The gang answers questions from the listeners.
Knights of the Night
KotN Actual Play Podcast 135 - Chagrin Listener Questions.
[music] Hello, and welcome tonight to the Night Actual Playpad Games. This world of dark history, Shagran, was written and run by your story by Scott. [music] And now, please enjoy episode 135. Listener questions to the Shagran story line. [music] Before we get into the Shagran feedback, we have some current feedback from some of our listeners. Starting with kotampacchast.com, Orleanne said, "Hey guys, enjoy and listen to the latest campaign." Would have to agree that it wasn't as strong as shit luck overall. But I was still enjoyable to hear the story progress and learn more about the characters. This may have already been addressed, but where do you guys stand on incorporating the God Machine Chronicles update? It shouldn't be all that hard to incorporate it into Hunter, and it would definitely change some dot distributions for some character, which you in particular, since his powers are now generally merits. Looking forward to hearing what's next for all of you. Well, first of all, thank you for the feedback, and I will point to this question at Scott. Since he's actually acquired that, I believe. Right, yeah. I'm going to be incorporating some of the God Machine Chronicles into our vanishing city story line. There are some things I'm not going to use that I just didn't like. I thought that the social combat, I actually enjoyed the one we used. Maybe it was the side of the making, then the one I saw in the God Machine Chronicles. But overall, I'm looking forward to, especially with the newer characters, like Daniel and Edgard, they want to be able to tweak their characters, not to actually understand the system, to playing it one time. They want to change it up. At this point, we can just have everyone kind of not remake their characters, but certainly by embracing the new rules, they can certainly firm up their character into the arc and the idea they really have for it. Especially for you guys who have been playing now for a while, too. You've got to have the idea of what you want your character to do. Some stuff might want to drop off. Might want to be able to refine a little bit better. So yes, we will be incorporating many of the rules. I can see such a kitty changing a bit. You were saying you wanted to tweak with her. So that's definitely something that we're going to be doing. Change is fucking perfect, so I'm not doing that. Here we go. What about choose abilities? Do those get downgraded now to the merits? It's a little iffy right now, because by the time we start playing again after Dresden, what they did was a... Even after Dungeon World, then the rest of them. Yeah, excuse me, I didn't know if we were going to do that. Are we going to announce that we're going to put it out there? Yeah, actually some of the lawyers that sent me feedback, they're like, "I can't wait to hear you guys' fake Dungeons World." Okay. So hopefully it's good. I don't know where they're going. I hope you don't mind. We just talked about it. I mean, we had a whole lot of words on it. I had fun playing that, so I think it felt like a good 60% of them were just jokes and laughter. Yeah, and in truth, the story wasn't as intriguing, because it's not a mystery type of setting. You know, it's a dungeon crawl, it's a fantasy... Kinda well, too intense, but we were trying it out. Yeah, but it wasn't like we went in there and saw something we didn't understand and killed it. And it was a little plot behind. Sure, yeah, no, I agree. Which is why I'm still thinking of... You're different. Plus I want to think. Plus I want to think of the last day I went, because I was from there. That's right. Jim is typical style. Maybe at least three times now. I know. You know what I mean? Back to John's point, when they released the God Machine Chronicle, it's an update of the blue book World of Darkness. The basic, you're a regular, normal fighting against the darkness. Hunter, obviously, is one of the splat books for World of Darkness. And they don't have... They don't have a GMC, the God Machine Chronicle, update for Hunter yet. They're going to be releasing one for Vampire and I think Werewolf. I'm not sure if they're going to get around to Hunter. So, just curious. I thought that was a... If you had to put him in a... Sorry, Tom. If you had to put him in a hierarchy of vampires first, right? Vampire has to be first. It's the most popular game. I was going to say I thought the trifecta was vampire, werewolf, and then Hunter. But I don't know. No, not quite. I think Hunter is something of an actual age. That's so nefarious. So I would say... It's definitely a... Well, I think we're actually towards the bottom. For whatever reason. People will enjoy, listen to us, enjoy the way we do Hunter. But I don't know if it's thematically or what the problem was, but if you go to the message board... It's a low-larpers. Yeah, I mean if you go to the message boards, there's really not a ton of activity on the Hunter board. Anyways, the idea being, I'm not sure how soon they're going to get to that, so we might have to do a little bit of... The mingling of our own. It won't be anything major though. The rules update isn't that exhaustive where it's going to change everything. But he is right. In some cases, they take certain powers and turn them into merit. Certain what we would think of as... Endowment. Endowment. Endowment's in Hunter. Okay. And I can see those being changed into merit as opposed to endowments. But to me, there is a difference between the two, obviously, but it's not anything huge. It's going to be earth shattering. And the game's going to continue on pretty well, probably even better, because I think the rule updates actually improve the system quite a bit. Mechanic-wise, I thought the only difference between endowments and merits for that endowments required you to have reputation in your conspiracy. Equal to or higher than this level of dots you have in the endowments. I think that's a good point. I think I'm not positive on this because I don't have my book out, but there might be an experience point different to add different downments as well as opposed to merits. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see. If they have the Hunter one out, great. If they don't, I'll just write something up for you guys so that you can just roll with it pretty easy. Great question, though. Thank you. Alright, we have some feedback from rpgcrossstock.web.com, our form site. From P-A-I-P, also known as Peter, said, oh, and this was in reference to because we actually, the very final episode was delayed by the days. Some people think on purpose. No, they couldn't have them. Why would a cliffhanger? To set up the tension. It wasn't. It really wasn't. It was just my fault. Anyways, Peter said, phew, that was worth waiting for. I look forward to the remaining five parts of the seven parts story arc. Seven. I should've known that. Seven in total. Just like Harry Potter. That's something Mike would say. Come on. If Chupark is Neville Longbottom, then... Oh, God. It goes on. Great stuff, Scott, and the players. Now, on to fiasco. What? Ow. Did you learn some of those jokes? It's right there. I didn't say it. It was there. Look, did you learn some of those jokes where everyone's saying, oh, we gotta get our one in, our one reference. So now the fans are in on it? Is that what's on? Of course. Yes. Maybe. I don't remember. Mike, you listened to the podcast. I don't even need fiasco joke references. I don't know these up today. I don't recall that specifically. It's not good. So I don't think so. I might not. I find it interesting that you banned puns and yet the name of the group. Is it puns? It's old. It's only allowed down one. It's too late to change. It's bad enough that the tolerance level is exceeded for me. Also, from RPG Crosstalk was Marcus, who's known as Unbound Books. Oh my god. The thing Mike is not here tonight. I think we've told that joke before. They can't complain about his name. Marcus says, "Hey, Tom. In the last minute of Finney, I'm going to use the pronunciation Finney. I don't know exactly how it's supposed to be. Sounds good. Just leave that in. That's what I'm doing. Congratulations to you and all the guys at the table. A couple of random points. These don't need to be read out at the cast as they're just general observations. Well, we're going to read them anyways, Marcus. Number one. I just wanted to mention that you guys inspired me to run my own 100 game one off. Awesome. It was fun, but I had all new respect for Scott as the White Wolf system was quite clunky in my humble opinion. Fair enough. Two. With the law and many podcasts I listened to, I went back and re-listened to shit luck from beginning to end. It was very interesting to hear it as a whole, rather than waiting between needs of episode. On reflection, I have to say episode 31, "A drop of blood was the best of the lot." It had a lot of real tension and drama coming out of the interrogation of Side Street Billy. That was a good one. I did. I agreed with him. Number three. 100 episodes plus in. And I just realized that your sons have the name of my own sons, John and Thomas. While my boys are a lot younger in the years, just seven and five, I hope that one day they will be into role playing just as much as yours. Cheers. And looking forward to the future, Marcus, binder. Thanks, Marcus. And you just got to start them young. I think I started, you guys are all playing very young. Maybe seven and five. Actually, at seven and five, I think you guys were on running your own stories. Yeah. We were just running your own stories and telling kind of imaginary stories where they were virtually no roles and you were just making stuff up. But that's the precursor to role playing, isn't it? Back to the feedback we had from Facebook. And this comment was put underneath a post that I put explaining the delay in the final episode in which Richard Watts said, "This story just refuses to end. I'm sure it'll come back to haunt Task Force Siren, even after it's death." Well, of course. We feel like there will be people. Yeah, I can already see Jay sitting in front of Winston Tate getting grilled. Yeah, and then we'll have a flashback and we'll be back into the fight fighting some more. What? The night that refused to end. That's right. Mr. Theron said, "Actually, when I have a hard time believing something, there's a quote from your podcast that comes to mind and perfectly sums up my reaction." What the fuck, Jay? I think it was Tom. Oh, yeah, you left me bleeding out in the field. Well, it could have been the time that you said this is what the spirits do. That's what you thought about it. And then I knew something totally different. I think multiple people would have had an occasion to say that. You want the fuck, Jay? Yeah, probably. I threw him upstairs and there was a zombie at the end of the hall and it was going to fight me. Oh, and it was you! I turned around and ran away and I left you with the... And then our man died because, like, vampire... Yeah. Like, what the fuck, Jay? Hey! In my defense, there were six different people bleeding out all over the compound and I was trying to save them all. We lost the man we came for, but, yes. But we got his daughter. Yeah. Who was the important one, apparently? I didn't know that. Well, at the time. Sure you did. Has anyone seen "Rolling Kansas"? No. 'Cause there's a line in the movie about it. What the fuck, Jay? I think I speak for every home when I say Kevin. What the fuck? Roy from the Rusek Amers also had a comment. He said the Rusek Amers did something similar to this a few weeks back and I still haven't heard the end of it. Losing a recording or rehabbing new reports on it. Right. Andrew Curtis Hall White said you are such a tease. Looking forward to the ending to which Michael responded. So it's a cliffhanger. You could work as a marketing exec. Yes, I'm practicing. It's going to be in my resume. Read Facebook. As for the final episode on Facebook, we had some feedback from that as well. Joshua Growski said, "Well done, gentlemen." This was really the eternal night. Any hints on what's in store next, hopefully the new crew sticks around. I really enjoyed what they brought to the table. So, there you go. Gentlemen. You're the new crew still? You're the new crew still. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what I was listening to. Exclusively too. Well, darkness. Well, yeah. We're on release. You're the new guest. So, Dave? We're going to have something to both games. Indeed. He asked if there's any... Yes, if what might be next. So, we're doing Dungeon Worlds. Right. We'll have some episodes. I'm probably going to edit that pretty tightly just to keep it down. We play it nowhere near as long as we do either drugs in a world of darkness. In any case, it's going to be shorter in general. Right. Handful of episodes or so. And then after that, we're going to go to Dresden. I thought that he meant, "Is there a hint from what's going to happen next?" You answer that as well. Are you sure? Just to make sure we cover all the bases. I believe the third story will be a little bit more like our first, in the sense that there's going to be a little more investigation involved, a little bit more tension, a little bit more mystery. And... Not a combat. There'll be some combat, sure, but probably not the eternal night of combat that it was, because it truly was. And a lot of it will be obviously revolving around why was Gracie so important. What is really the key to the Twelve Missing Agents? I think that's going to take front and center for this next story. Makes sense. That was kind of from Luke Green, who said, "Awesome story. Also vampires and werewolf, lots of spirit shenanigans. One wonders if changelings, geys, and prometheans will start to make an appearance." Those are all the very, for those of you who... The Splat Books. Yeah. Our World Darkness kind of sores. Those are other Splat Books that may or may not be making an appearance. Taylor McClure said, "I considered starting up a second round of, that was a thing, discussion that we had at the end of delivery, but thought better of it." In lieu of that, I'll just say, KOTN is currently three for three when it comes to endings. If you remember, Taylor said, "Well, that was a thing." And I was like, "It's not really saying when that's good or bad for a thing." So, and then he... Wasn't he trying to avoid the spoilers? Yes, I imagine it was something like that. But his clarification of that comment was no clearer. Yeah, actually, it just continued to get worse. They were just