're either a human or not a human,
but you don't have to share if you're not a human,
and your goal is to get from one planet to
the end planet, and as you go through, you flip

(15:06):
over cards and you lose resources or you gain resources,
but you lose resources a lot more often. And at
any point in time, someone who is not a human
can reveal that they're not a human, and then they
move to the not a human ship, and then they
can their actions change to things that can hurt you. Also,

(15:27):
everybody is given like a position, so you've got like
an engineer, you've got like a president, you've got like
an admiral kind of stuff. And if you're not a human,
some of those titles you can keep, which is really
bad for the humans. And then halfway through the game,
everybody gets a second loyalty card, and again you could
be a human not a human. You could be not
a human human, which means you always to default to

(15:49):
the not human goals. You could be a double not
a human, which means that you just stay where you were.
And it's a lot of fun. It is not a
role playing game, but my friends often roleplay it and
it has ended. It has upset people immensely, but in
the funniest ways, and I absolutely love it. There's one

(16:13):
character in the show who has like questionable morals, and
my friend picked that character for the board game. They
got two human cards, but we didn't know it, but
they were still helping the not a human's because that's
what the character in the show would have done, and
it was hilarious. You would have found it infuriating, but
it was hilarious.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, No, Ariel knows me well, she's seen me have
meltdowns at game nights. In fact, that's a great segue.
So we have a mutual friend. Our mutual friend Crispy
speaking of dragon Con, like that dude is like neck
deep in dragon Con. He's also neck deep in Halloween
and it starts like it already started. He already sent

(16:53):
messages out about Halloween like a week and a half ago.
But anyway, he's also a board game fanatic, like Ariel
has a lot of board games with her partner. They've
got they own a ton of board games. Crispy, I
think his house might be made out of There might
be load bearing board games in his home. Like, he's
probably played everything I've played, and I know he's played

(17:15):
tons of stuff I've never even heard about. But anyway,
I remember one day I went to play Werewolf and
it was my first time ever playing Werewolf ever, and
Crispy was playing the role of the game master. If
you're not familiar with the game of were Wolf. The
games it's played with, you know, typically cards. It's a

(17:38):
it's a social discovery game. You've got a big group
of people. Depending on the number of people you have,
you can have more than one were wolf. The goal
of the were wolves is to outlive everybody else and
kill off enough villagers so that you have at least
an equal number of were wolves to villagers, if not outnumbered,

(17:58):
and then you win. The goal of the villagers is
to sniff out the were wolves and kill them before
they murder everybody in the village. And the way the
turns work is every day is a turn and at night,
the were wolves are able to work with one another,
but the villagers can't see what's going on while that's happening,

(18:19):
so that way they don't you know. And the werewolves
have to be able to work with one another silently
so that so that they don't give away the fact
that they're were wolves. But they get to do things
like decide which villager they're going to kill, et cetera.
And there's a lot more rules to it. There are
a ton of specialty characters, but there's no need to
go into all of that. Anyway, Crispy decided for my
very first game of Werewolf, he would make me a

(18:40):
were wolf. I had never played the game before. I
was still like just learning. And on that first day
there was a brigade that all came up against me,
and they decided to kill my character, who was a
were wolf, and I died in the very first turn,
and I thought, well, this is a way to guarantee
I will never want to play this game again. It

(19:02):
is the most miserable experience. I don't know what I'm doing.
Everyone ganged up against me. I had no way to
defend myself because I had never played the game before.
I'm like, thanks, Krispy, you've made me hate this game.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
I mean, you didn't know that that would happen.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
But if you're a game master, one thing you should do.
I think if you're playing a game of were Wolf
is that if it's someone's first game, don't make them
a were wolf. Give them some other part. I mean,
unless it's everyone's first game, in which case that's fine.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
It can be fun to be a were wolf on
your first game, but also you can be a villager
and get killed on your first turn too, so.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
It's true, but like there's something, there's something. I guess
it's maybe particular for me. There was something about having
almost the entire group of players turn against you that
was I can't even tell you how unpleasant that was. Right.
It's like it's like if you were on a you know,

(20:06):
on any kind of game out on the playground, and
everybody was like, Okay, it's everybody against you, and it's
because we don't like you and you're a bad player.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah. I I like my favorite board game, which is
not when I've played board games more recently, and that's
not one of them, sadly, because I always have to
have like the right amount of people it's a long game,
and the right kind of people to play it. But
you know, you, it's got to be a game where
you can revel in being openly the bad guy. Another

