The new players share their thoughts on the World of Darkness game system and the whole KotN crew discusses the Chagrin storyline.
Knights of the Night
KotN Actual Play POdcast 134 - Chagrin Player Wrapup
[Music] Hello and welcome to Night to the Night Actual Play Podcast. This world of darkness, retrospective, is on the Shugrin storyline. The discussion is chaired by your storyteller, Scott. And now, please enjoy episode 134, Shugrin Player Wrap-Up. This is the world of darkness, story Shugrin Wrap-Up Session. Your storyteller, Scott, is with us tonight for the wrap session. My right is... The gentleman who is picking king of your opponent. Tom who plays J. Alton. Mike playing, Michael playing. Thomas playing, I've got my taste. John playing, Jamie Morgan. All right, so I will start the feedback session off with some questions. I think it should be kind of organic and how we respond to things. But I guess the first question I wanted to ask the players was, this story was so different from any other story that we did in the past. I mean, in a long time, it was very combat-centric. As the story went on, the last quarter of the story maybe was a bit more our typical playstyle, where there was a lot of interaction with social interaction, some artifact hunting, some mystery solving, et cetera. Anyways, our new players enjoy the world of darkness system in general, and then how did everyone enjoy this much different spin on a story than what we've been used to in the past. This is different? They're all like this. I have no thing to compare it to. No, I don't know. How did you look like this? Well, you compared to Dresden. How did you like the world of darkness compared to Dresden? I don't know. I felt a lot more reactionary, I guess, in this game, even though I had some problems near the end of Dresden where I wasn't really quite sure what my character should do. But in this one, the characters, it's centered around where a lot farther from my character, so a lot of it was reactionary. I enjoyed myself. I mean, I wouldn't come here every week if I didn't. And it's not just that I like the crew, I didn't enjoy playing the game. Well, you had it tough too, Thomas, because your character literally was on his back for probably the last two or three weeks. Oh, it had to be. I felt longer. Like the five weeks you came, you still got to play in the flashbacks, but that's what it was. It was like five weeks in its entirety when my character was down, but almost every single one of those weeks we were doing flashbacks in which I was actually a lot more useful. Right, which is cool. Because if not a combatting a character, it's not a combat center. And that wasn't accidental, obviously. The idea was to get every character a chance to shine. I was trying to at least have one episode where that character gets to be in all their glory. It doesn't always work. But that's the general idea. The lawyer was getting chewed on. That was a very U centric episode in which your almost died. I think what was different maybe is harder on you guys was there was no build up. Look, we got into the field, got right into the action, right from the get-go, and then the flashbacks took us out to some other role-playing opportunities. But previously we were collecting information, facts, having encounters, finding more about the mystery, getting more details, and building up to something, whereas this we were already in the thick of it. And he kind of looped back to do those flashbacks. And so I think a lot of, like you said, some of your abilities are not combat-based, and we were in a combat situation from the get-go, and I'm not super-- I'm not combat centric. I am for like close fighting, but not for range. I, as a storyteller, enjoyed as much. I definitely enjoyed telling the first story more than I enjoyed telling this story. And some of that's my fault because I'm not saying I didn't have a fun time. I mean, I had a good time, but if I compare the two stories to each other, I definitely enjoyed the gradual collection of information, the revelations, the pulling back, the layers of the onion as you get closer and closer to what the root cause, the major antagonist for the story is going to be, and then overcoming that. That's a typical story. You know, that's writing 101 or even storytelling 101. And I really enjoyed that in the first story with shitlock watching you guys really peel back the investigation. I really enjoyed that. And I think as a storyteller, I enjoy the mystery a lot. But as far as the combat goes, in those first couple of episodes where it was really heavy on combat, my-- I just didn't quite have as much fun as a storyteller because it was so combat centric, and there was so little of the typical role playing that we normally do. I think my impression of that was that I felt like you've front loaded it maybe too much. Yes. And so what happened was-- The flashback should have started a little bit earlier, I think, to break up the action. Not only that, but I think we went into a-- it would have been a challenge even without Valkyrie there. Right. You know, it would have been a tremendous challenge. And so we're busting through a gate, we're losing our vehicles, we're working our way through dense woods, we have a perimeter that has demons, we have a perimeter that has zombies, we have snipers, we have helicopters, and we got, oh, the guy we're trying to see and help is also snapping at us. And-- Well, it's almost a three-way battle, which added to the dynamics of the situation, where if it was only-- And I don't think we were prepared-- we were prepared for combat at this level, and you're right, we came into a three-way-- well, we became a three-way situation, and so it just felt to me in a-- Not a good three-way. No. No. No. There's only one. I can take it. But-- and that's what I felt like when I say by front loaded was-- like, how was shell shock? Well, almost literally, my character was pegged by a sniper bullet, early on, and it just felt like we only had 100 yards to go, and it was like the longest 100 yards for anything. I just kept thinking it was on the hot beach. But now, I kept thinking that Monty Python-- Right. [LAUGHTER] We got the tower, the guards were looking, and the guys were on it, and then they cut the stick to camera, and they come back and get it to the ceiling just as far as the way. He's not getting any closer. Yeah, this was our little weird start in the story with, "Okay, you're driving up to this gate. Well, what are we here for? What are we doing? Well, we'll go-- we'll go with that in flashbacks." I'm like, "Well, how do we know what we want to do over now?" Yes, I-- you don't know who we're going to go see, and why we're here, and what we're coming here to expect until we get through the flashbacks. And it's almost the fact that World of Darkness doesn't really lend itself to player-driven narrative. We couldn't make declarations that said why we were there. Exactly. And so there's plenty of games that you can play that way, and in fact, that's the way you're supposed to play, where the player input is driving the story in different directions, where the darkness isn't that type of game. So that was what made it a little bit awkward. Even when we played Dresden, we were a little light on that. Well, it's not a skill, it's not a muscle we've exercised, so I'd like to see-- I feel that exercise in more. In this-- in that we were being told why we were there and such, because I don't exercise that I muscled myself very often. What did you think of the-- the business for-- the business that was chosen? I didn't use your time playing Dresden as my character, because, as you said, I was stretching goals I wasn't comfortable with. I am comfortable with a person with strong moral, virtuous conviction. Right. But when it comes to, well, your character did it kind of end up having some strong moral conviction. Yeah, he went after a child in a burning barn. Yeah. He has morals. It's just not what his character is central around. Right. Yeah. His conflict isn't that. Right. I think if there's a harder-- I think the world of darkness is harder to balance, challenge-wise, and I think maybe that's what I also felt that, you know, sometimes if you roll well, you kind of breeze that breeze through, but you can succeed through some certain challenges. I started. And if the dice rolls go-- and, you know, in fate you have, okay, well, I'm going to influence then throw some fate points to kind of-- Kind of need to win this. Yeah, yeah, to move it along, whereas will the darkness. And sometimes when we encounter these different challenges, I'm like, okay, it's almost like I wish you could somehow-- look, they're having a hard enough time with these feeder deams that he thought was maybe a nuisance and became my god, their succulent mates, and killed