Capybaras Don't Care, And Neither Should Your Wallet When looking at Dnd, MTG and Rodents of an Unusual Size

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Testing, testing.
This is Richard Arthur JohnKeebus.
I reporting in for Deep Spaceand Dragons.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And this is the captain of the ship going
through Deep Space with thedragons Carl.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Nice.
I love the joke that it's likeI have four names and you have
one.
I considered when I was likeupdating our website portfolio,
to go Carl anonymous as yourname.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
No, I mean I know I don't, uh, we don't try to get
political or or social, socialkind of stuff like that.
But I mean I've read a book andit's called stuff White people
like.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've referenced this.
I think we have went through anepisode on this actually.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, uh, one of the things in this book is uh,
having multiple middle namesyeah so I mean, I'm not, I'm not
.
I'll leave it up to ouraudience to to assume what our
ethnic identities are.
Uh, given our geolocation, thatthey may or may not have
discovered.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Uh, and various pictures that are easy to find
of of a certain uh, raj kivassee, that's kind of funny
because, like for like brandingand tagging, I get the
occasional uber for raj and justkind of roll with it.
I don't hate it and like it wasa go-to at the law firm I
interned at which is funny, raj,and I'm like I don't hate it

(01:23):
and it was a side effect of mychoices.
I don't really like my acronymKDAP oh, you've given them so
much data now.
Oh, that was a mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm just saying Raj, at least is a word, but KDAP no
one's ever gonna rajivus is likean interesting way that plays
out.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm like I don't actually hate that.
I think I like that better thanmy actual last name.
My last name is a typo and Ihaven't figured out like a
solution, like I think I need tolike put an accent or something
or like an umlaut, like there'ssome kind of punctuation thing
I can do to fix this right,because a lot of people will say
kevis to the point where when Iwas filing my grad work, it had

(02:09):
me like do an audio recordingof the pronunciation.
My name, I'm like key vas,k-e-y-v-a-s.
Yes, you can do this, I believein you.
I'm like they're gonna get itwrong.
I'm gonna get raj kevis.
It'll hurt.
I'm going to get Raj Kevis.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
It'll hurt.
That's a pretty good segue towhat's New With you, what's New
With Me?
Okay, all right, so super minimovie review.
I'm giving you exactly oneminute and I have a timer going.
My fiance and I went and sawthe live-action Lilo and Stitch.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
That could be this entire episode.
I have so many thoughts on that, oh no.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, my super mini review, keep it under a minute.
Lilo and Stitch the originaldidn't have very much magic or
crazy technology, so it wasalready somewhat more grounded
than the other animated moviesthat's ironic transition.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
It transitioned into a more grounded and emotional,
heartfelt movie as live actionand I ended up liking it more
than the original so my like 30seconds, because good flash pick
is there's one thing to do nearthe ending of it which shows
like an anemic shift in theentire somology of the movie.
That ruined it for me, becauseit was like they basically

(03:35):
entrust her to the state at theend, instead of the idea that
you would give up your collegeto take care of your family for
years.
And it's like a weird societalshift to be like, no, her older
sister shouldn't give up herdreams to take care of your
family for years.
And it's like a weird societalshift to be like, no, her older
sister shouldn't give up herdreams to take care of her
sister.
I'm like that's an interestingmoral, but was not the moral
presented originally.
And it's like kind of like aweird societal shift in a way,

(03:58):
to be like, oh, if my brotherdidn't go to college to take
care of me, which is kind ofwhat happened.
That's like people sacrificingto like their personal thing for
the value of family.
Now it's like, no, no, this canbe the state's problem and she
should go off and live her lifebecause she shouldn't be
beholden to family.
And I'm like I don't know theviews on family and culture I
could, like I said, I could do afull two hours on just that

(04:20):
shift.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
But stitch is also my favorite disney princess uh, my
fiance's review of of lulu andstitch live action was seven out
of ten.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Uh, there wasn't enough, elvis correct, like
every part of that's correct.
It's one of those things whereit's like the movie gained
nothing for being in live action.
But here's my hot take assomeone who went through the
entire Disney original Stitchshow and the unrelated Stitch
anime.
Stitch is a concept ofliterally an alien, murdering
bioweapon, forearm, bioweapon,dual gun wielder who crash lands

(04:59):
in a relatively chill place.
It's basically the plot of FullMetal Panic, but with Stitch.
Yeah, okay, chill place.
It's basically the plot of fullmetal panic, but with stitch.
Okay, because it's like he'shyper intelligent, but it's also
a doofus.
And there's just there ismoments in the original I love
so much where it's like what doyou mean?
You had to change the heart,had to change the heart, don't
know what to tell you.
All right, you're free to go.

(05:20):
You're free to go.
So, yeah, you did keep itwithin the time limit, good job.
We will not dwell on stitch toomuch, uh, but does beg the
question of why disney nevermade a smash bros maybe they

(05:41):
will, who knows?
I think it's too late now,although I have a full unrelated
rant about how fighting gamesare good based on their
one-player mode, but no one'sfigured that out yet, because
it's the one-player mode thattrains people to play the
two-player, and a fighting gameof a good one-player mode will
do better than a fighting gameof a good two-player mode, which
is deeply ironic.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Okay, so then I have a second mini-movie review.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
What.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I wouldn't give you less time.
Go, this one will be under aminute as well.
My fiance and I have beenre-watching all of the Final
Destination movies.
The one we most recentlyre-watched was number three, and
I was worried that it was goingto start to go towards being
campy, because I've never seenit before and because that's
just the way those genre goeswhile the 2006 CGI they used

(06:39):
very sparingly, but it was alittle bit distracting because
it's so bad.
I found that the movie tookitself very seriously.
It was a little bit distractingbecause it's so bad.
I found that the movie tookitself very seriously but didn't
really feel like it felt likesomeone else was trying to cash
in on the idea rather thancontinuing the story.
So overall decent movie, but itjust felt disjointed from the

(07:02):
other two.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
So it's like I think I've said it before it's just so
hard to land the third movie ina trilogy.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Hmm, Well, I mean they made references to the
other two movies, but one of thethings that held it back from
feeling like it was part of thesame story was no recurring
characters.
One of the things that held itback from feeling like it was
part of the same story was norecurring characters.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
So it's interesting for something like Final
Destination because it's like Idon't think it needs recurring
characters conceptually.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
It doesn't, but that really helped tie the first two
together.
And there's this mortician thathe seems to have some knowledge
about death and what's actuallygoing on, and he appeared in
the first two movies to kind ofhelp explain the exposition and

(08:01):
whatnot, and he just wasn't inthe third movie.
And so then they had to add adifferent element to help with
the exposition and whatnot, andhe just wasn't in the third
movie.
And so then they had to add adifferent element to help with
the exposition, which againpushed it further away from
feeling like it was a genuinecontinuation of the story.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Okay, so that's fair.
It's one of those things whereit's like despite taking a full,
like six months course inhorror.
It's one of those things whereit's like despite taking a full,
like six months course inhorror, it's like I never really
try and think of it as morethan like I find that's a genre
that just works best tostandalone movies.
Also, we never actuallymentioned ghostbusters in our

(08:37):
reboot quill episode and that'sbeen drilling in the back of my
brain for a while because I didit twice.
That is rice like I think theyreboot quilled it three times.
But anywho, I mentioned thatbecause, I'm sure destination
it's like was it a reboot quillthen?

Speaker 2 (08:59):
uh, no, it was very like.
Like I said, they did referencethe other movie, they just
didn't bring back any othercharacters and the exposition
and style and tone were all justslightly different, which just
made it feel like someone wasjust either cashing in on the
idea or they had a similar ideaand the studio wouldn't green

(09:20):
light it unless it was part of afranchise yeah, I could see
that.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's rough, the idea where it's like, yeah, your
movie's good, but I think it'dbe better as a star wars
miniseries yeah, yeah, you knowthat's like that's the studio
interference, I think I don'tknow if there's any history
there, but I would love to know,like the backstory, of how many
movies are like scripts forunrelated movies that get

(09:47):
established IP slapped on it.
Like I'm like you, gotta wonderif something like Air Bud 6
Super Pups had anything to dowith Air Bud.
Just like, hey, I got an ideafor this movie.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Okay, and then the last thing that's new with me is
actually I don't know ifethical question is the right
phrase.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Okay, this is already getting spicy.
You have my attention.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
So I work at a redacted pizza place.
I mean, I'm sure by now I haveexposed where I work and whatnot
.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, like honestly, if they split us like 200 bucks.
We'd shout them out as asponsor every episode, and by us
I mean me specifically, becauseI want a new board game, but
that's unrelated.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
But anyways, saskatchewan and I mean all of
Canada, I mean all over theworld actually, really, but
there seems to be a significantnumber of wildfires throughout
Canada.
I mean all over the worldactually, really, but there
seems to be a significant numberof wildfires throughout Canada,
and Saskatchewan has alreadyhad several hundred this year
alone.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Climate change.
Oh sorry, that was weird.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
But unfortunately sometimes people have to
evacuate and I guess I don'tknow for sure if Red Cross has
an actual government contract.
Well before you ask me a reallyspecific ethical question.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
I want to go on the record to know that if Saskatoon
burned down and I knew thatthere was pre-made pizzas you
were about to put in the oven, Iwould stand on people's charred
ashes to get a free pizza.
So my ethics may not be trusted, but please continue.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
But so so.
Red Cross is the organizationthat helps find accommodations
for evacuees and provides foodand whatnot.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, to my knowledge , Red Cross is just good.
So let's see where you're goingwith this yeah, red Cross is
just good.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
They let's see where you're going with this.
Yeah, red Cross is just good.
They do lots of good in theworld.
But they call my workplace andthey're like yeah, we had a
bunch of evacuees come to thishotel and they came in last
night and we want to serve themlunch.
Do you have the capacity tomake 60 large pizzas like six

(12:07):
zero and get that deliveredwithin an hour and a half?

