Session Zero University Book Club - Obojima: Into the Tall Grass by 1985 Games - Session Zero Heroes - A TTRPG Actual Play Podcast

Episode Transcript
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[MUSIC]
Welcome students to Session Zero University.
My name is Professor Rainier, one of the many teachers here at the university,

(00:24):
but for right now I am your orientation representative.
Here at SCU you will find a variety of professors well versed in the realms of tabletop role-playing games,
offering you their insight on every facet of TTRPGs.
Perhaps you'd like to take a home brewing class with our potions professor,

(00:45):
or join in on a role-playing class put on by our theater department.
Be sure to take all your required general education classes like Character Creation 101,
Intro to World Building, and NPC Voices for Beginners to help round out your education.
There are also plenty of electives and intramural opportunities to add some fun and diversity into your everyday schedule.

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So get out there and learn.
Whether you're hoping to graduate with a degree in DMing or playing it matters not,
there is always room to grow at Session Zero University.
[MUSIC]
Welcome everybody to a special sub-series of our Session Zero University where I,

(01:30):
and other members of our book club, sit down to discuss a piece of content amidst the TTRPG world.
Maybe it's a brand new system, maybe it's a supplement to a system or a new world.
Whatever the case, join us for a deep dive into something you might be looking for
and allow us to intrigue you to check it out for yourself.
The content we'll be discussing for today's book club meeting is Obojima Into the Tall Grass,

(01:55):
a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign setting created by 1985 Games
and advertised to be inspired by Studio Ghibli and Legend of Zelda.
It ran on Kickstarter and procured over 23,000 backers and brought in over $2.5 million.
Highly successful in terms of TTRPG Kickstarters via SEH.

(02:16):
We're incredibly excited to be a part of that and they've released the initial digital books for the tier backers.
So Cameron, who is joining me today, and I are extremely excited to talk about it.
Cameron, you're a huge Studio Ghibli fan, right?
No.
Oh, okay.
Did you only watch the live action movie?
Yeah, I only watched.
Which are the last two?

(02:37):
Is there a live action one?
Okay, I figured there wouldn't be.
No.
No, I'm... it's... okay, so it's not that I'm not a fan.
Like, I've only seen two Studio Ghibli movies and I liked both of them.
So it's not that I hate the series.
I just haven't watched all the movies.
I've only seen Spirit of the Way and My Neighbor Totoro.

(02:59):
Well, if it makes you feel better, Spirit of the Way is my favorite by far.
My Neighbor Totoro, good stuff.
House Moving Castle is pretty phenomenal as well.
Again, I want to see the other ones.
I just haven't gotten around.
No, that's fair.
I think the animation is really cool.
Oh, yeah, it's a bit...
And the world building is phenomenal.
So I see why they wanted to make a TTRPG system around the world.

(03:20):
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's definitely the big thing that I think draws people into his movies is every movie kind of brings this whole new world and its own rules and stuff.
It's true.
And it's fantasy in a modern setting, to a sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because you have the spirit elements oftentimes and they're kind of getting brought into this sort of modern...

(03:42):
Yeah.
...depending on which movie it is that you watch.
So, in today's Book Club session, we will be discussing a handful of the cool features of Obojima's campaign setting, offering some insight into some of the elements we're excited about and even make our own characters using the Obojima exclusive content.
Some of the key features you'll hear about will include themes and tones, the world of Obojima, the island itself, the island of Obojima, which has a lot of kind of really cool features about it.

(04:11):
Some of the places within the island, the magic that exists amidst the island, the currency, which is a little bit different than D&D, but we'll touch on it really quick just so that you guys are familiar with it.
Some of the history of the island and the world and the races that exist there, the species, the technology that exists on the island, which is really interesting.

(04:32):
I think that's going to be one of my favorite parts to talk about.
And some of the secrets as well, which we'll get to a little bit later on.
Additionally, there's factions.
Those are going to kind of relate a little bit to both the story, obviously, that a person might create in their campaign, as well as character creation, because a lot of the backgrounds will tie into those factions.

(04:53):
And then, of course, we'll talk about some of the more technical stuff, the equipment, the skills, magic items, potion creation system, which is really cool.
And I'm really excited to talk about as well.
Some of the new spells that exist and your monsters and allies, or as they titled it in the book, Friends and Fos.
And then, of course, at the end, we'll talk about character creation, which I'll be really excited to put each of us will put together a character using only the subclasses that are available in here.

(05:20):
They don't have any new classes per se, but they do have new subclasses.
And of course, we're going to use exclusively the species, heritage, whatever it is you want to call it, that are listed in there as well.
And those are really fun.
Also, so let's jump into first off, there's themes and tones.
So because Obajima is trying to kind of recreate a tone from Studio Ghibli, and to keep in mind, it's Studio Ghibli and Legend of Zelda.

(05:48):
It's not exclusively just kind of like this Ghibli style with the spirits and a lot of those other elements.
Like those are there, but there's also other things that they kind of pulled from like a little bit of Legend of Zelda inspiration as well that kind of fit within this world.
So just to clarify that it's not exclusively like this isn't the Studio Ghibli TTRPG, it's a TTRPG setting inspired by Studio Ghibli.

(06:16):
So and Legend of Zelda.
So the tone of the world is going to kind of focus on sort of a fun, lighthearted.
It's not trying to create some overarching theme of dread per se, even like one of the primary sort of scary things that's going on on this island,
which I'll just say is the corruption, right?
That's kind of like the primary like, I don't want to call it the Big Bad because it's not meant to be the Big Bad.

(06:40):
It's just something that's kind of there and people aren't really sure about it.
So there's no like Big Bad Evil Dragon that's causing mayhem and destruction and will bring about the end of the world.
It's not some cult that's bringing about the end of the world.
There's no like end of the world.
You're just existing on the island of Obajima.
You're a normal person, but there are challenges.

(07:01):
Within that existence and within that reality that are going to arise on the day to day.
And that's something that you're dealing with and you're going to find like opportunities to go on quest to explore this mysterious island.
Because the island has a lot of secrets, like a lot of secrets.
There's all kinds of cool stuff in the book.
They mentioned that they're going to come out with more content in the future that has like some will explain some of those secrets.

(07:25):
And then of course it's going to introduce more along the way, which will be really cool.
But yeah, there's like a ton of those kind of things.
So it's more like learning the world and getting to explore and see all the amazing, crazy, wild things that are in Obajima.
It's going to focus on like those small stories, little quests.
So like for example, they actually released a sample quest within the world for free game day 2024.

(07:51):
And I got a copy. I was really excited for it.
And the whole thing is literally just like a mushroom hunting competition.
And there's like, there is an encounter in it.
It's not necessarily exclusively like a combat encounter.
Like of course with anything else in D&D, you can solve a problem in a multitude of different ways.
So they offer that as an option in there.
And so that's kind of the tone that they're going for, right?

(08:12):
Like you're not going out and fighting against this horde of monsters.
You're going out and you're just participating in a mushroom hunting competition.
Try to find the coolest mushroom.
And then the mushrooms themselves have kind of some unique challenges to getting them, which is really interesting.
So lots of focus on characters, NPCs and role playing, taking your, your carrier,

(08:33):
which granted this should be kind of a part of any TTRPG campaign,
but taking the characters that your players are playing and really tying them into the campaign that you're going into.
The NPCs are there to kind of like help lead the story or just interact with the,
the characters offer like answers to some of those interesting secrets that we've talked about or we'll be talking about.

(08:56):
And things are like those lines, right?
And it's again, it's going to be role play heavy.
It's meant to be a fun time to sit down and discover this world from less of a serious or monotonous combat,
which I know a lot of people with D&D have kind of concern about, right?
Like I sit there, I roll my D20. Let's see, does it hit? No.
Okay, move on to the next person's turn.

(09:17):
We go around the table. Did everybody survive?
Did anybody need to, you know, be healed? Whatever.
You know, it can get a little bit monotonous, especially with like big bad monsters.
And that's what they want to avoid, right? They don't want it to be monotonous, boring.
They want it to be something that you guys are all discovering and creating the stories ago.
So this is a great way to kind of encourage that tone.
So that's everything with theme and tone.

(09:38):
We're jumping to the world of Olochima.
So one of the key things to go off of is the fact that there's the spirit realm and then there's the physical realm, right?
So if you guys have watched like Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro or The Boy in the Heron,
you'll pretty well understand this concept of like there's the spirits that exist

(09:59):
and they sort of interact to some extent with the physical world, but they have their own realm.
Like they see things differently than we do and we see things differently than they do.
I think Spirited Away is probably the best example of that.
You had this like big rundown theme park that was kind of the setting of the entire story.
And then when the spirits get there, everything changes.

(10:22):
Everything is bright and new and things are happening and things are being used.
And so that's kind of the idea behind it, right?
There's going to be portals that could lead into the spirit realm, but otherwise you're existing in the physical realm
and some spirits exist in the physical realm, right?
They cross over and they reside in the physical realm.
You might cross over and be in the spirit realm.

(10:44):
You know, it can go both ways.
Whatever the case, you're all on the island of Obojima.
You're still in those same places.
It's just that there's sort of two dimensions that will sometimes cross over, but otherwise they are separate.
As far as the spirits go, there are hundreds.
I mean, really your imagination is the limit.
You can come up with any kind of spirits there are.
There are spirits with very unique personalities.

(11:08):
They look different, different visages, different levels of sentience, right?
You might have some that kind of come across as very animalistic versus some that are like,
"We'll talk to you and have a conversation with you and tell you things and you can learn information from them."
Some spirits are nice.
Some spirits are not so nice.
Doesn't necessarily make them evil per se.

(11:29):
It's just like, for instance, Avatar of the Last Airbender, there was the forest spirit and the forest was being chopped down.
So the spirit was very angry and it was taking people from the village.
You might look at that and be like, "Wow, that seems like a bad guy."
It's just doing what needs to be done to protect what's his, right?
So there's that.

(11:51):
On the other end of things, you have the demons.
So demons are, in fact, spirits that have committed some sort of hateful evil and otherwise sinful act.
And the other spirits have kind of cursed them for it.
So these demons are usually marked in some way and they exist within the world of Boba Jima as well.
And a lot of it's, as far as I could understand, a lot of people look down on these demons for reasonable reason, right?

(12:17):
You did something bad to get you cursed.
I'm not going to trust you.
I don't like you.
You stay away from me kind of thing.
But it makes for like a really good, maybe like smaller boss type characters, these demons do.
I mean, there could be some big ones for sure.
They'd be like full-on bosses, but it makes for some good antagonists to put throughout your campaign.

(12:39):
And then of course, there's the fact in general that Boba Jima is an island.
And as it's an island, it is surrounded by water.
And one of the interesting secrets about the fact that it's surrounded by water is that nobody here knows what's out past the water.
Nobody on Boba Jima knows what other islands exist, if other islands exist.