(20:40):
example is Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yes, that's that's on my list of games that I
really enjoy board games that.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
I really enjoy because you can also become the villain
in that mm hmm, completely by mistake, and if it's
your first game, that's really hard. So yeah, I think
we talked about recently. They're coming out with a version
three or something like that.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
There is a third edition out.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, where they've got rules for if it's your first game,
somebody else can take the haunt from you for exactly
that reason. Even though it's completely by happenstance and everybody
knows who it is and when it happens, it's still
hard if you are not familiar.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
So the way that game works is that you are
playing the role of like an investigator. It's almost like
a Scooby Doo episode. You're an investigator and you're investigating
a haunted house and you start off there are some
common spaces that will just be there all the time.
But when you're exploring the house, what you're doing is

(21:42):
you're actually drawing from tiles, and the tiles represent different
kinds of rooms. So when you walk through a door,
there's nothing on the other side of the door until
you draw a tile and lay it down, and then
that tile has stuff on it. It may be a
regular room, in which case nothing really happens. There might
be an event associated with that tile where you have
to draw an e vent card and explain what happens,

(22:04):
or there might be an omen card and the omens
are the things that potentially create the situation for a haunt,
And eventually a haunt is guaranteed when you play it
long enough, but you might even if you're really unlucky,
you might get a haunt super early in the game,
and that stinks when that happens. But at the point

(22:27):
where you get a haunt, one of the players gets
turned into some sort of villain. And there's like fifty
or something different variations, and it all depends upon the
conditions of the game, so you're pretty likely to if
you're playing it like even ten times, you're not likely
to have a repeat necessarily. I mean, it can happen,

(22:49):
but it probably won't. And then at that point it
becomes a competitive game where it's the remaining survivors against
the villain, and usual your goal is to either kill
the villain or more likely try to escape the house.
And it's a very clever game. I the second edition

(23:12):
is the one I'm most familiar with. I know that
it corrected some of the problems that were in the
first edition, where like you could you could encounter impossible
situations just because the combination of tile an event card,
Like there was one where it was an elevator that
could go anywhere, and like it was just one of
those things where it's like these two things break the

(23:34):
game because they're combined in the same space, but it
is a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, and that's that's kind of That's one of
those like semi cooperative games. They're obviously winners and losers,
but usually it's a group. Most of the games, honestly
that I play lately have unless it's something like Apples
to Apples or Equivalent, which I haven't played in a while,
but I missed that game. I missed that game a lot.

(24:03):
You had to be really clever to be funny, and
I loved it. Have some level of cooperation to it.
So like Legendary, which is a card game and you
can collect cards and you all work like there's definitely
a winner at the end, or you're all losers, but
you all work together so that you aren't all losers.
Or Eclipse, which is the longest board game ever where

(24:27):
you build out your own space territories and some people
you ally with and some people you don't, and you
want to have the most points at the end of
all of the cycles. I'm playing Pandemic Legacy right now,
which is like Pandemic, but you keep the same characters
kind of, and you destroy cards and you get new cards,
and you unlack map parts each game and having goals

(24:51):
each game.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
You might want to explain what the game Pandemic is
all about. It's a cooperative game.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
I'm bad at that because I've only played it once
and that was one game of Legacy, two games of Legacy.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Essentially, what Pandemic is, it's a cooperative game where all
the players are trying to get a pandemic under containment,
and you have lots of different constraints on you and limitations,
and it requires a lot of coordination to do it.
And if you win, then you get the disease under
containment and you it's a win state for the game.

(25:25):
And if you lose, everybody loses. The pandemic has spread
too far and there's no way to get it under control.
It seems particularly relevant after the last few years I
played it. I played it pre twenty twenty and then
I haven't played it since because I'm like, I lived it.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Maybe maybe a wise choice.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, but it's it's a it's a great like. I
love cooperative games because I have a very competitive side
to me, and I don't like it because I don't
think I come out well most of the time. And
I'm also a really poor loser. It's I'm the worst
person to have at game night. I'm just gonna say
it right out here. I am the worst person half

(26:05):
because I am ultra competitive and I'm a terrible loser.
Another example you mentioned Apples to Apples. I remember you
might have even been in this game, but there was
an Apples to Apples game and our friend Lucas was
the judge for the round and the prompt was deadly
and I played the card James Bond, and I said,

(26:26):
he literally has a license to kill. He is like,
by definition, he is deadly. He has a license to kill.
There's an entire movie about it. But no, Lucas awarded
it to someone who played Full Moon because they said
that's what makes were wolves, and I said, are you
kidding me?

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah? Those things are very subjective, Like what is shocking
a charging rhino?