Speaker 1 (12:13):
I'd say, if we went across a couple of stores,
probably, actually you probablycould do it.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
We did it.
I went back, checked to makesure we had dough, got the dough
guys to make extra dough, andthen we just, we just powered
through it and it might havebeen like an hour and 35 minutes
, but we go and we successfullydeliver these pizzas to the
evacuees.
So that part is a success storyfor sure.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
But on the logistical end it was a difficult hour and
a half trying to deal withother orders while trying to
make this big order, make sureeverything gets out there on
time and whatnot.
And they come in and they payand we gave them a really good
deal because it's for evacueesand we don't want to be generous
, but we obviously can't justgive away 60 large pizzas

(13:03):
without any prior authorizationor notice.
Yeah, I agree, it's a good deal, yeah.
And then they come in and theypay and they say that they can't
tip the driver because it's acorporate car.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
That's fair.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Well, that's kind of my ethical question is like the
I want to be a part of doinggood for these evacuees.
That's kind of my ethicalquestion is like the I want to
be a part of doing good forthese evacuees.
I don't want to disparage RedCross, but like they put us in a
rather difficult situation andthey were unable to express

(13:41):
appreciation for the.
You're not going to like myanswer, even like a dollar.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
So I'm going to put this in very simple terms.
You're not going to like myanswer to that, even like a
dollar, so I'm going to put thisin very simple terms.
You're sitting down.
Are you prepared for this,mm-hmm, why wouldn't you then
take 40 bucks out of the tilland give it to the driver for
their?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
hard work we did Well , not 40 bucks.
I gave him an extra 10 bucks.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
But the reason I say that is like so for charities,
right, red cross is built ongovernment-based funding, which
means every penny they spendneeds to be accounted for on a
receipt, which means you canreceipt food orders from charity
.
You can't receipt tips.
They literally couldn't withtheir funding, because what's to

(14:24):
stop you from giving your buddythat charity money for tipping
you a pizza and giving them alarge tip so they could not do
it?
That's just how charity fundingworks.
Ironically, a photo of thereceipt.

(14:46):
But we are not allowed to paytips with the club budget
because we then couldn't proveit was being used for the club.
Ah, yeah, okay, so I'm sayingthat yeah, if you're, the thing
I was going to got you on is atip based economy is bullshit
and everyone should just paytheir drivers and pay their
staff.
And the idea of tips wasliterally used as a racial

(15:09):
control method so people couldgive more money to white servers
in the states and the rest ofthe world laughs in our tip
based culture because it's justinsane for large, profitable
corporations to not pay livingwages to their full-time staff
but expect them to act likestaff.
So it's like.
I fundamentally disagree withtip-based jobs being a thing and

(15:31):
Uber shouldn't exist, likelegally speaking.
I don't even know how you gotthe ability to be like, hey, we
can just undercut drivers by notactually having any kind of
quality control on our service.
I have a full other rant aboutAirbnbs and how you skirt around
housing codes and those justshouldn't have been legal in the
first place because you shouldhave had to have every Airbnb

(15:53):
and be inspected by your city.
But ethically, speaking likeyeah, they couldn't.
That's the actual fact of thematter.
So it's not that they didn'twant to.
They literally couldn't.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, okay, the Red Cross itself couldn't, and I
suppose it is somewhat unfair toexpect the individual to have
any capacity to tip.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Odds are the individual was not being paid
above minimum wage, if they werebeing paid at all.
So it's like the person pickingup your pizza makes less money
than your delivery driver.
So that's my ethical thing.
It's like should they havegiven a tip to the driver?
No one should give a tip toeveryone.
We should just stop now theidea that you can privatize and

(16:43):
make it that the rich get tochoose how much service workers
are worth on an interaction byinteraction basis.
Just think about that for asecond.
That this red cross employeegot framed, even for a second,
as someone who is deliveringpizzas to displaced people could
be ethically dubious becausethey didn't give the delivery
driver extra funds for workinghard.
And you think where the onus onthat should actually be.

(17:05):
And you did the right thinghere.
I was so prepared to call youout and be like hey, you reward
the delivery driver for workinghard because you guys are doing
the right thing and probably canget a tax deduction on the
giveaway.
There's a very good chance youcan take that stub and be like
hey, I gave this discount tothem, so as a tax deduction I'm
going to deduct the discount Igave to the red cross because it

(17:27):
was charity and then end upexactly where you were before.
So that's my libertarian rant ofthe day, slash socialist rant
of the day depending, because,ironically, those opposite
philosophies both agree thattips shouldn't exist, because

(17:48):
hyper capitalism is you pay thelabor for the work and hyper
socialism is people shouldn'thave to.
You know, basic survival, food,shelter should be a human right
, and both these things havereached the conclusion that some
asshole profits if you haveprivate citizens just pay
premium for the same productbased on their individual
emotional whims by making it aguilt trip.

(18:09):
Also, we love to talk aboutequality in society and people
get better tips if they'rephysically more attractive and
if they're disfigured,differently abled or
disadvantaged, they'll just getless money working the same job.
But it is somehow a legalsystem.
I hate tips.

(18:29):
Can you tell?
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
I just Then.
I also.
It's like, aside from thevirtual signaling, I suppose you
might call it even there's notmuch of an incentive for us to
help Red Cross out in thatsituation again where they put
us in like we gave them a reallygood deal.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
We actually managed to do 60 pizzas, you saved live.
Like, the incentive is prettysolid.
Is these people in an emergencysituation got food and your
reputation gets improved?
Like, also, you should sleepbetter at night.

(19:16):
Like there, you could just do agood thing.
You're allowed to do that.
You're allowed to do that, fairenough.
Also, well, I mean a hot taketoo.
An even hotter take.
If more was done to fightclimate change in the first
place, when scientists allagreed on this unilaterally 60
years ago, then you wouldn'thave to make panic pizza for

(19:36):
people displaced by fires likethis should be.
Like oh, this is a rarecircumstance that happens on an
odd occasion once in 10 years.
I will just suck it up andsuffer slightly for the good of
humanity.
And I don't think that givingyour driver a tip would really

(19:57):
have changed the mild, slash,severe inconvenience that that
many ores at once is, although,to look at it, incentive-wise
too, and this is going to soundkind of sassy about it.
So when you do your initialbusiness transaction with a
potential business partner, yougive them an exceptional deal.
Like my ghost rating rates arelower than they normally be

(20:19):
right now Because thatpositivity and word of mouth
gets you more deals.
I'm going to be mean here 100guaranteed pizza sales at a
discount is still more incomethan 20 unguaranteed sales Fair.
So unless you gave them such adiscount that by not selling 100
pizzas you would have made,unless it inconvenienced your

(20:42):
sales to the point where youactually made less money than
you normally would have takingthat deal, the incentive is the
bulk pricing.
The idea that a person couldcall you up and order 100 pizzas
is good because you make moneyon those 100 pizzas and I feel,
I have faith that you and yourboss did the math here to make

(21:03):
sure that those hundred pizzasdidn't cost you more money than
it took to make them in stafflabor and expenses.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
And in fact you had an above average profitable day
as a result.
My boss doesn't even know aboutthat 60 pizza order.
You know he listens to ourpodcast, right he might?
I mean his nickname is AngryBird, so we'll see how mad he is
tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Because, yeah, that's my argument is, what happens is
if they order you 60 pizzasevery week, that's 60 pizzas
guaranteed sales and you stillmake money.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
So that's your incentive.
I just hope that they can bemore organized so that it's less
of an inconvenience foreveryone.
Yeah, I'm sorry that they gotinconvenienced by that fire, so
that it's less of aninconvenience for everyone.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
I'm sorry that they got inconvenienced by that fire.
No, no, no.
I suspect that in my city whichI probably already name-dropped
, but it's redacted now becauseI said so yeah, hobbiton I
suspect that in the city ofHobbiton we are the only store
that would have been able tosend out 60 pizzas within an
hour and a half.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Well, I know that's not true because I also lived in
Hobbiton and worked at a storethat could have sent out 60
pizzas in an hour.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
And you would have had enough dough for the day.
Oh, absolutely we did schoollunches.
Oh, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, so check your privilege.
Punk All right All right, allright, it's so rare for me to
like specifically be likeactually you're wrong because
I've done it before.
That doesn't happen often.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
I do wonder how many places would have, or perhaps
even did turn them down becausethey just couldn't handle that
volume.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
though None of them, I think, because, like working
in food service with yourmargins so short, like I was
kind of saying earlier, mostdiscounts are calculated that
the discount is to offset thepotential loss of business
because you are slammed at fullcapacity but you'll still get
money, like Right.
The idea is that, oh, you made60 sales, depending when they

(23:01):
made that call.
It's not like you turned down60 sales at full price to get 60
sales at reduced.
You still managed to handleyour normal workload.
So I don't think any pizzeriawouldn't try, because that's at
some places that's like betweenthe hours of noon and four, more
sales than you would have gotall day.

(23:22):
That's true.
So, like, from an ethics pointof view, yes, help out the red
cross.
From an unethics point of view,bulk orders are awesome because
once you actually get themomentum going and you're just
doing the same thing a hundredtimes, those are the best orders
.
What sucks is the I want sauceon half feta, on the other half

(23:45):
double toasted crust and thenfold it into a calzone and put
frosting on.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Like, the worst orders are the ones where they
order, like you know, 40 smallpizzas and they're all different
and they have all these specialthings, and then they want you
to like label every single boxwith a name.
Yep.
It's like like, oh, that's sucha hassle, yeah so, but again it
does generate that word ofmouth.
That is, you know, we areactually capable of taking on

(24:14):
that volume and those extraspecial requests yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
So my rationale when I was a kitchen manager and I
got an order like that wouldhave been hey guys, we've got a
big one coming up and then wemake a bunch of these pizzas
Someone fucks up to Massimilar.
I give everyone a free pizzafor lunch.
I tell my boss.
Hey, I got 60 pizzas wentthrough.
Pretty sick, huh.
So I'm going to stay late andmake more dough.
I'd be like, alright, sweet.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
I did have to make more dough, but I did not have
to stay late, luckily, nice.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
But yeah, TLDR on that one is.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Richard hates tips.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
I really, really do.
There was no ethical quandary,None whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
It was just a business transaction.
Let's shift it a bit.
Let's say I was calling and Iwas letting pipe industry the
specialist in putting lead inpipes and I called you and I
needed 60 pizzas for a corporatedinner because we had to stay
late to add more lead into thenew pipe system.
Would you have turned down my60 pizza order because we are

(25:19):
the lead pipe company?
No, and our discount would havebeen close.
You probably still would belike hey, can I get a bit of a
discount in there because I'mordering 60 pizzas at once oh no
, I, like I said, I gave them areally good deal.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
I, I, I think we probably sold them pretty.
I don't know if it was at cost,but it definitely.
Uh, we gave them a really gooddeal.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Oh man, I put like 20 minutes bitching about tips and
like I can't stress enough.
It's not about whether or not Ithink entry level workers
should get paid more money.
It's that they should be paidconsistent money and they
shouldn't be rolling dice to paytheir rent.
And tips are not being used toenrich employees.
They're being used to keep thembelow the poverty line.