an eight-minute joke after a while and kept making an appearance. But it ended up being all good. Yeah. Taylor definitely enjoyed it. And actually, Taylor also responded on episode 134 and we had this written wrap-up where the players discussed the storyline and whatnot before we get to this episode, which is the listener feedback. He said, "Regarding the discussion of social combat systems, probably the best social combat system that I've ever encountered was the dual-of-whits mechanic in Burning Wheel. What's unique about this system is that even if the characters get demolished in social combat, as long as they're able to inflict even a single point of social damage on the winner, he is owed a compromise." The magnitude of this is proportional to the amount of damage he inflicted. Consequently, even a clearly outmatched character can usually force at least a minor concession. And the focus of the gameplay shifts from who is going to win the combat overall to how big of a concession is the winner going to have to give up to the losers. Another important point that dual-of-whits makes is to require everyone involved to agree on the stakes of the conflict before it takes place. A common problem that I've encountered is that someone will win a social combat and the people at the table will disagree about what was just won. If you're interested in tweaking the mechanics of world of darkness as it was hinted in the discussion, you might consider taking a look at Burning Wheel as a model. I think I like that. That's a very interesting point. I really like that. I think the second point of his comment was... We do tend to say... I was going to say we did do that. I remember you saying with Boblish, what is your goal? Yes, you have to give a one sentence or a phrase of what you're trying to accomplish. I want to pick up that girl. I want to make him finish through that fence. I want to make him so depressed he starts drinking. Whatever the case might be of the social combat, you do say it. To his first point, I thought it was exceptionally interesting that a concession, because right now as we have it, it's black or white, which of course is never the case. Well, as you stated in the discussion, even if we lose, we can burn a willpower or whatever and then get back in it. Yet, if the NPC loses, he loses. I kind of like that too, if there's shades of gray, there's okay, you won, but you still took damage, so therefore you lost a little bit as well. You have to give, maybe we'll come up with minor concessions and major concessions, depending on how close the combat ends up being in the social combat. I do have Burning Wheel, I have a mouse guard, and I was a kickstarter. I'm a member of the Torch Baron, which is the new kind of Burning Wheel based game that's coming. It's supposed to be a little more simplified from the Burning Wheel. So, we have the mechanics we look at, we have the books. Good stuff, thank you very much, Taylor. And Facebook, just in the general post, Kevin Lama said, "Hey guys, just finished the Sugar and Story line, an awesome story it was. I'm definitely looking forward to the next World of Darkness story arc. As far as the social combat goes, I really like the change up. It's conceptually very similar to Burning Wheel, the whole of which mechanic." So yeah, I'd say keep it in for the third arc of the Task Force Siren story. In the interim, Dungeon World is the next planned system, if I remember correctly. If so, I'm definitely looking forward to listening to it. I've had some exposure to Apocalypse World, the mechanic system that Dungeon World is apparently based off of. Keep up the good stuff, and indeed it is, it's the same basic mechanics. It's just kind of a different setting, and there are, I'm sure, other tweaks, but glad you enjoyed it, Kevin. I think you don't have to worry too much, we're gonna keep some sort of... A little bit more advanced social combat, because especially with our group that just really enjoy socially solving problems. A bit more, well, not even that you guys enjoy it, which is important, of course. And probably the most important, but also I think that a lot of situations, especially when you're trying to infiltrate, or trying to be less obvious than sticking a gun in someone's face, or bashing outside the head with a baseball bat, it's really nice to have a more robust social combat system, so I'm excited for what we'll be able to bring to the third story. Danny Crawford said, "Hello, I recently started listening to the podcast for the Joes and Foul Ropling System action, and I'm currently on the "Gool King" episode. Go John, or Roberto. Anyways, it's my first actual play podcast, and it's fantastic, I'm definitely hooked. So, I'm looking forward to the future, and you guys talk a lot about World of Darkness and what's coming up, so I'm thinking I'll just jump into the next series. Or, should I go back and listen to the beginning? This shit luck episodes. Turn on your questions. We get this one a lot. This is probably the fourth or fifth time we've gotten this question. So, Danny, I think that it really depends on how much you value the audio quality and the sound effects. Over the story. Over the story. Because if it's really-- You've been told this matter. Shit luck probably has, well, you know, it seems like we've heard some comments at Shit Luck's story. It might have been a little bit stronger. I think the role-playing was just as good in the second story. Maybe the story itself was, I don't know, I think it was different. But anyways, if the story is all that matters to you, then I think you can struggle through our... ...more amateuristic, I think, recording style. Not on your part, Tom, but I was actually playing music in the background. Yeah, definitely on my part as well. As an editor, I was nowhere near as strong as I've gotten longer. But I had music going on the entire time in the background, so when you're cutting, there was all those-- Well, we also have your furnace and/or air conditioner going on, which we've since solved. Solved. So, there's some issues with the sound quality, Danny, but if you enjoy a good story, I think that you'll really enjoy Shit Luck. It really lays the foundation for the second story, and the flashbacks will have much more meaning for you if you had listened to the first story. But if you really like a nice crisp-sounding podcast, and it's going to really distract you, then you might just want to listen to Chagrin. And then when you're really jonesing for something, you can go back and listen to Shit Luck. John? How odd would that be if they, say, tuned in halfway through-- I played music in the background the entire way through the Shit Luck storyline. I thought you put that. It never ended until it was done. I don't think we'd stop playing music until delivery. Yeah, I think-- Because you said you thought it would be better if you just put it on for the podcast. And I'm not sure when we actually added the new equipment. Right. Sound quality, but I think it was in mid- Dresden, because I listened to some of the other episodes and I was going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh." Right, exactly. I just got the whole fact that Shit Luck was recorded on the Nipod as opposed to-- Right, the Zoom, yeah. So, that's a tough question. I think only you could answer that for yourself. Listen to a start, you know, maybe with a couple of the Shit Luck story. And if it's just grading on your nerves and just jump right into your end. There's a recent listener, I think, who might be exaggerating how bad the Europeans are. Yeah. So you're going back and listening to a little bit, especially compared to the other stuff. Yeah, I mean, it just seemed to get through those three and a half-hour actual play podcast by-- I mean, it was definitely, you know, back when you were starting your editing and getting into the rhythm of how to do it and-- Yeah. Getting your technique on it. But as far as the game goes, it's just the same way as we play now and it's-- Yeah. The jamming style and then the players absolutely are. Yeah. And there are some good scenes in that story too. There really was. The scene with Mike when he meets-- well, Michael Clay when he meets Heart Cook's Brain. Right. That was an outstanding scene. Bob's, uh, no. Bob's, no means no. No, a woman is a strong scene. Big Mama Hopson. The interrogation with, you know, these aren't really spoilers because you don't really know exactly what's going on with them if you haven't listened to it. I think it's worth the listen overall. But it's definitely going to be a little bit different on the quality of the recording. And our last Facebook post was from Thomas Bjork, who said, "Hi Knights, just about to finish the Dresden episodes and are about to move on to shit luck." So far, I'm loving your play style. And Tom is a marvelous gem. Well, we just stopped right there. Yeah, I said that. No. Well, we're not concurs so far, man. Yeah, it's all good. If the vote were still up, I would say London is my favorite character. Oh, thanks. Yeah, he would have tied it up. You and John were that close? Right. Episode 99 was titled Episode 98 and the final information. And some of the shit luck episodes have many file informations inconsistent, making the podcast files play in the wrong order if you play them in an album on my Android phone. An easy fix, just have the same syntax of the album and title. I also suggest putting shit luck before sugar in on the home page as it makes more sense that way. Keep up the good work. The Swedish guy. Alright, so well, thank you for all the compliments, Thomas. First off, if I go back and change anything at the end of the episodes, like the naming of the file. Right. Or on Libson, it considers it a re-release and will pop that episode up in every run and so we try to avoid that. I know I'm in mistakes and I apologize for that. I can certainly go back to our web page and change the order so that shit luck shows. That makes sense. And that's an easy enough thing. His other suggest makes sense, but it just isn't, it would have bad results. Yeah. I don't want to force everybody to go, "What the hell am I getting this old episode?" Right. So unfortunately, we can't fix those. But moving forward, we can see it. And as we've gone along, I try to get a more consistent naming convention because Jim mentioned the same thing. You know, when he's listening on his Android phone, could you shorten it up so that I can actually see the episode numbers so that when I don't download multiple ones, I'm not. It doesn't end. This is episode 1.0. It's cut there. So we tried to fix that and the page fixes easy enough. But unfortunately, there was definitely one I know where I said something in the title and then named the file wrong or something where I made a mistake. But to go back and fix that actually causes more problems than it's worth, unfortunately. So I apologize for that. We seem to have a strong Nordic component. Nordic has a strong role playing history actually. They're very big. They're styles different than ours. But from what I've heard on other podcasts, it's a big community. So with that, I'll just remind everybody, feel free to go to our webpage on kotnpodcast.com, use the Amazon links so that we can get some free money from Amazon. There you can find an entire archive of all of our past stuff and enjoy. We will continue to try to put out the episodes in at least a decent manner. Summer's a little tougher and sometimes we get slowed down, but we're trying to stay consistent. With that, we'll go on to the listeners' questions. With that, we should probably go on to the listener feedback and see what they have to ask us. Alright. Mad Mulener from rpgcrosstalk.webs.com. That's our forum site. I would be interested to know how much the character creation and city creation impacted your storyline in the end. And if the answer is a lot, are you happy you did it that way? Left to my own devices, I'll be coming up with an archetype for the story. Heist, rescue, seek and strike, and then using the info from the creation night to put meat in the bones. Changing topics, though, in response to your call at the end of the Shagarin questions, a very simple question that may be a very long-winded answer. How did Scott see this story unfolding versus where it ended up? The first part of the question seems to be referring to Dresden? Yeah, I would have to say because we didn't do character creation and city creation, and maybe he just didn't know that. Like, he figured that we did do it for World Darkness as well. And to answer that, at least quickly, it was huge. I mean, it drove the plot, it drove the storyline, it drove everything, it drove character development. And our city creation with Dresden, it was the... I was even there for most of the city creation. Yeah, I mean, it was a big part of how, but that's how fate and in particular Dresden is supposed to work. But it's funny because I came in and asked what was city creation like, and then we ended up talking about it and adding a few things to it and changing things. And it's supposed to be a living city that grows and changes as you go along. Absolutely. And I just did that for World of Darkness, I just did that in my own head, city creation wise. I didn't have the input of the characters because at that time we never thought to do it. To be honest, when we first started playing this particular campaign three or four years ago... Before Dresden. We started playing before we even had any exposure to Dresden. So most of the world building and city building is in my own head. Now the characters themselves, that is something that each of the players really kind of... The characters themselves put together at creation, their own idea for their characters. I think I speak for you guys when I say that most of you didn't complete a full arc. It kind of just felt your way through that first story, shit luck. And the newer players felt their way through this story, chagrin. But I think now you're getting a better feel maybe for your character. I think it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition with Dresden. In the sense that with World of Darkness, I think you find your character more... I don't want to say organically because that sounds like it's better. But I think you find him through a role playing more than in Dresden. I felt like I had my character. Well I would say they're less fleshed out. I mean the aspects of Dresden and fate in general, your character is fully developed with much more of an understanding of how your character works. It's fundamental to the character creation, so you're coming in with a much more developed