badly. Right. So, you know, have a four-less zombies. Right. You know, but then that ruins the opportunity that we got with Bob, who had a great storyline in that trailer. Right. You know, so-- I think we're just comparing world of darkness to world of darkness. I actually enjoyed shit-like more, even though I'm a combat-centric character. And it was my episode to shine. And I think part of it was, in combat, the turns are three seconds. In the first story, in shit luck, when we went and did things, time was elastic. You could make it as long or short as you needed to be, because there is no finite amount that a turn is. Right. In combat, there is. Exactly. We're going to talk to Big Mama Hoppson. Okay, you guys, do anything before you do that? It's all stretching. I'm going to dress up in a suit. I want to look like I'm a newspaper guy. That's the extent of the turn that gets you prepared, then you find the house, I give you a little bit of description to paint a picture, and then boom, you guys are right in the front door. Yeah, and I find I enjoy that more. I think I have to agree. I think the combat was just-- What I found really frustrating about it is-- and I learned something about how this character works and how the game works from it is I was really frustrated because in the shit luck series, even though the character is only there for sure amount of time, but even with my character before, there's things that you want to do that take time to do it before you go somewhere. You can be like, "Okay, I'm going to take this five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes to do this casting or the spell or prepare this potion or whatever you're going to do." And then you go into the scene where you're going to use it. Right here, I was thrown into a scene and realized that I can't do this, and I can't do that, and I can't do this because I don't have time. You don't have 15 minutes. It's going to be like, "You're four by seven minutes, fifteen minutes, and all I got is three seconds." Right, you're forcing the three second baby steps. Yeah. I think that-- So this will all be over by the time I can do one useful thing that I really want to do. It's very valid for your character. Yes, absolutely. And I think that the flashbacks were crucial in breaking up, that if this entire thing would have been one gigantic battle, it would have been tedious. It would have been terrible, it would have been going back to four E. I mean, in-- Yeah. I had never seen a combat last seven weeks in any system. And I don't think it was the fact that it was a combat, it was actually a war that happened. Yeah. I mean, most comments are not this big. To me, I use it as a fun example, but if you go to the movie Saving Private Ryan, which I had no influence on my gaming idea here at all, but when we were slogging through it, I'm like, "Jesus, this is the beach, this is Omaha fucking beach, and this is Saving Private Ryan." You guys are, I mean, it's time to slow down. There's both ping, ping, ping. You're hiding behind something, trying to stay alive. One of the idea was, in my head, was it's going to be a little more fluid of a situation, and you guys are going to hit that building a lot quicker, and there's going to be these great role-playing opportunities. It never really manifests itself. The role-playing happened in all the flashbacks is really going to be major role-playing. I think you're trying to depict a small unit confrontation in a system that's just-- You're just not-- Well, and that's what it was. We are prepared for a-- Like a firefight. Well, not a fire-- yeah, this was, like Tom said, this was war, complete with helicopters and missiles and rockets, and I would have been like, "Look, I've got a knife, and there's sniper rifles, and there's hillock gunships," and at one point I'm like, "Okay, to role-play this properly with my academia and my intelligence, I'm like, we have to withdraw, we have to leave." That's what I was thinking about. And your character did, oddly enough, but-- Yeah, it's time to-- we are in so of our heads, only two people have kind of an experience, and only one guy really-- this is his-- War Two. Yeah. So-- I like it. But then that goes back to, I think, one of the original World of Darkness games that we played, that we didn't record, where, at one point, where War Two was like, "Okay, look, yeah, we had no resources whatsoever." You weren't 100, right. And I'm like, "I'm ready to move out of the city. You'll get a job in sunny California, where the sun never sets or whatever." Right. And I'm going to pretend Chicago never happened, because-- Yeah. At some point, you're like, "I'm so powerless, and I'm being hunted by the strange things." My guy would get out of dodge. Right. I'm a young man who has no-- There's no eyes here. I'm gone. Chicago kicked my ass. I'm not-- Yeah. Time to go. Yeah, the only thing that kept Katie moving forward to this place is I want to help keep my friends alive. Oh, he's down. Oh, not crap. Get farther into this. Well, we just-- I want to turn on the lead, but now I got to turn around and try to pull somebody out of a trailer. Thank you. Does anyone have a moment of combat that they enjoyed? Because taking as a whole, it was long and somewhat tedious at times. But in small doses, there were some really cool spots that I think happened. Thomas has his hand raised, so why don't you go first, Thomas, and tell us your favorite moment during the combat that will never be repeated again to this extent in any stories I don't think. But I'd still like to hear what you have to say was your favorite. Both throwing flashbacks, but when we got in the first one, when we got in the gunfight with a bunch of thugs, and I just fucking showed him who's boss, I removed his weapon from him twice as fast as anyone over there was trying, and he was like, okay, I'm gone. I wasn't there that night, and I had to say that's probably my favorite scene at overall was when Jay was rescuing his sister. It's just not just for combat, but for role-playing, I thought it's good. That was a good scene. I got a little ripped on the dice there. I was supposed to heft the sky off the stairs, and I was like, eh, boy, I'm scared, I'm just out of here. But I had shot myself in the foot, it was before I added those skill points in because I was down, like you were down four skill points, right? That's why I started sprawling, and I should have been good at it. I went up to that guy who was abusing his wife, and I was like, that's uh, he did like one damage to him. But you were just like, I was hanging a card, and then I went to go punch him in the face, and I thought that was clever, but then I rolled, you should have got bonus. Like shit. Yeah, you should have got an equipment bonus for your card. Ah, paper gun! No kidding. But anyways, Tom has given his favorite, Tom, you've given yours. Anyone else have any input on any of the moments in combat that they've really enjoyed. I'm talking about something you're going to say at the time when you're getting eaten by the zombies. Why I thought you were going to say, you're all the shit out of that. No, I mean, just for the moment of sheer terror that it evoked, I was like, I've been here for like, I don't know. Four weeks? I don't really have to fucking... I mean, if you're talking, if you're talking combat, the one I picked wasn't really for combat. No, I mean... It was an interesting situation, and it was interesting, and there was combat involved. But I think for combat, the one I enjoyed the most was probably John's character fighting with the vampire in the upper store. So I was going to say. Yeah, that was a good scene. And that's, I think, where World Darkness shines is when, not shines, but I think it's stronger, is when there are those brief flurry of blows, and that tense, the fires around you, you're fighting. It's going to last maybe five turns before somebody either gives up or dies. I think it really shines in those moments, and that was one of my favorite combat scenes was definitely that battle up there. I mean, I had great shots, a guy down the scope, and hit him in the eye, but that's just a role. And I think I liked his setup and his scene much better just for the role playing that was part of the combat. It wasn't all about dice rolling, which you have a handful of dice. I don't know if you'd call it combat, but doing the dueling hacker with Binary Hex was fun and engaging, and as much as I hated the result, I thought the result had a very cinematic quality of not only did I get beaten, but he compromised and ruined all my equipment at the same time, so it's like an insult to injury. But as an observer, the one thing that stands out, I think he took a social, or I did take a social damage, or mental damage, whatever, I fully accept it. I get a phobia about it now. But watching Bob do