(26:07):
We literally have laws in placethat let you pay people below
minimum wage if they make tips,and if they don't make enough in
tips, they get boasted up tominimum wage.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Is that a Canadian law?

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh, it was in Alberta , for sure, and Denny's is a
server.
They give you a minimum.
You go below minimum wage, butif your tips don't make it to
minimum wage, they have to payyou the difference, right?
Yeah, that was specifically.
I'm name dropping them.
This was a denny's I had aninterview for in calgary,
alberta, specifically wasexplaining that you get below

(26:41):
minimum wage, but your tips willget you above it most nights.
Hmm, I'm going to call them out.
Come at me, denny's.
You can't sue me.
I was in the room.
I didn't sign an agreement.
Maybe they don't do it anymore.
If so, kudos, I'll put thatdisclaimer Also.
We're a comedy podcast and noone should be suing us or taking
us too seriously.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Well, I mean you almost working at denny's sounds
like old news.
We should.
We should hear some new newsfrom from you there, richard so
I hate tips.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
The worst part is I still have to give them right,
like I can't be the only personwho doesn't tip to better
society, and that's the problem,right, like I can't just not
give tips.
So on Thursday, me and some ofmy classmates now graduated, but
we have our actual ceremonynext week.
Decide to do a meetup Becausethe GTA is huge.

(27:34):
The most convenient location tomeet up was High Park in
downtown Toronto.
Have you been to High Park?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Okay, sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know
specifically that I've beenthere.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
So we go to High Park , which is it's a park and they
have like a foresty, farm-stylefree zoo area in it.
It's like a nice park A freezoo.
Yeah, you just, they're justanimals, you just walk by and
see them.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Oh, like a petting zoo or like exotic animals like
monkeys and stuff.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
So Carl guess like exotic animals, like monkeys and
stuff.
So carl guess my three favoriteanimals.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Uh, I want to see how close you get first well, I
feel like fox has got to be onthe list not top three, but
pretty close, like that big topfive okay, okay, um capo bears
so perfect.
We can stop the game rightthere.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
So it's near my birthday and we're in Hyde Park
doing this meetup, right, andone of my friends goes hey want
to check out the zoo, and I'mlike what?
There's just a free zoo here.
That's crazy.
Much like you yourself had thatreaction.
And there's freaking Capybaras.
You see, it wasn't like it wasa birthday surprise or an

(28:47):
elaborate thing.
Our meetup just happened tofall around that time.
We went from brunch from areally decent restaurant like
actually a really good brunchplace.
I was shocked because usuallytouristy type places like so
this brunch place was in thecenter of this park, right and I
was concerned.
It'd be like the buffet in thecenter of wonderland, where it'd
just be terrible.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
But it's there, so might as well buffet in the
center of wonderland, where it'djust be terrible but it's there
, so might as well.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
so my standards are on the floor, so I order my like
omelet and toast and things.
I'm like this is really good.
I wasn't expecting this to begood, I thought this would be
novel.
So, like I eat my breakfast, wedo like like a couple photos,
we chat, we cake ketchup, welike want to go for a walk for
the zoo and I'm just like I'vebeen on an ascending Capybara
memes trend since the Capybarashowed up in World Trigger for

(29:32):
the first time.
Like I am super pro Capybara.
And I'm just like oh my God, Formy birthday, I was given the
privilege of watching thesecapybara eat, and I did not
expect this and it wasn'tintentional.
I'm just having the best day.
So like there's some goats andsheeps and like buffalo, buffalo

(29:54):
, buffalo-looking things.
That is the plural of buffalo,yeah, the buffalo, buffalo
buffalo buffalo, but it wasprobably actually a bison or a
fuzzy sheep or something.
It was not a capybara item.
So like we go through, we walkthrough, we go through the kids
play area, we have our day.
I a friend of mine gives me alift back and it was like such a

(30:18):
treat on a random thursday togo to the park, hang out with
some friends.
I don't see that often and seecopybaras, so that's like sure I
could talk about my writingendeavors and my research
project and things where it'slike, okay, it's kind of funny
to think about.
So I'm negative one weekgraduated with my degree and I

(30:40):
guess I'm a professional writerbecause my income's completely
being driven from my writing,researching, researching and
editing skills right now.
So that's kind of wild.
It's something like 1% ofwriters make a living on their
writing.
I'm like, huh, I guess I win.
So like I get my final gradesand I got honors, but I didn't
get high honors and I'm beingkind of salty about it.

(31:02):
One of my friends got highergrades and I'm like, yeah, but I
got a writing job, so I guess Iwin.
Like I don't really know ifthere's a better thing than, hey
, I got high honors in thiscreative writing program, like I
got a book deal.
I think I just win.
Like I think I won, I think so.

(31:23):
Like it's like oh yeah, I wentto school to be a paleontologist
and now I'm getting paid to goon a dig.
That's just a win.
And, honestly, in most fieldsit doesn't happen that often
Most people end up adjacent towhat they went to school for.
Like if you went to school as amusic teacher, you'd probably
end up being a teacher, or likefaculty somewhere.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
That is faculty, true , yeah, I mean you did the
program that I was in, uh, didhave a minor in a secondary
teaching area because, uh, thenyou're more hireable and you
would just end up also teachingthe other subject.
I wanted mine to be chemistry,uh, but I wasn't quick enough to
sign up for the chemistrycourses, so I ended up having to

(32:06):
take English, but then mydegree didn't go through.
I didn't follow through, sothat's.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
I mean to be fair, you did better than my first
attempt at school where myschool went bankrupt allegedly.
Like to be fair, I'm my secondtry at school, so like I haven't
actually beat you yet, uh.
But yeah, like it's kind offunny because a lot of people
like I gotta have school and I'mrelaxing like nope, gotta have

(32:39):
school, send out 100 jobapplications that day, yeah, but
yeah, so that's also I have.
That deadly thing of my work isalmost all remote, asynchronous
work, which means like I evensaid this when I had like an
interview with a client recentlywhere I'm like I want to get
ahead of this.
And there's a version of myselfwhere I get more material done

(33:00):
wednesday, thursday.
But there's also an equallylikely version of reality where
an hour before a meeting, yousee two files appear in the
minbox.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I like the brutal honesty.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
I even tell people in interviews when they give the
what's your Weakness?
I'm like I have ADHD, whichmeans when I focus and lock in,
I produce a truly insane amountof work.
I don't really get to choosewhen that is.
It's more like it comes in awindow, like you'll get it
before your deadline, but Icannot guarantee when you'll get
it before your deadline.
I'm like there's a very realchance I work late one day and

(33:34):
then slack the next day tobalance off the hours.
Never give you a timesheet andyou just magically receive the
thing you wanted.
I don't control these things.
It's the wills of the universe.
So I guess that's like the bignew ones with me.
Is that like grad stuff comingup?
But Capybara, like I can'tstress enough.

(33:56):
I saw Capybaras and there'sjust not a thing on my to-do
list this year.
They're not an edible you justexpect to see next to the goats.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah, and I think I'm a little bit surprised.
There are definitely otherlarge parks that have zoos in
them, but I didn't realize therewould be any free zoos.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Right Like the version of wanting to go look at
the capybaras was just not athing that occurred to me could
be possible.
It was truly magical.
It looked at me and didn't care, because copy Baras don't give
a fuck.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
That's our one F-bomb for the episode.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Worth it?
Totally worth it.
Oh, and I guess I've beenmaking hard eyes at the new
Daggerheart game.
So let's go into this week'stopic of card games and TTRPGs.
We're going to kind of do likesort of a weird what's new with
you to see how this kind offreeforms.
So I've been chatting with oneof my friends, friend of the
podcast who's like reallyinvested in the Magic the

(34:55):
Gathering Final Fantasycrossover set.
Okay, several of his friendsare in like GPs right now, one
of them, I think, like top aidedat a big event.
So I've been getting likerandom.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
I haven't been, I'm not.
I guess I'm not invested in theFinal Fantasy set because I'm
annoyed about the licensingissues causing the packs to be
more expensive and also nottransferring digitally, because
naturally Square Enix, enix,nintendo, whatever wouldn't give
digital licensing rights.
So there's the same card butit's actually a unique card if

(35:30):
you're playing digitally yeah,there's a lot of things it's
like.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
So when they decide to be super smash cards instead
and I was having a chat with myfriend of mine about it where
it's like recent magic sets thathaven't been their universes
beyond, they've been likepushing the scope of what magic
is for the last few yearsbecause they had like cyberpunk
kamigawa, like recent magic setsthat haven't been their
universe beyond.
They've been like pushing thescope of what magic is for the
last few years because they hadlike cyberpunk, kamigawa, their
humblewood, mice and med redwallone, their streets of new

(35:57):
cabara, gangster hippopotamus,and it's like they've been
trying to like just one thingthat I've heard people say about
a lot of the newer sets arethey call them hat sets.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
So there was the detective set, where they put on
detective caps.
So there literally is a cardcalled detective cap that equips
two detectives for less thanother creatures and then, like
the Outlaws of Thunder Junction,they just put a cowboy hat on
all the characters.
The Aether Drift set they justput helmets on all the

(36:36):
characters.
That's so funny, that's soliteral so a lot of these sets
the bloom borough, which is thekind of red wall set people
really liked because it had alot of that classical magic, the
gathering flavor, so they don'tconsider that one to be a hat
set specifically.
But any of the non-universalsbeyond, non-universals beyond

(37:00):
sets have been decried becauseit's not.
People don't feel like it'smagic because they're trying to
expand their scope but they'renot actually putting effort into
creating the setting.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
So that's kind of my conspiracy theory, right?
Is they're trying to flood itwith a bunch of cards that would
make sense to be played inthese Universe Beyond sets that
aren't from them.
So it's like they do CyberpunkKampunk kamigawa, right?
This is a straight conspiracytheory.
So they do cyberpunk kamigawa,right, and they release it with
warhammer, and they release itwith doctor who, and then

(37:35):
suddenly it's not so insane.
So like let's take.
Let's take cowboy set and let'stake gangster set right.
So in file fantasy we got acharacter riding a motorbike
with a greatsword and the set'sup to set right.
So in Final Fantasy we got acharacter riding a motor bike
with a greatsword and the set'sup to that we put in different
motorbikes, differentgreatswords, different summons.
So it's like, okay, we primepeople on sagas, we prime people