(13:01):
As far as they're concerned, this is the world right here.
This island is the world.
It kind of harkens back to our criminals of island numus.
To some extent, like you guys haven't run into anybody that knows anything.
Pat, I mean, I feel like I'm spoiling something here.
Maybe I shouldn't say anymore.
I don't know.
I mean, out of character, I mean, we had a discussion the other night.
A group of us, all group of me, it met up and you weren't there.

(13:24):
And we talked about criminals of island numus.
And we were talking about our theories about the world and stuff.
Oh, yes.
And Dave had a wild theory that he started saying we're actually not even in a different pocket dimension.
We're just on an island.
Oh, I feel like I remember him mentioning something like that in the past.

(13:45):
In the game, yes.
But then he's talking about, and it's like our characters are just on an island somewhere.
You just got teleported there.
And we just hadn't actually tried to go on a boat and just like go away from the island.
Okay.
Well, then I definitely shouldn't say anymore because I might give something away, but that's an interesting theory for sure.
And well, in this case, in this case, without, I'm not going to spoil anything.

(14:08):
I want to mention what the secrets are, but I don't want to say what the writers have said in the book.
I want you guys to go get, if you feel like this is something up your alley, I want you to go get the book for yourself or the digital version or whatever the case, because it's really cool.
The artwork is amazing.
It's full of adventures.
It's full of the new creatures and everything like that.

(14:29):
It's worth getting for sure.
There's a ton of stuff in there that would be really fun.
Even if you just take pieces of it and implement it into your own world and campaign, I think you'll still have a lot of fun with it.
So one of those secrets is what's out there?
What's past the waters, however many hundreds of miles and whatever direction is Obojima, the only island that's out there?

(14:50):
That's kind of part of the question.
So let's look at the island since we're talking about it and the different parts of the island.
So you've got, it's broken up into a variety of different regions.
You've got the gift of sh, I'm going to try really hard to pronounce these correctly.
Shuritashi, which is simplified to just the gift, right?
It is the southwestern corner of the island.
It features a variety of forests, plains, hills, and even some sandy beaches that border the water.

(15:15):
Obviously within those forests, there's some interesting monsters, creatures, things along those lines and lots of opportunity to create some unique stories.
With that being said, you also have the land of hot water.
Now, if you are familiar with anime, you know that far too often they will have a bottle episode where they go to some hot springs.

(15:38):
This is the perfect opportunity to do that.
And like I said before, Obojima is focused on kind of like a fun and not overly like complicated, not overly serious and heavy role play are kind of the big themes.
And all of that could easily fit into a hot springs episode for sure.
Cameron, I know you're a big fan of hot springs, obviously.
Real ones or like anime ones?

(16:02):
I don't know, you tell me.
I mean, a nice hot springs that I've been to a couple in Colorado.
Oh, yeah.
Like real ones.
Yeah.
Oh, right on.
How was it?
It's pretty cool actually.
You feel like it's like a hot tub, but like in the rocks, but of the earth.
Yeah.
Did you feel like super relaxed and refreshed afterwards?
Like they say that you do?
Who wouldn't be?

(16:23):
Yeah, fair point.
You're steaming your bones.
But yeah, hot springs are pretty cool.
I don't know much about this hot spring anime thing you're talking about because I don't watch that much anime.
The only hot spring episode from an anime was a one punch man spinoff episode.
I knew you were going to say the one punch man one.

(16:45):
That is it.
With the murder.
Yeah, it's the murder.
It's a spinoff.
It's not even like part of the show.
They did two standalone episodes.
Right.
This is how Saitama got his cape.
It was outfit and the other one was about this hot spring episode.
There's always a hot spring episode Cameron.
I'm amazed you watch any anime at all and they almost all have a hot spring episode.

(17:06):
Not like the five I've seen.
Cameron, here's the thing.
If you're not into hot springs, never fear.
Obojima has an alternate version of something you can do for a bottle episode.
Okay.
So is the beach episode?
Actually, yes.
You could do beach episodes.
That's a good point too.
Okay, a third option.
Oh, a third option.
Which is you could take your players to Mount Arbora.

(17:28):
So a ski episode.
It's like a ski episode.
It's like a snowy mountaintop.
The snow from this mountain.
So what I'm getting is anime is just like using vacation retreats as ways to do bottle episodes.
Yeah.
I mean, it's relaxing.
It's fun.
I mean, even your characters need a vacation.
That's right.
Which made me realize that I don't think I've ever done that in any of my campaigns I've

(17:51):
ran where I've had my characters go on a quote unquote vacation and it was just all role play heavy.
I feel like there's an opportunity there, right?
Like where you literally let the players do whatever on this beach.
If we're doing a beach episode, right?
And then like as they're like suggesting things that happen, you're like, oh yeah.
And then yeah, that happens.

(18:13):
You guys are going to have to deal with that.
But like what if you didn't cause conflict or drama and you just let the characters just have like two to three hours to just sit in a room and just talk?
Like where do you think they would?
That's the thing.
What would you would have to set it up?
And I mean, this has absolutely nothing to do with this system.

(18:36):
Well, not technically, but I'm just saying if you're running this system and we're looking at like a beach episode or a or a skis trip episode or a
hot springs episode, like what would that, how could we do that?
Like what would that look like?
Maybe so what I'm pitching is exactly what you're saying where it's like two hours of just like letting the players do their role play and stuff like that.
And then you, the GM, don't come prepared with any kind of conflict.

(18:59):
But based on what the players kind of like say, like one player is like, man, it'd really suck if like a giant crab popped out of this hot spring.
We had to fight it.
And you're like, it's funny.
You should say that.
Maybe, you know, it's like you got to kind of make it up on the fly to some extent, but it also just kind of lets the players like, what do you guys want to do while you're here?

(19:21):
Yeah, that's true.
So I don't know.
That's just my idea.
So next up you have the Gale Fields and the Gale Fields.
So Obajima has kind of the subtitle into the tall grass.
When they talk about tall grass, they're talking about like the Gale Fields, right?
It's literally the central section of the island.
And it's just like tall grass as far as the, I can see like up to like past your head.

(19:43):
I don't care how tall you are.
You could be fatty Lunkins from our criminal bias newest series who's like a seven foot tall dude.
I don't know these actually seven, what like six, eight, but still this like tall grass goes up above his head, right?
This is like walking through a forest of grass.
And there's all kinds of like dangers and stuff that could be inside the tall grass, which I think is really fun.
Now to reference to the book with a short story by Stephen King.

(20:09):
And did the tall grass?
Yeah, because there was a movie.
Yeah, there was also a movie.
It was pretty dark.
I mean, I'm just saying like for this tone, it wouldn't, wouldn't work.
But when I think of tall grass and the possibility of monsters and things hiding inside, I think of Pokemon.
Because that's always kind of like the thing, right?
Like don't go out into the tall grass.
You need a companion Pokemon with you before you go out there.
It reminds me of, again, this is more of a darker theme, but it reminds me of the episode of it's called, I think it's called the tall grass.

(20:38):
And love, death and robots.
Oh, there's a random, well, those are all one off episodes, but there's one episode where the character is on the back of a, he's on a train and they stop by this giant field of super tall grass.
And he sees like blue lights floating above the grass.
And so he gets curious and he wanders in to follow the blue lights, but he gets right before he goes in, he gets warned by a guy.

(21:02):
I remember this.
That's a wonder too far.
And he ignores him and he goes into the fall grass and he follows these spirits that are like floating around.
And he finally gets to one and it was all like a trap because it's actually like zombies.
Oh, sure.
They just like grab people and they're like, they're using the spirit, these blue light spirits to lure them into the field so they can kill them and stuff.

(21:25):
And they do has to run off and stuff.
But I could, you know, I know like Obajima is supposed to be like light tone, but that idea that there's like a spirit.
Yeah, they're using their evil spirits.
It fits really well.
So I mean, hey, there's a freebie for you.
Yeah, there's an idea.
It's just like you're out at night and you notice lights in there and everybody else warns you like, don't don't follow those lights.
They're like from the village next to the gale fields and you're not from there.

(21:49):
Yeah.
And so yeah, you're not familiar with it, but you're like, oh man, the intrigue, the curiosity is killing me.
I got to go see what those are.
And then yeah, you have to deal with something you wish you hadn't.
So speaking of places where you wish you hadn't the blackwater wetlands, the swamp lands that are sparsely inhabited, the difficulties and dangers of living in the swamp and made the people here pretty tough.

(22:14):
Pretty intense.
It's a dark place and it's a spooky place and it's tough to survive.
And additionally, it is the prime spot that the corruption.
Did I mention it earlier?
Right?
Did I mention the corruption?
Yeah, you started talking about it.
Yeah.
So and I'll talk about it a little bit more here later, but the corruption has kind of started to take a hold in.

(22:36):
And so there's a lot of opportunity for some very like spooky dark type stuff, which of course any swamp lands.
Is just like, be perfect place to do something like that.
Now let's say you're like, Hey, this is D&D.
I want to do some classic dungeon crawl.
Where can I, where can I take my players to do some classic dungeon crawl?
Check out the coastal highlands, which is a plateau of craggy rocks that's bordered by sheer cliffs and then the sea.

(23:03):
But the interesting thing about those rocks is that amidst them, there are a bunch of caves, which could easily create some cool opportunities to do some dungeon delving with your players.
That's something you're looking for.
And then finally, the last place on the list of this region is the shallows.
Now, if you want to take your players to the beach episode, yes, you could do that for sure.

(23:25):
And then attaching to that, if you want to take your players and paint them an incredibly beautiful underwater description for them to explore.
Take them to the shallows.
We're talking like reefs.
We're talking like fish swimming amidst it, being able to explore amidst the seaweed and the, I don't know, whatever else is down there.
Like the Great Barrier Reef type clear blue water kind of stuff.

(23:49):
Plus it also offers some interesting opportunity to do some fish or sea based, you know, monsters and things like that, which are always kind of fun.
I always enjoyed those very piratey.
Each of the regions that we listed have locations amidst them, including villages and bases and other points of interest, each with their own descriptions, features, opportunities and one of the most important things, plot hooks, right?

(24:13):
Things that you can help lead your players into another element of the story so that they can go explore it and solve mysteries and do fun things, right?
That's what we're trying to create when we sit down with our players for a TTRPG is to create an interesting story.
So they've got plenty of plot hooks at each and every one of these places.
And when I say places, like you've got the region and then you zoom in a little bit and you've got a bunch of places scattered about that region.

(24:36):
So that means within the region, you got a bunch of places each with their own plot hooks that can create stories and help you do some stuff.
So there are a lot that 1985 games has put in there is vast, right?
And so we can't talk about all of them.
I'm not even going to go too deep into all of them because again, this is something that I want you guys to, if you feel like this is interesting to you, buy the book and explore these yourselves.