character. I think it was just the opposite for me. That's the truth. Were you in the story? I was more into the backstory and into the characters I had for World of Darkness were Dresden. I really wasn't sure where I was going and how the game roles went and how he was played and what he can and cannot do. So was that a case that I originally made? Couldn't do the things? Was that more of a case where the system appealed to the type of character you wanted to make? Like World of Darkness is darker and had the Malius Maleficarum that Sister Katie was part of. And it just spoke to you on a certain level where as Dresden you never found that one thing, that one niche that spoke to you strongly and made you want to write up a whole backstory. I think it was just that I didn't understand the role set and the skill set and the power set and the stunts sets of what they were and what they could do. And the character I had envisioned making when I tried to actually do some of those things. I'm like, "Oh, that doesn't work that way." I do remember you having a slight problem. So system familiarity can be a deterrent. It can be, but I think part of it too and saw a bit of that as a problem with Mike as well when you were making the character. It was too open. You wanted a little more structure, a little more like choose things to fit into your character rather than saying, "Here's your character to do whatever you want." And then requiring you to come up with a lot more of the structure. The aspects are so wide open in Dresden, they could be anything, anything. It's a sentence, anything you want. But world of darkness, it's like choose what group you belong to. Well, these are the groups. Here in that it applies something and that implies something. And then your character kind of builds itself. Yeah, I knew what skills he could do. I knew what powers he had and they were written down or she or she. And what they could do and what they would spell out were when I was starting Dresden, I wasn't exactly sure. It's kind of a blank sheet syndrome. The powers weren't the way I thought they were. I thought they actually thought they were going to be more open when I tried to do something. It's like, well, you can't do that exactly. And then the aspects, I didn't understand that at all when I started. That's what I was referring to and I still couldn't think of a good way to put an aspect down that made sense and was useful. That's what I was referring to with Mike is when he made his character use. I like more examples. I almost want a list to choose from rather than make them up yourself. Not how it's a joke. I also think I remember making up a few and they're like, that's not an aspect. That's not an aspect. Right. All right, well, then what's my aspect? Show me. Can I have a definition, please? Johnny, do you have something you wanted to add? I certainly just had a framework by the time I was done making my character. And he put on flush as I played him because I've got to make decisions and those to find him a bit. I've actually talked to some of the fans and they said that your character was like really game-steamed, that he became more and more interesting and intriguing as anyone else. I don't think it's good. They can see that and I'm good. I would have to agree with it. My thought and character did take on a lot of depth as the story continued. Hopefully we'll get a chance to do that with some others in the next story. How did Scott see this story unfolding versus where it ended up? Of course, you know, you have in your head an idea of how a story is going to go. Are we talking just or we're back to world of darkness. Sorry. This first question was a little in both. The next one is just about it. Yes, how did we see the story unfolding? Or how did I see the story unfolding? I don't know. I think sometimes I have unrealistic expectations of how it's going to unfold because you don't know. You know what I mean? You throw stuff at the characters and sometimes they brush it aside. Like it's nothing. You're like, that should have killed them. And then other times you throw something small in and it becomes this huge conundrum that you can never know in your head how it's going to unfold when you're kind of building it. By the way, our latest story evolves and I choose that word on purpose in a very interesting way. Originally the combat that we started out with, like we started out with a bang, just like with a weapon, you know, two or three. And we're in meet a res if you want to be more cool. And then you fleshed out that story with opportunities to flash back where we could do stuff. Right. I was, at least Michael Clay was in a completely uncomfortable... Sure. I just not a good story. And really the whole story, because even at the end, the one of the two major conclusions of the story, which was the leader of Agent Valkyrie, that you were up against. And then on the other end of the farm, the spirits, you would have been much more comfortable on the other end of the farm. From the start, from the moment the first shot fired, to the end, when there was a very tense negotiation happening, Michael Clay was out of his element. Oh sure, exactly. Like, you could never seem to find his groove for that story, which was interesting. That was hard. So I guess to get back to Mad Mjolnir's comment, "How did I see it unfolding?" I really thought there would be a time when there would be a conversation with Danny. And I could have done Deus... Deus Ex Machina. Yeah, that thing right there, that he said. I could have done that and made him be alive. But by the time that the combat unfolded, the story unfolded, by the time you guys got there, there was just no way that he realistically was going to be in a negotiating talking manner. Well, that's what I meant by saying that that's how... I didn't think that you meant the combat to be as long as it was. And then what happened was, it became the foundation of the whole series. It was a very, again, to use the word, I don't know if you're saying the story itself. Right. It became very organic to the story, the combat, and it allowed for the flashbacks in there. I certainly thought that you'd get to the house quicker, because you never know. If I'm just talking about Off the Cuff, I thought you would not have as much trouble with things I laid out there. Of course, you guys are going, "What the hell are we talking about?" I have thought about, if we had been allowed to at least get through the first gate with our vehicles... Right. And maybe stop at the second gate where the body... It's a little fence where the F.S. That, and on having those vehicles and gear closer to hand... Would have been huge difference. Would have made a difference without taking away from what I think you were trying to achieve. Right. Because just imagine if Katie O'Connor had her vehicle with her in that open field... Oh my gosh, in those open fields? And then going down zombies... Yeah, I mean, just... That's a great... We would have drove in and pulled right up into the front door... Or the door. And then we got shot at while we were rushing into the building. Or just imagine that we're burning through... We're bursting through Dukes of Heaven style the burning road in order to... If we had taken the military of them, we could have made a run for it. Something like that. Something like that. I think what happened... Because we were on foot for 400 yards... And then we have our own... We hit the grassy hole and just got bogged down. It did. It got totally bogged down. And we tripled split the party. Right. We had three... So, just to get back to his point real quick... No, it's fine because I think it's all really interesting. I thought that they would get through the difficulties a little. I thought that you'd be able to get through some of the difficulties a little easier. I didn't envision, for instance, Daniel's friend getting shot in the head. That's the way it played out. Let's start with name. I didn't know that. I'm just saying. You were on both sides of that. That was on you. There was no... But I didn't go... But I did not go into the story anticipating that you'd be taken out that quickly or would lose cover or that Daniel would be the one he'd see and go, "Hey Daniel, what's up? What are you doing here?" It could have been anybody over there. It could have been anybody over there. And it could have turned out completely different. So, once you lost the one ally that you might have had on the Task Force Valkyrie team... That slowed things down. The sniper slowed things down. The reticence to actually... Danny Rockland killed. Once you realized it was Danny Rockland potentially in the sniper nest, the reticence to take him out in some way because you wanted to interview him. There's no really good way to take him out. You couldn't get across that field fast enough. I looked at a couple of minutes. Right. Capacitate him and get over there. So, you know, long story short, I thought that it would be a shorter trip to the house just in my head. I thought that you might actually be able to turn and work with Task Force Valkyrie but didn't work out that way. There was at least a small percentage chance that it could have happened. But it didn't. I thought that the feeder demons would be better taken care of in a quicker manner by the sister or some characters who were more occult based, but it just didn't play out that way. Everything seemed to bog down into a crawl, which was great for the flashbacks to occur. But not great for you guys to actually get to interview Danny Rockland. Was there a way to banish the demons that you expected us to figure out? Well, maybe with an exceptional success. I mean, you didn't find out after a while the way to get hit with blood in your mouth. You could get them. The feeder demons in the lights were kept them at bay, things like that. But again, if it would have happened four or five turns earlier in the game, it would have made them much less harrowing of an experience. But again, first time you get encountered with them, sometimes you just hunker down and fight tooth and clock because you don't know how to deal with it. And people were failing, I think, some occult rolls early on. And not really getting the information they really needed right off the bat. So from my perspective, I thought that it would revolve more around the house, investigating the house, negotiating with Danny, and then having to deal with both task force Valkyrie and task force Siren wanting the little girl, wanting Gracie. And how is that resulted in what you'd ally up? And then there would be a huge social conflict inside the house on how it was going to play out. And even with Danny, saying, "I'm not going to give you my daughter," kind of thing. Right. So in my head, it was more of... It was more going to be the feeder demons in the zombies that were going to be your main fight getting to the house, but you're going to team up with task force Valkyrie and solve the problem. But then it just made... the way the story played out, you know, him being there, the guy coming out and realizing... And then task force Valkyrie realizing who you guys were and deciding to take out what they considered to be the weak click on their team. It started to build towards a different type of interaction that really slowed you guys down a lot. So it's my fault in many cases, but... Yeah, I was going to say, we weren't really given an option. We did not fire the first shot. No, we did not fire the first shot. If you had taken the time, I could have busted the lock and we could intrude in. Again, it's a whole series of decisions. If we were in a rush to get there... Yeah, because you knew that task force Valkyrie was there, what were they doing? Were they getting seen up on the rushing because... Okay, no. We were delayed a day because of my sister. Yeah, well, there's that. It was a meta thing. It was faster to have Jim roll to bust up in the car because it wasn't a continuous thing. But it actually took him like 30 minutes. And even then she rolled a terrible success for her. There's that. Which ended up being the car going halfway down a reunion. What a continual success. It was a terrible success. Success is a success. Explanation of my success. Yes. There you go. Yeah, I remember specifically saying, wait a minute, this is a success. I made it and you're like, no, you didn't. You just kind of went off the side. We did. I mean, you got through the gate. And you did let us go. I didn't get through the gate. I got through the side of the fence about... Oh, well, when you weren't going to get through the gate, there's no way you could make it through that reinforced gate with the vehicle. I don't think we knew that we were trying to go right now. You were trying to go right next to it and for whatever reason, that didn't quite work. But it was the terrain behind it. There was a dish that we didn't quite understand right there. Right. If you took a car going really fast into a gate and jumped out of it at the last minute. I think the car is going to go through the gate. It depends on the question. The car is heavy. Well, again, you have a paranoid ex-hunter who, this was his compound. He was almost a cult. And that was a very reinforced gate. So I think, I mean, he had three locks on it that Edward needed to work his way through, which we never got the chance to do so. But again, it's just all... It was part of the mechanics, Monteis. Your attempts took five minutes for driving a car through to... Right. That was the difference. It actually took her longer to hotwire the car. But if we had sat there and waited for me to roll out all the successes I would need to do it, I would have taken off all night. Okay, switching over to Facebook. Our longtime listener, Ari, had a question. One question that has lingered my mind since shit luck. But it's kind of big and kind of out of the scope. But have I missed the background for Hunter game? Like, what's what? And who's who? Did he miss it or have we just not gone over it because it's kind of a mystery game? Well, to be fair... I think he meets individual characters. Okay. Sister Katie wrote up something that's on Facebook, but... Or is it? It's on Facebook. Yeah. I don't think the rest of us have ever done a full fleshed out. Well, he's not done, I'm sorry, I didn't finish this. Oh, sorry. Hi, intro. There are always mentions in the character intros about their connections to the mysteries and conspiracies. Any short-ish way to open this? P.S. was looking for the rule book one time at the RPG store in Helsinki, but they didn't have it. Okay, so actually it's a deeper question because he doesn't... It looks like