his stuff with his flashback was like watching a horror play, and I remember just being, there's a couple times where you're going, you know, Bob's reliving that horrible stuff in the trailer with his dad, and at one point I'm just like, I can't go home. But in a positive way, and the fact that I'm acknowledging that, okay, it's compelling, it's horrifying, it's interesting, but at the same time, for me, I would have taken you a sentence. Well, there's no way I would have done anything with you. I forgot to mention this, but I was talking to Rich Rogers a long time ago, and he mentioned something that I should have brought up to you guys, which is an interesting tool that he's used, or heard of being used in other role playing sessions, you have a card in front of you. It's a cue card, basically, or a no card, which has acts on one side and an O on the other, and so that you're not interrupting the flow of things, but when things start to get to that place where I'm not comfortable with this anymore, just hold up the X so the GM knows, back it down a little bit, entering an area that I'm not comfortable with. Yeah, I'm not sure we would have gotten that same place if we would have had that available. The O, of course, is for, I'm really liking this, let's keep going, type of thing. This is cool. I want more of this. For our listener, just a quick flip and holding up with the card, and I thought it was an interesting mechanic, but I'm not exactly sure about it. Expanding a safe word? Yeah. It kind of is, but you're not interrupting the flow, but, you know, would you have held up that card at that time you probably would have, and would certainly put that back off on it. And then it would have been less of a moment. I bet Scott said we're just more. For our listeners, I did talk about briefly about that before that scene took place. That was never a scene I would have done with any player without talking to them first. And letting them know, it's going to get a little bit dark, and I'm going to take you to the place that's dark, but I'm also going to try to not cross a line, glamorize it, or, you know, make it seem like it's fun, because it was not even fun to talk about. It gave me chills when I was paying the picture verbally. I was getting chills and uncomfortableness just doing it, but I felt like that's Choo's backstory, and it's where he came from, and it explains a lot of his indecision and his ability to not really, but his character is one that likes to say quite often. Right. What am I doing here? You know, what are we doing here? Why are we doing this? Well, I don't know. I'm not trying to. I'm not criticizing you for what it was, but, I mean, it was, I feel the point because that was the same way. I felt revulsion, but at the same time, I'm like, this is a good stuff. Right. It reminded me of the girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where it says that I read the book and was compelling, but I will never read any other books, and I won't read it again, just because it's just all this stuff. It was too dark, right? Yeah. Getting back, spinning back around to where we were, which was our favorite combat. I don't know if, Jim, did you have a favorite combat that occurred during the whole time? No, the only time. As far as Sister Katie goes, our favorite combat moment, which, and she was trying to not stay out of combat and stay alive through the whole thing. Right. Just trying to be more supportive was when she ripped the two helpless. Yes. Chew and Montez. Montez. Montez out of the trailer, and she wasn't doing it because she was good at it. She was wounded. Yeah. And she was a bad kid. And she just made it on, like, 12 dice. It was an incredible moment, I thought, too, in the game. That was fun. My favorite Katie moment was, you know, with the children. Right. Right. We'll get to our favorite done. Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to kind of focus on combat. I actually got more fun when the week I wasn't there afterwards, and you guys were digging in on her. Oh, you got to write. Do everyone answer that question? Your favorite combat, John? Did you get a chance to? I agreed with Dad that when I was fighting the vampire, thanks for the gun, by the way, Katie. Even though you didn't actively shoot the vampire, you had blussed a gun that Robin J.K. running up the stairs with the blust gun. It was-- We made a good team against a vampire. We chased him from the building. Yes. You did. But they were up there bravely taking him on himself. You didn't know I was going to make it up there in time. I like that the running into the burning burn twice. Yeah. That was-- In that-- Daniel. Yeah, Daniel again. So I guess let's turn it over to maybe some of the big scenes that were non-combat-related or had very minimal combat that people thought were compelling. The flashback with Chew was horrific. It was tough to story tell. There's times when I get nervous for you guys during a story. I think Thomas/Edgar said, you know, when he stepped one foot onto this farm proper and all the insects went dead. Hey, it's been so long, I forgot I was the point man. Yeah, you were the point man. I saw it down. Now, in retrospect-- It was-- It was starting to like disturbing when you go to a place that is normally so full of life and everything's still and quiet and so it should go suddenly. It's what I was going for there, but I would say that Chew's flashback, if I had to say-- Because I mean, any story that's this long, you're going to have quite a few moments where you think the story just is compelling. I think Chew's flashback. That was one of the more disturbing moments of storytelling, but yet I thought it was made for a really revealing look at his backstory. I thought your saving of your sister was a fun scene where you tried not to rise to your anger and you're obviously victimized and you tried your best to get you and your team out safely and save your sister while not causing any compromise for your team members or for your conspiracy. Right. I enjoyed that scene a lot and it was one of those rare moments, like I think similar to in Dresden when you were dealing with your mentor, locked away, where the role-playing just seems to flow and you have all the right-- It's just good stuff. Right. And it ended with her saying that the reason she was in there in the first place is she wanted to be like me and the natural thing, just it was just there, I was like, no, no you don't. Right. And-- And scene go. Right. It would be like the perfect line for a movie type thing. And then you're out. And then it's a good feedback, like you don't want to be like me and then the next scene you see you sniping people. [LAUGHTER] Right. And you're attacked by zombies and-- Well, I'm flying and you're dropping all around. So those were two scenes. I say another scene that I thought was pretty neat was the scene where you're getting ready to open the door and then just opening the door on Gracie in the basement of the storm shelter. So maybe Daniel will have to see severed head of his love, which doesn't make any sense at all, to the moment that you're in, it obviously will make more sense as we go on with the story. I thought that was pretty-- and just the nervous tension of-- he's huge and he's trying to-- Yeah. --the right position so you can fire. And then you open the door and there's that horrific young tween girl. That was pretty cool from a storytelling. I liked the social combat. The first one we did with the wife, Peter, who wouldn't let you in the house to talk to his wife. And I thought that had some pretty strong role-playing value to it. I think Chu-- Yeah, I wasn't there. --it was recognized with her. But I enjoyed that. I think that was one of the best ones. Daniel. Daniel Chu and Montes? Montes, I think. Yeah. I remember there was a moment where Chu said, like, I was done with the scene. He leaned into me towards me and said, you know, you don't have to live like this. It was a powerful moment that I thought was really great role-playing by the top. And then Daniel's barely suppressed anger at how it was handled. So those are probably four that I really liked. And I guess if I had to give a fifth because I was trying to give five compelling scenes binary hacks, they give and take those first couple of times just to introduce him. There wasn't a lot of tension there. I just enjoyed the rapport that was immediately there in the back and forth. I thought that was kind of cool. So anyway, so I wasn't at the, I wasn't at the wife-beater scene, but I remember thinking you were absent at that time. I was thinking of character. I mean, my character wasn't in the scene, but I remember, I remember that was a compelling scene. And I remember thinking, I just had this like, can we just like break this guy's arms or legs or put him in the hospital