(37:56):
on animal races, we primepeople that we can have Midgar
make sense when paired withthese non-universe beyond cards.
And I have this whole rantabout how the sets feel flaky
because they're not blocks,they're just sets, so you don't
actually give people a year tosit with them.
You don't give out a book, so 1in 10,000 players will read the

(38:18):
book and then tell the lore toother players at tournaments
until it diffuses through theatmosphere.
There was a time where whereit's like, okay, ravnica is a
year straight of just ravnica.
We're going to passively andactively absorb what these
characters are and what's goingon right when you go through,
this week is mice and this weekis cowboys.
There's no passive diffusion ofinformation, you're just

(38:41):
getting bombarded with crap andit's.
There's a video I was watchingthat Professor Dungeon Master
did the other day, where it'slike Hasbro isn't a game company
anymore, they're an IP company.
They make their money licensing, selling, remixing, using and
building money off IP.
After all, monopoly Go madethem infinity billion dollars,

(39:03):
right.
And it's like, yeah, they'reobviously going to keep doing
universes beyond file fantasy,before it's even lunch has made
them infinity trillion dollars.
That's, that's true.
Lord of the rings made them somuch money.
They made it on the eighto'clock the evening news.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Well, yeah, uh, so I don't remember which episode it
was, but, um, I don't rememberwhich episode it was.
Our fans, dude.
They're addicted to this stuff.
There was a random questionwhat's something that you would
outlaw?
Tips that people do.
I don't remember exactly how itwas phrased, but people know

(39:48):
that Universes Beyond is erodingthe base of what Magic the
Gathering is, but they still buyit.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
I think I was ranting probably about Gachapon games,
eroding the game market, whereit's like they still buy it.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
And if I could like tell people it's like no, you
need to speak with your walletand stop buying into the
universes beyond so that theyactually refocus on the core of
the game, which I mean hopefullyultimately may actually be
unsuccessful, because, well, howdo they reach a new audience?

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, here's what's kind of funny about that.
My brother kind of pulled thiscompletely into a different
zoomed out perception the otherday.
That kind of stuck with me abit.
Okay, so magic has scalpers andcash value, right.
And the scalpers are makingthings spiking sales, making
things look wildly moresuccessful than they are, so
they can dish them back out tocreate FOMO, right.

(40:45):
If things look wildly moresuccessful than they are, so
they can dish them back out tocreate fomo right.
If you ban the scalperscompletely, that hits a big
chunk of the problem.
If scalping, if literally justbuying from a distributor and
reselling, if a markup is justillegal, a lot of industries
benefit greatly because they'rejust assholes, right.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
They're like, ah, nerds want their nerd crack, so
we're just going to middlemanthe out of this well, I mean,
that does bring up aninteresting thing about wizards
of the coast, when they took outthe msrp manager's suggested
retail price, uh, and so then?
Uh, you know, nobody knows howmuch they're supposed to be sold
for, so they just sell them forwhatever they think it's worth

(41:23):
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
If wizards of the Coast was an ethical company,
with modern technology, youwould just buy the magic cards
from them, right, like what youdo is you'd mark it up where
it's like your website is thesame as the local friendly game
store, so you can either go toyour local friendly game store
or buy from them and just cutthe middleman out of this shit.
But I digress.

(41:48):
Actually, it's kind of where Iwanted to go with this episode
to begin with, which is fun.
So when I had some funds awhile back, I got into flesh and
blood cards for a while, partlybecause I rolled up and I'm
like, hey, can I have a bunch offree cards for my club?
And they're like here, havefree cards for your club.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Right right, you did tell me that trying to sell my
collection, and including thecommons, is probably actually
going to lower the overall valueof the of the of the collection
because store game stores haveso much bulk garbage cards
donate it to schools.
That's the ethical thing to dooh, I could donate it to the
refugees so they have somethingto do in their hotel rooms.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Like, honestly, yeah.
So on the topic of brandloyalty so the Final Fantasy
Magic brand loyalty is somenonsense.
I was chatting with my friendabout it.
Final Fantasy already has acard game.
They've had several over theirruntime.

(42:45):
Yeah, ok, so it's like their IPdid not need a card game to play
their IP.
In fact, shoving all of FinalFantasy into one set is
vomit-inducing Because it's like, yeah, every creature has to be
a legendary creature to put inas many references per square
foot as possible and there isn'tenough space to do any of the
concepts.
Really that much justice Makessense.

(43:07):
Like there's a card that'sliterally instant speed command
menu Do you want to attack,defend item or something?
And they have.
Like there's summon creaturesthat are a creature slash saga
that stay in play for threeturns and disappear and do an
effect and each turn gets adifferent saga effect on it.
So it's like they have coolconcepts, but it's weird because

(43:29):
it's like an actual FinalFantasy card game, which yet
again, not only has there beenseveral, there's also been
several in-game Final Fantasycard games that exist.
Like Final Fantasy 7 just has afully fleshed-out remake, just
has a fully fleshed-out cardgame.
They could just sell.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Well, that comes back to why they wouldn't want to
sell the digital rights to Magicto be able to license the game
through the Arena client.
But that's a tangent from whatyou're going on here.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Kind of, but kind of relates to the bigger problem,
which is my main thing I wantedto talk about today unjust
intellectual property loyaltyyou sheeple.
So it's like let's take fleshand blood cards.
They're from new zealand, theydon't have a digital client
because they did not wantdigital monetized micro gambling

(44:20):
nonsense, right, you can't buya digital playmat.
You can't give them money forcards that already exist because
, let's be honest, you makephysical cards, a digital
playmat.
You can't give them money forcards that already exist because
, let's be honest, you makephysical cards, you design them
and you put them on your apponce you got your pipeline set
up.
It's just free money, right?
Because you're designing fortwo things simultaneously they
support their stores, they sendout promos, they really care

(44:41):
about their meta of their game,like they have a system.
So the way they have a bandlist for that game is you have
your hero, your commander foryour card game, right?
And the cards will either begeneric cards that can be used
by anybody, weapon cards thatcan be used by anyone with the
right weapon, or hero-specificcards.
When that hero wins tournaments, they get legendary points

(45:03):
based on how many of these thishero top 8s in big events.
Okay, when they get over athousand legendary points, they
move from standard to extended.
So what this does in practiceis say I'm running Dash, the
gunner, cyberpunk, steampunkgunner character, right, if Dash
is doing too well in the meta,it'll win a bunch of tournaments

(45:25):
and then rotate out.
Then dash's cards can be usedby the other mechanist heroes or
the other gun users, but theirdash specific cards are gone and
their hero ability is gone.
Their specific armor is gone,and what that does in practice
is when decks are too unbalancedand win a whole bunch, they
leave, and then your cards.

(45:46):
You have to rebuild a new deckthat's less strong but it
doesn't become invaluable, oryou have to play in the other
format.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
That is something I was actually going to ask about
in this podcast.
Here is magic just has a timeframe.
It's like everything withineverything within the past, like
five years, I think, is what?
No, maybe not.
Maybe that was just for thatfoundation set.
That is five years, but butthey have a specific timeframe
where it's like these cards arelegal and standard and they just

(46:16):
rotates over time.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, but they've never, made modern less modern.
So modern now can be old enoughto vote, but modern, so modern
now can be old enough to vote.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
But then so Flesh and Blood, they rotate cards out of
standard, like you say, justactually based on tournament
performance.
I don't expect you to know howthe standard format for Lorkana
or if there even is any otherformats for Lorkana at this
point, but I'm a little bitcurious about if, if you know

(46:47):
anything about how these formatsare created for other trading
current games like like pokemon,as well as pokemon I'm gonna be
real bitchy about it.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Oh, this is fun.
You set me up to be real saltyand real toxic and real bitchy.
Okay, all right.
So we'll start with NamcoBandai cards, which is Digimon,
one Piece, gundam, dragon Ball.
They are just a for-profit cardgame that doesn't give a single
solitary fuck about maintainingcollector value.
Yeah, I use two F-bombs.

(47:16):
Come at me, fcc.
So over my life there has beenfour Digimon card games with
different rules, three DragonBall Z card games, three Dragon
Ball Z card games, four DragonBall Z card games and three
Gundam card games.
Just that have made it to NorthAmerica Because what they do is
they release the game when thething is popular.

(47:36):
When popularity dies out andpeople stop playing it, they
shut down the game, make a newgame, relaunch it and make it
look like they care.
No cards from Namco BandaiGaming with the way they just
vomit out promo cards to moverandom other merch.
Their standard formats willoften be like oh, we'll do a
rotation, eh, not really.
And they're inconsistent.
It's like what they decide isrotated, what they decide is

(48:00):
banned isn't being handled veryintelligently and Lorcana
doesn't really have acompetitive scene because the
scalpers, human beings, don'tplay Lorcana.
If I want to go play Lorcanaright now, there's no way I can
get my hands on the cards.
I would need to build a deck,because Disney scalpers are.

(48:21):
They'll cut you for a stitchblanket.
I also couldn't get any 1Pstarter decks because scalpers
pre-grabbed all those.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
So where kind of my overarching theme on this
episode is and where I was goingto go into, like the D&D versus
Daggerhut stuff later, ispeople's intellectual property
ban loyalty is insane.
So flesh and blood you couldplay professionally.
Their tournaments have muchhigher prize support.
Their mechanics are balanced,their games innovative, all the
lore is original.

(48:52):
They pay their artists, theypay their writers.
They're an independent newzealand company that doesn't
have big money backing them.
Their cards have maintainedvalue.
Really they've been reallycareful about it to like keep
cards relevant and rotate themso that your valuable cards will
stay about the same value theentire way through the game

(49:13):
where you can play a deckcompetitively and it's like each
deck will have like a couplemoney cards in it if you want to
build like a tier one deck.
But you can win a tournamentwith a tier two deck by just
being better than the other guy,right.
So it's like their game isreally player focused.
It's literally called Flesh andBlood because they want you to
play it in curve, for sitting ingame stores Makes sense.
Any ethical Magic player wouldhave switched to Flesh and Blood

(49:37):
already if brand loyalty didn'texist.
Hmm, the moment Magic said, hey, you can't have our Final
Fantasy cards and the stores cancharge however much they want
for it because we don't have arecommended price and also our
tournament prize support's down.