Ari does even have the Hunter rule book, which describes the conspiracy. So, for Ari, for anyone else who is not a longtime hunter or rule-the-darkness player, there is a Hunter book which describes all these compacts and conspiracies which fight the darkness. That the players can belong to. So long story short, each of the conspiracies that the players belong to has a fictional backstory in the world, which sometimes plays in, like Dr. Lucius had to deal with his Chiron handlers in the first-story shitlock and got the living crap beat out of him, if you remember. You went and got a pterrogate because they were pissed off that he... Well, just as a quick aside, my character belongs to the descending ones. And that is a group that... They're semi-religious, different religious beliefs, but they ingest poison or drugs and convert those drugs or poison into powers. Right. My character specifically got involved in... He was in the military and was off in the Middle East when he ran into a situation that he got indoctrinated into this particular group. And he's carried out in Cleveland area in one of their local cells. Which actually happened to actually... It's coming back home. You actually have some conflict within your group as well in late in the story of Chiron. So did you say your character didn't become an ascending one in the US? He did it overseas? He definitely did it overseas, yes. He did it when he was in Iraq during the war, and then he brought it back with him to Cleveland and realized there were more like him on the east side specifically. And my character's got a father, no mother, a younger sister, his father's involved in the church. So there's some conflict between there. So there's, yeah, there's a history, but that's the history of his group that he belongs in. Right. And Mike belongs to... Aegis Kaidouru. And that figured very prominently in the first series. Yes, it did. Your mentor, as a matter of fact. My mentor. And access to certain resources that we use to even... What is Aegis Kaidou? Just to fill Ari in real quick. They are... They just kind of, well, they have three different branches, but basically we are the former Atlanteans who are protecting the world from the evil of shape-changers and such like... Your artifact hunters. Artifact hunters. Right. You kind of collect and then use the artifacts to the good of keeping the world safe from the monsters. Right. But also are very much collecting of ancient artifacts that they have power and are very interested in that. Which we also consider part of our legacy in that these artifacts are meant to be studied and also eventually used to prevent the other side. If any Michael's background, I think he was from Austin, Texas originally. Yep. And had... I'm not quite sure how you were indoctrinated into the Aegis Kaidouru, but I know that you did some museum work there. And then there was a group of artifacts that were turned in the United States and you were called into Task Force Siren and then sent to Cleveland on assignment underneath the auspices that you were actually watching over those originally. The way I look at it is the Aegis Kaidouru operates under established family bloodline. Right. And I'm not saying that I'm... It's not royalty, but when you reach an age of majority, which is 25, you have an opportunity to come into it and you come from these not necessarily wealthy families, but you're expected to achieve... Well, prestigious, I suppose. Yeah. Are you guys Atlanteans who left before it all went down? Like, way down the line. Or do you just... Yeah, that would be why you keep them both. I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, the whole labyrinth, the minotaur and shape changers in general plays into the mysteries of the initiation. They have a labyrinth that they actually keep all their artifacts in Greece, where they're headquartered at, etc. And so then with Jim's sister, Katie, she belonged to the Malius Maleficarum, which briefly is a branch of the Catholic Church. Hammer of the Witches? Yeah. Hammer of the Witches, which has the ability to cast spells for lack of a better term, although they're benedictions. Right. They're gifts from God. And your character background is fully online. Yeah. If you do down in the past on Facebook, you can read the character background I have. But the long and the short of it is she was born into a racing family who raced NASCAR races. And as she grew up, she got pulled into it. And while she met somebody through her family's racing team, she fell in love with him. The sky, she was going to go across country in a Baja race to... and co-pilot the car he was riding in, where when they were pre-running the race track, just scouted out to see how it goes, they got bumped into a vampire. Had a fight with the vampire, and her husband got killed by the vampire before a priest showed up and took him out. And she kind of got into the hunting thing through the priest that saved her and that and her husband. Right. And then John's character, Daniel, who's new to the scene. For this story, you were former Task Force Valkyrie, right? Okay. Is the Sasquatch passing for you? My guy was an ex-founder of Task Force Valkyrie. Well, Siren is a split off from them. When agents went missing, we weren't at Valkyrie in particular. It wasn't allowed back in Cleveland. But you explained what Valkyrie is for people who are... Oh, yeah, sorry. They are a government organization to deal with the supernatural. Yes. They're like a government black ops force that deals with... I would explain with lots of cool gadgets. Yes. That's what they specialize in. I brought to the table some tranquilizer rounds that the government had cooked up to knock people out. We used it up to any during the fight, actually. Jay shot him in the eye. Your character's background is pretty much mapped out in flashbacks during this. Yeah, a lot of it was. But not the actual what Valkyrie was, you know, specifically what they are. You want to know about this? Yeah. And then Thomas, do you have a quick backdrop of your conspiracy and your character's relation to it? I'd go to Montes' point of the way, "Mr. Air Conspiracy." Correct me if I'm wrong on that pronunciation, I've been doing it. All our French listeners? Right. All year. I don't even know. The conspiracy is a little complicated because it doesn't actually have an organization tied to it. I'd say, right. Right. It's very loosened. Isn't it more of a philosophy? Yeah. It's more of a philosophy and... Indoor religion? Indoor religion. Religion's good. But I guess the central factor to everyone who's in this conspiracy is their relationship with ghosts. Well, spirits. Spirits. Not all ghosts. Right. They allow the spirits to possess their body in order to gain some benefit from the spirits. Be it for combat or disguise or... I think there's... You're like a voodoo prick. It's like these primal types of religions. Whether it be some kind of African religion or voodoo or these very primal type of religions. And you allow these spirits of your past ancestors, I believe? It depends on the conspiracy. Well, sure. Is that something you intend to flesh out more in the future? Yeah. Additional powers you can get to do that? I have one. It was not pertinent and I'm not good at it, but I'm working... And we're going to allow him to alter his character too because it was his first time playing the game. So, before we play the third story, everyone's going to get a chance to kind of revamp a bit. Yeah. Edgarden, in particular, is a voodoo and practitioner. He was taught by his grandfather. Right. We lived down south in... Northerns. Not. Northerns. Not. I'm not doing that accent. Sorry, for anyone who really wanted me. You were Haitian. Yeah. My family was Haitian. We moved up to New Orleans to escape the poverty. Or maybe just the earthquake. Yeah. It's all terrible. The whole place. You weren't really caused the earthquake. That can't be proven. All right. Chew isn't here. You want a cover for him? Oh, sure. Chew is a member of the Basky unit, which again is another government agency that, in particular, this one is an offshoot of the FBI where they find agents who, when they apply for the FBI, if they have a certain degree of... Cytonic? Yeah. Cyonics or the ability, yeah, with their mind, they get brought into the Basky conspiracy. And they actually... The way it's written in the rule books, this one isn't in the Hunter book. It's actually in... One of the Splats. Yeah. One of the Splats. It's like a serial killer or one? Oh, it is. It's slasher. The conspiracy actually gives them drugs, injections, which brings out more and more of their liability. Who's it? They don't tell the numbers that conspiracy they're doing that. It's just, you know, happy juice or something. Wait a minute. But the government? Yeah. Does experiments? It doesn't tell anyone? So that's his particular background. And of course, Chew's actual background is that he wants to hunt serial killers. And it becomes a lot more apparent after this particular story. Right. Why Chew chose the Basky unit of the federal government to chase down serial killers? Is there any amount of crossover between the Basky and the Valkyrie? To the laymen, just anyone that knows a little bit about the supernatural but doesn't know a great deal, doesn't belong to either conspiracy or even they do. On a low level, there's no crossover whatsoever. Now, at the upper levels of power, is there a crossover? Very likely, or at least certainly a possibility. But your character, nor she is character. Is there honestly an aware of their organization? I would say you're aware of Basky. Basky was aware of you. And you're all kind of a... The Valkyrie squad with the Basky add-on. A lot of... That would be really cool. When you read to the 100 book, when you read me over your, um, conspiracy information, at the end of it, it'll go through how your conspiracy views other conspiracy. So it sounds like they're pretty aware of most of them. So they could say, like, they like this one, they don't like this one. Yeah, if you run in, if you're out there hunting monsters, you're gonna run into other conspiracies doing the same thing. Basky and Valkyrie is probably a CIA/FBI type of relationship. They're aware of each other, but... Right. Or sometimes ship information. Maybe SEAL Team Six versus FBI type of relationship. Task Force Valkyrie is very militaristic in its view. Like, they don't go there and talk things over. You know, they go there and they... Yes, I think we've seen that. Right. Yes, you have seen that. You call them black berets. Nice. Maybe we will. Maybe that'll be your turn for them as well. On Facebook, we also have a message or a question from Andrew Curtis-Hole-White. How much effect did the flashbacks have on the plot of the present events? If the characters had made other choices, would it have affected the storyline? Or was it merely put in to put the events into context? Great question. Didn't we talk about that a little while we were playing? We did talk a little bit about not just when we were playing, but also I think in our rap obsession for ourselves. I think as players, I remember thinking or discussing that we would try to play within some parameters, so we didn't try to change history or change what was going to happen. An anti-air vehicle? What? We definitely joked about that we were having a Bill and Ted's excellent adventure moment. I use willpower. I use willpower because you knew you had it the next day, so why worry about it? Right, and also I think let's put a stash of guns and anti-aircraft rocket launcher and stinger missiles because we're going to need it. I think in general, maybe half of the flashbacks were simply for flavor. Sure. The other half I think did affect that bit. The other half did by providing us with weapons that we discovered in the flashback that we carried forward, contact, or an appeals at the very end, which is kind of... I also think it evolved. I think the flashbacks started, but then we got into a situation where that's the structure of this particular story arc, and that is the climate. I think some of the flashbacks as well filled in why we were here. That's obvious. Yeah, so some of it was an info dump. It was an info dump, and that was intended. I think it's an Andrew's question. I trust my players, and I think hopefully there's some trust back as well. I don't anticipate them doing something that's going to so derail the story because I've played with them for a long time. Now, if they did, well, that's part of why no story survives contact with the players. You have to have some flexibility. Were there healing ampoules in the storyline to help Edgard come back quicker to help with the spirits at the end? Absolutely not. That was a complete flashback affecting plot. Now, could we have handled it other ways? We certainly could have gotten him back into action a little quicker if those ampoules weren't there. But I think that, yeah, some of the actions that you guys did in your flashbacks absolutely affected the plot. And I think also though, some of the knowledge as a player that we were in a flashback affected some of our actions because I was deeply concerned in the last flashback that one of us was going to get shot. Which we made absolutely no sense in the current situation. Right. And it did semi effect how I reacted. I mean, I did go in there trying my hardest never. I wasn't going in with guns blazing to rescue my sister. Now, this could be explained easily enough in the fact that it was... She's in danger and... Well, I didn't want to endanger her, but it was also the fact that I was dealing with an offshoot of my own faction. Why would I be shooting people? Right. Again, I think for Andrew, it's good players. Same reason why we killed a bunch of Valkyrie. No, we killed Valkyrie because Valkyrie shot at us first. Fair enough. But they almost shot at us first. No, they did. They definitely shot at us first. Yeah. I'm fairly certain. No, I didn't. There was a shot that went on. They shot Jim? Jim? They're all dead. Your commander is telling you they shot at us first. That's the answer. History is written by the winners. Exactly. So, for Andrew, it's time. When we talked to Tate, they shot at us first. I'm talking about the gangbangers. They shot. They did shoot at us first. Can we shoot at them? No, we didn't. And again, I mean, how would we have handled it? Well, let's say Edgar got shot. Well, there were the ampoules that I put into the story specifically because, okay, well, I've got to be able to account for-- That's a good point. You know, two different things. So I think-- By the way, Jim, there's a huge difference