(25:01):
Some of my favorites, though, just to throw these out while scrolling through include the spooky Goody Mart, which is amidst the swamp lands, also amidst the swamp lands.
And man, I was just, I guess, I don't know, maybe I was in a mood for some like spooky adventures.
Ironically, amidst this amidst these spooky scary swamp lands, you have Hakuman's ramen shop.

(25:22):
And I mean, I'm a ramen fan.
So the idea of like everybody goes to a ramen shop and then like maybe they describe what they want in their ramen.
Like don't just there's no menu.
What do you want your ramen and this guy can like make the yeah, I don't know, something like that would be really cool.
The domain of the lionfish king.
I know I didn't I wasn't able to get you a visual copy of all the information from a Bojima.

(25:45):
He's kind of a lot of like summary stuff, but you would love the lionfish king.
He's literally like a lionfish humanoid and he's just like in full captain regale.
He's got a big old like Cemetery and yeah, just would be phenomenal.
He also has like this giant reef rock that he's made into like his home kind of reminds me of the crab from Moana or lobster or whatever.

(26:08):
He's like extremely over the top.
You know, if I was to make a villain, I just finished watching Waterworld.
Yeah, that's right.
And the villain in Waterworld is probably one of the most entertaining like like old 80s movie villains I've ever seen a long time.
He was hilarious.
I think the idea of like making a villain, but they're like a villain that just is so it is a funny villain just to laugh at as he's doing stuff.

(26:33):
Right. I think like if you made the lionfish king like just this pompous over the top dude who just is also like he's aware that he's a bit silly.
So he plays into it on in a part, which is what the Waterworld villain did.
The deacon was his name.
And I think if you do that just right with a good villain and I don't know the lionfish king, I bet it's like the blueprint of a character is there.

(27:00):
But the personality is probably what's open.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to kind of make them than yours.
Here's a stat block.
Here's what he looks like.
Go him on it.
You know, here's a little description of what he's done up until this point just to kind of give you a little bit of an idea.
But yeah, absolutely.
And then finally, the last place I thought was really interesting.
There's a place technically is called the wandering line.

(27:22):
Now this one is intriguing.
It is a train that is constant.
It's a spirit train, essentially very spirited away feel.
And it is constantly running all around Obojima.
But you have it doesn't have set tracks.
It could be anywhere.
It can show up anywhere.
Which means you could just be walking down a path one day and then all this in here.
And this train just kind of isn't that kind of how the bus works in my neighbor Totoro.

(27:51):
It might be.
The bus cat thing.
Yeah, it might be because they just showed up when they needed a ride and never really had its own.
Stop.
They had a stop.
Right.
But then it also just randomly showed up and dropped them off at different points in the story.
So yeah, kind of actually a lot like that because yeah, it doesn't have like it has hundreds of stops.
So where it takes you is really about how long that you want to stay sitting on it and where it where it ends up at.

(28:17):
And it does.
I think if I remember correctly, it does cost you to be on it.
Like there's some kind of currency or something like that.
So like you can't just stay on it forever.
It's a great plot device for DMs that are like, I really want my players to go to this one specific spot.
So you're like, all right, everybody, oh, the train appears.
Oh, everybody, are you going to claim on the train?

(28:38):
And they're like, yeah, sure, we'll climb on the train.
We'll see what happens.
Take some straight to that spot.
And they're like, all right, everybody off.
And they're like, oh, where are we?
And then you get to do what you wanted to do.
Yeah, literal railroading.
Yeah, a little.
I wonder if they plan that.
I wonder if that was their thinking there.
That's a good point, though.
I mean, with a game that's all about kind of like a more about role playing and stuff like that, you know, let the DM have their fun.

(29:03):
Magic.
Let's talk about magic.
So magic in Owojima, it's pretty like every day magic is normal, kind of like high fantasy stuff.
Even though this feels like a weird mix of that kind of fantasy with modern day magic is considered pretty normal.
I like to think of it as sort of like Avatar Lost Airbender.
There are people that have bending and then there are people that don't have bending and it's not weird either way, right?

(29:29):
Like somebody pops it.
It's not like Harry Potter where someone starts blasting magic and all the muggles are like, what is this guy doing?
You know, like somebody starts blasting magic.
They're like, oh, yeah, that guy's part of a witch coven or something like that.
You know, it's pretty typical.
Magic is normal.
So for what it's worth to you guys, that's how it kind of works.
But one of the coolest parts that I thought that they had come up with for this was the potion system.

(29:54):
So obviously those without magic might be kind of bummed out because they're like, well, you know, that guy's got man.
Let's talk farming, right?
Like I always use farming as kind of a baseline.
You got to do that can't cast magic and he's trying to farm the normal way.
And you got to do that can cast magic and he's also a farmer and he's like, I'm going to go do a bunch of studying for a bunch of nature magic.

(30:16):
And I can make my crops grow two times as big two times as fast.
Yada, yada, yada.
The other farmer who can't use magic is not going to stand a chance in that market.
Right.
If they're both growing corn, the other guy's going to beat them out every time.
So obviously the non magic castors have to come up with a solution.
What are we going to do?
What do we have that can kind of put us on equal ground?
And that's where potions come in, right?
Potions can be crafted by anybody using the right ingredients.

(30:40):
And so the non magic people have the opportunity to make these potions that do all kinds of cool things.
And it is a big list of different things that you can do with the potions.
It's really cool.
So I'll go into the potion crafting just so you guys can hear about it because it, like I said, it's a whole system that they made.
And I think it was phenomenal how they did it.

(31:01):
It does.
And again, I'm going to tell you this right now.
Another reason why you should get this, this whole D&D campaign.
This world is because it's not really something that I can sit here and tell you.
And then you can just kind of recreate it for yourself.
Like this is something you're going to need the book for because it's a big list of different potions.
But with that being said, there are all sorts of ingredients that are scattered across the island of Obojima.

(31:26):
And it could be anything from fruits and vegetables to it could be bugs.
It could be salmon.
It could be a powder that you have to kind of crush and make yourself.
It could be there's a tea bags are one of the ingredients, you know, things like that.
It could be just about anything either natural or something that you can make from natural components.

(31:50):
So the way that potion brewing works is that every one of these ingredients has three stats to it.
There's a combat stat, a utility stat and a whimsy stat.
And you can mix any three ingredients together and whatever the highest stat is at the end is the number that you're referencing on the sheet of potions.

(32:14):
So for instance, the example that they give is they use a boomberry, a flash paper and a rust crab.
And those all have different stats, but at the end of it combat is the one that comes out on top with 21 points.
So you would go down to the sheet that says combat potions and you would look for number 21, which is the dancing juice.

(32:41):
It says you can coat one melee weapon with this potion.
When you hit a creature with a coated weapon in the next hour, you can force it to make a DC 12 Constitution saving throw on a failed save.
The weapon is no longer coated in the potion and the target begins to convulse in a manner that would be mistaken for an awkward moment.
It's mistaken for an awkward clumsy series of dance steps.
The target speed is reduced to zero until the end of its next turn, after which the convulsing end.

(33:06):
So there are so many potions in here and they have so many different effects.
And you can kind of personally, you can kind of garnish what kind of potion and what abilities it has, even without knowing what it's going to do.
Kind of like Legend of Zelda with the cooking mechanics, right?
You can just throw a bunch of stuff together.
Oftentimes it'll either come out with something, a recipe or junk, which also can happen.

(33:31):
And I think that's a lot of where the Legend of Zelda inspiration kind of came from is that whole cooking concept.
Of course, ingredients can be common all the way to rare.
The rare the ingredients that you're mixing together, the higher the chances that you make a really good potion because the stats will go up, right?
So common ingredients have like an average combat stat of five.
When the rare ones have like a 20, you're more guaranteed to get one of those really good potions by using the rare ingredient and getting one of the like higher level potions.

(34:00):
So that's that's how potions work in a summary.
I think it's really cool.
Like I said, it's there's tons.
There's so many, there's so many potions and so many ingredients that you can make those potions with.
There's also hazards.
So obviously if you're goofing around with stuff that you don't know how it works, if you're not following a recipe, you might fail.
And then it'll blow up in your face, but that's a whole mechanic in and of itself.

(34:22):
So that's the basic gist of how potions work.
And I think that's really cool because I don't know.
I don't even know really much.
I mean, D&D, I think it's just mostly like you can make magic weapons and magic stuff if you have.
Yeah, no, it's not as wide as that, especially with potions.
Yeah.
Like there even is the alchemist for the artificers, like the closest to it.

(34:44):
And it's not even that deep.
Like it's just a get a list of different versions that you can just do.
But the list is like not even that long and has nothing to do with like materials or anything like that for the potion making process.
It just says like, well, it'll always tell you like, oh, and you need 50 gold worth of materials.
So as long as you have 50 gold, like, yeah, you can basically do it, which I don't know.

(35:05):
I don't know.
It just feels boring.
This feels more, yeah, this is a lot more to it, which I am excited in a fun like in game kind of way.
Yeah.
Currency really quick.
Obajima's currency is basically the same as D&D.
They just phrase it differently for the theme of things.
So instead of a copper piece, you have a copper bud instead of a silver piece.
It's a sea petal.

(35:26):
And instead of a gold piece, the gold flower.
So it's very like natural themed, right?
But they're basically the same thing, right?
It's a piece of copper as a piece of, I guess technically sea petal, I think is more of like a crystalline type thing, but I digress.
So that's just that's currency in a nutshell, just so we can kind of mention that in case anybody was curious about it.
It all works the same.
It's like the 10, 10, 10 principle, I think.

(35:48):
So yeah, it's pretty straightforward.
History of Obajima.
I'm not going to go too deep into it, but I'll highlight everything that I can.
First age is kind of the original, right?
This is everything before the arrival of the island's first race, which was the Nakudama.
With that being said, the Nakudama age is exactly what you could guess.
It's when the Nakudama, Nakudama, which are the frog folk or toad folk, I'm not really sure, but either way, race appeared on the island.

(36:17):
Then you have the age of humanity.
Now this is where it gets interesting.
You might think that like the Nakudama or the Dara, which I'll get into here in a moment, the humans also just kind of appeared up on the island, possibly through some spirit type thing.
Actually, it explicitly says that they are seafaring people that found their way to the island, which adds a little bit of mystery.

(36:39):
Where did the humans come from that inevitably, and why did they leave, that inevitably led to them landing on the island of Obajima?
Really interesting there.
Also, they mentioned in the age of humanity that when the humans landed due to some magical stuff innate on the island, that's when the elves started getting born in the island.
The elves started getting born from the humans, right?