(49:58):
But you can go play Commanderif you buy our Commander set,
where we then ban cardsdeliberately, knowing we are
printing them to sell more packs, but no one's going to jump
over because they've sunk somuch cost, time and energy.
Like there is no reason youshould have any loyalty to
Wizards of the Coast.
You should be showing up totournaments with photocopied

(50:18):
proxies you printed.
Like fuck them Because, likethey don't care, when I started
with magic they would literally,based on our tournament points,
send us promo cards in the mailand envelopes I.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
I don't remember if this made it into the last
episode recorded man.
I've had such a toxic mousetoday, which is weird because
I'm in a really good mood um,part of the reason that I am
wanting to sell off mycollection of the cards that I
don't actively use is that Idon't really like the direction

(50:56):
that Magic the Gathering isgoing.
The hat sets are like theyprint some cool cards, they
print some cool themes, but likethey're just vomiting out more
and more cards, and so it's like, even if I want to build a new
deck, every week there's 500,600 new cards to go through that
might fit with my deck, uh, andsome of them are going to be

(51:19):
more expensive because they'relicensed products.
Now, um, some of them are goingto be impossible to get a hold
of because the the whole debaclewith secret lair printings and
like, well, yeah, it's just, andthen decreasing tournament
support.
Like it's magic, the gatheringis setting itself up to implode

(51:40):
and that's the thing like but Ido enjoy the game.
I do enjoy the game enough to belike, yeah, if I have some
magic decks and someone elseknows how to play, I can just be
like, hey, let's sit down andenjoy the game.
I do enjoy the game enough tobe like, yeah, if I have some
magic decks and someone elseknows how to play, I can just be
like, hey, let's sit down andplay the game itself.
The core mechanics are stillenjoyable enough.
So there are some cards that Ido want to keep for nostalgia
and to actually be able to playand use, but I don't really need

(52:00):
a giant bulk collection of whatI've counted so far is around 6
000 cards.
Um, that, uh, it just sitsthere and takes up space and I
don't really need to be buyingmore from this clearly unethical
company, uh, whichunfortunately, uh, also is part

(52:20):
of the dnd.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Uh, ip right well, that's what's interesting about
it is that like so for flesh andblood.
For example, I bought achristmas kit for like 80 bucks.
That was their idea ofcommander, where it was like a
four-player game with specificrules on how to play it
multi-way I can't remember whatthey called it, but it was their
equivalency to commander andhad four commander decks and
they gave each one like adifferent specific play style.

(52:44):
Like one was a bard deck thatwas all about bribing other
players.
One was like a sniper deck thatwas all about targeting and
that a mechanic where you couldonly attack the player to your
left or your right and whensomeone got knocked out it
changed to his to your left oryour right right, so you
couldn't like have all fivepeople maul one person.
So, like this little commanderset I got I busted out a few

(53:04):
times at club nights and thingsand it's such a player design
product.
And then I would get thecommander cycles for final
fantasy and I'm like you want meto spend like 400 to be able to
use this as functionally aboard game.
But it's like most people Iknow are still playing magic and

(53:25):
what's weird about brandloyalty is say I were to make
strictly better ethical magic,like I go back and make because
a lot of games want to start,they want to compete with magic
where it is now not before magicstarted and they suffer from
complexity bloat and magicitself suffers a lot from
complexity boat.
When I first started playingmagic, a two, two for one,

(53:49):
really good card didn't have anytext on it, just a two, two for
one, really good, right.
Or like oh, I'm a two, one,first strike.
I'm like that is amazing.
We have cards that have sagacards with that are enchantment
creature, saga spell that have amana cost, that are a creature

(54:09):
that get lore counters that tickdown, that then flip to a
different creature type on atwo-sided card that have as much
text as the opening prologue toLord of the Rings.
Because when they've been doingthis universe beyond, a side
effect is that they have amassive complexity bloat right.

(54:31):
And then these namco bandai cardgames I throw shade on.
They don't have self control atall.
So in their first set they'llbe like here's a creature of 3
000 power.
And the next set they'll havehere's a creature of 4 000 power
.
The next set they'll be likehere's a creature of 4 000 power
that costs zero mana, thatpunches your opponent in the
nuts and you can't even keep upwith your cards because every
set makes your last setcompletely worthless, right,

(54:53):
right, so Flesh and Blood istaking this measured approach.
But structurally, magic is aunit collecting card game where
Flesh and Blood is more like afighting game style, where each
card can attack, block or energy.
So say you were to sit down andmake structurally better magic
Wouldn't be hard.
I would just remake Alpha Magicand fix all the design errors.

(55:13):
Right, it would be nearlyimpossible for me to sell it
because it's too similar toMagic, so I couldn't be able to
sell people on this new game.
Right, where Flesh and Blood'slike we know that, so we're
going to make it playdifferently so you can.
It's like you need to get it.
So people are playing bothgames at once and then wean them
off.
And most of these Namco Bandaijust makes magic.

(55:36):
Now it's like, yeah, dbz cardsis just magic without mana.
Digimon cards is just magicwithout mana, with a grave
flipping mechanic.
I'm pretty sure One Piece cardsis just magic, which is funny
because the more fighting gamedesigned card game makes more
sense for an anime Like, if youhave a leader and most of your
cards are attacks, you don'tburn through your material as

(55:56):
much.
That Dragon Ball card gameprobably has over a hundred
Gokus With different subtitlesand from different chunks of the
show.
I remember at one point wherethey're like each color, they
like rebooted the game while itwas going because they like made
their webcon, uh client oneslightly different.
They're like here's a dragonball card game, here's a dragon
ball fusion something or fusionworld online version, whatever.

(56:20):
And they're like yeah, are wehave three leaders for each
color and each color gets a goku.
And I'm like no one's favoritecharacter is goku what are you?

Speaker 2 (56:32):
oh so like?
One's favorite character isgoku.
It's funny because the nerd Iam.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
I'm like I'd love to make a game that milks an ip.
But when you generate your ownip, you get longevity because
you can make the stories matchthe mechanics, not make the
mechanics match the stories,right?
So, wizards, when they firstdid ravnica, for example, the
goal of ravnica was to do thisis a set all about two color

(56:57):
combinations.
And the original ravnica waslike we're going to do four
colors in the first set, fourtwo-color combos, then three,
then three in our block, so allten will have representation and
you learn four guilds at a time.
And they literally structuredit to be like if you build Izzet
in the first set, then you canbuild Gruul in the second and

(57:18):
then you can build Rakdos in thethird and they, like launched
it.
So over the course of the block, if you're building two or
three color, you're gettingsupport.
But they invented the setting tojustify this is the two color
set.
So the guilds, all thoseconcepts were so they could
build sigits for everything,guild gates for everything,

(57:40):
split color.
They invented hybrid mana.
It's like, yeah, we're gonnaspend a year building these two
color things out and thenthey're like, oh, we're gonna do
this next set.
That's tribal, so we're gonnaspend a while fleshing out this
theme.
When you invert it, you get thelet's take sephiroth.
You get the sephiroth card thatyou sacrifice seven power

(58:01):
creatures to did it and they setup as a combo that you have
sephiroth sacrifice eras.
It gives you counters to did it, a transformed sephiroth power
creatures to da, da, da, da, daand they set up as a combo.
They have Sephiroth SacrificeAerith.
It gives you counters to da, da, da, da, transform Sephiroth.
And I'm like that's what killedYu-Gi-Oh is when you build your
cards to do ridiculous comicalshit for lore, not building your
lore so you can build yourreasonably designed cards.

(58:23):
So we're like an hour in andmostly talked card games, but I
got most of my points across.
So where I'm going next is fromrunning like TTRPG Club.
People are obsessed with D&D.
They only play D&D.
You've probably experiencedthis too.
You run a lot of TTRPGs, right?

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah, well, I mean, or play it D&D.
D& is is the one that I know,and fifth edition, uh, was
ridiculously streamlinedcompared to previous editions
and I just haven't really had agood reason to switch aside from
wizards of the coast beingunethical and see that's what's

(59:03):
kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
So I've tried probably 20 plus ttrpgs at this
point, because I made a point totrying a new one every week in
club because it was the ttrpgclub.
Yeah, and it's like fifthedition we've talked about this
on the podcast before has a lotof design relics in it that if
you were to build a new game youwouldn't have.

(59:27):
There's just some oddinteractions, like, for example,
in order editions, owning astronghold was a thing, right.
When you try and mechanicallydo that in fifth edition rules,
it doesn't really work.
And they like in dnd 5.5, whichthey refuse to give a number or
sensible branding or naming foryou to tell what's the new
stuff like they try to do itlike a dlc patch and I, low-key,

(59:47):
hate it because it's like thenew edition of dnd isn't worse,
it's probably better, but it'snot new.
So it's like for me it's almostimpossible to sell my players
like I could make students playwhatever I wanted.
I was the only game master andthey showed up to club and I'd
make them play a game, whetherthey liked it or not, or they

(01:00:09):
could just not play a game but,my core group of friends are
like yeah, I play dnd partlybecause I watched a bunch of
critical role or dimension 20 orwhat have you.
So I just kind of innately knowhow this game works and I bought
books and I've sunk in time andit's hard to get someone to
move into a new game, especiallyif there's a startup cost.

(01:00:29):
Even though tt rpgs technicallyhave none, most people will buy
a book or something or other.
Right, they usually will.
You don't have to, but mostpeople do well, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
So then, bringing this back around to dagger heart
, which is critical roles, uh,alternative to dnd, so um, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
So for critical role, they're more ethical than
wizards.
So critical role puts out theirstandard reference document,
which is the document that'slike hey, you can use these
rules to make whatever you want,right?
And critical role is prettymuch like yeah, you can use
these to make whatever you want,just don't stick the Critical
Role logo on it.
If we don't endorse you.
Have fun.

(01:01:11):
And their standard rules arelike, I'd say, like 90% of their
rules.
They have every class in thereand every subclass in there
where 5e is like, you get fourclasses as examples and one feat
as an example.
But what's weird to me is likeall right, so I'm reading the
Daggerheart rules and they fixeda lot of things that bugged me

(01:01:32):
about D&D.
So, for example, they havemovement where their movement is
close range, medium range, longrange, very far, and they're
like here's a little chart ifyou want to use the tiles on
your grid, but it's by liketiles, right, it's like oh yeah,
it's five tiles away, not feet.
No one's doing trigonometry.
Their initiative system isinteresting.