and give her a net. Can I call him and tell him to hurt him? You know, and it's just, but then that's, I think that's more like, you know, like, right, but it could have been, but I guess anything, I think any time you could feel during a role-playing game, I guess, you know, even if it's sometimes not a great thing, I guess you're getting your money is worth because you're there and you're feeling something whether or not you necessarily like that feeling or not. Well, child abusers and wife-beaters are like orcs and goblins. I just think we should be allowed to kill them and hurt them and yeah, just on principle if nothing else. In the real world, there's real consequences. And there was even real consequences for her, potentially. If you guys went too far and beat the living crap out of him, it was going to be interesting to see how I was going to feel the next week about what would be his reaction that would be cowed by it or would he be more likely because they usually take out their anger on people who are weaker. Because when we act for an actor here in 24/7, then what happens is we come back after the farmland and find out on the newspaper. Oh yeah. She's dead. Yeah, hey. Which I think with the amount of force you guys put into, I think it was just, it walked to me in my mind of who that character was, that wife being away from saying it was the razor's edge. You guys walked it perfectly. I was like, oh, I think I'm going to have them just like be a little bit taken aback and then maybe a week or two later, I'll start up and be out and jump in and walk that razor's edge. Yeah. Scott, I got a question about flashbacks for you in GMingham. How do you deal with having flashbacks that happen days before everybody's healthy and fine and going into a situation and then having a flashback that could potentially injure them? Which, how would they be injured back then if you're not going to be injured? Yeah. That's a good question. The first thing that I knew I had in my back pocket, the ace up my sleeve was that you had the ability to heal damage and you had the time to do so. All you need is 15 minutes or a half hour, an hour, two minutes or whatever it is. The combat, that's time is precious and just not there. But like Tom says, the elastic time of just the day he did. Even going to the last night is hard to do but yeah, Katie could do or it would take a couple of weeks. You can heal it up overnight. Overnight. So I knew I had that in my back pocket and then in a metagaming sense, if it wasn't completely compelling that someone should get hurt, really hurt or shot, well, he missed. It's okay. It's the story. It's the idea. I think there was one time that I actually had to pull the punch with the dice. I'm guessing it was when Jay was rescuing his sister. Yes, that was the scene. And I thought the same thing is I thought Jay would play it and I don't, well, he still sees it. We're on the same hook. There was a lot of dice rolls too. I mean, there was a lot of combat there. There was guns going off and there was fist flying but there was only one die world I had to say. I'm not going to hit it because it wasn't compelling. I can't remember it. It was a montage. Either by you or the gun Daniel or Jay or they were both at the front door and I thought it was one of them. It was one of you three because it was, these were the main three. I was, because of my case ran out to the guy and he might have got up and shot it. I'm not sure who it was, to be honest, but it was so inconsequential because it was much cooler to have him disarm him and get a moment to shine a bit because he'd been lying in the fucking field bleeding out. And it's like, no. He needs a chance to- That's so much better yesterday. Yeah. He needs to shine a little bit to get something. So just a storyteller caveat of is it really important in the story that that creature or that thug hits with his bullet right there? No. Now, if that would have been an exceptional success, you know, I'm probably going to listen to the dice then and go, well, we're going to take this. You know, Katie's going to have to maybe use some of her energy and some of her magic to heal someone up, but those are the two reasons Jim and I was able to do that. Well, I think the majority of us weren't being douchebags where, you know- You got that as well. I run right in and stick my face in the gun. Go ahead. Shoot me again because I'm alive tomorrow and I know it. Right. You guys were trying to disarm them and trying to be- Right. Good. So, but again, back to the question. What was at least one more, if you feel like it, what was the most compelling scene that didn't have to do with combat for you guys during the story? For all playing scene? Sure. I'll go first because I know nobody's going to choose this. It was way back in the beginning where we actually did our first, one of our first flashbacks and I was going through talking to the psychiatrist and different things like that. And there was no guys rolling, no, I don't think there was. Yeah, I don't think so. But it was just role-playing between me and different NPCs on- Winston J. Justifying- And then, yeah. And then the psychologist. And then your sister. Right. Right. Really getting into J's head, his reactions were different than mine would have been. Right. Which is what they are. What his would have been, being who he was and what he went through in his life. So I really enjoyed that. That's a good one. I enjoyed that too. I thought there should be, my play on that was that it's a government agency. So they're going to ask questions, they're going to, in a psychologist they have to make sure you're okay to go back in the field. So they're going to push you. So I thought there's no way that they're going to have their first experience as civilians your group. Not you. I'm already dreading round two. Right. Well, mine wouldn't be. We also got a... What? You killed... Who? What? Why? Well, then it's a good thing the farm is in flames as you're walking away. Anyone else have a scene that was compelling to them on a non-combat scene? That hasn't been mentioned. It hasn't been mentioned. Bob's social combat with the vampire at the very end when the vampire decided he was going to tell him. I totally thought it was going to end up in some sort of a fight. Right. Right. Yeah, I was expecting at least two of the three of us were going to go down. Maybe think of them as more than just an adversary. It's just a guy. Right. And to lose absolutely everyone on his team. I'm confused why he's kind of a dick. Just a guy who's kind of a dick and also a vampire who works for... That doesn't make any guy that has sense to me. You don't know. Right. That's not what we're all playing. You see, yes, I know. But my character was led to believe as his training that they're the enemy. Anyway. And I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to have my sister rescue as a balance, actually the same type of situation was going on in both of those. We were confronting someone who was a friend/enemy in trying to get the situation resolved with or without violence and Bob and you guys were going through the same situation. And is it going to resort to violence? Yeah. I'm just going to say it for the fans. We're having a more relaxed session and there's cheese that's going around. I'm trying to eat them quietly. Yeah. We're trying to eat it quietly, so... I'm not going to even try. So Thomas, anything? Jay's confrontation with the road sisters. No. I enjoyed seeing Jay's reaction to that because it didn't resort to violence in cases where... And I'm definitely a man of violence. I have the ability and that guy kind of do is it. It was me because I think Jay didn't want to do anything to jeopardize his sister's safety. Right. I mean, you punched the reverend and the guy to his eye gone and shoot your sister. Whatever. I mean, it just... There was so much uncertainty there that I thought was well role-played that you're like, "I'm just going to walk the straight narrow, get her out of the room, and I'm not going to accept no for an answer. She's leaving and he can make whatever threats he might want to at that point. So I thought that was pretty cool. Like anything? And he seems to that come to mind that you enjoyed or thought that we're none. Not that they weren't combat. I mean, they could have come out around them, but that role-playing aspect stood up. Yeah. I like a... Sorry to interrupt. Nobody could think and choose reluctance to admit that there's actually zombies. Right. Well, this buddy's getting eaten by one. Right. That's a fine line with me. Sometimes I think he could be carried a little bit too far. Yeah. Right. But yeah. It reminded me a lot of Greg. Dr. Lucius would do the same thing. Right. He would try to put it in a scientific... Right. Or he's going to describe it as being science. It's not man. Right. It's not... I didn't think he was considering that we had just killed the bee lady, but... Yeah. There is... He's dealt with supernatural law. Yeah. But in the context of what he was dealing with, with his dad and when the issue is there, I thought it was more like a repression type of situation. Right. Makes sense. So even though it's not... Maybe we should be here to tell us. I know. We should be here to tell us. I know. I think we can speak for Bob. We can interpret Bob's actions other than... You would just say... You would just say... It's funny as hell, because one of the episodes you can hear him saying, "Can I borrow your dice?" And I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Go ahead." And he's like, "Holy shit. I just rolled six successes." And then he rolls a guy and he's like, "Oh my God. No, I have seven successes. I love these dice." And I'm like, "Yeah. Don't curse them too much. I give you my dice." You can do my dice. I can triple his output for the whole game, whole story. We introduced a new mechanic in this particular story, which was social combat. And Jay Tom did not get a chance to partake in any social combat, nor did Jim/Katie, I think... Well, you were there. You were assisting. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. I was assisting. In one of them. And then the other two, which you... Not Bob, too. Not being here. Thomas and John, you don't have a lot of experience with the game in general of knowing how intimidation would have worked beforehand. But did anyone find it somewhat enjoyable? It'd be something that we should expand upon further as we go into more of our normal role-playing in the future with that social combat? You declare something. I'm trying to get this woman to let me through the door, and she says, "I'm trying to get this guy to buzz off," and you go through it and role-play it. Did anyone enjoy that more so than just one roll of the dice and move on? I think, like you said, I didn't really... You experienced it as just a spectator, but I think it works relatively well. The part that gets a little bit dodgy is when it goes on a little bit too long, and people run out of arguments. You start a loop, but the same thing happens in Dresden, so it's not to say strictly a world of darkness issue, but there's the time that Bob just says, "I say the same thing I said," because you've already made your argument, there's nothing else to say. It should be over one way or another, but yet it's not. I think it's also in a game where we're trying to do more storytelling, it's giving you a waypoint for what your character can say or do, because if I lose at the social combat, my choice is kind of taken away where I failed, so I have to either go along with whatever they need. But if you lose in a physical combat, it won't work. But that's a physical contest, that's a skill. When it's social, the only damage is that my actions are curtailed, or I don't... My options are what I would do, or my actions I would take. Your peaceable options are going on. I've been kind of routed. But that happens in real life. I mean, you've been in a meeting where maybe you've... Well, I was going to say, if I may interject just briefly, not to sound loud, Mike, it's just, what if you would have lost a contested role in intimidation, like I'm going to intimidate her. Okay, Mike, here's your dice pull of six, here's her dice pull of four, roll. Oh, wow, she's got three successes, what'd you get, two? She says, "No, you can't go in." She's not intimidated by you. So it's one die role, we're here at least. What I liked about it, and we could not usually get it, people decide they don't love it, is that it, that advantage, that six to four advantage played out over four or five turns before someone's social hit points, your social health was knocked out. So it minimized the randomness as you went on, because if you roll six dice and someone else rolls four dice, you might lose on one straight up roll, but you're probably going to lose on five straight rolls, and there's going to be a little more give and take there. So that's what I thought brought to the table, and it also brought people just saying, you know, I look at her as an intimidator. It made you say something, it brought a little more Dresden in the game from my perspective. I'm not saying it's a perfect system, I just liked it a little bit better. And just to be devil's advocate, maybe it's nice to have that randomness where if you're going to stretch it out with a long social combat and you've got better skills than the person you're fighting, vice versa, the person with the better skills nine times out of ten is going to win. So it's going to be a given that you're going to know who's going to win at the beginning of that combat, where if you just have one straight up roll, you can get lucky and be your first out, or they can get lucky and beat you, and that throw out a little randomness and something a little bit different. One other thing is you guys never lost the social combat, you won both of them that we've rolled on. If you do lose, it doesn't mean you don't get your way, and the scene's over. It means that you, I think, I have to look, I don't have my notes in front of me, and it was a new roll so I don't have it memorized, but I think you have to spend a willpower or something, or you lose a willpower, and then you can go ahead and try a different tact or something else, and there's just a minor penalty. One of the things that introduces the social health, I'm algomation of stats, and it affects my character in a few ways, because he does not have good social health because he's been matched like crazy, right, let me tell you this, I work with somebody who has phenomenal social health. I watch this guy get yelled at by the boss, he's ground zero, I'm next to him, I'm not the one in trouble, I'm not the one that's, and I'm still taking damage, but it got to the point where I'm like, your boss, your supervisor is screaming at you because you're not getting it, you're not doing whatever, and you're saying, it's not as bad as you think. It's not really that, no, no, I know she said that, but she didn't really mean it, I'm like, oh my God, this, I mean, you don't perceive that this is not the situation you think it is, you know, and those people do exist, and I've seen it, and so that's my real life example of where Bob had social health of like six, and I'm like, Bob's not going to take no for an answer, and he's going to be able to outlast, and the help, kids are really good at it, they're like, they can wear you down, and you're like, whatever, just. Yeah, they have a social attack of like one, and a social health of like nine, and they just pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, until you're like, you're a social health in six, where? Absolutely. You're all five, basically, one. I think you just invented a little game called parenthood, and you could probably do a little, like, do the kids go to bed? Right. John, did you have anything you wanted to say about it? I thought it was a little odd how the combatants worked. It was only one versus another. Despite how many people were there, I had social skills like help. I couldn't bring them to the table because they were about intimidation, and such. Well, you were totally different tack that we weren't taking. Right, but don't you think that's true? I mean, if Mike is saying to me, Hey Scott, you know, you know, we're all friends here, we can work this out, and you're like, Hey, Dick, why, it would undermine him. Stop helping me. Right. I couldn't step out of line. We're in Dresden, I figured when they did. Right. It was odd in that. Fair enough. Right. I wasn't going to do it in this game. I just thought about it and said, yeah, I can't do that. Right. The thing I was-- Which you actually could. Can't or won't. In a sense. Well, you're not, yeah, I guess you're not supposed to. Maybe we should make a role you can't. You know, you just open up another social combat or something along those lines. You should not be able to do it. Correct. So I think it's one of those things where it's a role it has some potential. Exactly. Maybe it needs to be-- It worked. It was fun, but it needs tweaking. Okay. It needs more stress testing. Yeah. Well, we'll keep it around for the third story and tweak it a bit. Thomas, to your point where your character is in Killing Main Max, I think it's fair to say that after the first story, I don't have any problems because we're all about story in the character arc. And if you want to change your character around to have stats reflect who you really found out who Edgard is after his first main story, you're more than welcome to do that before the third story. I think it would be kind of cool to have Katie Eppel talk to somebody else