(37:02):
The humans started having kids and they were elves, some of them.
So that's where the elf race kind of comes from.
And then finally, you have the Dara, the Dara age, which is when the Dara came to be, right?
The Dara are really interesting and we'll get into them a little bit later as well.
But they're very interesting.
All of these are very interesting, right?
Even the elves are not your typical elves per se.

(37:25):
So let's move on to technology.
Technology is probably one of my favorite parts of the Obajima campaign.
So as far as the island's historians can remember, there have been all these strange pieces of technology.
A lot of it's very like 1980s feel that are scattered across the island.
Devices, materials, working technological pieces.

(37:48):
Some of these are obviously very valuable and powerful.
And they kind of resemble relics or magic items that you would see in the typical D&D campaign.
So some of the technology is still functioning.
Some of it can be repaired by somebody that knows what they're doing.
And some of it is just wasted away to basically scrap.
But that doesn't mean that it's useless, right?

(38:09):
That's something that you can pull from.
And that comes into one of the two new stats that exist within this campaign that'll be on your character sheet,
which is salvage and mechanics.
Those are the two new skills that you can get and those relate directly to the technologies that are in here.
So let's talk about what some of those technologies might look like.
One of my favorite ones, which is like, I think is like one of the coolest ones is vending machines.

(38:31):
There are vending, literal vending machines scattered around the entire island.
One of the things that they said in the notes was that if it looks like it's a pretty like well cleaned, functioning vending machine,
it's probably owned by some wizard or other magic user that's kind of like locked themselves as the owner of this vending machine.
And there's going to be all kinds of weird stuff inside that they're trying to sell.

(38:55):
So it could be gizmos, gadgets, potions.
There could be ingredients in there.
Like you never know what you're going to find when you come across one of these vending machines,
but it's definitely we're stopping and checking it out.
It's also a great opportunity for, I know for like, criminals of island numus, right?
We created a whole new leveling system that's kind of centered around an arcade.
This is kind of a similar way to like take away from the monotony of like, you go to a shop, you buy that, you ask the person there,

(39:22):
can I get the stuff that I need? They either do or don't have it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you go to the vending machine.
You the DM could have pre prepared this vending machine.
This is just going to have random stuff.
It's not something the players need, but man, you can entice the heck out of them with some of the stuff that they might want or be curious about.
Especially because this is a new world.
So like, you know, I know if I see, oh, it's a holy avengers sword.
Oh, I know exactly what that does.

(39:43):
They don't know that.
They don't know this is new unless they looked over the book.
I guess.
Yeah, but I digress.
There are cartridges, cassettes, VHS tape for the for the itty bitty children out there who are listening.
These are some of the earlier forms of media storage devices that like, I remember watching VHS tapes.
I remember having cassette tapes and trying to like record the radio on them and like burn.

(40:07):
Well, you don't burn it, but you whatever it was that pressed it into the tape cartridges.
I remember the floppy disks were probably the closest thing I could think of.
I didn't play any like Nintendo 64, but I guess that would also be like a cartridge.
But whatever the case, these are the kind of things that you might find throughout the island.
And the beauty of that is that it can hide secrets and things on them, which of course that the players can get a hold of a device that can play it.

(40:33):
They'd find out some interesting things.
And I know they're definitely like, I remember seeing a Walkman.
There was like a Game Boy type device in here as like part of the magic items.
So there's opportunities you guys could find to play these cartridges, cassettes and VHS tapes.
It's just a matter of like looking around and finding them.
And then there's InstaPrint cameras, which are kind of just like a fun additive for those of you that aren't familiar.

(40:58):
I mean, they had kind of a weird resurgence kind of vinyl where like people were like, oh, yeah, we can get those again.
You just take the picture and then it prints it out right there out of the camera.
I know in like a lot of D&D campaigns, I feel like somebody has said, man, I really wish we had a camera right now.
So I guess this kind of like attributes to that.
So this is kind of a fun way to play with things.
So, all right, so we've talked a lot about the world.

(41:20):
We talked a lot about a lot of the resources that are in this world, a lot of the interesting things that exist within this world.
Let's talk about the corruption.
So remember how we said we touch on the corruption like multiple times earlier.
Let's let's finally dive into that for a moment.
So one of the primary main plot opportunities the creators put into the world of Obojima is this sort of strange black goop known as the corruption.

(41:42):
So if you want a perfect, a pretty much perfect example of what that means and what that is,
check out Princess Mononoke, which is the Studio Ghibli movie.
And I think you'll you'll understand after you see that like what this corruption is.
It's pretty much exactly the way they depict it, right?
So the interesting thing about the setting coming into Obojima is that the corruption is still pretty new to the world.

(42:07):
It hasn't existed for years and years and years and everybody's aware of it.
And they're like, yeah, it's a major problem.
We need to get rid of it.
It's taking over our world, right?
This is something new that started on the island and it's not even defined as a problem because people don't really know.
The few people that see it might think, oh, this is just some weird magic.

(42:28):
This is some weird spirit thing that exists here in Obojima.
They don't see it as quote unquote the corruption, something that's reoccurring across the entirety of the island.
So it's it's definitely an interesting mystery that your players can kind of look into and see and chase after and try to figure out the source of the corruption.
All right, so we got the corruption out of the way.

(42:50):
Big major plot point.
There's some other secrets.
We'll get to those here in a little bit just kind of touching on them.
In the meantime, factions now factions are going to tie pretty closely into your character because they usually have a related background that you can take.
So some of the factions that exist, you have the AHA, which is the guild of archaeologists, historians and archivists.

(43:13):
And these are the individuals who are intent on finding out more about the history of Obojima.
It could be where the technology all came from.
It could be where did the Nakada, who's the first Dara?
Who is the first Nakadama?
Where did they come from?
Probably some interest in the spirit world and figuring out like how did these spirits get here?
Who are they?
Why are they here?

(43:34):
So it's just, if you have a player that wants to do a lot with like intellect and some mystery solving and stuff like that, this is definitely the place to go.
Next up, you have the courier brigade, or as they sometimes will say the Knights of the Postal Service.
So we're in a world without cell phones.
There are some technologies, but they don't have cell phones, satellites, other communication technologies.

(43:56):
So the ability to get a message from one place to another is imperative.
It is a necessity.
If we're being attacked by some spirit in our village, we need help.
We need to get that news out fast.
So the people that deliver these kind of information, the people that are delivering packages and things like that across the island are the courier brigade.

(44:17):
So they're pretty cool.
And it kind of plays off of the whole like United States postman creed where it's like, you know, "Neather storm or snow or sleep, storm."
You gotta watch out for "snorm out there."
Watch out for "snorms and sporms and sleets and wheats."
And "wheats."
Oh man, that wheat man.
It totally kicks into your sinuses.

(44:38):
Exactly.
Hate favors the worst.
That is pretty bad.
It also kind of harkens to like Kiki's delivery service, which is again another Studio Ghibli reference there.
Really fun one.
I kind of enjoyed that.
Just like delivering across the dangers of the island of Owojima, right?
When I mentioned the tallgrass, right?
They mention in the book that the courier's guild up keeps the roads, but that doesn't mean that a spirit can't kind of throw that off.

(45:02):
And if you're a courier and you got to get this package to the other side of the island, you don't have the ability to just be like, "Oh man, the roads out."
Guess we'll save this package.
Nope.
You got to take that package.
It's got to get there.
And whatever dangers you have to go across to get it there is up to you to overcome.
So you have the Mariners Guild.
So these are undersea explorers separated into four lodges, which are north, south, east, and you guessed it, west.

(45:30):
Where they train and employ their divers and other seafarers.
There's some really cool opportunity with these guys to do some underwater, pirate feeling adventure type stuff.
Thanks to this element.
You can get your inspiration from Ponyo.
If you're looking for some Studio Ghibli stuff to kind of feed that desire to go seafaring.

(45:53):
And yes, they do have some Marines and they're pretty cool.
Going along with this, you have the...
This one gave me a big chuckle is the Society of Young Stewards is literally the Scouts like Boy Scout, Girl Scouts, stuff like that.
It's just that, right?
It centers around the idea of training kids to have an understanding of the world around them.

(46:15):
And yes, there are badges.
They are trying to earn badges.
It's like the kid from up Russell.
It's got to get that badge of helping an old person cross the street and gosh darn it.
If this old person doesn't want to cross the gosh darn street, I'm going to lose it.
I want my badge.
But with that being said, I think this would be a phenomenal place to start.

(46:38):
The beginning of a campaign is all the players are kids at the Society of Young Stewards.
And they're trying to earn a badge or maybe they get separated from their steward leader.
I guess it didn't technically have a name for the leaders, but they're steward leader.
And they have to find their way back to the rest of the group or something like that.

(47:00):
And they end up in some crazy situation.
There's a one-shot idea.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would love to do that.
Also, there's a whole variety of sword schools.
So if you've got people that want to train in weapons and stuff, this offers a really great opportunity.
And it does in fact have a mechanic for actually like training and learning something new if they were to go to one of these sword schools.

(47:23):
They have like special techniques from each one of the schools.
And if you're able to win in a duel against the masters of these schools, then you can learn that technique like you gain it.
So that's pretty cool.
Along those same lines, you have a whole bunch of witches and covens.
If you have a magic user that's looking to learn a little bit more when it comes to magic, spells, potions, potion recipes.

(47:49):
The witches all have like information that they keep very closely to either themselves or if they're part of a coven, which they aren't always, mind you.
But if they are part of a coven, then they only share it with the people within their coven.
Again, if you're looking for inspiration there, Kiki's delivery service, there's some witches in spirited away.
And then Earwig and the Witch is another one.

(48:11):
It was a 3D animated show.
It didn't have great ratings, but it's an option.
It's probably the most like attributable option when it comes to the witch stuff.
[Music]

(48:43):
Let's talk mechanic stuff.
It's not like new mechanics per se.
We're not jumping into like, "Oh, you don't roll the D20 anymore. You do other things."
No, you still do that.
It's all the same D&D rules.
But within this, they have a whole lot of new equipment, new spells, new things along those lines.

(49:04):
So that's what we're going to jump into here for a moment.
First of all, you've got magic items, regular items actually.
Let's start with those.
One of the things that I really enjoyed was they have a new way of handling shields or it's an optional rule, technically.
I really like it.
So normally in D&D, you get a shield and it adds, I think, +2 to your AC, something like that.

(49:25):
And there are better shields I think you can get along the way potentially.
Magic-based ones, yeah.
And I always thought, "Oh, yay, just more AC for this player. Yay, that's great."
Like, it kind of sucks when your player has like 18 to 20 AC.
And you're like, "Cool, monsters rarely hit them."
So that whole player, it's like, "I'm going to target the other players just because I know that I'll never hit this player."