(01:01:55):
Where you don't roll initiative, each player just gets to take
a turn.
When a player fails a roll orrolls higher on their bad dice
rather than their good dice,then the GM takes a turn.
The GM has these fear tokensthat basically mean when a
player rolls and gets a feardice or something plot-wide

(01:02:16):
relevant happens, I can usethese tokens to take a DM turn
whenever I want.
Right?
How it works is, if you're inan ideal world when your players
are playing fair, you don'teven track how many actions.
It's more like they takeactions until the dm finds the
need to jump in until theyfailed.
How it makes sense for an enemyturn to happen?
Right, and they have anoptional rule.

(01:02:37):
It's like each player getsthree beads and after they've
done three things, they have towait till everyone's done three
things before they can go again.
But if you want one player todo like a super cool thing, it
takes three turns in a row.
They can provide the.
Everyone else takes their turn.
So it's set up as this likeback and forth, right, right.

(01:02:58):
And then their main mechanic isplayers are rolling 2d12s
because it creates that bellcurve of extremely high and
extremely like low rolls areless likely, right?
So that means your modifiersand your stats matter more so if
you have like a plus two tostrength and you're very much
more consistently getting in theeight to ten range.

(01:03:18):
It matters.
So they like make their newgame.
Where it has enough interestingenough rules, you level up your
level up features or you pick acard and that's your level up
feature, plus some like statstuff.
Ok, so each class gets twotypes of cards and, like I'm not
going to spend this time inthis episode to explain all the
rules of Dagger Art, but I as aDM, I'm like, ok, matt Mercer

(01:03:40):
played D&D for the last 20 years.
Yeah, he hired a bunch of gamedesigners to make their own
indie ran dnd equivalency and hepays his artists, he pays his
writers.
You can see the design team inthe launch videos.
They're doing their interviews.
He has instructional videos howto play it.

(01:04:00):
There's campaigns where you ranit.
I think one of playtestingsuggestions made it into the
final games.
I'm like 80% sure of the rulesuggestion I gave where they're
just like yeah, you can't keeptaking turns.
I'm like here's an optionalrule I use where I gave each
person three beads for theirturn.
I'm like huh, I wonder if thatwas literally my suggestion,
because I was playing with.

(01:04:22):
I even said in my suggestionI'm playing in a group of kids
at a university and they're notgood at naturally knowing when
to give up their turn.
So I put in this mechanic wherethey got to do three in a row
max and then they could just sitthere for a minute.
But like it goes from level oneto 10, because no one ever went
past that in D&D in your lifeRight, it's level.

(01:04:48):
It's damage system is thatinstead of hit points it has hit
points.
But it's you have like damagetiers and you roll damage to see
if they take one damage, twodamage or three damage.
Right, so it like works thatthey have like you mark off
armor to reduce the tier ofdamage you take.
Like it's set up in a lot ofways that have less
micromanaging.
There just isn't spell slots.
Instead it's like you get youmark off stress or damage.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Like it's really well engineered but so I mean, it's
the point that you're getting to, the fact that, uh, because of
brand loyalty, uh, you havedifficulty finding any sort of
group to actually play daggerheart that's what I'm trying to
figure out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
So there's a few dnd equivalencies I've tried to get
players to play like shadow darksimplified dnd, and call of
cthulhu is more elaborate, andmazes is simpler, where
pathfinder is more elaborate.
Like, I played all these games.
The thing with dagger heart isI don't know if people are going

(01:05:46):
to be putting out material forlong enough for me to convince
people to buy in if that makessense and it's like even with a
TTRPG, I can generate infinitecampaign like my brain alone.
I could easily run anindefinite Daggerheart campaign
Right, you've had me DM, youknow this is true.
An indefinite dagger heartcampaign.

(01:06:07):
Right, you've had me dm, youknow this is true.
But it's like products comingout for dnd also reminds people
that they like dnd.
So it's like these new releasesare partly important to just
like remind people that theirhobbies alive and healthy and
people are playing it right.
So they're like watching theirdnd podcast, their dimension 20s
, their critical roles, and it'slike I don't know if critical

(01:06:28):
role themselves are willing togo all in enough to be like yeah
, we have multiple shows thatrun on our new system and we
have multiple other peopleplaying our game like because
they made their like other game.
They're like one shoddy gamecalled candela obscura which was
like their Eldritch Horror-ytype RPG and I ran one of those.
But like people, it's weirdHigh fantasy and low fantasy

(01:06:53):
make more sense to run anongoing campaign than a murder
mystery.
Right, like you can't really doyour Elder Horror or
Supernatural mystery, at least Ias a DM can't really run one of
those that would run more thanlike five sessions right,
because the mystery gets solved.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
And then what do you do?
Yeah, you have to find a newmystery right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
so unless I'm like willing to just read sherlock
holmes books constantly and hopeplayers don't read them or they
put out new adventures reallyfrequently, or like fantasy,
it's easier to like subgenre,like if you're running free
reign, you can just throw in ashooting exam and then throw in
a murder mystery and then throwin whatever.

(01:07:35):
But if you're running a Street,Fighter campaign.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Just as an example, one of the D&D books that I
recently bought was the Keys tothe Golden Vault, because it has
heists.
Yeah, heists are sick andthey're like single contained
episodes and it's like you canjust throw in a heist to break
up the flow of the game to makeit more engaging and interesting

(01:08:05):
, and then bring back freshideas when you go back to
whatever your main story is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Oh, absolutely Like one session for D&D.
I ran a municipal election Inits entirety Right, or one time
I literally did the murdermystery where, remember, it was
like oh, it was in fact thenecromancer.
All along I was parodying themovie.
Clue, specifically when I wasdoing that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Yeah, I did enjoy that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Right and it's like they did, like the crossover
books of hey, you could use anyD&D, you can use these few Magic
, the Gathering settings if youwant, blah, blah, blah.
And I just like owning books.
So the Daggerheart book, whichI don't have at the moment and I
may make hard eyes at peoplefor someone to birthday gift me,
this thing is a beautifulwelcome to TTRPG set.

(01:08:53):
So the character sheetsliterally have written on them
prompts for what your backstorycould be.
Fill in the blank for yourfriends, dev an overworld map
with instructions on how eachplayer needs to dibs a location
and attach it to their backstory.
So it's like the session zerokit where you build your
characters all together becauseyour level ups are card based.
It's like, hey, you guys canplay the same class but you

(01:09:16):
can't take the same cards.
So it's like there's only twoof each race, two of each
background and one of eachability.
So it's like we're gonna bothgonna be wizards you'll have
different spells with, just likehow the starter gets physically
set up.
So I watch critical role, justdo their session zero, and I'm
like man.
I just watched a two-hour videowhere they just did a session
zero and it was interestingbecause when you have people

(01:09:39):
pre-gaming the campaign of likeokay, here's a map of barovia.
Each of you tell me a placethat matters.
It's good design.
I just don't know like I'mconfident I could show up once
with this and set this game down.
It's like all right, let's playthis game.
We'll go through the sessionzero and then go direct.
We'll do a one hour sessionzero and then play for three
hours, get to level two.

(01:10:00):
But I don't know if there'senough societal momentum that
this game won't just stopexisting after six months, like,
for example, critical Role dida goofy one shot and now they're
doing their like eight episodeminiseries.
And Matt Mercer's like I'mmaking this Dark Souls, elden

(01:10:21):
Ring inspired.
He got really lucky becausethat Expedition 33 game just
came out which is like DarkSouls, elden Ring inspired.
He got really lucky becausethat Expedition 33 game just
came out, which is like DarkSkull Elden Ring expired.
That everyone I know played theshit out of and is completely
on board to do a dark, edgy,french-inspired campaign, right.
So it's like I don't know.
To ask this straight up to thequestion to you Do I try and

(01:10:44):
move my players of 10 years to anew game that I think, as a dm,
is objectively better but hasless stuff, or do I stick with
the existing game that theypassively absorbed lore for the
last 10 years?
Because that's another thingworth noting people just know
dnd lore and they don't evenknow why.
They know it like oh, peopleall have a vague idea of tiamat,

(01:11:05):
the red wizard, of fey, if yougo, the underdark and the drow.
Most people can kind ofunderstand what that's supposed
to be and it's probably becausednd was just lord of the rings,
just was like first edition wasa lord of the rings board game.
Let's be honest, it's not acoincidence that one of the

(01:11:25):
first races they had wasHalfling.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Yeah, well, so, like D&D and Magic, have this
inherent advantage, which lendsto the brand loyalty, of being
extremely culturally significant, even if you don't know
anything about those gamesspecifically.
There's so many movies andgames and books that borrow

(01:11:54):
ideas from Lord of the Rings andD&D and Magic, and some people
don't even realize that that'swhere the idea came from.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Right.
And it's like also, since D&Dis, strategy was steal
everything.
A lot of things that theyrecognized are just in dnd
because they stole everything,like there's a stat block for a
jabberwocky.
They weren't the first mimicchest, those bastards right,
like they took like everyreligion mythological creature
they could find and thencopyrighted a bunch of them.

(01:12:25):
So, like they released theirnew edition, they're like yeah,
you can't use their copyrightnames like strad and this and
that.
And I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah.
And some people on the internetare like I'm outraged.
I'm like why are you outraged?
They're gonna protect theintellectual property parts.
They've always were gonna dothat.
They're not just gonna give youstrad nice try.
But it's like yeah, ironically,most dnd books, if you're

(01:12:49):
willing to do basic math, can beused to play any TTRPG engine.
There's no reason I couldn'trun Curse of Strahd with
Daggerheart.
I just look at similarcreatures in Daggerheart,
replace their locations in Curseof Strahd and I'm done.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Right, because the core story content isn't what
makes it D&D.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Yeah.
So, like the maps and the storyand things, I could just I
absolutely could just run Curseof Strahd and Daggerheart, like
me specifically.
I don't even think I'd have todo the math beforehand.
I think I could just look at aD&D stat sheet, know what goes
on a Daggerheart stat sheet, andmake the mental math in my head
and then, yeah, like thingsthat are like a 15 wisdom check,

(01:13:31):
I'm like all right, andDaggerheart, that is a sense
check.
Okay, make a 13 sense check and, like you, just kind of have to
relearn the language.
They also got rid ofconstitution, because
constitution was never a stat.
You actively rolled.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
They're not wrong, but yeah, that's kind of where I
was kind of hoping to go withthis episode was more the bigger
question of brand loyalty andip versus better game.
Like to give a little example,I recently played a game called
monster sanctuary, which I thinkI told you about, which is like
a platforming rogue-likePokemon and it's the best

(01:14:17):
Pokemon game I've played in along time.
And there's a few games I'veplayed in my life where I'm like
this is just objectively betterthan Pokemon.
Hasn't even moved the needle.
I could not convince anyone toplay this Monster Sanctuary game
who's a fan of Pokemon.
They would rather just playtheir Pokemon game that crashes
from the frame rate of havingthreesome floors stand behind
you.