between a gangbanger and a Valkyrie guy. Yeah. I can take a gangbanger out without shooting. They don't want to be-- Right. Valkyrie are serious dudes. And so from that perspective, I think the best stories are completely devolved on their own. And you want to have a framework for a story. And I think Tom would absolutely agree here because of the way you run your stories. Yeah. You want to have a framework for a story, but you want to let the story be able to breathe on its own and change on its own. So if the players change the story, then the players change the story. And you can definitely-- I guarantee you with the players I have in my game that they will come up with much better ideas than I do. I could ever think of, right. Absolutely. So excellent question, Andrew, and hopefully that answered most of what you were looking for. So we next have a question on Facebook. What would Scott do if you guys did some serious fucking up in the J Flashback? Like, got seriously wounded in a gunfight or something similar? Well-- No, we just discussed that. We just discussed it. You definitely change things as a storyteller to make the story flow. The whole idea behind what we do is not for me to win or not for the characters, I think, to win. It's to tell a really good story. So if I need to put-- There was a couple times, yeah. And then I put healing ampoules in. Even at the very end of the story when it came down to us versus the time spirits, I was willing for Jay to die for the group to get away. It's not about Jay winning the day and being the hero. It's about the team and-- And that's what you do about the story. That's what your character would have done too. Right. And more importantly, because there are some characters who would have ran away and left you guys to die. Michael Clay. I actually make a joke at the end of it. Who are you getting to the car and come get me? And I'm like, I'm surprised. I'm surprised you just go the other way. And just say, Jay, I'll find his own way home. Let's go get some burgers. You're far more resourceful than I am. All right. We have some further questions on Facebook from Richard Watts. Is Michael Clay a tenor or a baritone? I see him as a baritone. He was in baritone pretty deep. Yeah. Yes. He is deep. He runs on many levels. I mean, he's no-- Oh. You know, he's got a lot of time. That is a-- What bitch is that approach? That would definitely be a-- What do you call it when you get kicked in the gym? False set up. Oh, false set up. False set up. That's a nice one. A castrado? Holy young boys. I don't think they have castraultos anymore. But I see him as Indiana Jones, but older. I'm more aware of the Indiana Jones. I was hasting not to use that. The more-- The more prudent-- He's not jumping over the orange one. Well, he's not combat oriented with firearms. He can walk into a dingy bar and duke it out and deal with-- Well, when the people who are excavating his fines are, you know, not digging fast enough, he can get, you know, kind of cross with people. Right. So you're going with the baritone? I always picture him like Ben Stein. Yeah, no, I'm for some reason not to make the connection to-- I'm drawing a blank in his name. Magnum P.I. Tom Sullick. Yeah, Tom Sullick. But he has kind of that higher pitched voice. I was-- Is it a higher pitch? I thought he was a deep group. I thought-- I just listened to-- Higgins! To North America. Do you watch a show on Discovery in North America? No. It's a nature show. Oh, yeah. That's the-- Tom Sullick's the narrator. Yeah, Tom Sullick's the narrator. And it's a relative of people. Well, he is pretty old, though. I'm going by Magnum P.I. Right. So much of all of the 80s. Actually, the most I remember from his friends when he was-- Yes, Monica's son. All right, then let's go with baritone. I think you probably gave way more credence to that question. I don't remember. Then did you ever-- It's gonna be baritone. If Sister Katie's social skills are solo, they make people flee in terror. Has she discovered our loophole to maximum intimidate? There is a chance that she might be a plant. I think she's so-- She strikes me as a perfect nun. She's got such a failure in all social skills. I have never been a nun and had good social skills. How many nuns have you met? We went to Catholic school. We were a whole point of view. Isn't intimidate under social? It is a social skill. She sucks at that, too. Right. I think I had-- It just depends what she's doing. I think I had her as my second grade teacher. Sister Katie? Yeah. It's Sister Mary Ralph. It's Sister Mary Ralph and-- Dogs? I always like the sister Mary yardstick, Sam wearing nothing. So, it could be Jim's kid. So, yeah, I think you got to go with that, though. So, you know, once your character finds something like a niche, even that you didn't expect to have happen, if there's a niche there-- I don't know about that because I'd be cool at man right now. Well, you would, but I don't mean silly. Well, not all your characters. She's obviously the lacking in the social arena. I think that Jim, as a role player, just needs to-- You didn't think you have to some extent, just embrace that. Oh, I find that. I deal with dogs and I deal with humans. You know, that's just-- That's who you are. For, like, many surreal characters. Or the death of your husband will be in a-- It will cost you? In a situation that I purposely make her say something and put her foot in her mouth and you have to turn around. Correct. It's just what she does. That's one of the clips at the end of the last episode. Me whispering, "Don't let her talk to my kids." You said something dead. Yeah. Richard's next. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Thomas? They were talking to the vampire and he said, like, "I'm going to have to go read all those Asians back." And Jim says, "Are they all dead?" They all dead. I'll call your friends dead. Like, Jim, let her talk. Why does John seem set on destroying all man-made construction one wall and window at a time? There you go, cool, amen. Oh, yeah. I was in a burning barn in Medicare of your corpse. I think that's reasonable. Well, no, the burning barn. I don't think you destroyed any doors in that particular situation. I don't know if it made the ground. It's you, which could have been your-- Well, okay. In the burning barn, he wanted to jump through. That was his first go to-- His first jump through the window and bust out. Right. And in the house, he ended up flying out a window and falling. Well, first, first, he got thrown into the window, I think. Or was it right next to the window? He didn't go to the floor, too, on the window. I would say an aspect that he's earned is that the only way out is through. It's through. Right. Through a wall or through a-- Because he looks at-- he doesn't see obstacles. He just sees potential doorways. It's not to start cutting the record, Rob. Right. So I can assume that that's not going to become a theme for Daniel in the future that he's going to be running through other walls and stuff like fate. Right. It's definitely an aspect for-- You know, I was actually thinking of trying to-- Like, I've been kind of hooked on this YouTube thing where they're telling stories through various clips of movies. And based on something you sent me, I thought of trying to find all these different clips of action movies where the character basically uses a gun or some device to punch a hole through some obstacles. Edifice. Just to show that this is how-- I think there's one great one in Underworld, where she just takes machine pistols and spins around in a circle and cuts a hole on the-- Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Totally impossible, but she's so hot it doesn't matter. The next question from Richard Watts is, "How is Chew Park sane?" That's a good question. That is a really good question. That's a good question. And I think my response to that, a lot of the people around the table have a shot at too, but I think my response is the deepest darkness allows for the greatest light. And I think he was in a really dark place growing up, and he could have went one or two ways. Could have followed his father's path, or he could have rebelled against that darkness, and he could have shown him the way to a lighter future. And I think in the darkest times, he found that little bit of light and grabbed onto it. So that would be my answer of how he's still seeing, but in all reality, I think anyone who goes through some of the stuff that we've worked out for Chew so far is going to bound to be sure he fucked up in some ways. Maybe we should retcon his morality score down to like three? Yeah. Or ten, one of the two. Yeah. He's going one way or the other. Yeah, exactly. Maybe it was down that far, and he's been slowly building it back up. Well, I don't think it's a, I don't think it's, well, it is, it's totally a random thing because we made it that way. But in the story, one of the reasons I picked the serial killer father for him to have flashbacks was because he's someone who hunts serial killers. So when Bob and I were talking about his background and what we'd like to do with Chew's story arc, it made perfect sense. If you're someone who hunts serial killers and supernatural serial killers at that, well, it wouldn't be really cool if your dad was a serial killer. Well, that wouldn't be really cool. It would be really disturbing, but it really fit his character arc well, and I think, again, in the biggest darkness, you can either... I can see that it provides drive, it provides pathos, but at the same time, it's a whole, it's a wound you can never heal. Right. Because you're never going to get your childhood back, you're never going to have a positive father figure, and you're never going to have a natural relationship. And that'd be, I mean, song would be lady. Right. That'd be really interesting in this third story if we get a chance to do a little bit of Chew and Tammy to see how he handles a relationship. Like, because he did have a very comforting mother figure growing up, as was told in shit luck. One of the flashbacks for Chew was in the hospital when he was having a dream, and it was his mother stroking his cheek, telling me everything was going to be all right, and everything was going to be fine. And when he woke up, it was actually Tammy that was there, then they had that scene. No, if you recall that or not. No Freudian significance then. Right. No, I'm so happy. Well, but then that could also be part of the neat story arc for him, where when he has to assume a father role to someone else, and where some of those issues will come up, and who knows, maybe what's happening to him is... Maybe he'll kill a bitch. Well, maybe it skips a generation. Maybe the craziness, the gene that made his dad so awful... Right, skips a generation and goes after... There's a movie that you'd probably really enjoy called... Are there children in danger? Yes, there is, in fact. It's called "We Need to Talk About Kevin." And it's basically about a child who is born evil. And the mom figures it out pretty quick that this kid is trouble, and that through a couple things, you know, finally he has to train. It's not like he's possessed. He's a bad kid. He's a bad, bad kid. He has a moral compass, or... No, he's evil. He has a compass that just points out. Yeah, that's... Constantly. Next question, thank you Mike for that. Sure. Let me get some of our listeners will enjoy watching that. Did anyone start humming "We Didn't Start the Fire" during the game? I don't think so. I can't even think of that. If we did it, it would have been cut out by a certain... By the editor, please. Ham-handed, yeah. Ham-handed! That's on all the good quality stuff. For a certain quality of good, yes. I think I definitely thought of the joke, but it didn't say that loud. Right, it didn't say that loud. It's got ever run the game in which no children are placed in harm's way. No, there's a signal. There's a false crowd. There's a false crowd. That signal, that signal, the end of days. It's awesome. I think everyone at this table would absolutely agree with that. Angel breaks the seventh seal. Scott has a game in which a no child is... Yeah, I guess I guess it follows. And then his last off the cuff, if you will, question is, in the next session, will Task Force Siren have flying agents, much like your Valkyrie counterparts? I don't mean we're in the budget. If you mean we're falling, because we were pushed out? We already did that. Oh, Cliff? Yeah. But no, I don't think that Task Force Siren has the budget that Valkyrie has, so I think we'll not have any flying agents. And unless you have some power... Some really powerful drugs. Yes. That whether it be drugs or... What about victims? Or wounds are pretty cheap. Artifacts. Or an overseas thing we've got to go fly over to check out. Right. Some actual airplane. Now onto Richard's serious questions. What was everyone's favorite story moments? We hit this a little bit in our version of the wrap up, but certainly, maybe everyone didn't get to mention one that they... Like, so favorite, favorite. Not... Don't call me... Anything, but favorite. My two favorites were Choose Story with his dad as... You're right. The Flash. I guess as disturbing as it was, that was a pretty incredible role-playing moment and story moment. Yeah. And then the one that I was really engaged in and gotten really frustrated that I lost was my failed attempt to outhack binary hacks. Binary hacks. Right. Okay. Two excellent moments of the game. Sure. Yeah. I think I mentioned the same thing with Choose. Yeah. I'd be interested to see what the... It'd be neat to know what the fans... If we had a fan version of what was your favorite moment? You can't really do it as a vote because... No. You're losing. There's 87,000 different moments in the story. And some people find things really interesting. What about a forum post? It's possible. I mean, anybody can post it on Facebook. Yeah. Facebook thing where we just ask people what their favorite moment of the story was. Yeah. I'll throw it up tonight. I think some of them would say the helicopter, like, what kind of mean game runner you are. Yes. Exactly. Evil storyteller. Anyone else have any moments that they didn't get a chance to express during the player feedback section that they might want to mention for Richard? It didn't. Yeah. I just mentioned them as I mentioned previously. But I think one of the moments I thought was really intriguing. And Mike's done this. This wasn't as great as when we played Dresden in that when you whipped out the accords on me. But the Christmas carols with the kids to get them under control and different things along that nature. There's no game mechanics to really recover. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Right. But yet, I found those really interesting moments. I actually like that. But something like that. When you guys were in the basement with the building burning down above you and about to come down on your heads and you're opening a door and facing, who knows what... That was nice times. And then trying to talk the girl out of the room while you're trying to hurry the whole conversation before the place comes down. I thought, yeah. I mean, for a game that had such moments of darkness, like the idea of this obviously... I don't want to say damaged, but certainly a little girl who's been through a lot. And we say little, she's 14 or so, whatever her age might be, holding on to a decapitated head. But in that moment, running and jumping and burying her head into Daniel's shoulder and neck area, just wanting to flee the terror that is her life. You have those little moments of uplift occasionally, which help out. I don't know if I mentioned that one before. In as disturbing as some other imagery is, it's still nice. It's still a little girl running to someone who looks like a big protector and saying, "Help me." And so those moments are sometimes nice as well. One more question by Richard. Serious question. I really enjoyed the flashbacks of the story and was wondering if Scott thought they worked out like he was hoping. I think that they actually, to be honest, I think they actually worked out better than I anticipated. I really started the story with them being a smaller part of the overall story, layout, or plot. They were going to be small in between, quick little hits. The combat wasn't going much quicker. But as the combat took a prominence, I went ahead and started developing a deeper flashback for the characters and flushing them out more. So I think they actually turned out a little better than I thought. Certainly, we would like to go back and kind of, as you always do after a story is over, tweak them, make them a little stronger, like the pacing, a little crisper on some of them. But overall, I thought they added a lot to that story. I thought the story would have really paled in comparison if we would have ran it as a straight story, as opposed to one that was starting in the middle and had these flashback sequences. So yes, I thought it worked out well, and I guess it says me. But did we or did we not like the flashbacks going around the table? The flashbacks are cool. I think they were good. I don't know. You don't want them all the time. It was something that was different and took a combat and spiced it up a bit. Things are a great idea. It worked well. In the story we were in, I don't know if it would carry well into the next one. It really depends on what you do. Right. I don't think it's going to be something we're going to do all the time. I think it's sort of that particular story. Sure, there'll be a flashback or two maybe in a given story. Maybe none. But never to the extent. Flash side. You know, where you do an aside adventure. Not adventure, but... Do you think it's possible to have an unplanned flashback? Absolutely. I think that you just have to follow the story. If the story is leading to a flashback, then you just got to make one up. Because again, you can't be so rigid with your storytelling that you can't look at. The story telling that you can't allow for things. If a situation presented itself where I'm trying to think of a good point to describe it, but... Well actually, the current Superman movie tells the story the way you told the story. Where kind of as a significant event is happening in the current time, there's suddenly a flashback as to why it's even more significant or what leads to a point. Right. So when you come back. And they're skipping all over the timeline. And then that movie. Right. Do you like the flashback that particular story? I... I liked the flashbacks. Some of them were you get to participate. And I liked it because it took us out of an environment where all I was really doing was... So combat had bleeding over the grass. Right. Right. And that was part of the reason I was laying some of them out. I saw a couple of people down gosh, I mean, weeks before they get to do anything. Well, yeah. I couldn't move. I couldn't, you know. And I just flashed back out a little bit. Right. And so as a player, I liked them. And as a player/love fan, hearing what some of those were and the experiences in particular shoes. Right. We're really moving and really powerful. Okay. And Thomas, what about you? Well, if Mike Scott said that it made him more interesting because he was bleeding out on the ground, I've got to agree. Yeah, I have to agree. Mathematically. Something that, I mean, I really appreciated since this was my first foray into the system, the ability to try out things that weren't just combat. Right. I don't know. I think they added a lot to the game. Cool. But everyone said everything I wanted to say. Fair enough. And to get back to Jim's question, I think, and I don't have a good example right now. But yeah, I think if there's ever a point in the story where we're talking about something and talking about something and talking about something and that thing or that person is becoming more and more important. I think we're having a discussion about Nico, Michael Clay's mentor from Shitlock, the first story. And if he's in the third story, if he keeps coming up and keeps coming up and all of a sudden, it looks like, hey, we can do a quick flashback here and actually adds value to the story then by all means. That's just an opportunity to provide exposition. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot more interesting ways to give exposition than just the obvious info dump. And I think dialogue is part of that. And I think flashback is part of that toolkit as well. And I think you've got to use them. Adam on Facebook posted, "How can Sister Katie work as a nun without social skills?" Imagine she has some position outside the public eye for the church in general for that matter. A wink and smiley face. So yeah, I mean, I'm assuming she does a lot of research for the church on his own. And the library, what she does is she fixes cars for the church. Right. She's a mechanic. She's a mechanic. People donate cars to the church and then she fixes them up and they respond to make money to the church. And she's a public eye for sure. And if she raises dogs, she trains dogs, seeing eye dogs. Right. And she doesn't like to interact with people as much as she, you know, if she ever has to like substitute for a day because somebody follows off. Yeah, it's just that's a nightmare. Parents are calling on. Yeah. What's Sister Katie's running? Yeah. Well, parents are calling the school the next day, saying, "Who the hell was in the classroom?" Why don't I keep coming out from underneath the bed? I've been a few of those. And I've had teachers like that. So I mean, I asked myself that same question when I went to a Catholic school. Right. How are you a nun? Adam also asked, "How does one exit task force Valkyrie?" Death. I know. I had to ask. Yep, yep. Katie would like to know how one exit task force sirened. Yeah. Well, it's a two year, supposedly, it's a two year assignments under cover in Cleveland to solve the up to two year assignment. To solve the riddle of these missing agents, which was your contract you signed at the NSA headquarters at the beginning before shitlock. And some of that was lost in the process because we lost those first couple episodes that we did. I remember that being a two year assignment, I thought it was just a let's talk about a five hour tour. It was a five hour tour. But no, so yeah, I think one exits one of two ways. Death or project completion. And even then, who knows? You recycle right back a new online. Lucius is technically still a number of task force siren. He's missing right. Because of his commitment to the chyron corporation, which is a medical corporation, he had to be missing for his particular story. He's a current auxiliary member. Yes. He also lost his lot since. Well, he was suspended. He was suspended. It was suspended as a punishment for his. Well, one player was eaten. Listen to you, shitlock. He's not an emergency medical. Yeah. He did make a token appearance when he came and helped your sister. We've had one player beaten and missing in action. We've had one player eaten. Burned. Guest stock. Burned by a werewolf. We had another player burned by explosives. Now, Doc was killed. Katie will tell you. Yes. Katie's in a bag. The next question is from Chris Nichols. This is from Facebook. With all the intricacies of both campaigns, World of Darkness and Dresden, how do you GM's go about keeping track of everything both plot and player wise? Do you use a predefined plot structure that you hope the PCs will follow? Do you have an underlying, ongoing plot that will take place no matter what happens with the players? Did you make it up on the fly? Physically, how do you keep track of it all? Is it all in the evil mind in the case of Scott? Just kidding. Or do you have notes stuffed in a binder somewhere? Do you use a computer program, iPad or otherwise? My reasoning behind the question is that this has been an ongoing struggle for me in my own games. I find it difficult to keep track of everything moving the plot along in an organized manner and especially run a game of intrigue where all of the plot points are so important. Hope my question makes sense. Thanks for any advice to improve my own game. Keep up the great work doing what you do. Each week, one of the highlights for me is the release of a new episode from this entertaining group of players and GM's Chris Naples. So thanks very much for the question, Chris. Chris, I'll get my short answer. Yes. That's it. All right. Chris is now much helped. Obviously we both had radically different stuff. Sure. My answer for me is I'm a kind of a winger, which some of them make stuff up on the fly. But even I do a little prep. What I did with the delivery game was I came up with the general's skeletal structure of a timeline, things that were going to happen. And I did write that all out. I used my iPad. I also sometimes had notes. I built each of the NPCs, the major NPCs, that I built some additional ones that I might scatter about here and there. And then from that point on, I played it as a sandbox. You guys could do anything you wanted. Certain events are going to happen unless you did something to prevent them on a timeline that I had constructed already. And if you did things that affected that timeline, then next week I adjusted it slightly. But it was really high level stuff. It was not nitty gritty. There was definitely things that did happen that there were details. But really, a lot of the story was generated from you guys. And that's actually how fate's supposed to work. Your aspects are supposed to drive the adventure and the story line and the structure of it. And then when we first made the city and we made the characters, you guys came up with all those aspects. And I looked at them and said, "Here's a handful of them that are kind of fit together and can lead to an interesting story." Right. That I put on top of thoughts that I had. But as far as the detailed maintaining information of what happened on a week-to-week basis, they would be notes that I jotted down on index cards that I threw into a folder and I would go over them before we played. There wasn't a whole lot of bookkeeping on my part because most of the characters were really made up in the beginning. Although some of them, Krispy Bruce and those were totally almost player creations, they made them important more than I did. Right. So I did have to do some adjustments. But I'm not much of a note keeper. It's just if I can keep the general structure. And I kind of have it a little easier because it's all recorded. If I have any questions, I can go back and listen to it. It's a good point. And you have them. And I have. In fact, sometimes, I'm not sometimes all the time. I have to go back and listen to them while I'm editing them. Right. And actually, we're not terribly different, I would say. The first thing I do is when I'm going to come up with a story. For evil pills. I take my evil pills, put on my evil cap. Make sure you're in a really bad excuse. Stop sticking, man. Stop taking my meds. No, I come up with a theme. I'm a little bit more story oriented in the sense that this is what World Darkness does. I mean, I'm not making this up on my own or breaking new ground. You're supposed to put a theme in a mood for the story. And then when things happen that are out of left field, you're not expecting or the players alter the story and they should. All you ask yourself is if they want to do acts and I need to come up with why, what's my theme? What's my mood? And it really helps you understand how a new character would enter into the story or how a existing character might act. It's almost like my daughter, Karen, must be a writer. And one thing I told her was very important for her is to be able to put yourself in the mindset of each character because each character has their own way of thinking in addition to their own information. Right. And they could be making decisions that are really, really poor based on the reality of what's going on, but it's based on the amount of information. The vampire or perceived vampire, the head of Task Force Valkyrie's unit there thoroughly convinced that the girl that you were taking that Michael Clay and who else was there. You and Katie, that was it. That again, you just put yourself inside the character and think about how they would think. And again, also matching theme in the mood of what you're trying to create with the story. So I start with a theme in the mood, then I do, I use Google Docs a lot. There's a flow chart. I don't know if it's like their version of Excel or whether it's a separate flow chart program, I can't remember, but it really helps me put the major players and the major plot points down. And then I use, obviously, write-ups of the different major NPCs. Like Tom, I use a timeline. There's certain things that are going to happen at certain times in the story. And then, I mean, that's it. There is a lot more note taking probably on my end than maybe on Tom's. Oh, definitely. But when it comes down to it, you're just trying to get in the minds of the NPCs while also trying to create a really fun situation or challenging situation depending on fun in the sense of role-playing, trying to create situations. So I do a lot of time from week to week as you probably do as