(49:48):
But then that's unfair to them because, I mean, this monster has just as much reason to hit, you know what I mean?
Especially because the people with the high AC are usually the ones that are not only tanking the damage,
but also dealing a lot more of the damage, the fighters.
And so then it kind of becomes a situation of like,
"Well, the monster would want to get rid of the person that's dealing them the most damage,

(50:10):
but it's also the person they're less likely to hit."
And then it's kind of like, "I feel like I'm wasting my time."
So in Owojima, when it comes to shields, one of the alternate rule that you can do is that your shield takes a certain amount of HP for you when you would take a hit.
So it's a little bit more like Legend of Zelda, where you're constantly getting like weapons and shields and stuff and they're constantly breaking, deteriorating.

(50:32):
Yeah.
So your shields create like 10 HP buffs.
Exactly.
But it's technically re-capable.
But it's not your 10 HP because you still can gain that.
It's just its own HP on top of it, on top of your base.
Yeah.
And if it loses that HP, it'll crack the shield and inevitably break it.
But you can repair it.

(50:54):
Now, the one thing that it did say was that you can't use the Mending Spell on it.
You can't get it because that's way OP, right?
Like I can just have, because Mending is a can trip.
So it's not something you can do in combat.
Absolutely not, yeah.
So I mean, if you have combat and your shield breaks and then you spend minutes repairing it afterwards, I don't really see the flaw in that.

(51:15):
That's true.
And those are like shields are really good in this system.
The one that I saw, I think was the base one.
I think it had like 10 HP.
That's not like a lot.
It's not, but a level one character has about 10 HP.
That's true.
The shield is as much HP as a level one character.
That's true.
So having a shield doubles your HP at level one.
That's true.

(51:36):
Right off the bat.
Yeah.
But then it kind of becomes useless later on.
Depending on, I don't know.
I didn't look through all of them, but, but anyway, yeah, I mean, they said no Mending.
They said that the damage is too significant for Mending to work on it, which would make sense.
Mending does specifically say like small cracks and whatever.
I could see a situation where you create a mechanic where you say, okay, your shields busted up.
And then you can do Mending to it once and you can regain like a D4's worth of repair to it or something like that.

(52:04):
Like something small.
So like you, you're putting a Band-Aid on the shield.
Exactly.
So in case of you having our combat.
Right.
It can take like a little bit.
A tiny bit.
But it won't full heal it.
And I didn't, I didn't look too deeply into it.
But maybe there's a situation where, because it did say like your shield can just break permanently.
Right.
Like it's just so busted up.
There's no repairing it.

(52:25):
And then there's a wood here where you want me to do is gloom back together like a broken vase.
Like, so I like the idea that depending on what mechanic, if they're like, oh yeah, if it runs out, you have to roll a D20.
If it hits a one, like a lot of magic items, right?
If it's a one, it's destroyed.
If you do the Mending and you repair it and you take it into combat and it hits you again, you say, okay, now you roll the dice.

(52:46):
And if it's a one or two, and you could just keep doing it.
So every time you mend it, it has a chance of just being shattered.
It permanently raises the failed condition.
Yes. Until you get it like repaired by an actual like professional.
Yeah.
So anyway, that was, that's like the only thing I had to say on like the standard equipment.
I guess, I don't know.

(53:07):
They put weapons in here that were just wild.
Like you said, they probably put in a lot of silly weapons.
Like, use, use weapons.
Example.
So for armor, it's bark armor, scum weed armor.
It feels very Druid.
Druid, yeah.
But for, oh wow.
Okay. So I just saw the shields.
Wooden shield is five HP.

(53:28):
Metal shield is 10 HP.
Well crafted wooden shield is 10 HP.
And then a well crafted metal shield is 20 HP.
And also it says if the shield takes damages broken, it can be repaired at any armor Smith at a cost of one gold pedal per hit point recovered.
So it's kind of one of those things like, yeah, it's at zero.

(53:49):
And that means for even just the basic wooden shield, that's going to cost me five gold to repair it.
Like that's, that's a lot.
It sounds like how much a base shield costs in D&D.
Oh, I'll just go buy a new one.
Exactly.
Okay.
So weapons, simple melee weapons, boat or, okay, boomerang, fun stuff, butterfly staff, fan, like a big giant fan, which I love.

(54:14):
A frying pan.
Fantastic.
And fans with the chicks used in Avatar.
This is more like a giant fan.
Oh, yeah.
Like a big like like a giant metal fan that they like, oh, like the company Big S fans.
Yes, very much like big.
Okay.
Where do you think they got the inspiration?

(54:35):
No, I'm just kidding.
Iron tea pots or kettles, a shovel fits.
And then you'll love this one in umbrella.
This feels very like the adventure zone, the first season with the umber staff or whatever it was.
Yeah.
And it was his umber magic wand.
Yeah.
It was his umbrella.
It was awesome.
I loved that.
Or like, oh, Yondu?

(54:56):
Yondu.
Oh, yeah, Yondu.
Yes.
I'm Mary Poppins, y'all.
I'm Mary Poppins, y'all.
She cool.
Is he cool?
Hell yeah, he's cool.
Hell yeah, he's cool.
For Marshall Melee Weapons, you've got bellow flutes, you've got a candle makers club, you've got a dandelion spear, you've got a drive shaft from a car.

(55:17):
Yep, got it.
You've got a long, long dagger.
I don't know much about that.
Secret stone.
Oh, that's compared to the long dagger.
Yeah, yeah, just a singular long dagger.
Oh, okay.
Those, they just stopped making them.
Nobody wanted them.
These weren't the long, long daggers.
Long, long, yeah.
That's right.
Long daggers.
Or just regular daggers.
Yeah, because those are affordable.
Yeah, exactly.

(55:38):
For the man on the budget.
That's right.
You've got a shepherd's crook in case, you know, like there's somebody on stage that you meet off-stage.
You've been referencing.
Berserk.
Yeah, you've been referencing Berserk a lot lately.
Not on this recording, but.
Well, that's true.
But just like in our passive conversation, there's a secret stone sword, which is just like a big rock, like a buster sword.
Yeah, like, like that's has.

(56:00):
Like a buster sword, yeah.
Probably would actually.
It's made a stone after all.
You know, it's got me thinking, because I was looking ahead at the buster sword.
Yeah.
They got me thinking, what races can players play?
Because this is supposed to be a D and D thing.
But from what it sounded like when you were describing it, it sounds like humans, elves.

(56:24):
Nakudama.
And the Dara.
We're like the only four races actually on this island.
So like the buster sword just made me think like a Goliath with a giant like stone sword.
But I'm like, but with Goliaths, Tordles, Dwarves even exist in this world.
That's a very good question.
I'm glad you asked it.
So actually, technically, no.

(56:45):
So there's nothing stopping you from running your own obojima campaign, of course, and using whatever race it is that you want.
Yeah.
I mean, you could technically, during the age of humans.
Right.
Just say that they had different.
Because people are showing up.
You could say like Dwarves showed up.
But thenatically, you probably shouldn't have elves show up because they already are there.
Magically start getting created from the world itself.

(57:07):
Exactly.
You could say Dwarves showed up and you could even say like Tiefling started showing up and stuff.
Just if you want to go crazy.
I mean, you did said there's demons in this world.
So technically, you could have deemlings being created via the spirits.
That's true.
That's true.
But so and that's that's exactly what they say in the book.
They said these are not native to the island of obojima.

(57:28):
If you want to implement them, come up with a good reason.
Rewrite the history a little or make your own.
Yeah, exactly.
But I'm glad that you asked that because that is a very good point.
Like technically speaking, Dragomoron and gnomes and all that other stuff, they don't exist.
Only the humans, elves, and Narkadoma.
I could say gnomes existing just because they're very magical.
That's true.
In the sense that they could have just kind of been sure.

(57:50):
You could have gnomes showing up around the same time as the Narkadoma.
Narkadoma because they're very magical.
That's true.
You can make and you could have the gnomes be not like what we think of gnomes, but be like Terry Pratchett gnomes.
It's quote my favorite author where typically when you think gnomes and D&D, you think like just like kind of like Hobbit, like halfling mask, but like a little more magical, right?

(58:16):
But in Terry Pratchett, he went full garden gnomesk where he said no gnomes taller than six inches or about like eight inches, none taller than a foot for sure.
And his literal tiny magical creatures that like just catch rides on rent and ride like rats and stuff.
They're basically like, what's that family, the books, the people with the little.

(58:41):
Oh shoot, that was so long ago.
What was it?
The little tales and stuff.
Oh my gosh, the borrowers or something.
Yeah, the borrowers and they even made a movie about them.
Wow.
Wasn't very good.
What a throwback.
Well, yeah, the borrowers kind of that's kind of where Terry Pratchett went with it.
It was like this group of magical tiny people who just kind of make their magic and they live their own lives.
Yeah.

(59:02):
Kind of could do that in this world.
There's like this race of tiny people that have always been there, but since they're so small, nobody noticed, but they've been there for like thousands of years.
That's very much like living in trees and stuff.
Yeah.
Well, hey, exactly what you're doing right now is exactly what they say to do in the book.
Come up with a good reason for it.
Slide it in there.
That's fine.
At the end of the day, nobody can stop you.

(59:24):
It's true.
So with the weapons that we were talking about, right?
A lot of them have more than just like, okay, this does this much damage as this much reach.
It has these like special things.
There's all kinds of different things that these do that make them a little bit more interesting than than just your typical stuff.
So like, for instance, there's the butterfly staff.

(59:45):
And although it can be used as a weapon, the butterfly staff is more commonly used as a tool to catch small spirits and critters.
It's tall.
Half is capped with a well woven net, which is often made from sheep dragon wool.
When you make a grapple check while holding the butterfly staff, you can use the staff to target a small or smaller creature that is up to 10 feet away from you.

(01:00:07):
When you do so, you use your attack modifier for the weapon in place of your strength, athletics check, while grappling a creature in this way.
You can't make another attack with the butterfly staff because you've caught something with it, right?
But that's interesting, right?
It's more than just like, here's a weapon.
It's got like interesting elements to it.
There are all sorts of new feats.

(01:00:29):
We're not going to go into those.
That's a lot to go into.
But I would love to touch on the magical items.
So obviously one of the most fun things to do is look up magic items from all over D&D, the homebrewed stuff people come up with.
And I got to say, this has some pretty incredible ones in here.
You've got a helmet that just looks like a big giant anglerfish head.

(01:00:52):
And it's an uncommon item.
It says, while wearing this helmet, the duration of the water breathing spell is doubled when cast on you.
And you can cause the helmet's antenna to shed a bright light in a 20 foot radius and dim light from an additional 20 feet.
So if you're doing the diving stuff with the one guild, this is a this is a great item to have.
In fact, this may be an item that you get from that guild, right?

(01:01:15):
It also lets you cast Charm person because it's kind of like that, you know, beckoning someone in with the light.
So there are all kinds of really cool magic items.
And one of the things I love most about them is they go along with that whole technological side, right?
There's weird technology on this island.
There is a Burnwright brand hair dryer.