besides dogs. Right. I'm sick of dogs. I got rats. You got rats? No, there's two dogs that we have in the group. I think it's going to be a half-star. But to the fact that the reason we want every time is we have a group of people and we don't stick, well, I don't know, some of my existing Katie on the front lines of a social combat. We put the guy who's best at it to both cases, who is really good. It's what he does, like, you know, each of us have the thing we shine at. That's choose. And I think you can understand why Chu has a very strong social health after what he's been through, you know, through his flashbacks. If you go one or two ways to get every social health of one or social health at six. Well, and again, this is how I perceive that. And I think it's a great way, a great mechanic to display it is that what he has lived through and endured and survived, this stuff still, it doesn't phase me. It's obvious you never left, whatever. I work with somebody who had come back from his third tour of Iraq. Right. And so do you think the guy who has come back from his third tour, who's been shot at, who's been interrogating dissidents, is going to blink when a manager gets a little pissy with him in our meeting or someone's going to talk about a process because a piece of paper didn't get filed properly. That doesn't phase him. He didn't have any politics in mind when he would have these meetings or you'd have said, like, okay, you kind of made situations worse first because you're not wrong, but your delivery is horrible. Right. And we're no one shooting at you. So we don't think we can be a little bit more circumspected. Right. As for character progression, like stat-wise, how much will we garner from this? Is it possible to knock our stat bubbles up a couple? Yeah, you'll get a couple skills that you'll be able to raise. You'll get some great practical experience, which will allow you to buy more tactics and things along those lines and even beep up to your safe house because you've been spending so many points in that particular. And your attributes, you should have enough after this story, and I haven't calculated them out yet, but we will before we play our next story. And you'll get a chance to all, because it'll be, again, several weeks of downtime, you'll be able to build up your character the way you want, research and stuff. You might want to research some of the artifacts and stuff you found. This story obviously ended with a lot of question marks, just like the first one did. We answered a surprising amount of the ones we found. You did. Yeah, but we've also overlooked some that have slipped, by the way, as this adventure has gone on and on. And you noticed because... In particular, I'm concerned about stamina and strength, oh my god. Right. He's a giant. That isn't reflected in the stats, because it's a very expensive thing to buy and uh... Right. Well, I think that... So I wanted that a couple more to strengthen stamina. This is a long chronicle, what they call them, in World of Darkness. So long chronicle. There's going to be between seven and nine stories before the vanishing city comes to its conclusion. And your characters will be able to definitely grow into exactly who you want them to be and then hopefully have the arc that you want them to have. And that leads me to one of the last questions I have for discussion. We can keep talking, of course, but just what I had in mind for tonight was there are questions. There were a lot of unanswered questions, there might have been things that happened that you thought, wow, that's a loose thread that he didn't follow up on. Chances are, I'd probably have an idea. I mean, sure, stuff happens and you forget. But I have a pretty good idea of where a lot of this is going, or at least where I intend for it to go, of course, no story survives interaction with the characters. So does anyone have any questions? Like, hey, what happened then or what was that all about? And I'll answer them by can if they're story-centric, then I'll say I have to pass it. Well, we did wrap up and stop, so there's a question of the lady on the hill, because she alive, she dead, you know, I mean, you think you were on the bike? Yeah. What's her name? Desi. Right. Desi. She, unfortunately, became a zombie. She was reaching out towards Chew as he ran by if you recall. I don't know if anyone recalls that right at the end. And she had turned, but she will end up not having to, you don't have to worry about her. If I were an editor, I would like cut out that whole spooky as the bike coming through the darkness was. I think that's what I meant by, like, front loading the situation. I think you're giving yourself so many different places we could go and build from that. But I think once we got there, she became this, we were trying to rescue her and save her. And then we were trying to keep ourselves alive. Like, yeah, it became almost like a trap, or a Samaritan trap, if you will. Yeah. And I think that's what it was intended to be, to some extent. If I didn't write this, I took a written essay, as they call them, in "World of Darkness," which is a story that they created. It was "Bad Night on Black Moon Farm" or something along those lines. That sounds right. Completely twisted it to our story and what we wanted to accomplish. But I like the scene. I like the... It struck me as... A cinematic nature. A cinematic of it. And then, what the hell do we do with a civilian on a battlefield? But I think you're right in a sense that it may have took away from the momentum, purpelling the story forward. I mean, you guys are good people. You're actually about to let it bleed out on a field and a farm. Until we did. And so it kind of sapped some of the, until you do. If there hadn't been other Valkyrie people in there, and the sniper was the guy in the house, and it would have kept it kind of like, "Yeah, no, that would have been fine." I think I say, when I say it, I think it's a good way to say it. It sapped some of the forward momentum of the characters in the story. I think that what I meant by sapping some of the momentum. And I get it. You know, Katie stopped and tried to, you know, look and see and you stopped and then. We would have kept going. You would have been at that trailer if it wasn't. Yeah. You would have been at the trailer a lot quicker, had it not been for that scene. That little vignette. It definitely caused more confusion, but it's about a field. Yeah. Like that happened. So, yeah. I think it's totally believable. I don't think... I think Mike's thought, though, we should start. But as an editor, sure. I mean, I get it to be... I mean, to see where it eventually went, it's almost like, we exercise this part because it really... If we're editing down to 90 minutes of a film, that goes because it didn't add anything major to it. That's what I meant. Yeah. I understand what I'm talking about. It is about. So, Desi, we got that question answered. Who else has questions about what happened? Who was this guy? Why did they do that? What the hell was that all about anything? The big question I had was, are any of the people that we fought against and saw the same people that are missing that we've been looking for from the very beginning of shit luck? Of the 12 missing agents, are any of these valkyrie agents... Just one. Just one. Just one head. One head. That's one. Well, we lost him. Jim's comment about her. Wrap it up. He's... They're talking about... Nash's girlfriend. She's one of the 12 missing agents. But the other valkyrie guys, so they're like new valkyrie, not the old valkyrie. Right. These are not in the 12. The ones we fought with are not in the 12. These guys... See, when I kept in hearing Valkyrie, I'm like, "Well, so these are the guys that we're looking for and now they're a rogue team and a little killer." No, they didn't understand that. They were looking for... Valkyrie doesn't want to give up, you know, no man left behind or whatever the motto is. Right. No one left behind. They don't want to give up. They don't want to just seat it to you guys to find it's their people. It's their... Rookies, untrained... But that's fine. So now I'm putting my head in. It's cute. It's cute. It's cute. That's cute. That's cute. That's cute. That's cute. That's cute. That is a mystery. And that they have enormous resources, enough to call in gunships. Silence stuff. Silence stuff. Silence stuff. The one that I was laughing and you were looking at me weird, Thomas and John, because Jim was making a comment about pieces of the puzzle being spread over weeks. Oh, it was spread over weeks, right. And it's obvious if you wouldn't have heard them right away, but... It reminded me of, first of all, Scott likes to do a recap at the beginning of it. And sometimes I cut it out because the people just heard it. Right. It's