well, Tom, of, I don't have a daughter who's a writer to bounce ideas off of, like you do, but I tend to bounce them off myself. I try to, what would be the worst thing that could happen here? What would be the most, like, if he totally misunderstood the situation, what would he do? If he totally wanted to really fuck the player characters over, what would he do? If he wanted to concede, you know, just try to look at it from a bunch of different prism angles to see which one's the most interesting and then throw it out if the players do something else. But the idea is obviously to try to get in, try to create scenes, again, talking in the world of darkness, vernacular, try to create scenes that are very memorable. And all that is is really knowing your NPCs and knowing your story really well and staying within your theme. For instance, the theme there was a little bit of how far down the path where you go in a hunter game. Can you keep your sanity? Can you keep your normalness? Are you going to say, when you're sitting at a table with your mouth, pass me the fucking mashed potatoes, mom? Because you're just in a different place. You're fighting monsters, I remember there's a Vietnam story once that was told where the guy came home from Vietnam and said, pass me the fucking mashed potatoes, mom. You know, like just asking, like that's how you ask because that's how you talked when you were in Nam. From that aspect, you just try to stay with the overall theme. So, the theme of the story was, will you guys end up like Danny? We end up in some compound somewhere completely off the reservation because you've lost your humanity in what really has made you a human, spending so much time fighting these monsters. So, when it came to the flashbacks, whether it was Choose Dad or whether it was your sister being really violated in some way, or at least seemingly violated in some way, or even going back, you look at the situation with Danny's wife who is now in abusive relationship, all of them just showed how, you know, Mike will say it's just me being evil and to some extent, you know, I guess I do, like, run a darker game. But also, each one of those flashbacks fit in thematically with what I was trying to accomplish with the theme I named before the adventure even started. So, I have a lot of notes in front of me, maybe more, I would say more so than Tom does, and, you know, how do you keep track? I mean, I guess you just, if you know the story well enough and you know your NPCs, because you've gone through them enough times, and you have a flow chart of how you expect the story to progress, a flow chart of who knows who, you have enough notes in front of you, there's no shame. You don't catch it when we're not, when Tom's editing as well as he does, but there's times when I looked out at my notes and there's 30 seconds of complete dead silence so I look for the right answer. So, experience doesn't hurt either, you get better at that as you go. Good point. You do get better at it as you go. I almost cringe thinking of some of the first stories I told, like the Chicago story that we told in the world of darkness, how now amateur, I mean, my pacing was horrible. You guys struggled with that damn pictogram for eight weeks when I should have just made you made a role and gave you the answer to keep the story moving in the right direction. So, you learn a lot as you go on. One other side, you mentioned that characters acting true to themselves, and that's just enormously important. I mean, when I read something or I watch something and it doesn't make sense, the Hunger Games for instance, I don't understand. The League character, there's really, you're that stupid again, and I just -- That's one of those young adult books in the trope, so it's like that's an extreme example, but I'm just saying any character that doesn't act like they ought to be a good reason, and if there's not, well, you know, about it. Yeah, absolutely. So hopefully we answered Chris's question and helped him a bit, but that's how these two GMs handle it, and hopefully you got something from that. Yeah. Okay, our listener, Tom Rocket, has a question. Rocket! Can we have an entire episode of "Just Choose Flashback Again?" No, our audience would kill themselves. If ever we had an opportunity to have like a guest call in just for like a five-minute interlude and just like, just harass you for some -- If we had to have true to interact with some non-player character, I'd like Rocket to be that non-player character. Just busting his balls about, you know, for no apparent reason. Right, right. There's a lot of our fans I wouldn't like. Yeah, well, he has so many that -- We should have our special weapons agent. Yeah, B-R-O-S-S-Pistle. No, Kellorda. Kellorda. Yeah, and like he should be our quartermaster, you know, our armor. Yeah. You guys don't know your own equipment, so I'm not going to issue you anything. He wouldn't issue me a water pistol. No, he wouldn't. I neither would I, but -- He names them all as he hands them out, and then makes you reset it back to it. That's right. That's right. And you can't turn it in at the end of the day if you don't remember what it's called. Furthermore, this sniper weapon is vehicle mounted, not church mounted. Okay. Do you ever think that shitlock quotes such as, "I got this, I got this," or, "No means no woman will be echoed in the current game." And it does. I don't know if they survive the cut-ups before, or not, but -- He's a few, yeah. I know this has become a whole lot. Yeah, that's probably the more popular one to do. I think more shows up in feedback when we talk about stuff in the game. Sometimes in the game. Right, but in the game it does show up. Anything else? There's definitely -- I got this. Definitely show up. Because there's a lot of time sometimes. I'm trying to do something, and it was -- It's always pertinent. Right. It is. Where no means no woman, it doesn't. I mean, that was a one-time, awesome zinger that just -- Yeah. We'll go down in history. We can't really just pull that thing out. There's not many circumstances that that applies. Yeah. I got this. It happens a lot. I think in our first -- It should look when there's a lot of fun ones that never really cut on. I don't forget enough people listening to those earlier ones. It's my job. It's what I do. Yeah. Get off my lawn. Right. It's the fun ones that I like a lot. Tom also asked what were Scott's favorite moments of the game as storyteller. And I've kind of given some answers to that. So instead of giving specifics, I'll give a general. I'd love -- I think most storytellers probably do. Just putting out what seems to be a very difficult situation. Whether it be social or combat-related. Or impossible. Yeah. And watching the players maneuver around it and find a way that again I never thought of. So I think that's really what drives me is storyteller is just watching everyone perform. I just -- I'd love to see in character how they solve problems. I think -- I actually think it's a problem if the storyteller/GM comes up with a situation in which there is one answer that they're looking for. Right. And as a -- as a GM, I never tried to do that. I come up with a problem and that's it. You guys will find a way to get through it. Or you won't. I don't care. But that's how life works. There aren't -- you are never presented with a problem that there is definitely an answer to. Sometimes there isn't one. And that's the interesting part is finding, if not the answer, the path around it. Right. I think that's -- that's the fun part for the storyteller is watching the characters have those moments in-game where you lay something out for them and just watch them respond in character to that. And there were numerous instances in this last story, just numerous that I really enjoyed. Moving on. In Facebook, we have Adam Ants Drake on who has a question. Would you be willing to have a fan-made musical created for this campaign? Who would you play in the musical? Who would play you? Excuse me. In the musical. What carols would be included? Any other song. So kind of a fun question there. I can't believe that Mike actually responded to that seriously. Adam, I thought it was just a joke. Because I don't really have a vast knowledge of music. Well, there is four questions there. So if it is a joke, it's quite the aggressive one. I think he's halfway serious here. And who would play -- who in the musical? What carols would be included? Well, see, the problem with that for me is -- and I think maybe somewhat of the boys as well. I'm terrible with names as far as actors. Actors and stylists. I don't even know the characters whose picture I took for Jay. I don't even know who that is. I just saw a picture and it looked okay. That's Jay. It's an actor. But I don't know his name. Jamie Fax, maybe? Yeah, it's Jamie Fax. Someone mentioned it to me. I thought I answered that question. Who would -- who would -- well, go ahead. But the rest of the year. I can't remember what I said. You know who would play it? There's only one famous nun that I can think of. And she does the same. Oh, no. What's her name? Yes. But again, I don't know fucking names. Sandy, come to me. No, Julie Andrews. Julie Andrews. No. She is so not Julie Andrews. Sister Katie. I always wish she was not funny. She's not funny. You know, the llama from the train? That girl. That woman. Right. The redhead from the '70s show, That One Girl. Laura Prappad? Oh, whatever her name is. We'll take your word for it. Yeah. That's the character that would play you in a musical. She would play me on the show as a movie student. Sure. That works. I mean, your character, so. Because she doesn't have -- I can't -- she's not musical. I couldn't fit your Katie via musical. So you would want to have someone who isn't very school and be in the musical. Right. How about John Stamos? That would be an older, great. John Stamos would be your -- But still. He's getting older. Yeah. Right. I'm at, like, a more sophisticated looking John -- not a young John Stamos. Okay. How about -- who is it? The Desperate Housewives thing. The redhead from that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. My wife does. I don't know. She's the psycho redhead. There's a psycho. Yeah. Oh, of course. They're desperate housewives. Yeah. I know who you're talking about. I can picture her from commercials and stuff. Her face and my head. I don't know where her name is. I got nothing. Is that right? Mike, do you figure out what you -- Oh, sure. Like, you know, if you want to get really funky about musicals, you know, a young Colm Wilkinson would be a good one to play for Michael Clay. And I'm sure the person who asked the question knows who he is, but -- Right. He's a famous musical artist. He plays Jean Valjean and Les Mis. He did the Phantom and he did a few others. There's a song that I think would fit, although -- and I think everyone should go try and download it. It's called "Nemesis" by Shreekback. Okay. And that has a lot of imagery in that song. It's a -- Well, the song I chose for the closing credits for the end of the story is "The Funeral" by Band of Horses. It speaks more to Danny Rockland in his death. Okay. So that would certainly be something that I think would be an appropriate song. I also thought about, for a while, all these things that I have done by the killers was an apropos song for Danny, and even a bit for Jay and the rest of the group as well. That's a really good song that I think could have been played in certain instances of the story and struck home with a lot of our listeners. So those are some of the ones that I tend to think of. I think "The Black Parade" by Mike Chemical Romance would be a good one. There you go. Go to play. And boys, I know that musicals aren't your thing. Any actors like a movie or something? Well, you can do a movie because I don't know. I don't know. The actors know how to -- I'm just trying to think of it like a giantism. A giantism. Andre, the giant. It's only a giant I know. He's dead by the way. The grizzly Adam's actor from back in the day would be good. Like a younger version of him when he was in his 20s. That would be because he was probably in his 40s because he was -- Oh, Dave the Hasselhoff is a big lurking monster looking to -- He is. It's unfortunate that he did Baywatch and all, but he's a big, big dude. You ever -- the wrestling, who's the undertaker from the wrestling back in the day? No, he got me on that one. That wasn't a big wrestling guy. He's a big scary looking dude. Oh, yeah, he was kind of sweet. And a Haitian voodoo practitioner. That's just a tough one. Tough one. That would be a difficult one. Anyways, for Chew, I don't really know because Chew's pretty -- He looks like a hard ass. He looks like he's been through a tough life. He's not some dashing hero type. He's more of -- he has that crew cut going on. He looks mean. He looks tough. I don't know -- I could see him as a more Americanized version of Cheyenne Fat. You guys have seen hard boiled, right? Yeah. So interesting question by Edomant, Drake on. All right, Trevor Hudgens has a question on Facebook as well. Would you run a campaign in World of Darkness or another setting with doppelgangers of these characters? Or the characters for the particular setting? How would they be different, similar? What would their backstories be? So we'd just transport these characters to a different world? To another setting. Or the characters for the particular setting? My general answer to that would be no. Simply because if we're going to play in different settings or in different gaming, I want to try something new. I don't want to play the same character over and over again. And I think you tend to take us places that are different enough. Within this storyline, we've been in different circumstances that unless you're going full blown vampire or whatever and I don't see Jay surviving in an environment like that. So again, if we were to play World of Darkness under a different game like vampire or vampire or any of those, I'm playing a different character. It doesn't fit into their well and I'd like to try something different. I do enjoy playing a character out against the long haul and seeing the character development. The question implies that things are so radically changed and then might as well be another character. And if I'm going to do another character, I'm going to do a different character. If I'm sticking with the character, then I'm sticking with the character. Anyone else have a desire to play this particular character in a different setting or would you want to play different characters? Much like Jay just sometimes. So, a different setting you