(01:14:38):
Oh, also, I probably should haveput this in our podcast.
Don't sue me, nintendo, but mygoodness, is Nintendo trying to
do skeezy licensing agreement?
You don't own your Switch oryour video games nonsense.
But that's a full episode title.

(01:14:58):
Yeah, but I've been at this fora while.
I used up a lot of thebandwidth here.
What are your thoughts aboutall we've discussed today,
friend?
oh, oh yeah I'm supposed tomention that I've been using
frederick as a recurring npc inmy current campaign.
I'm running and it's like I'vebeen trolling players with the
existence of your NPC from aprevious campaign and they
recently found him in the jailcell in a tabaxi village and a

(01:15:19):
full metal alchemist clapped hishands to make himself a hammock
and he's drinking a smoothieout of a coconut.
And they asked him the obviousquestion why don't you just
escape?
And he said, and I quote,because I broke the law and I'm
in jail and I'm sure they'llfigure it out that does sound

(01:15:40):
like something that would do, sothe party members actually have
a conspiracy theory that cedricis shadow's ex-boyfriend,
because one of my players isplaying shadow again and like
they avoid cedric in a way.
It's like, is that like your exor something you're like?
No, much worse, you don'tunderstand.
So like party members aregossiping about shadows
connection to thedrick and itjust makes me happy.
I love a 10 year old setup fora five-year-old yeah,

(01:16:03):
five-year-old setup for a jokeis pretty good because like I'm
literally showing them havinghim collect, like his infinity
gems, one at a time, each timethey see him right, right,
because his whole goal was tobuild an infinity gem to, to be
worthy of being, uh uh, acolyteof the god of the dwarves yeah,

(01:16:24):
so I'm fully intending to payoff his entire plot arc in the
background of this Tome ofAnnihilation campaign.
That's amazing.
That was the point of thisepisode, but I got some good
bitching in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Yeah, I, I don't really know how to answer your
question, because it's likethese cultural juggernauts until
they implode themselves bybeing greedy and unethical,
they're just going to keeppushing out content and being

(01:17:05):
physically in people's faces toremind them that it's like, yeah
, I like that thing andovershadowing uh, better work
that has been done in thebackground.
I don't really don't reallyknow what to do about it, aside
from waiting specifically forwizards of the coast, but for
any major company, uh, to justimplode from their own unethical

(01:17:27):
activities.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
Well, it's like one of my friends made a comment
years ago when, like, I'm like,hey, I got a playtest copy of
the avatar campaign and theysaid something to the effect of
I don't want to play in thatsetting over dnd because I don't
think you can do this showjustice.
Like I, it'll feel cringy ifexisting characters and no make
cameos.
It'll be awkward.

(01:17:50):
I'm not on board with this.
It's interesting because it'slike that's probably like the
better take because, yeah,avatar will be an mtg set
shortly.
That's one of their nextannounced ones.
Right, it's a ttrpg I canalready play if I wanted to,
although I don't love the enginebehind that one.
I'm drawing a blank of whatit's called, but it's like more

(01:18:14):
role play focused.
I think it's the powered by theapocalypse engine where I'm at
my core strategist.
So I like to have some tacticsin my games.
Right, but it's like it'sinteresting because I always
champion indie authors and indiemagazines and indie stories.
Now, right, like I'm a canadianlit person, my social media
feed is mostly hey, submit tothese local publications.

(01:18:36):
So, like, on the micro level,my strategy is promote creative,
interesting stuff.
That's half of what we do onthis podcast is, if something's
cool and interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
We tell people about it because it was cool and
interesting and then we tellpeople about a lot of garbage
because we, you know, want themto avoid garbage yeah, like this
episode.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
I'm like play monster sanctuary is really good and
you've never heard of it.
Don't play pokemon, scarlet andviolet.
It's the third most profitableintellectual property in the
world.
They should not have had framerate issues.
I like a full angry rant withwith my brother with this
earlier, where I'm like whenthey get to the nintendo switch

(01:19:16):
and they're like oh yeah, notevery pokemon can show up on
sword and shield, and I'm likebut you literally sell an app
for us to move pokemon around asa separate service, like I like
we were talking gameplay wise.
You can make a better pokemongame.
With less pokemon it's easierto balance.
By restricting your favorites,you force people to try new
combos.
Black and white did that it didreally well.

(01:19:37):
Ruby sapphire did that it didreally well.
But when your brand is, youwant to catch them all and we're
collecting services to catchthem all.
Even if you don't put all thepokemon in your game, they
should all work on your gameright, like if you made a magic
the gathering video game.
Looking at you arena, youshould work with all the cards,

(01:19:58):
even if you're not even like youdon't want every magic card in
standard, it'd be terrible, butlike they should be all on here,
right, like the fact you can'tplay commander on arena is the
most baffling decision ever made.
Hmm, just doesn't work, andyou're a trillion dollar company
.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
Fuck off, we're moving into automated territory
now.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
I'm mad about this.
Like there's three things thatdrives me nuts about the state
of affairs for just the FinalFantasy, specifically me nuts
about the state of affairs forjust the final fantasy,
specifically one I couldn't haveit even if I wanted it, because
my friendly local game storewill upsell it, scalp it.
You can't order it online.
I physically couldn't get itand it would cost me hundreds of
dollars.
Two right, it's such like acash grab, where it's like these

(01:20:45):
cards are designed to beflavorful first and functional
second then even once I get thecards they won't work in
anything Like.
you've heard me complain aboutCommander for years, where it's
like one person who knows whatthey're doing shows up with a
competitive Commander deck andthen I can't build my Chocobo
Jack and have fun.
Which is what I would do withthis Final Fantasy sec is I'd

(01:21:07):
run the Chocobo Commander andrun the Bird Matters Tribal Deck
because it's stupid.
So, like my three magicproblems are, I can't afford it.
The cards don't actually workfor their intended function and
I'm not supporting where theproduct's going.
And it's like if any of thosethree problems were fixed, if
the cards were cheap, if thecards maintained their relative

(01:21:31):
value or if the company weregood people, I could justify it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
So yeah, those are all pretty valid points.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
And how long is it before?
Instead of D&D giving us Magiccrossover sets?
They're going to UniverseBeyond and just make everything
in 5E's engine and we'll getFinal Fantasy, the Magic the
Gathering book.
They're going to universebeyond and just make everything
in 5e's engine and we'll getFinal Fantasy, the Magic the
Gathering book.
And then doesn't Final Fantasyhave its own game?
Avatar has its own game.

(01:22:08):
But I could see Avatar gettinga Magic the Gathering set, then
getting a D&D book and it's justyeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Unification and monopolies are bad I agree but
with that maybe we should, uh,yeah, move, move into a random
question.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
I just want to angry rant because I'm in a good mood.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
But yeah, random question, here's I don't have a
random question this week foryou, I'm sorry.
Sorry, I haven't thought of one.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
Alright, here's what we got.
This one's kind of interesting.
If you were to ink a side intoa magical world, do you think
you would become the king or beburned at the stake?

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
If I were isekai-ed into a magical world and you
have all of your current.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
You're isekai-ed into a magical world.
And You're Isakai into amagical world and you have the
ability to summon any piece ofmodern technology you want.
Do you think you'd become theking or get burned at the stake?
So you show up in I don't know,paranoid Mage, but you can just
summon a smart Tesla.
Not only do you have all yourknowledge, you can manifest it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
Paranoid Mage is a bad, bad example because, uh,
that's kind of largely like the,the magicians are in the
background of the real world.
Okay, fine, let's go withlegend of the shield hero.
That's an effectively garbageone effectively garbage one, I
can summon any modern technology.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
Yeah, do you think you become?

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
the king or be burned at the stake I'll.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
I'll tell you my answer instantly.
So, a good friend of mine, I'mgoing to go with Mr O for this
context Once told me somethingwhen I was considering briefly
going to school to be a policeofficer.
I wanted to be a police officer, I wanted to be a Mountie once
upon a time in my youth.
Okay, and he said, and I quote,it'd be the first day on the
job.
You say, hey, you're underarrest and you get stabbed in
the face and be dead Becauseyou're a very stabable in the

(01:24:03):
face person.
And I think if I got ecocide andhad access to all my knowledge,
all my little looshing all myknowledge, all my little
looshing all my cunning I can'tshut up and I'm getting burned
at the stake because I'm tellingpeople what I actually think.
I'm not being smart enough tolike.
I'm like, summon gun, kill theking and then get burned at the

(01:24:23):
stake for witchcraft immediately.
Like I like open uh, I open amodern hospital institute, free
health healthcare, and then getassassinated by the nobles
Because I just ruined theirlucrative medicine business by
giving them antibiotics andbeing killed for it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
So I think it would be dependent on what exactly the
setting is.
Shield Hero there is someamount of magic, so I think I
could sneak in modernconveniences that I could pass

(01:25:13):
off as magic and eventually justlike build that into it.
I think that I could succeedmaybe not necessarily become the
king, but become wealthy andinfluential in an isekai world
through the careful summoning oflike, say, summoning a laptop

(01:25:33):
to be able to do likepresentations and whatnot and
then also like record ideas andyeah, I think what it comes down
to is I think you'd be finebecause you're more low-key than
me.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
I think I would drastically change the entire
status quo of that world, but Iwould not be alive to see it
yeah, I think maybe eventually Iwould change the status quo of
the world.
But uh, you'd have a pizzeriayou'd just be like feeding
adventure.
Like you'd end up likedelicious and dungeoning it.

(01:26:04):
Like you just like use yourlike ecossign knowledge to live
a good, regular-ass life.
Let's be honest.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
Yeah, hopefully, but no, I don't think I would become
king.
That's the.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
Okay.
This next one is particularlyunhinged.
So you're getting a new house,mm-hmm, and you need to have
someone negotiate your lease.
So you're getting a new houseand you need to have someone
negotiate your lease.
However, the landlord Is atalking Meowth and you have to
let one of your PokemonNegotiate your lease.

(01:26:43):
Which Pokemon are you havingnegotiate your lease agreement
With the landlord?
Meowth, which Pokemon?