useful for us when we take a week or two break or the fact that we're stretching this out. But these people could listen to it nonstop and I don't want to repeat what they just heard. Right. It's useful for two reasons. One is it reminds us of what the hell did happen two weeks since last time we played. But the other one is often the storyteller will tell you or highlight certain things that are important, that are important that you didn't think was important. And what I was laughing about is when I was editing once, and I'm not sure if I edited it out or I left it into the episode, but it was in the museum and Bob's asking a question. He's allowed to ask one question and there's this long debate going on over what the question is. It finally decides on saying motive. I want to know what the motive was. And then you started going into, well, it could have been this or could have been that and it could have been this and I'm like, or we could be quiet and let the jam tell us what he wants to tell us because right now he's wanting to eat us information. And we're still trying to guess at what's going on, let him twist that in any way that he wants to get information out to us because sometimes we're our own worst enemy. Where we're in there saying, oh, it must be, it must be, and if it's just, you ask one question and let the jam interpret it any way he wants to so that he gives you the information that you need, maybe even not on purpose. It's back to, you know, where he's explaining the flashback or he's explaining what happened last week. He's explaining what was important to him and therefore kind of what's important to the storyline where we might have been focusing on something totally different. He's not manipulating, he's just sometimes letting him just use his job. I would also submit, which is a focus on the story the way he wants to. Yeah, because he's the one getting, he's the storyteller, he's giving us the information. I would also submit that we would get some type of whiteboard here so we can. That'd be nice. We had that. It would not be a bad idea. In my face, I would want to. For the Chicago story, I had a whiteboard and you could start writing things down. Well, we could just have a key sale, in fact, so we can always look and kind of keep it going through those things. I have one. You call those your notes, Mike. You are. Yeah, but I'm not dependable. I want everyone to be able to contribute. Not that. But a whiteboard is pretty easy to erase. Yeah. We might lose it. Oh, you might, but when I would. Tell the kids not to, you know, this box is good. We'll just put it away underneath the stairway. Yeah. You can do and pull it back out for the. When we go back to the dressing room, we use this downright Ryan fucking Nelson on the way. I would be able to, right? Because damn it, they can read now teaching them things. Yeah. That's cool. And what's this word? So, okay. Any other questions about severed head or anything, you know? Well, there's the mystery of the book of you want to explore that. What exactly it means as an artifact or as a. Actually, I do have a question. I didn't think I did. But the severed head. It's more important than ours. The box I saw in the flashback, is it the same as the one the child's carrying? Because in that episode, I remember you going through and you were describing it and you kept wanting to describe it in like the thirties. Because we thought it was an old. But I was arguing, no, it doesn't, it's a head. So it's obviously not, unless it's a ghost head from the thirties, or a shrunken head mummified in a bit. But if it's. The one that you saw in his flashback was a head that looked as if it would be a death mask or, you know, something that was produced in the thirties. Okay. So there is. So there is actual hair. Right. It was layered in horrible, but it was aged. It was. It was absolutely. Okay. And so it is. It is. This is Chu doing a special. Yeah, I know. Because it was never clear. It comes to me. And I'm looking at it. Does it. Is it tattered old? No. I remember it looks. We were questioning it. But he never answered it the way I wanted him to. She's making it. It's dead. So it's got an aged look to it because she's dead. But not the thirties old. But not the thirties old. It looks like a recently decapitated. And we never got to ask. And we could leave this till later. But anybody else looking at the head. Does anyone see what I see? Everyone sees what you see. Yeah. I didn't. Well, because I'm not at that end of the action. So my character was never directly there. I'm only going by what I would hear. But as a player, I'm wondering, is Gracie some kind of vessel that was holding three demons to like contain it? That's exactly what I was just thinking is did those three heads that came out, did they come out of grace here or did they come out of the head? The three decapitated spirits, the spirits of time that I'd guarded was kind enough to reveal when he came back to the world of the living. They came out of Gracie, not out of the severed head. And so that made me think like, and did Rocklin was the daughter a willing vessel? Was she possessed by these beings? But then it didn't possess. It doesn't make sense. Daniel got teary. Right. So like it looks like he got those things in her to keep her on purpose. Well, yeah. And there's a mystery there and I'm not clear because the house was also a vault basically designed to keep her contained. Mm-hmm. Okay. They're time spirits. She was dead at some point. Perhaps you use these time spirits to undo whatever death she had in the past. Correct. And that's how she manages to be alive today. Well, my isn't looked significantly older. So many of you have done a lot. That's the important part. That they preserved her even to this day. You should have to be the same age or what happens to get older. Maybe they kept the disease from progressing. But then I quite sure, well. I thought you died violent. I'm not quite clear why-- Oh, she died violent. --and spirits. Not a disease. But evil. These, real quick, the severed heads in the Cleveland Police Museum is from the Torcel murders of the 1930s that were never solved in Cleveland. One of the largest unsolved cases or most notorious unsolved cases in U.S. history. And the head itself that was removed from the case of the museum was one of a bit-- someone looked like they're from the '30s-- absolutely horrific decapitated head. The faces desiccated and the teeth are brown and the hair is completely molded. It's a horrible thing to look at. It's absolutely petrifying. This person got their head sawed off in the 1930s. And this is the preserved version of that. The head that you see that Gracie was holding by the hair in the storm cellar was, I don't want to say, freshly decapitated. But certainly-- Not years and years. --not years and years. It looked like something that was much more recent than that. And the only thing you have really tying those two together is the fact that when two did his flashback, I believe his statement was something along the lines of-- he heard Daniel saying for his motive, "Now I can make her better." Right. Danny. Yeah, I know. We were too similar. How dare you? Name was, Daniel. Daniel, Danny. Rock him. Yes. Wow. He's dead now, so. So you win. He shot himself all over my back. Hm. Wait a second. Phrasing. Shot him. [LAUGHTER] Pronunciation. Shot. The end of Archer. Phrasing. [LAUGHTER] The severed head is definitely a huge question going forward when I can answer, but it is a huge plot point, and it's not something that I screwed up, or I'm one who will always say like this. Go ahead and-- Time one. What's your name, Desi? You're not Desi. No. There's a girl's name. Casey. Casey. And Casey are just-- Casey is his girlfriend. We're going to be two of the first things that we're going to have to be jumping on and figuring out what the hell's going on. We've got time? Well, we've got research. This head was still on long before she disappeared. The other thing is, we're going to have to get back in touch with our-- Winston too. --with Winston. And tell him, we just killed a bunch of elk cream numbers, and by the way, one of them is a vampire, and that's going to be awesome. You know, I survived. You know, the old hunter, the whole area, is dannings and sashes, so the farm's been burned. There's a lot of-- This almost makes you wonder if this guy-- See, I was one of my conspiracy theories, I'm wondering what's going on is this-- maybe this vampire has been leading these teams and getting them slaughtered. Hmm. Well-- I'm pretty upset about him. Yeah. He's a good actor. So. What was he wrong? To see-- We would roll against that. Sorry. He would roll against that. I can't tell you that. Yeah, I mean, obviously, that was a huge plot point. The fact that someone was saying they were a Valkyrie task