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah? And that's the thing is that like like like
when I stepped back, I'm like, no, I think that
his choice was really interesting and funny, but in the
moment I was so mad.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
The other thing, I like really simple board games sometimes,
but my partner, my husband, loves board games that are
very complicated, so fall Out, Shadow Run board games. He
kicks started both a teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a
Batman board game series, which come in multiple boxes and

(27:30):
they have a ton of scenarios. It can be a
lot of fun. He actually had to buy an organizer
because it took so long to pick out the characters
and the scenarios and the cards you needed depending on
what you're playing with the Batman game, and every character
has miniatures, including like Condiment Man or Economic King and
kite Man and stuff. It's ridiculous. And just the longer

(27:53):
time goes on, the more complicated the board games in
my house become. It takes longer to explain them then
play them.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Sometimes I respect, I respect the attention to detail and
all of that, but yeah, I there's something to be
said for elegantly simple games. Like one of my favorites
that is very very simple is just called Skull, and

(28:20):
it's a card game. Have you played this? I don't
think I've played Skull, So Skull it's Hervet Marley created
this game. It is gorgeous art. But each player has
some cards and the cards either have one card will
have a skull on it, the other cards will have

(28:42):
roses on them. And the game is a game of bluffing.
And the way you play is that each player, starting
with player one, puts a card face down on. They
have like a little placemat type thing that represents their score.
When it's face down, you have zero. When you turn
it over, you've got a score of one, and if
you get a score of two, you win the whole game.

(29:04):
So it's just you just play till you win twice
and that's all it takes. But winning is tough. So
you've got your place mats face down, you play a
card face down on their next person plays, next person plays,
next person plays. However many so let's say there's four players,
then it comes back to player one, and the player
one can either do one of two things. They can
put a second card down on top of their first card,

(29:27):
or they can wager how many rose cards they can
get by turning over the cards that have already been
laid down. So at the end of like a four
person turn, there's four cards, right, So I could say
I can turn over two Rose cards. Then the next

(29:49):
player can choose to either pass or bid higher. So
the max you could do is bid four because that's
how many cards have been laid down. But if anyone's
laid down a skull card, you overturn a skull card,
then you lose, and you lose one of your cards.
Actually that's put in the center so you no longer
have access to it. So the way this game works

(30:10):
is it's very much all about bluffing, and uh, it's
not easy to do if you've got really good people
who are good at reading you and figuring out whether
or not you're bluffing about whether the card that's in
front of you is a Rose or a skull. Because
the other element to this game is that the first

(30:31):
card you uncover has to be your own. You cannot uncover.
So if you've played a skull, you might bid in
the hope of tricking someone else to bid higher and
uncover your card. But if no one bids higher, you
have to turn that card over, and if it's a skull,
you've just you just lost your own point or your

(30:52):
own card. It's it's a great game. It's it's like
I said, it's actually pretty simple, and all you have
are the each player's cards and then the little placemat
type things. That's it. There are no other pieces or
dice or anything like that. And it all comes down
to the style of play. I might be partial to

(31:14):
it because I don't think I've ever lost a game.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Oh nice, nice, Yeah, I haven't played that. Now I
have to play that. It sounds like so much fun.
I only recently, I say recently, like in the last
ten years, learned how to play Flux.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, I've heard of that game. That's another card game, right.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, yeah, And it's a game where it's simple and
difficult at the same time. It's almost like playing a
game about programming, because you start off with one rule,
draw a card, play a card, but the cards all
have different like rules or exceptions or things on them.

(31:57):
So like you could play a card that says, now
draw five cards, play two cards, and you have a
hand limit, and then card that says the end goals
you want the sun and the moon and the stars
for outer space or whatever. And so you're trying to
collect cards and discard cards, and like you change the
rules as you go. But because all of the rules
are laid out, it's still pretty easy to follow. It's

(32:19):
a lot of fun. And I have like a Doctor
Who version and a Jamunji version and a regular version.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
And wow, I have never played that, but it does
sound really interesting.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun. What do you think
of games like jack box games? I feel like those
kind of bridge a gap between board games and video games.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
I love them. I love the jackbox games. I actually
I almost love watching playthroughs of it more on YouTube
than I love playing them myself, because I almost always
feel like I am in like a mental quagmire when
I'm playing, like I can never come up with the
incredibly clever pun or silly answer that's going to make

(33:03):
everybody crack up, like for games like Quiplash, for example.
But there are a ton of different jackbox games. I
think some of them are stronger than others. I think Quiplash,
Quiplash and Murder Hotel. I think that's a murder Trivia
Hotel or whatever it is. Yeah, those I think are
the strongest ones.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, I like those. I like Fibage too. Fimage is
also fun, basically balderdash, But when I play Fibage, I
don't play it to win. I play it to be
the most ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
I mean that's I think that's legit. Like, if you
find enjoyment from it, I think that's what's important. That's
if I can find that in myself when I'm playing
a game, I typically have a much better time because
I am aware of my personality flaws and I'm not
I'm not putting that on anyone else. That's all me.
So if I can find that in a game, then

(33:54):
that's great. I did have a one less board game.
I want to ask you about real quick before I
jump onto more computer games. Have you ever played Mysterium?