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
Am I having to negotiate the lease with
landlord meows?
Which pokemon?
I'm having to negotiate thelease with landlord meows?

Speaker 1 (01:26:56):
and note it has to be a pokemon you yourself have
captured and used in a game.
It's not hypothetical.
You have to like, cite whichpokemon specifically, to the
best of your ability you can.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
So I'm feeling this is a cheeky answer, but my
Espeon and Umbreon from remembermy Magic Bounce Espeon Right,
it's pretty cool.
I have faith that if, like Miko, was a psychic cat, I could
trust Miko to negotiate, so I'mgoing to go with my Magic Bounce
Espeon specifically.

(01:27:31):
I feel pretty good about that,so I'm going to go with my magic
bounce espion specifically.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
I feel pretty good about it.
I I'm gonna go with chatot nice, uh, because it is technically
negotiating for me, but it'skind of like it'll just pass the
mention, like literally recordmessages, and pass them back and
forth.
Uh, it's a bullshit, but Ithink you're good to go.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
I also thought about being like, oh, I'm going to
just bring an Arceus and be like, hey, you should give me a
discount as God stands behind meintimidatingly.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
I do think that the best Pokemon I guess, as a
general category, the bestPokemon to choose would be
Psychic-type and the bestPsychic-type is Mewtwo.
To choose would be psychic typeand the best psychic type is
like you two, like you would.

Speaker 1 (01:28:13):
Just, you would get you the best lease for sure.
Although, like I said, like ameowth is pretty dumb, like the
team rockets meowth, I don'tknow like, I think deploying a
cat might be more effective thandeploying a god, because that
meowth has taught gods to go tohell and has absolutely learned
language to impress a cat.
That's true, all right.
And we do have one last randomquestion.

(01:28:35):
You're handed the infinitygauntlet, but you're only
allowed to make an extremelypetty change.
What do you do?
No, you want the change to beso petty that no one actually
notices.
You did it out to someone.
They get in their aware.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
Okay, I think I would make specific customers that I
do not like forget that TJ tj'sever existed.

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
Oh that's.
That's real petty.
Like I love that.
Like part of me was gonna likego big grain and be like, well,
I can't cure cancer becausepeople would cash on.
But just like everyone goesinto remission slowly, but like
it's not petty enough, like theprompt, like clearly, whatever
fan this is wants me to be apetty bitch about it.
Right, like that's.

(01:29:34):
The goal of the question is notto make the world a better
place.
You know what I'm doing.
I have to make the world abetter place.
I'm getting rid of press to tipscreens.
I'm literally just like, butnot like magically removing them
.
I'm like making it.
The legislation wasretroactively passed in all the
parliaments making it illegal toask for tips when you're a

(01:29:55):
machine like I've just bannedtipping machines.
No one remembers I'm gettingbanned.
But you tell someone oh yeah,tipping machines are banned.
They're like yeah, that makessense.
So I've just banned digitaltipping machines, particularly
at places that don't havecustomer service that's the
catcher, so like tj's pizza.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
There's still a tap to tip screen, but the self
checkout at walmart no I, I, Iknow someone, uh, they uh had to
pay the impound lot to uh getcar out and the debit machine
had to tip prom.
Yeah, I'm getting rid of allthe tip proms.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Those can go directly , just be gone.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
So ridiculous?
How is your service having yourcar impounded?

Speaker 1 (01:30:46):
It's like those can.
It's pretty petty, like that'shigh on the list.
I don't know if it's pettyenough, but I kind of want to
make it like a phone update goesout that requires someone to
text before you call.
Like a service comes in thatyou'll be receiving a call an X
amount of time.
It's like whenever you go tocall someone it gives them a
text and you have a timer beforeyou can actually call, so you
can't call anyone withouttexting them first.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
That'd be great oh, that would be funny that's
pretty.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
That's pretty petty, but pretty good, and I mean, I
already santo, snapped someoneaway like no one missed that
person he liked to hear aboutboth smash bros.
So yeah, I'm surprised you evenremember that it was a he at
this point.
They were so disintegrated.
I'd probably also like I'mgoing to be honest, after

(01:31:39):
today's episode weird hot take,I think I would Thanos snap
printing errors in the set ofMagic that all of the pictures
are slightly misaligned.
So none of the cards in theFinal Fantasy set are legally
playable Because there's just anerror on the printing press.

Speaker 2 (01:31:57):
That would be funny.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Pretty good.
There's some fun that could behad with it.
Actually, I know what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:32:05):
I'll take back all of those including curing cancer.

Speaker 1 (01:32:07):
For something slightly more important, Okay,
I'm making Ice-type be immune towater and resist Steel in
Pokemon.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
Resist, Immune to water, that one kind of makes
sense.
But resist Steel the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
Icebergs very famously break metal.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
Yeah, yeah.
No, I mean Ice being supereffective against steel, but
resisting steel, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:32:35):
So I did the math the other day.
Ice needs to resist, becauseice only resists ice right now.
Right, which makes an icesubtype bad?
The first one is if ice added awater immunity, that makes a
lot of.
It's really good for Mamoswine,it's really good for
thingsamoswine, it's really goodfor things that just splash
Ice-type.
Because Surf is such a commonattack.

(01:32:56):
It makes Dewgong have animmunity against Lapras and
things.
It's a good one to have Steel.
I'm not as sold on, but it'slike I want to do something
because right now Ice is weak toso many things that it needs
some resistances to balance out.
So ice type aren't just bad, Idon't know right so it's either.

(01:33:20):
I'm open to suggestions here, somy first one is the water
immunity feels like an obviousone that does feel like an
obvious one I think I'd takeaway its fighting weakness.
Yeah, I think I'd take away itsfighting weakness because that
one's just kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
So, to summarize, your petty Infinity Stone's snap
is to rebalance Ice-Type.

Speaker 1 (01:33:53):
Yes, because it's just they keep making bulky ice
types that are just worse thanbeing bulky water types.
Yeah, that's true, there's somany bulky ice types.
Like they decide that ice is abulky type and gave it a bunch
of physical weaknesses andspecial weakness to rocks and
weakness to fire.

Speaker 2 (01:34:09):
And you know, no, no immunities, not even resisting
itself, right.

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
so, like ice resist.
Like ice should be straight upimmune to ice and resist water
or immune to water.
Resist ice, like, yeah, it'sjust, it's such a good offensive
type, but it's like it's aweird situation where a pure
water type of Ice Beam is betterthan being a water ice type.
Gyarados is a better ice typePokemon than Lapras, poor Lapras

(01:34:43):
, right, so I'm like it wouldn'ttake much to fix it either.
Hmm, but yeah, that's my pettychange.
Hmm, but yeah, that's my pettychange.
That's extremely petty, right,like that should be petty enough
.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
I think that's probably petty enough yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
Also, how long do you think it takes someone to
notice that, like the newPokemon game comes out?
Because, like I didn't evenretroactively change it, I just
changed it going forward.
So when the new Pokemon gamecame out, ice was rebalanced.

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:35:13):
I mean, I guess it's an Infinity Gauntlet, so it
would retroactively Right, so Ithink I would change it to like
I think I'd make that changeretroactively.
Have taken place in X and Y, Ithink.

Speaker 2 (01:35:30):
When they introduced Fairy-Type.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
Yeah, I think that's a good spot to make the change
they introduced.
Fairy-type Ice gets upgraded.
A single NPC says due toclimate change, ice and Pokemon
have had to adapt.
I think that's brilliant.
I think that's the best part ofthe whole bit.
Due to climate change, we'venoticed Ice-type Pokemon have
gotten more resilient than theyused to be is a sweet way to

(01:35:53):
introduce that and then likesend out a spiel or something.
I think like if I had to make adifferent, really petty one
back when I played more magic is, I'd probably Thanos snap that.
Dual lands should never havebeen rares.
Ooh, they should have alwaysbeen uncommons because they're

(01:36:17):
required to play the game.

Speaker 2 (01:36:18):
Yeah, they are essentially required to play the
game.

Speaker 1 (01:36:22):
So that's another one is I'd make all dual lands
uncommons unless there'ssomething really obscure and
janky like it's like I'm a dualland that turns into a vampire.
I'm'm like, okay, fine, thatcould be a rare.
But.

Speaker 2 (01:36:34):
But it better do something more than just be a
land.

Speaker 1 (01:36:37):
Yep, all right, that's all I got.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
Well, I mean, I feel like you said 10 out of 10, no
notes.
My idea was perfect, so yeahyou nailed it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
Bad customer doesn't remember is a pretty solid like
yeah, I can't think of a singleplace I've worked where I
wouldn't want to do that Like.
I do find it funny.
It's like the one snap toyou're like, all right, it'll be
annoying, going, no it's.
Oh, it's like a permanent, likeweird hypnosis.
Like if someone doesn't tip you, they just forget that store

(01:37:11):
was there.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
Then all the dragons are like oh, suddenly we're
making more tips.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
Right, that's such a weird business strategy.
It's like, huh, we have lessbusiness, but our customers are
better, all right, well, let'swrap up here.
Thank you all for listening toRichard and Carla present Deep
Space and Dragons.
I'm a weirdly aggressive but ina peppy mood.
Am I just bitchier?

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):
the happier I am, richard episode was just you
know uh basically unethicalcompanies that uh have unjust
brand loyalty due to theirlegacy status.
Well, that was your takeaway?

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
my takeaway is that that you should I I was trying
to be more optimistic of hey,the things you like.
If there's ethical versionsthat exist, you should go
support those to be the changeyou want to see in the world.
Stop giving your money tothings that make you angry was
kind of the point I was tryingto get at.

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
Yeah, but you just sounded angry yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
Oh no, I ruined the pic.
I should just tell people likethe takeaway for this episode is
go watch Delicious Dungeon thatgot cheated its Anime of the
Year award.
Go watch Free Run that gotcheated its Anime of the Year
award.
Go watch Free Run that gotcheated its Anime of the Year
award.
And play some cleverly inspiredindie games like Sea of Stars
and Expedition 33 and MonsterSanctuary and, I guess, check

(01:38:43):
out Daggerheart's free YouTubevideos and their free starter
kit.
There we go.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
Optimism.
There we go.
That is more of an optimistictakeaway as well.
As you know self-care, you knowmake sure you're hydrated,
exercise, get your blood checkedperhaps, yeah, you don't want
to find out that you're dyingjust on a whim.

Speaker 1 (01:39:03):
You want to make sure you got some heads up for that.
Bye, bye, I do enjoy that.
I made that the title of thelast episode.

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