mean like a genre? Or, yeah, like vampire for instance. Or even dressed in. Or the World of Darkness. What if I ran a dressing game when we had these characters? Would you want to play an offshoot of the same character or would you want to try something different? I would do what Tom said. I'd rather try something new, do something different. Have fun doing something else besides doing the same character. If I'm going to return to a character, I want to continue the same storyline. I don't want to do an alternate reality version of that character. Right. There's too many characters to play. Jay's not me. Right. He's Jay. Okay. I think anyone else got anything or is that it? I like Michael Clay. I think I could play it in any environment or world. Yeah, I can see it done. It's just a matter of whether you'd want to and it sounds like you wouldn't have any problem with it. No, I mean, but if we're in a world, you know, dressing is kind of more of a world of magic than the supernatural, I guess. Versus the world of darkness, which is you're really at war. Right. Because if you're taking Michael Clay to Dresden, you'd have to radically change him. Well, you should be usable on that. And then if you radically change him. And then you should be in a fantasy setting, too. Like if you took him to a fantasy setting, like a complete... Jay would kick ass on a fantasy setting. Well, he would be very good with a crossbow. Crossbow? Yes, crossbow would have a scope. No, I'm bringing my sniper rifle. But, I mean, I could see all these characters in different settings. Right. I mean, Michael Clay, the archetype treasure hunter. He would probably be more of a rogue in a fantasy setting. I could see... A gentleman in a paladin type of... Right. Just a butt kick in no nonsense. Or Clara, even, because you're healing as well. Sure. I can certainly see that happening. I think a lot of people would like to try different... Every time we play a different game, we try to play a different character just to try a different personality on for a while. We have one last question from Jason McDonald. This is also on Facebook. If you had to convert your characters or favorite NPCs into fate, what aspects would you use? Oh. So... You. Who wants to go first? I try to warn you guys about this question, so you can give it some time, because it's not really one that you can just whip an answer out of, because aspects are so difficult to create. You have to create the whole backstory in the fate universe. Chew. I'm gonna go... I'll give this a shot. Chew. There is no good answer. That would be one of Chew's aspects. That would be his trouble. Yeah. Or there is no right answer. There you go. I think Jay would be... this is what I do. Well, yeah. Just something to... I can't be that good. That's a good answer. I have. That's a good answer. Mm-hmm. It says "ask back", so if you think of more than one for your character, certainly feel free to put it out there. Well, I'm just, you know, thinking of the virtues and the vices, you know, the prudence and the greed. Right. Okay, maybe I got God on my side. Or something like that. With God, all things are possible. Tony's dead, but I think we don't want to ask for that. What's that? Tony's dead, but I think we know what I want to ask for you. Mm-hmm. For some reason I'm thinking that Michael Clay will have a, ooh, shiny. Right. Yeah. Right. Just kind of... Yeah, it's something like maybe... Ooh, let me look at that. Yeah. I think that's mine. I think I can film. I'll hold on to that. I'll hold on to that. No, let me look at that. Oh, well, oh my God. I like to let me look at that. Your butter knife. Yeah. I've got a knife. I have a knife. It could also be the, what's the multi-tool call? Oh, the other one. This tool does everything. Right. So you got to... It really, in some cases, your morality seems to be, not your morality in the game sense, like the mechanic of world darkness, but in just the true sense of morality. It's, he seems to be pretty, like, the ends justify the means kind of individual to me, so that also struck me as maybe one that could apply to him. His moral compass... He doesn't have too many moral hang-ups about, as long as he... I mean, ultimately he's doing good as he is defined. But that involves letting the spirit take possession of your body for a little while, to wreak some holy havoc on the situation. He's down there. I mean, it's kind of in the style of the adventurer. Yeah. Indiana Jones is not following the rules. I'm saying he's not a typical... Not typical, but he's not a Michael Amike Paladin. You know, I think he's not your typical Paladin or the good he twoshes that you sometimes play. This character has some moral ambiguity to him that you don't see in some of your characters, I guess. I would say I could also see an aspect. This belongs in an ages carry duo museum. Right, this belongs in a museum. This belongs in a museum. More to the point, why are you... Why are you doing this? The museum, right here. John, in my pocket museum. It didn't focus a lot in the story we just played, but Daniel doesn't fit well into civilized society, cities and such. He just wasn't born there. He doesn't live the same kind of lifestyle that would suit him in a city. Okay. He is perfectly at home, like, shooting the eyes off a squirrel that's bothering him in his front yard or something. And you can't... Well, he shoots on a city... They off my lawn! Fish out of water? Yeah, something like that. Okay. Where he just doesn't belong in the city and he's enough to date on what's... What goes... I ain't no city boy. Right. I ain't no city boy would be a good aspect because you could do that either way. You could do it as... Technology just gets in the way. You just want to punch somebody in the face and say, "I ain't no city boy." So you could do it. Plus, do the punch. This wouldn't fly in Alaska. Meaning, like, he saw the woman being abused and went up and smacked the guy. There's a different law in the... You don't... You explained to you the Alaskan way. Yeah. That's something along those lines. What about you, Thomas? What are some of the aspects you think that would be... Again, it wasn't a chance for... This wasn't a story that you really got a chance to shine. I'm hoping that the next story will be one that will really bring some of your talents and your character's backstory to the four. But what would be some aspects that you would... The form of fate. I don't know. I can't really think of anything else to cuff. And... It's a lot because I hadn't been thinking about the character recently. Right. So... Yeah. When you redesigned him, are you gonna... I didn't hate you anymore. I'm not. Are you gonna change... Are you gonna keep his backstory the same? Uh... He's close to it, yeah. I can mostly do that. Well, if you got that, then your grandfather is definitely part of you. He's not here. He's not here. High concept of trouble. But he's dead, right? Don't you call him him for help sometimes? As a spirit? Maybe. I don't know. Yes, he's like that. My grandfather taught me this, or... I think it was a good workout. It runs the family. That it does. Yeah. One of the things in my back story was that my father was an only child and he absolutely refused to learn about all this. Because he needed to make money for the family. Right. And my grandfather taught me to keep the leaves going. To keep the trolley away in or something like that for breaking into places or opening racks. Yeah, that's another one I could work with just because... Dad, don't rest. Dad, don't rest. Well, I think that's specifically about ghosts. It's a mixture of ghosts and spirits. There's a very thin line about ghosts. Honestly, I don't know enough about the system to tell you if that line is actually as thin as I think it is. It's a little thicker than you think it is. Okay. Well, at least by the way that the core mechanics go. Okay. Let the spirits guide my hand or something like that. It's mostly spirits that I can interact with. On a quick side note, when we start the third story in the vanishing city storyline Chronicle, which will be after Dresden most likely or sometime in the future. We're going to be incorporating some changes into World of Darkness. They just released, as many of our listeners may be aware, they just released a rules update to the system. And the ghost machine... That's not even close. That's okay. The ghost machine chronicles, I think it is, GMC. And in that, they did borrow some ideas. First of all, there's no longer called morality because that has such a connotation to it that a lot of players didn't like. When you start to lose your morality, you have a chance to pick up derangements, which are mental illnesses. And that's not really how life works. You don't necessarily become a chlorpomaniac because you had to murder someone or you saw a ghost. There's not a clear thing, so they changed that to integrity in the mechanic. They changed that. But they also added some elements from fake-type systems where the characters have aspirations that are brought in long-term and short-term aspirations, which kind of take a place in some ways of aspects. So we're certainly going to be changing the gameplay. And the gameplay itself has changed in general. So we'll get to that one when we get to our next story. But what's interesting is we're coming up with aspects for our characters and actually something we're going to be doing. When we sit back down again, it's going up with some aspirations, which our world darknesses take, at least to some extent. It's not a direct carryover or a crossover. But it is something that is going to be interesting, I think, coming up. We have one more question from Merckty. It's also from Facebook. Has any of the listener feedback influenced you guys into doing something you wouldn't have done otherwise? Listener feedback? Listener feedback. So the question happened at the beginning. I agree with my buddy. Change it the way we did some of the weapons. Yeah, sure. Colorado. That was what I was going to say about Colorado. But also, we may have changed some of our reporting styles and different how I edit the podcasts because of suggestions from the listeners as well. Sure. You say when the actual play begins because someone was like, "I want to hear through feedback all the time." Right, right. When the actual play begins. I haven't actually made that voice. I heard it. They did. Oh my God. Actually, most of the listeners like it. But there are those who don't. And that's great that someone brought it up so we can at least give them the best of both worlds. It's almost like a roundtable discussion. Every feedback is a little glimpse into our personalities as opposed to what, you know, playing does as well. But some of the people enjoyed that. I tried to whine a lot less. Sure. I think one of the ways that it's... Not working. Like one of the ways I can shitlock when we first started playing it that was kind of a feedback thing was the pole. Which characters were shining, which ones weren't, which kind of gave you an idea which characters the listeners were listening to more and doing more. Identifying with... Or getting better more votes and which ones they weren't. And I was usually... I was low on the totem pole and I was sneaking to myself. What could I do game-wise to make my role... Improve my role-playing... Yeah. Improve my role-playing, make my character shine, mark, do something that makes her stand out a bit more of him. That's the point is from a storyteller standpoint, I also could see players that were not getting votes, were also characters that were not involved necessarily. They weren't getting the FaceTime, the time to shine that other characters were. So it was an opportunity for me to kind of hone in on them. So sure. I mean, I think feedback is just fun anyways. It's just fun to hear there are people out there that listen to our stories and think they're interesting. And it takes them on a long, lonely drive after classes and some college. Or it's their companion during a workout or whatever the case might be, it's just neat to know. Right. I find it interesting to talk to them on Facebook and the chat. I always love them. Sure. And it sends me a message or even it's just very interesting to hear what they think is interesting and what they find intriguing. And often it's what you think it would be. A lot of comments on shoes, flashback, right from all the listeners, but there's often some people will mention stuff that I didn't even think of. Right. People would find interesting. Yeah, start chords somewhere with someone that we didn't necessarily recognize. But I mean, I want to take a moment here at the end of the feedback to thank all of our listeners. I appreciate the feedback that we get during my stories. I'm constantly amazed of the positive comments that come from our listeners. So thank you so much for those. And feel free to just post on Facebook. I mean, if you still, this is done for the wrap up for World of Darkness. But if you have something that you missed, the deadline or whatever, throw it up on Facebook. We'll still answer it in the normal feedback of the information. It definitely makes the game work fun listening to what you guys think of and what's going on. Whether or not it's a serious question or just a funny comment, just go ahead and throw something out there if it's on your mind. All right, and World of Darkness will be back with the third story on our Chronicle. And I think that you'll learn even more about these fantastic characters and their character arcs. But in the meantime, you know, we're going to be starting up Dresden here. So enjoy the second story in that campaign and hopefully you'll be reacquainted with some wonderful friends. Yeah, the Warden and Roberto have some issues to resolve. Yes, they do. And so hopefully you'll enjoy listening to that as much as we'll enjoy playing it out. So thanks again for listening and until next time. Thanks for listening to Knights of the Night at Actual Play Podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures. Where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling, props, and even a forum for comments and suggestions. Or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com or contact us via Twitter or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business, please visit ZenAudioSmith.com and please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. Anyways, it was my first actual playpad game. Fast and strong. So it was, was it Kevin? It was, this was Danny? That was me in the close. How much the... You make me cut out more shit, you know that. One of these days. Yeah, it's gonna slip.