Speaker 1 (34:03):
I have not played Mysterium.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
You would really dig it, Ariel, I think you would.
It can be a frustrating game, but it is really interesting.
So the way this game works is that it's a
cooperative game. You've got all the players are working together,
but one player takes on the role of a ghost,
and this ghost has been made and well, they were
murdered when they were still alive. That's what made them

(34:28):
into a ghost. And the ghost is trying to communicate
with the other players who are playing psychics who are
trying to solve the ghost's murder, and the ghost is
trying to communicate to them the person who committed the murder,
the method, like the method of murder, and the location

(34:50):
of murder, but the ghost is not allowed to talk.
The player who's playing the ghost cannot speak. Instead, they
have cards that they play, and the cards represent visions
that the psychics have that are meant to guide the
psychics to finding the correct person weapon location. And you

(35:13):
have a limited number of turns and a limited amount
of time per turn to get it all right.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
So it sounds like Clue with an assist.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Kind of, but yeah, you know, you have to do
it in this abstract way, and so the visions, like
the cards that are visions, nothing is going to be
outright obvious for the various things that you have. You know,
people have to kind of use intuition and figure out
what you're trying to communicate. And the problem I would

(35:44):
run into is I would be like, oh, this is
the perfect vision card because I want to communicate this
specific thing to this specific person, So I want to
play this vision card. But it's because I hadn't paid
attention to the other alternatives that were on the board
and thought, oh wait, this also could apply to other
things and I could be leading them down the wrong

(36:05):
way and it's really tricky, but it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah that sounds great. I do want to play that.
We got to get a game day together because I
can be fine with you being competitive and a sore loser.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Well, especially if you tell everyone ahead of time, this
is Jonathan. It's okay. He will he will want to
table flip. We have bolted the table down, so he'll
just end up straining himself and then he'll go sulk
in the corner for a while and it'll all be
all right.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, yeah, I totally get it. There have been times
where I'm like, geez, I just can't catch a break,
and then I'm like, but you know, it's fun spending
time with friends, and that's all that matters. On this
vacation that I am going on, one of my friends
has decided they want to run they want to build
and run a game changer.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Oh wow, okay, as in the dropout TV.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah right, yeah, And I'm like, I don't know what
to expect.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
I mean, that's kind of a point, right, you don't
know what it is until you get there.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
And I'm like, if that is fun for you. You
can plan that I will watch or I will play.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah, but that's wild because you really have to cater
that to whomever is actually going to be playing for
it to really work properly.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah. Yeah, So there are a ton more board games
that I love that I never play or that I
hardly ever play. Yeah, I am, by no means a
board game expert, like like our friend Crispy, but I
have a lot.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
I will recomm Well, I mean, it's hard to recommend
this because I don't think it's not in print anymore,
so you'd have to find like a used copy or
something somewhere, or maybe maybe you got reprinted. I don't know.
But when I was a teenager, a game I love
to play was called Family Business. This was also kind
of a card based game, and each player controls a gang,

(38:03):
and that's actually based off of the various gangs and
mafia members of the nineteen twenties. So like there's the
Capone Gang, the Purple Gang, the Moran Gang, Murder incorporated
all these different actual real world gangsters, and you would
get each player would have nine of these gangsters, and
your goal is to be the one surviving gang after

(38:26):
a gang war, and so all your cards were things
about that would allow you to attack other players or
defend from being attacked by other players. And I just
love this game. It's very fast moving. It actually was
really easy to pick up. Like it on the surface,
it was complicated because there were so many different kinds
of cards, but once you learn some basics, and the

(38:50):
cards were somewhat color coded to help kind of guide you, like, oh,
this is a yellow card, so this is a you know,
defense card, or this is a red card so it's
an attack card, or whatever it might be that helped.
But yeah, loved that game. It's a Steve Jackson game.
And if you can ever find a copy of Family Business,
a lot of fun for like I would say at

(39:11):
least at least three people, but if you can get
a full group of six to play that game, it
is a blast.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
I'll definitely have to keep my eyes open for that. Yeah,
we'd love to hear some of your guys's favorite board
games too for our hypothetical hopefully happens one day game day.
But also you wanted to talk about video games, Jonathan.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, some computer games that I would wanted to mention,
So I just started playing Bouldersgate three by Larry and
Studios as a big fan of the original Bouldersgate games
that came out a couple decades ago, and so far,
I'm having a blast. It is actually based off fifth
edition D and D rules. You encounter situations where it

(40:00):
make you roll for various skills, like I keep running
into ones where it's like a persuasion check that kind
of stuff. It's a lot of a lot of fun,
it's a lot more there's a lot more variety and
open endedness to the situations that I would have expected.
So like, if you're playing as a barbarian, you could
have a very different experience and get to the same