(01:01:37):
That's a magical item.
There's a Konseco bat, which is just a bat like a wooden baseball bat.
And it's got like paper sigils on them.
And it gives you like a bonus to attacks and things along those lines.
There is a TV.

(01:01:59):
It's a CRT TV and chicken timer.
There's a chicken.
Like one of those ones that you like you turn it and then it goes.
Okay, but I merely thought combination TV TV microwave.
It's okay. Well, so it's like there's a cool place like, oh, dude, why don't they put like a TV on microwaves?

(01:02:22):
Hold on a second here.
They can't do that.
You can't tell them that they can't live physically can't do that because of microwaves.
The reason they have the light is so the light of a microwave can science, but so the light can get out with the waves, but not the bad waves in the sense.
And but you could put a TV on the front of it, I guess.

(01:02:43):
Well, you have to make it have holes in it.
Anyways, TV microwave combination.
And then the timer tells you when your food is done.
And then it makes like a squawking noise because it's your chicken from fruits.
Well, let me tell you what they came up with came in.
So this is the CRTV and chicken timer says as an action, the chicken timer can be set to 11 minutes and 14 seconds.

(01:03:05):
I don't know if that's explicit.
Like, I think that's at most.
It can be set to 11 minutes or 40 seconds when the timer begins to count down.
The TV starts to show a fuzzy video of a 10 foot radius sphere centered on the chicken timer.
Once the chicken timer goes off, the TV turns off again.
Once the timer has been used in this way, it can't be used again until the next dawn.

(01:03:30):
So the TV just shows a video of us a ball.
It's the ball sitting there for 11 minutes and 14 seconds.
Is it trying to suggest that I can use a tape in it?
Maybe. I don't know.
I like the idea of just a ball.
You're like, wow, this is my favorite channel.

(01:03:53):
There's a cube of cubes, which is just like a Rubik's cube.
This is the first age puzzle. It seems seemingly impossible to fully solve as its tiles are constantly shifting and turning.
As an action, you can solve a whole side of the puzzle.
Wow.
Yeah.
Unlocking one of the-- which means nothing when you do Rubik's cubes.

(01:04:15):
Like, oh, cool. I got this side. Everything else is a mess.
As an action, you can solve a side of the puzzle, unlocking one of the six spells trapped inside and releasing its power.
Roll a d6 and use the table below to determine the spell.
Spells cast through this puzzle using a spell casting modified up to +4, a spell attack bonus of +7, and a spell save dc of 15.
And they can include water bullet, which I believe is an Obajima custom spell, same with Forest Guard.

(01:04:40):
Then there's Cure Wounds, Reduce-- or Enlarge Reduce, Flaming Sphere, and then Pass 5 Persons.
Shame that Rubik's cubes are impossible to solve, or someone could cast all six at once.
Oh, dude. That'd be insane.
But they're impossible.
I've tried them.
It technically says--
In here, technically says "Seemingly impossible."
I don't know. They are.

(01:05:01):
They are.
I've tried.
Let's see. There's all kinds of stuff in here. There's a flying broomstick.
Yeah.
I figured that was a given with the witches' covenant.
Cameron, let me tell you my favorite one of the whole lot.
Was it the chicken microwave?
No, it's the keytar.
The keytar.
Yeah, of course you would say that.
You know, Skyler, it's a real thing.
Yeah, I know it is a real thing.
As a part of a minute-long performance on the first-age instrument, you can choose--

(01:05:26):
So it's a full minute.
You can choose a lock you can see within--
Oh, because key. I get it.
Oh!
You can see with the 50s video.
Oh, sick. Okay, this got even better.
Yeah, using the magic of music.
I'm going to just hint.
This item has-- I already had an idea for a character.
This item has been added to my character.
Is it?

(01:05:47):
Yes.
There's a game toy, which is literally like a Game Boy color.
I won't go into what it does.
I'm just noticing things at this point.
Yeah, there's just a ton of stuff.
Obviously, there's the in-supprint camera, which we mentioned before.
Anyway, there's all kinds of stuff.
There's a sticky hand, like one of them sticky hand toys that you get out of a little machine.
So anyway, there's all kinds of different magic items.

(01:06:10):
There's a whole bunch of different spells,
new spells that you can play around with and that are part of the various classes.
There's all kinds of different monsters.
I'd love to talk about those.
One of the primary things about Obajima is that there are three primary spirits
that are sort of like the-- you could almost call them like protectors.

(01:06:32):
You could almost call them gods to some extent of Obajima.
They're just these massive spirit creatures that sort of guard over things.
There's also the concept that spirits are in a lot of things.
You can have a whole bunch of little friendly spirits.
In fact, these can be your familiars.
When you cast Find Familiar and stuff like that,

(01:06:53):
you could have a little spirit that possesses a pumpkin.
You could have one of my favorites is a little spirit that possesses an object.
The example that they give is the little Game Boy color.
Then it just feels like you're walking around with BMO from Adventure Time.
That would be kind of fun.
You can have those little spirits, but again, you have those giant spirits

(01:07:15):
that are almost like gods.
You have the corruption, obviously.
That's one of the monsters that you can do.
You have-- I mean, there's all kinds of stuff.
There's a lot to go in here.
There's a giant angler fish.
There's the demons.
I think they have different levels of demons.
There's dragons, but they're not like D&D dragons.
They're more like smaller dragons that kind of just hang out around the world.

(01:07:39):
They're not necessarily evil by any means.
They're neutral, but they can be dangerous in the right circumstances for sure.
Field giants, which are these huge--
I mean, it's like a big giant creature with a tree growing out of it.
There are fish folk.
There's the lionfish guy that I mentioned before.
There are giant jellyfish.

(01:08:01):
There are giant CR-25 koi fish that fly in the air.
Wow.
Which is just insane to me.
There's a Gorogoro, which is like a demon creature that centers around alcohol,
and it hides within sake pots.
Oh.
And that's like a CR-7, so it's pretty freaky looking.

(01:08:23):
It looks like just like a blob with a big old mouth and an eyeball popping out of it.
They have their own version of harpies, which are kind of almost like their own race,
but they're kind of like this bad group.
They're notoriously like villainous.
They're the bad boys.
They're the bad boys and girls.
There's howlers, which are very much like gnolls.
Oh.

(01:08:44):
And they're also another kind of like common villain that you might run across.
So there's a whole bunch of different monsters in here.
You've got like golems.
You've got the sheep dragon, which aren't so much monsters as they are like a necessary part of obojima.
They talk about that a lot, is that sheep dragon are kind of considered like very important elements of obojima.

(01:09:06):
Like the economy and the farming and everything like that, raising them.
They're slimes, which is classic to any anime with like a fantasy sort of a RPG feel, right?
Everyone that's like, "Oh, gotta go grind some levels.
Let's go kill some slimes," right?
So anyway, there's a ton of stuff to go through as far as the monsters of obojima.

(01:09:27):
But let's get to kind of the final part, which is Cameron and I making characters.
Now, I've already got mine picked out, but I wanted to see if Cameron, if you had ideas of where you wanted to go with a character.
Yeah, I already have my character ready.
Okay, tell me about your character.
Are you doing mine first?
Sure.
And do you want me to go first?
I mean, if you want to go first, you can do it in the system more than I do.
So I can base on my character, because I have the idea for my character in my head.

(01:09:51):
Sure.
I just didn't, you know, I don't know exactly the system.
I don't know how similar this to D&D with character creation.
It's pretty, it's honestly pretty straightforward.
So for those that aren't familiar with character creation in Dungeons & Dragons, just in general, right, you're going to pick your species, your ancestry, your race, whatever you want to call it.

(01:10:12):
I don't think they call it race anymore.
I think they call it species or something like that.
Again, we are explicitly doing it from the content that is in the obojima campaign setting.
So you got the Dara.
You've got the elves.
You've got the Nakudama.
And those, that's it.
Or humans technically are also an option, right?

(01:10:33):
You know, just kind of a human.
So the Dara, these are a mysterious magical people that are born out of nature, right?
Like they like literally come out of a tree and they have the ability to absorb massive amounts of information, which is stored in these special glyphs that can store the entire like life memories of a Dara.
So when a Dara prepares to die, they typically try to seek out their village so they can share their experiences with everybody.

(01:10:57):
And then when they do die, they leave their, they'll implant their parting glyph onto a tree, which has like their entire life is stored on this glyph.
So that when another Dara comes along and finds a glyph, they can download that information into their own mind.
And the book actually kind of mentions, it's like a, it's like an opportunity for a player who's playing a Dara dies.

(01:11:20):
They can just say, okay, well, I'm going to come back as a new Dara and I'm going to go find my glyph.
And then I'm just going to download the information.
I am basically playing the same character.
It's within Dara, there are two, two kinds of Dara.
There's the red Dara, which are smaller and they have access to the might talisman.
So this is kind of one of the traits that you get by choosing this race is the species is you get to make these talisman and these talisman allow you to do a variety of different things that can like benefit.

(01:11:47):
Usually you and your other players, I think there's some that kind of enhance your weapons so you can deal damage.
But whatever the case, the red Dara have access.
There's like three that you get access to innately, but then the red Dara specifically gets the might talisman, which is kind of like Bartic inspiration explicitly for saving throws.
So you or somebody that you know, who has this talisman can gain a D6 to add to one of their saving throws.

(01:12:13):
On the other hand, you have the blue Dara, which are like six to seven feet tall.
They have a singular eye in the middle of their head.
The red Dara have two eyes and the blue Dara have the ability to create the knowledge talisman, which works very similarly to the previous one, except it's for ability checks, not saving throws.
So just kind of a fun addition there.
Now for my character, I actually chose a red Dara for for my race.

(01:12:37):
So that's kind of where I went with that. His name is Bungo with an A is B A and G H O.
And he has a background of being part of the couriers.
So he's used to traveling across the island delivering messages and packages and things like that.
And part of the reason why I chose that was because I wanted to use the class, which we haven't talked too much about.

(01:13:04):
And then we're going to go into those as we're making our characters of it's the rogue subclass and it is called the wax work rogue.
And so the idea of the wax work rogue is that you're part of it was originally created as a faction of the courier brigade.
And the idea is that you make you have this magical wax and you make it into different things to give you a fighting chance against the various dangers on the island.

(01:13:30):
It can boost you.
It can help you fight against things.
There's a whole bunch of different ones.
So if I remember correctly with the wax at third level, you can make the wax enchantments.
You learn three enchantments of your choice and then very similarly to the source where you have these like points that you can use to create these while you're out and about.