force leader, and they were a vampire. The separate head is a huge point that is incredibly mysterious because-- All of Mike's artifacts, aren't he? Yes. All of Mike's artifacts are interesting plot points, some more than others. I think Binary Hex has access to a lot of information. Oh, we haven't really asked him. We haven't seen less of him, so I'm sure there's going to be more coming. I was trying to think of the date when Binary Hex first contacted us. Did he ever indicate why? Where he came from, what his motives were to help us out. First, we didn't mention his motives. We asked him that, and he said that-- well, it's us versus them, right? There was something along those lines that he was trying to give us information against. Mike, he's a computer hacker hunter. It's once in time. He came up on his radar, hunting something down, so he thought he'd help us out or something. Yeah, it was something very vague along those lines. I don't think he ever revealed, like, hey, I'm so-and-so, and this is why I'm helping. I'm a member of whatever he just said. There's dark things out there, and you guys need some help, so here you go. Which conspiracy is it that focuses on all that internet shit? It would be net or zero. Net-so. I had a previous character that wasn't one of us. Yeah. Pretty cool. No, it's pretty cool. I still think that should be one of our characters. Which one? Oh, the college one? Mm-hmm. All right, so we can always do a question, which is always interesting, is if something could have been done better. Less combat. What could have been? Yeah. I think that's an easy answer, because-- You're not going to finish the sentence. The storyteller feels the same way. It's time to be less combat. Or, how about a more focused combat that was pretty broad, and a lot of smaller targets, and we weren't-- I think-- You weren't clear of our-- well, is it a group attacking? Yeah. We had to define that, okay, there's actually two separate groups here, and then one was our ally, one wasn't, or aye, it got very confusing. Muddy. And it wasn't just two. They were demons, they were zombies, there was a sniper, there was a task force Valkyrie. I like that. There was literally four different individuals, more groups. That's what I'm talking about, but it is. If you want us to say, not so many groups next time, make sure you don't, because that's what's locked it down, was always trying to figure out everything going on. Yeah. I think combat-- It's a three-second combat. But the most impact in world darkness when they last between five and eight rounds, that is a nice, succinct, tension-filled combat. And this one lasted for 35 rounds, or whatever the case may be, which in the big world of things is a minute and a half, or something like that. But if it comes to something like that again, could you house rule how turns go that they take more than three turns for this particular encounter? Second. Three seconds. But-- And like Dresden's nebulous turns that they take as long as they need to. We run farther, we run-- Right. --for this encounter. Because-- You could. I mean, there would be no reason we'd be quitting house rule. I don't think I'd ever do it again, to be honest, John, because it was one experience for me, too. You know, it could have gave someone two shots in six seconds and a lot of them moved twice as fast. Well, one of the weeks and weeks, I start to say, well, it's-- we don't want to break all the rules, but-- Right. --sorry this along. Yeah. And some of the cases, you know, once-- I would be like-- the demons say that they've had their taste of blood now that they can go away, and they're good for it. Yeah, they-- Nice. --for another fear. But that's one of those things that wasn't meant to be an obstacle, or a challenge to kind of just give you something to do. Or did it just become too much of an obstacle, because our dice rolling was war, or we scattered, so no one could really back each other up. We're all kind of dealing with it individually, and it-- I don't think any choice but to scatter, because there were demons, there were zombies, there were snipers, there was task force valkyrie, there was nothing. I don't think authors-- --there were-- A little later, but-- And the-- Oh. --at the children in peril. Yeah. At the very beginning, within two or three sessions, you had four different-- --animes, and a bleeding out civilian. And a bleeding out members of the app crew. Yeah, crew. So-- And we had less information than we normally do going into those-- Because you were in media, right? Right, right. One thing I got to mention about the media is, is that when I came down to it at the very last portion, I did feel that we learned everything sufficiently. When we actually came down to pull off that chendo-- Right. --when they were going into the basement, when they were having their face off with the vampire, we knew-- Right. We knew pretty much-- --come in knowing. Right. Which is when it really matters. Well, it mattered the most recently. Right. That-- So we rode the kick all the way up. So any other complaints or suggestions, constructive criticism or whatever? Yeah. How did everyone like Flashbacks? I mean, certainly, I think they were goddamn necessary because-- Yeah. --with the combat. The combat-- He's starting in the middle. Nothing else would broke up the combat. Exactly. The middle would broke it up. Did you like what happened during that? I liked what happened. I personally liked what happened with them. With everyone. Everyone had different things. Right. I didn't like them. I did think, though, that they were a little confining, and I think Tom had mentioned it, where we're trying not to be dicks and take advantage-- Right. --or you're going back in time. And so there are some things you can't do, and you're trying not to use future knowledge in the past to try to change things or to give you more of an advantage. So in a way, it felt like you're a little confined, but, for the most part, that would be necessary for what we were doing. Going forward, I wouldn't mind seeing more, but, like, way back in the past. Right. My character's first run in with-- I don't think this is a flashback worthy, but just talking of something that could be. As he joined Valkyrie, he was in Alaska, and he got attacked by some supernatural thing. He managed to escape or hold his own or something. That's something that's way back. I couldn't really influence things currently in the story. But we're first explaining your character development, it would be a suitable thing. Those sort of backstories, I don't mind, still happening, even if we're not in New York. I don't think they'll ever happen to the heavy degree that they happen in this story, because it was necessary. It's a very good idea. I'd like to break up the combat. If flashbacks happen in the future, I'd like them enough as a convention, a storytelling convention, to dust them off once or twice, maybe, in a future story. If that, it happening very, very seldomly. But Jim, you have a contrarian point of view, and I'd love to hear it. No, I like the flashbacks, and it might just be the way I created this character, but it just seemed like, in a flashback, I was either away... You were somewhere? Yeah. Or I had nothing to contribute to what was happening in the flashbacks, I was just sitting there making coffee, watching TV while everybody else is hacking away on a computer, or doing something. So I really had nothing to contribute in a lot of the flashbacks. I liked the flashbacks, I liked how they were handled, and I think most of the fans really enjoyed them. And it sounded like too many of these flashbacks suck, which usually you're going to get some contrarian points of view, but... And that's so far anyway. Right. Not only were the flashbacks cool, but the editing of how well you run into them and how they sounded was really unique, and I like the way it was done. That is a value. All right. Well, you know Scott argued about the going in. I did. You didn't like it. The going in sound, I wasn't fond of, the tin can sound, I wasn't fond of, just go shoot us to show, I mean, just goes to show that I don't have the answer. It was overwhelmingly positive in the sense of the technical aspect of the flashback, so glad to be able to do something that we were in a flashback. It was just, sorry, we're going to do a flashback now, because, yeah, you're right. I mean, in a few cases it's spanned over three episodes of the podcast, where it's, we're still in the flashback type group. So that was important. Well, with that, we should probably go on to the listener feedback, I'm writing with that. All right. Thanks for listening to Knights of the Night 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 form 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. of course. [MUSIC PLAYING] (gentle music)