(40:21):
like endpoint, but through a totally different journey than I would.
I'm playing a bard, so you know, I'm trying to
talk my way out of everything. But like if you
were playing a fighter or a wizard or something like that,
or a warlock, be a very different role. But yeah,
I think it's I think it's really so far, really

(40:42):
well done. I'm just at the very early stages of
the game, but I'm very much enjoying it. Other recommendations Dredge,
which came out this past year. It's a kind of
love crafty and horror fishing game. Yeah, you're you're you're
controlling a little boat and you're going around trying to
fish stuff. And meanwhile there's this story about I love

(41:05):
crafty and like god, that's in the ocean. That's really
it's a great game. It's got a great sense of atmosphere,
really easy game mechanics, a lot of fun to play.
I mentioned Dave the Diver. That's a blast too. That's
a very crazy Korean game where you're playing a diver

(41:26):
who's also the manager of a sushi restaurant. That one's
a ton of fun. Inscription which came out a couple
of years ago. That's like a rogue light deck building
game with other elements to it. To speak more about
it is to do the game of Disservice because a

(41:47):
lot of the joy of that game is discovering the secrets.
But let me tell you one of the creepiest games
I've played in a really long time, and it's a
deck building game. So that's kind of crazy. And there's
tons of others. Like my go to game if I'm
just wanting to kill some time is Seven Days to Die,
which is a zombie survival crafting game, as in your

(42:08):
crafting stuff to survive zombie attacks. You're not actually crafting zombies.
That would be crazy, I.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Mean and fun. Which, yeah, that's Minecraft, which is one
of the ones that I play. I haven't played in
a while. I've been a little busy with life and such.
But yeah, my mom and I play Minecraft. It was
a game I didn't I played it and I was like,
I can't get into this. It is too sandboxy. I
don't know what to do, I don't know how to

(42:36):
discover what to do. But I've really come to enjoy it.
I haven't played many video games. My partner is playing
video game gloom Haven with some folks, and I keep
debating playing that because I like RPGs. You know, I'm
in two right now. And then straight Gods just came

(42:57):
out what you were talking about a little bit before
we hit record, which is kind of like a choose
your own adventure like RPG based game with kind of
simple comic book style animation, where like the person's eyes
are closed and you hear dialogue, but then they open,
so it's not fully animated. Some of it is. Some

(43:18):
of it isn't. But you basically RPG and you pick.
It's kind of like mass effect where the things that
you pick will change people's emotions. And like you sing
songs and you build songs based off of your choices,
and it's it looks interesting, is what I'll say. That
just came out, and so I might play that one.

(43:40):
I also now I want to play boulders.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Gate, so it's great. It does start with a pretty
icky encounter with a mind flavor, which is yeah, crazy
because like you start off as a first level of character,
and if you're familiar with with D and D, a
first level character encountering a mind flavor that's only gonna
go one way.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's not great. I remember seeing like
a trail, like a teaser with part of that in
there for a long while or a long while ago,
although I do know we didn't talk about this on
the show because we weren't sure how that I'm If
I play Baldersgate, I might avoid being a Druid because

(44:23):
some of the romance options for the Druid just I.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Can't Yeah, you run into well you can. You don't
necessarily do this, but you can run into Druids pretty
early on, And I gotta tell you, I don't think
there's any danger of wanting to hook up with a
Druid because they are the worst.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Every single Druid in the entire world is the worst.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Well, they're being there, They're the Druid community I ran
into is making a decision that is adverse going to
affect an innocent population, And it's hard to be on
their side, the Druid side, because they're being so selfish

(45:11):
and they're being led by someone who is like uber
like strict and selfish. And yeah, I don't know, I
just I certainly do not find the druids attractive.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
I get that well, especially if one tries to romance
you as a bear.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, I haven't haven't had that issue yet, and I've
only played a little bit, Like I think I'm still
just level two, Like I've only played a little bit
of the game because I just purchased it and downloaded
it today. But as I'm playing, I'm like, I'm already
really enjoying it. And I do think the romance stuff

(45:58):
is like they looked at Mass Effect and then they say,
hold my beer.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Oh goodness.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah, I no one has directly tried to get to
know my Bard a little better. But it seems like
that's just a matter of time before everyone starts offering
my character their companionship.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
And I mean, that's a that's a choice.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
And I'm not playing my Bard as being super duper
like horn Dog. That's not the way I'm playing the character.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Gotcha, gotcha? So you're a corner case Bard.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely one of those edge cases because
the stereotypical joke about the Bard is that they're just
constantly trying to romance everybody. That is not what my
character is doing.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
I mean, to be fair. In the Ebron game that
I'm currently playing, two of us recently took levels and
barred because the DM's like for the DM is super
awesome and super creative and bends the rules to whatever
there his whim is, and so he was like, you
guys can all take At one point in time, he
was like, what, it's ridiculous, you don't have this skill.