(01:13:53):
So I think I can't remember exactly how many you start with.
I think three and then like every single time you level up, you gain one, which is really nice.
So the three that I chose were candle pop, which you can spend two wick points to ignite and hurl a misshapen yellow candle out of creature.
You can see within 60 feet of you, it explodes into like liquid wax that can cover the character that you're fighting against and like hold them in place.

(01:14:20):
So I was thinking, you know, he's this kid that's trying to deliver packages and he comes across enemies and rather than thinking to himself, oh, I can fight this enemy.
What if I can just trap the enemy for now?
Because I need to get to my destination.
So I'm just going to trap the enemy now and get away.
That's my main focus.
Okay.
The second one I chose was waxlings, which also kind of goes into this idea of finding a familiar right.

(01:14:47):
So you can basically make a little wax creature that's your your companion.
And I just thought that was kind of fun.
I just thought that's adorable and he's out in a bow across the island of Obajima.
He needs a friend so that he can retain his sanity.
And so yeah, I just thought that was fun.
And then finally, the last one I chose was delicacy.
So this one's a little weird.
You can as an action spend one wick point to imbue the tart flavor of a pyramid melon and the healing properties of a river spear into your candle and as a bonus action, a creature can consume the candle, like eat the candle and cause it to regain 1d6 hit points.

(01:15:24):
And it gives them nourishment for like a full day.
So I'm thinking, okay, he's traveling around this island.
He's delivering packages.
Sometimes he has to do overnight and sometimes he doesn't run across the village along the way where he can get some food.
So he's got these delicacy, these these edible wax things that he creates to give him back or to feed him and give him back any health points that he might have lost.

(01:15:46):
Cool.
So he wields a fan, which we mentioned before.
He also has a short bow and daggers, which are kind of part of the like normal stuff in D&D.
And he's got some capability within these tools, cobbler's tools.
I mean, these are just kind of roguish things that he gets.
I will say his primary stats are dexterity and intelligence.

(01:16:07):
He is proficient in everything within dexterity, which kind of makes sense when you're a rogue.
But I also tried to like get a lot of stuff and intelligence.
So there was some spell stuff that kind of related to that, if I remember correctly.
And so yeah, but anyway, yeah, that's basically my character is waxwork rogue, Dara.
That's cool.
What do you got, Cameron?

(01:16:28):
In the distance, you hear a low bass riff and a drum kick coming up the road.
And all of a sudden you look over and you see this kid on a bike.
Nice.
Covered in technology.

(01:16:51):
Nice.
Oh man, I think I see where this is going.
He just hear a punk rock song as he comes riding up on it and he's got a track on his hip and he's got a boombox like on his other shoulder and he's got some headphones on.
And there is like, he comes riding up and he flies up and he comes to a power skid.

(01:17:13):
Nice.
Stop.
With this music just started blaring right next to you.
And he just, he turns his head and looks at you and he's about to like whip his sunglasses down to look at you and they fly off his face as he clumsily falls over.
Oh no.
Spike.
And he's trying to quickly pick all his stuff up to remain still looking cool.

(01:17:38):
And then he picks up his bat.
Nice.
And he points at you and goes, "You didn't see a thing."
And he hops back on his bike and he tosses a couple papers at you in envelopes and he hops back on his bike and he starts driving off again.
What's in the envelopes?
Letters for I2.

(01:18:00):
Hey!
Pick the courier.
You're also a courier.
He is cool.
He is a hip courier.
Nice.
Named Tepke McWheels.
That is not his Christian name.
He calls himself Yo Yo Yo, I'm Tepke McWheels.
Named Tepke McWheels.
I'm trying to do like a frog voice because he's a Nakadama, which is the frog race people.

(01:18:23):
It's probably the coolest race.
I'm trying to do like the closest to the frog sound.
But he's also like, he's a kid.
He's like 15.
So, he's 15.
Oh dude, he has.
What's up McWheels?
What if he just has that thing like his frogs with their nose.
Look he just has that thing.
I'm going to inspect whales.

(01:18:44):
Hey guys, I got to deliver this package.
What?
My name is McWheels.
So anyways, he's just a Nakadama.
Nakadama really, they're not as cool as like the Dara or like the elves of this world.
But they are cool.
They're frog dudes.
But they're cool in the terms that they're literal frogs.
They're frog dudes.

(01:19:05):
I love it.
I think it's sick.
And because they're frogs, their race stats aren't really, they don't like have a, what I meant
was they don't have a, like the Dara in this world have this whole like Taosman system and
this brain thing that if they die, they leave glyphs.
That's really cool.
And then the elves on this world, they have like these, they put, they put like a charm
on themselves or like they're born with a charm.

(01:19:27):
They're like cursed in a sense.
And they have this whole power based system based around it.
Nakadama don't have that.
They're just literal frogs.
Their specialties is like they can breathe underwater and they can jump really high and
they have tongues that they can use their tongue.
They can like grapple hook tongue.
Yeah.
They basically have a grapple hook for a tongue that they can like grab things across the room

(01:19:49):
and shoot their tongue.
It's basically like a combination grapple hook, mage hand.
Yes.
In a sense.
Ooh, I didn't think about that.
Short range rage.
Yeah.
But it's faster than a mage hand in a sense because it's like quick as a whip, you know.
So that's pretty cool.
So the race isn't cool.
The class I went for is the spirit fused, which is the fighter class.
It's so cool.

(01:20:10):
Which is basically a character who is fused with technology.
And that's why my character is covered in music and listening to the stuff.
He's cause he's like, and like, I didn't say, but like if you pay close attention, you see
like this kind of like electrical glow around him.
And when he like pointed the bat at you, it's like got a little shock of electricity on

(01:20:32):
the end of it.
And when you pick up the letters, you might have gotten a little static shock too.
But yeah.
So the spirit fused is really cool.
It's interesting cause the very first thing you pick when you make a spirit fused is like
over all play thing has nothing to do with like the character abilities.
It's just a role play thing, which is called their arcane quirk, which is basically the
magic in you is always trying to let itself out in the weird, in like weird ways while

(01:20:56):
you're controlling your powers.
And what a spirit fused is to describe them is a person who was fused with a spirit, right
catches.
They didn't choose to be at spirit fused with the spirit.
Just one day, a spirit jumped into their body and now it's like, and I think they usually
like died like the spirit.

(01:21:16):
Yeah.
It's a dying spirit that gave you its essence.
It's like energy needs a vessel.
So it just jumps into a person and it's like they coexist in a sense, but it's like the
person has full control of their body and stuff is just like the spirit wants to keep
the vessel alive.
So it's giving the person enhanced powers to help keep the vessel alive, which in part

(01:21:41):
keeps them alive as a spirit.
Very symbiotic relationship.
And then you can kind of like start like, it's kind of like venom in a sense, right?
Like, and I'm sure like at the start, the fighter has more control, but maybe you can
role play later on that like as the fighter grows in power, the spirit grows in power as
well and might start taking its own control over the person to protect them.

(01:22:04):
That would match so well with like pretty much almost all the other subclasses have
like some element of that.
So anyways, Arcane Quirks, the Arcane Quirks I chose and it has a list that you can choose
and I'm sure you can make up some of your own, but it said you could choose one or multiple
from there.
The main two was when my character is using any effects from this class, random technology

(01:22:28):
around them just starts going haywire.
Oh, no, he's okay.
I just started making like music sounds or like crazy bits like electricity.
You walk into a shop and like other, like I shut the door and all of a sudden like seat
like TV start going static and the radio starts like tuning in to the rain.
People's chicken timers are going crazy.
So that's the one thing.
The other thing is anytime I make a weapon attack, the radio, the cassette player I'm

(01:22:51):
wearing on me just starts playing a random different song every time I make an attack.
And so my character, I think mathematically has like a 20 set list like a set in it and
every time he hits an attack, a random one of the 20 songs just starts playing.
So it's like a whole, it's just like a chaotic fight in terms of like the music's just constantly
swatching and they're all like punk songs, like like early 2000s punk songs is what my

(01:23:16):
characters listen to.
And so anyway, as the person that would edit the podcast that we'd make for this, that
actually kind of sounds fun.
That sounds like a fun challenge.
As for abilities, the character that's very simple, which kind of plays into like how
fighters work.
Fighters usually have a more simple set system.
This system is you have the ability to channel energy into your attacks where you have a

(01:23:39):
pool of four D sixes.
And the cool thing is you can use these D sixes to either modify an attack to increase
your chances to hit or after you make a hit, you can then add a D six to increase the dice's
damage.
So it's however you want to use it.
And you have 46 at the start and you gain like extra dice to this pool as you level

(01:23:59):
up.
Love that so much.
Like the fact that the player has the ability to choose not only how they use it, but when
they want to use it.
And then when it's out, it's out until you go take your long rest.
But it's like, you know, you got, you got these wizards and stuff with their spell slots
and they've got a whole variety of things that they can do.
And fighters have notoriously always kind of been, I hit it, maybe I hit it again.

(01:24:21):
Okay, my turn's over.
Okay, like now you're, you have some options within there, some things that you can do.
Yeah.
And also the cool thing is you can choose to use that energy dice after you see what
your role is.
So like your role, your attack, and then you like say, you roll like a 12 with your added
strength score.
And you're like, Oh, well, I know their AC is pretty close to this.

(01:24:42):
So I'm going to add a D six so I make sure I can hit it.
Exactly.
But then for the most part, you're probably going to be saving most of your D six to add
to the damage.
Right.
But it's that sweet spot where you're just close enough, you know, like I can use a
D six to get there.
That's cool.
Make sure it hits.
Yeah.
And then they have another level three ability, which is it's, you get a special like magic
item that energy has been combined into.

(01:25:04):
So it's called your spirit energy and object channeling, which is you gain the ability
to channel your internal spirit energy into objects, creating an area.
So like they give you a list of them.
They have a ballooning bag and entangling cord to find the thing first stage steed and
goggles vision, but I went with first stage steed, which is I am not a ritual creates
a bond with a special vehicle.

(01:25:25):
My choice, which is the bicycle, which the bike, the vehicle can only carry one creature
and is walking speed of 60.
But the cool thing is as an action, I can summon the vehicle to my side.
Oh, and it lasts for an hour.
And the crazy thing is while the vehicle is summoned, it is unindestructible.
What?
So I get an indestructible bicycle for an hour once a day.