(47:09):
So everybody pick a skill that you should have and
take a proficiency in it or you know. And of
course this makes it difficult for him because he's got
to level up the encounters to match, but or like, hey, everybody,
go ahead and just take two levels in a second
class if you want, you know, and if it doesn't
work with your I'd rather work in a cool story

(47:29):
way then mechanically. So if it doesn't work mechanically, we
can adjust it so like you could have a wisdom
based Bard or something uh based, you know, situationally, and
then we build everything out in Aurora so that that
actually works on our character sheets. But yeah, so you

(47:49):
don't have to play a super sexy schmecksy Bard's that
that's a stereotype.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah, well, just like like you know, all the stereotypes
exists because there's tons of people who have played characters
that way. But the beauty of a role playing game
is you really can craft the type of character you
want to play. And if your character is like atypical
for whatever their class is, that's just as legitimate a

(48:17):
choice as playing someone who is stereotypical. Right. It's whatever
is going to be entertaining to you and what you're
going to really connect with and enjoy playing. And I
really appreciate that. Like even in Balder's Gate, I suspect
I could play a totally villainous type of character, and

(48:39):
I would still be able to play through the whole
game making choices that reflect that. That's I just I
never enjoy that when I play like I don't like
playing for role playing games, I don't like playing baddies,
So I don't unless I'm game mastering, which case I'm
I'm playing baddies for the sole purpose of the players
to vanquish them.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
I don't. I don't In tabletops, I don't like playing baddies.
An anti hero is cool, or someone who who's got
some flexible morals is fun, but a pure batty is hard.
Sometimes in LARPs, I like playing a shady character. I don't.
I can't explain it. That's a huge viera away from

(49:19):
board games and video games.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
But not really. I mean it's an extension. LARPs are
really an extension of tabletop role playing games. So I
was actually going to ask you which role playing games
do you typically play? Are you just playing D and
D or are there other systems you're playing?

Speaker 1 (49:38):
So my LARP is not based off My LARP is
based off of their own system.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
I mean specifically the role playing games role.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Playing I'm playing a fifth edition Ebron, but you know,
super it all serves as story, so Superlucy Goosey. We
recently started using the role for emphasis, which they're using
in Worlds Beyond Number, which is a pod like a
role playing podcast done by the dropout people. And are

(50:09):
you familiar with role for Emphasis?

Speaker 2 (50:10):
I am not.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
It's where you roll two dice and the one that
is further away from ten is your result, so you
either get generally, you either get a spectacular win or fail.
Sometimes you'll roll like two ones or two and eleven
and a nine and then the higher role wins. But
you know, usually it's pretty fun because you'll roll like

(50:34):
a three and a seventeen or you know, those are
also the same distance away from ten. But you know
what I mean, So it can be a way that
it's not just yeah it's rolling for emphasis, it's it's
a storytelling thing. And then I'm playing the Changeling the
Dreaming reboot, which is a White Wolf game.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
So like one of the Masquerade spin off game.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, it's a we're all fairy folk said, feuh, And
it takes place this this particular campaign takes place in
modern day Atlanta, so that's fun. I play a ferret
Puka stunt woman.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Do you go Earth when every year running around?

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I don't, but now I should.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Okay, because that's what that's the noise Ferret's make.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, And the thing is like, I built
this character because it is a fun game. I love
my DM, I love the fellow players. It's a it's
a wonderful game. The rules mechanics are just a little
extra convoluted for me, and I struggle with them. Yeah,
and I used to struggle with all game mechanics, but

(51:51):
it's a lot better now, but this one's still there.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I'm just like, yeah, the the White Wolf ones were
a little always a little tricky for me when I
was a kid. I remember I played a DC Superhero
role playing game and those those mechanics were tricky too,
because every rank in something was twice as much as

(52:16):
the last rank, which gets really ridiculous when you start
getting above like rank four, to the point where where
you know, like, because of the way the the system worked,
and because it was such such big jumps from one
rank to the next, it meant that technically Batman, because
of his strength, if he got the right roles, be

(52:38):
able to juggle cars. And you're like, well, this this
doesn't work, whereas the I also played the Marvel Superheroes
role playing game from way back again, like this is
a game that's been out of print forever. But that
one was a little easier in that each game had
or each power had a rank and it had a

(52:59):
descript to it. But the problem with that was trying
to remember which ranks were. Like they had charts so
you could see, but if you're just casually saying, oh, yeah,
my strength is that amazing, like, oh, mine's at uncanny,
You're like, I don't remember which one's bigger. You have
to look at the chart. But it was. It was

(53:20):
a lot of fun. And both of those were tons
of fun for things like character creation. I haven't played
any tabletop RPGs in a very long time. I'm still
working on the one I want to run as soon
as my as soon as my the repairs on my
home are complete, which who knows when that's gonna happen,
but I want to. I've got a D and D

(53:44):
Pirate themed game I want to run.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
I'm looking forward to that one. Yeah. Building building my
white Wolf character, I was able to get at advantages
and disadvantages, you know, based to free up points and whatnot,
and I picked things that I thought would go well
with the character, but it makes it. I can only
imagine that my character's hilarious, but I can only imagine

(54:10):
she's the most infuriating person to play a game with
because uh, pokahs in Changeling can't tell the truth. You
have to spend willpower to tell the truth. And then
I also took absent minded and impulsive. So once per game,

(54:30):
I have to roll if I'm being made to wait,
and if I fail, then I just run into the situation. Uh.
And then I usually just end up role playing it
because I forget or or like to remember certain things
other than very basic information. I have to roll or
spend a willpower, and thankfully the DM doesn't make me

(54:52):
hold to any of those things super hard and fast
because it would just be unbearable.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
But be cautious, I mean, that's the whole, that's the
real I think the secret to being a great games
master is knowing when to rely on the rules and
when to set them aside. And it should all be
in service of the story you're telling collectively, Like, if
the rules are going to help you tell that story,

(55:17):
then there's nothing wrong with leaning hard on those rules
to help, you know, take take on some of the work.
That's what they're there for. But if the rules are
going to prevent the story from you know, proceeding to
any good degree, then it's okay to set them aside.
Like I think about things like, you know, if if

(55:37):
you come up to a door, like the question of
do you have the door be locked or not? And
if the door is locked, is there a fun thing
that the players can do in order to either unlock
the door or to find a way to get the
door open, And if there's not a fun thing for
them to do, then maybe that door doesn't need to
be locked.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really it's it's really good
to to play with people who are flexible and not yeah,
rule sticklers.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
It's one of the reasons why it's actually good to
watch or listen to actual playthroughs where you've got someone
who's a very good game master running the game, because
if you pay attention to what that person is doing,
like on a technical level, then you can start to

(56:29):
pick up on good habits to incorporate in your own games.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I'm gonna yeah, yeah. It's also why I like like
Monster of the Week, because everything is a fail up
and it encourages that kind of behavior. I'm going to
bring this back to board games as as we kind
of close this out. Since we're talking about how we're
totally fine with house rules and flubbing for RPGs, how
do you feel about house rules and flubbing for board

(56:55):
games to make them more enjoyable? You know, Monopoly house.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Rules or well, I would say that house rules are
the only thing that can make a game of Monopoly
even remotely entertaining. Monopoly is a terrible board game. You
should never play it. It's a perversion of what the
game was originally created to be, because the person who
created the game was really trying to make a game

(57:21):
that would illustrate how terrible capitalism is, and instead it's
sort of become a celebration of capitalism. It's like the
opposite of what the intent was. But I do think
like I think house rules, as long as everyone is
aware of them and agrees to them ahead of time,
I have no problem with them. I mean, like the
game I play, not that I've played it recently, but

(57:44):
the game that I would only play with house rules
was uno right, Like the rules about things like with
una where you can continue to stack for draw cards,
Like if I play draw to on someone and they
have a draw to card, they can stack. It's now

(58:05):
become four and it goes to the next player, and
so on and so forth. But those can get out
of hand too. Have you ever heard of the house
rule that if you play a seven you have to
swap hands with somebody else, or if you play a
zero then everybody has to hand their cards to the
person that's on there, you know, in the direction of play.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
I haven't, but I love it.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
It is chaos chaos.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Oh, there are two more board games I want to
mention that are lesser known but really really fun, okay
for people out there. One are the Penny Arcade board games. Again,
it's a kind of a deck building game. It's not cooperative,
but it's it's ridiculous. It is a little bit It
can be a little bit saucy because it is Penny Arcade.
It can be a lot saucy because it's Penny Arcade,

(58:54):
but it's it's a well built game if you like
puns and you like deck building games. The other is Encore.
I feel like you've got to be familiar with on
Core Jonathan.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
The name sounds familiar, but I can't conjure up any
thoughts about it. Can you give a quick description?