(01:25:49):
So I love the idea that it talks in bike ring.
So like it comes up to you goes, but, but I like the idea that the bike is always with
my character because he's a courier is it suck if I lost my bike because I only had
it for an hour.
So I like the idea that my character has the bike on him at all times because it's his

(01:26:10):
bike.
He's tepkine McWheels after all.
How would he be without his wheels?
As you said courier sometimes get in the hairy situation.
So I like the idea that if he gets in the hairy situation, he like kicks.
Like he has like, I imagine like, you know how bikes have that gear set kind of things.
He has like a second gear set where like, lifts a random gear up and it switches it from
normal bike mode to magic bike mode where he like doubles his speed while he's riding

(01:26:35):
and makes the bike indestructible.
So he then just starts doing some crazy stunt work because it's indestructible bike.
That also kind of flies in a way.
And I think it's a really crazy thing.
And then like as this goes on, he'll level seven, you get a thing called spirit battery
which you gain the jolt cantrip and then you can target machines and like become stronger

(01:26:55):
with the machines around you and then your bike becomes stronger with your improved object
changing.
Oh, you can upgrade it?
Yeah.
And then improvised armor, you start like using the energy and like technology around you
to like start protecting you.
It's like the spirit in you is like grabbing sources around you to help defend you.
But yeah, it's, it's a really sick class.

(01:27:17):
And then of course my background is the same as your background, the courier, the couriers,
which I thought the idea of a, because I was already knew I was going to make like a punk
kid.
Nice.
It was my idea when I saw the spirit fused, but then I saw there's like a, like a punk
kid who's like a male carrier who's like, he, he fits your, your character.

(01:27:39):
There's a male carrier and it feels like your character might be more into the male carrying
for like the honor of it and just like the importance of it.
Well, my character does it because he thinks it's sick, but he gets to ride around his
bike and chuck like newspapers at people every day and it's legal.
It's legal.
So what I'm getting here is that we need to do a one shot or something where everybody

(01:28:02):
is part of a male brigade and like they're, they're early trainees or something like that.
And so they're all given like, okay, here's your package.
Go out and deliver it.
You guys all together to like prove that you belong here or something like that.
I love that.
That's great.
Other subclasses, you got the barbarian does the path of the belly brewer, which is a
really goofy one.
I thought maybe you would take this.

(01:28:24):
This feels like something Dave would definitely.
Yes.
This is something Dave would take.
It's a barbarian class where it focuses on the idea that you're like constantly eating
ingredients on obojima, like everywhere, like all these various ingredients that you'd use
to make potions.
You're making the potions in your stomach and you can activate them sort of at will when
you use your barbarian rage.

(01:28:44):
So you get some like benefits.
One of the ones I thought was hilarious.
So if you choose, so like the benefits that you can gain when you activate your rage,
they match those of the ingredients, right?
So it's that combat stat, a utility stat and a whimsy stat.
And then you're kind of like activating them to use the benefits of it.
You, you said here in your example that it's more like Monkey Deep Luffy, but I was thinking

(01:29:11):
it's more like that guy he fights on the island where he meets Chopper, the pirate king who
just eats stuff and he stores it in his stomach and then he can turn himself into the stuff
he ate to fight Luffy with.
Well the only reason I said it was like Monkey Deep Luffy is because you can make yourself
elastic, which is a potion.
But yeah, when you choose the combat version of this, you, you become elastic just like

(01:29:33):
Monkey Deep Luffy.
But yeah, you've got the Bard, which is the College of Masks.
And the cool idea with this one is that you make your own masks and you're like kind of
an expert actor.
And so you put these masks on and it gives you benefits and it also kind of like disguises
you to some extent.
So for instance, the old man mask allows you to cast tick magic and identify spells at

(01:29:56):
will without burning spell slots or material components.
Whereas the stone mask is you proficiency in the athletic skill and also like minimizes
the amount of damage that you're taking.
So your mask kind of is becoming your identity, which is really interesting.
So you have the druid, which is the circle of petals.
If you want to have this character that does things in a really beautiful way with flower

(01:30:20):
petals or like, you know, like the cherry blossom petals, which are pretty prominent
in like kind of an anime style thing.
This is the this is the one that you want, right?
You can create difficult terrain.
You can attack your enemies with the blossoms.
You can even make animals like mimic beasts out of petals, which is really cool.
You mentioned the fighter subclass of the Spears Fuge, which that was honestly a close

(01:30:43):
second for me.
I that one's a really cool subclass.
The monk has an interesting one.
We mentioned the sheep dragons and how important they are.
So the monk subclass allows you to be a shepherd of the sheep dragon.
And there's some interesting benefits of that one as somebody that's never played a monk
before.
It was kind of like I didn't fully understand everything that was happening there, but it

(01:31:05):
was it was interesting if that's something that you're into.
Paladin.
Okay, so if you were if you know spirited away, you remember Haku, who's kind of like this
dragon of the river or spirit of the river that takes the form of a dragon rather.
This felt like kind of a reference to him because it's the oath of the river.
And so you have your tenants as a paladin, right?

(01:31:27):
You usually have like something that you're directly attributed to you believe in and that's
what kind of gives you a lot of your power for this one.
It's tenants are offered by the river.
It flows on it quenches or drowns it rages and it seeks to see so some pretty intense
intense verbiage there as far as like what those tenants are.

(01:31:49):
These are all just like really quick summaries of all the classes, by the way.
You have the Ranger, which is the corrupted Ranger.
If you look at the picture, I swear it's like straight out of Princess Mononoke.
Like he's being enveloped by the the corruption.
And that's what it is, right?
You're like a individual who got infected with this corruption that's throughout the
island and it gives you powers, but it's also slowly corrupting you more and more the more

(01:32:14):
that you kind of give into it.
So there's a lot of opportunity there for you as a player to kind of create that story
thanks to the subclass that you chose.
There's the Waxwork Rogue, which is what I chose.
The Sorcerer has the Oni bloodline.
So in sort of Japanese legend, Onis are like these big ogre demons.

(01:32:36):
And so you are basically the Chow because we mentioned the demons before, right?
That exist in this world.
So you're basically the child of one of those, which is funny because you said, what if that
looked like a tiefling?
And then in Obojima, they said, well, what if that looks like a Sorcerer subclass, which
is interesting.
Yeah.
But yeah, and that one actually is very similar to the Corrupted Ranger where the Oni is giving
you power.

(01:32:56):
The bloodline within you is giving you power, but you're also slowly becoming an Oni to
some extent thanks to this bloodline.
The Warlock is the Lantern.
So the Lantern isn't your patron per se like some of the other ones, right?
It's not a genie.
It's not a demon.
It's not like an ancient one.
In this case, you have made a pact with a powerful spirit and you've taken them on to be your

(01:33:20):
patron and in you carry their essence with you in a Lantern.
And so that's why they call it the Lantern.
That one, again, also another one of those situations of I have this power that's being
offered to me, but I have to keep the one that's giving me this power happy.
And sometimes they might make me do something that I might not want to do.

(01:33:41):
So there's a lot of opportunity for story there.
And then finally, if you know Studio Ghibli, you know that there's oftentimes origami is
a part of it, right?
Like if you look at like Spirit It Away, he there's a part where Haku gets chased by these
origami birds like creatures and he gets all shredded up and stuff like that.

(01:34:01):
So they kind of this was my second.
This was your second one.
Yeah, I was going to get a second night.
My idea was like someone obsessed making paper airplanes.
So he's just making paper airplanes.
I'm not origami.
He's just making paper airplanes.
But by he was, but the origami was is I was going to custom make the subclass, which was

(01:34:23):
basically how it works is you can create different types of origami, which each origami provides
different effects based on the form you gave the origami, right?
Right.
But my character was going to, I was going to subclass at work.
He just made paper airplanes, but to create different spells via these, he was going to
draw on the paper the spell he wanted to make.

(01:34:47):
This could go into the like sigils and stuff.
Yeah.
He was basically making sigils on the paper planes and he would chuck it out into the
air as a paper airplane.
And then the paper airplane would take on the spell or the effect as it flew away.
Yeah, yeah.
Basically, to be fair, I mean, origami by definition is the Japanese art of folding
paper into decorative shapes and figures, not limited by any means to paper swans and

(01:35:12):
stuff like that.
So I would say I would, I would argue you could absolutely do exactly what you just
described there.
I think that'd be phenomenal.
And just be paper airplanes and we could just homebrew the verbiage, but otherwise it's
the same thing.
So awesome.
So with characters out of the way, I will leave you guys with a couple of the secrets
really quickly highlighted of Obajima.
I'm not going to tell you the details of the secrets.

(01:35:34):
I'm not going to tell you what the book says about the secrets, but I will mention them
quickly.
First of all, you have, and we mentioned it a couple of times before, the corruption.
What is the corruption?
Where did it come from?
What is it doing?
What does it want?
Why is it trying to take over the island?
What is beyond the sea?
Right?
We talked about that before.
We know that the humans, which inevitably led to the creation of the elves, they came

(01:35:55):
from the sea somewhere.
We don't know where from.
So that suggests the idea that there's something out there, but what what exists out there?
Where did the technology come from?
All this weird sort of 1980s technology that's scattered across, I would say nineties too
to some extent, that's scattered across the island and it's been there as far as anybody
can remember.
Where did that come from?

(01:36:16):
How did it get here?
Where did the Dara come from?
Cause they just kind of popped out of a tree one day.
Who are they?
Why are they here?
Who's the first?
I would also argue like in the first age where you had the Nakodama appear or I guess
the Nakodama age.
Where did they come from?
Why are they here?
Why did they just kind of start popping up randomly?
You have an individual known as the demon emperor that exists in here.

(01:36:38):
So a possible severe antagonist that you could put in.
There's an existence of the crawling canopy, which is sort of like nature retaking in a
sort of monstrous form.
There's some interesting questions to be asked there.
And then finally you have Malgrotha, which is a spirit.

(01:36:58):
I read a little bit about Malgrotha.
She has some sort of villainous tendencies, but she's not always evil per se.
But there's another area of exploration there.
So with that being said, I encourage everybody to go check out Obajima into the tall grass.
It's an incredibly immersive world, all sorts of different new subclasses that we talked

(01:37:23):
about, the new monsters we talked about, the magic items, everything else, the entire like
potion creation system, all of this amazing stuff in there.
There's pre-written adventures to get you started right off the bat when you get the
book at the bottom.
So there's plenty of reason to go and get a copy.
It should be available in the near future from when we're recording this episode, maybe

(01:37:44):
not immediately, since it was done through Kickstarter, but eventually it will be available.
I know Free RPG Day, there's going to be another small quest that they will publish in its own
book, so that'll be available.
But I highly recommend checking it out.
If it's available to you, go get a copy if this is something that intrigues you and check

(01:38:04):
it out and run again because I think there's some pretty incredible and beautiful stuff
inside of here.
With that being said, we will close out today's book club and we will see you guys at the
next one.
Thank you so much for joining us for today's class.
We hope you gained some new knowledge and ideas from our incredibly knowledgeable professors

(01:38:27):
which you can take with you to your table and implement into your games and sessions.
If you enjoy what we're developing here at Session Zero University, then be sure to
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(01:38:48):
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Session Zero University Book Club - Obojima: Into the Tall Grass by 1985 Games

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Session Zero University Book Club - Obojima: Into the Tall Grass by 1985 Games