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yes, it is a board game where you have two
teams and you Each team has a marker and they
move it through the board and you'll land on you'll
rollodize and you'll move that many spots and you'll land
on a color and the color could be like team
against team, or individual versus individual, or or one person

(59:42):
against a team. And then you also get a word
or a phrase and you go back and forth. Each
team has a minute back and forth, and it usually
doesn't take that long. It's probably less than a minute.
But let's say the word is moon, so team one
has to sing or say it's flexible seven consecutive words
in a song that have or a song lyric that

(01:00:06):
has the word moon in it. So blue moon, I
saw Hugh standing a loan. Yeah, that's It can get
tricky with syllables, but and then the next person will
the other team will go, I see a bad moon rising,
blah blah blah blah blah. And you go back and
forth until a team can't get a song within the
time limit and then the other person gets the point

(01:00:29):
and moves on. It's a lot of fun because there's
no limit of to what you can do musicals. You
can do heavy metal, you can do punk, you can
do stuck ska, you can do Bible songs, you can
do children's songs. You can pick a song that says
the same word over and over and over and over
and over and over and over again, like blue, I'm blue,

(01:00:51):
dabadi daba yeah, yeah, And it's just so you know,
and you know you're not supposed to but a lot
of times people will try to like convince you that
a song lyric is a song lyric, and sometimes you
don't know, and so it's also trying to catch the
people who are either genuinely incorrect or trying to pull

(01:01:12):
a fast one over on you. And it's a lot
of fun. And like one team might be like, ooh,
I have a song for this, and they'll try to
whisper to it, and the other team will be like, oh,
I heard you, and then they'll take it. So it's
it's surprisingly like fast paced and energetic and fun. And
you don't have to be super great at lyrics because
most of the time. It's team against team, and your

(01:01:33):
teammates can help you, so it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
That's great. You know, I haven't. I actually have never
played that, but it sounds like it would be a
blast I would love to get. I mean, we have
Ariel and I have so many common friends who are
all or rather I should say friends in common. They're
not common people, but we have a lot of friends
in common who are like musical theater geeks, and they

(01:01:57):
just love like music in general, not just musical theater,
but music in general. That I think, like, I just
think about the groups that we would do karaoke with, Like,
that's the same group that would have a lot of
fun with this kind of game.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Yeah, we should. We should do that. We should get
people together and play it. I've gotta I've got a
copy of it. We should figure out a time to
do that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yeah, I would love that. All right, Well, I feel
like that was a great discussion about some games. I mean, obviously,
like we're barely scratching the surface. We're just talking about
some stuff that's sort of top of mind. But games
are one of those things where I think it's great.
It brings people together, Like if you invite me, then
make sure it's a cooperative game so that way you
don't have to deal with jerk face Jonathan. Uh and uh, Yeah,

(01:02:40):
I love playing them. It's probably why I play a
lot of computer games, honestly, because the computer doesn't care
if I get mad at it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Yeah. Yeah, so I get that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Yeah, I will say. I meant to mention this too
about Balder's Gate. I haven't done it yet, but I
can easily see myself falling into the trap of saving
before every conversation in case there's a skilled check so
that if I fail it, I can go back, reload
and try it again. I haven't done that. I've actually
lived with the failures, and y'all, my character's pretty darn

(01:03:16):
skilled and those dice rolls have not been going my way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
So it's a good note because I might pick up
Balder's Gate, and so I'm glad to know about that pitfall.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah, you can save like at any time. So if
you want to save before every conversation or attempt at
doing something you, I mean, it'll take up they'll make
your game session last five times as long. But you
can do that if you really want to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
Yeah, Well, if that's something you'd like to do, or
you have games and video games that you'd like to
share with us. I know you have in the past,
but you can always do so again, Jonathan, How can
they reach out to you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Well, you're gonna have to go on a long walk
in the world. So if you don't live near the woods,
you're gonna have to take a drive out to someplace
that's got some decent woods in it, enough so that
you know you're not gonna see roads and houses and
that kind of stuff. You're gonna go out there, gonna
walk for probably fifteen twenty minutes, and you'll come across
the clearing. It's got an old, beat up, faded tent,

(01:04:19):
like a carnival tent. Not a huge one, a medium
sized one. You go in there, I'm gonna see a
table gets set up. On that table, there's gonna be
a wooden cup and a pair of dice made out
of some material that you know, you could swear it
could be bone, You're not entirely sure. And there'll be

(01:04:39):
nothing else in there except an empty chair on the
other side of the table. So you sit down on
your side, put those dice in the cup, give it
a roll, something terrible will happen, But then you can
ask me your question and I'll be glad to give
you an answer.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
If you don't want to trust the dice God want
terrible things to happen after the last few years. You
can also reach out to us on social media on Facebook, Instagram, threads,
and discord. We are Large neurdrounk colighter on x we
are ellenc.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Podcast that's called Twitter, y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Yeah, still no, still no Blue Sky account, but I'm waiting,
just waiting, and yeah, until next time I have been Aeriel.
I still have so many customized dice for my wedding
cast in.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
And I am Jonathan. Do not pass go, do not
collect two hundred dollars. Strickland The Large Nerdron Collider was
created by Aeriel Caston and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted,
published again. Curse That by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin

(01:06:00):
McLeod of incomptech dot com