Everything you wanted to know about sex (in the Old West) but were too afraid to ask
Hello there, and welcome to episode 260 of Effect. Everything you wanted to know about sex in the Old West, but were too afraid to ask. I'm Dave.
Matthew:And I'm Matthew. And 260 episodes. I mean, I know I I say this about every 10 episodes now, but that's amazing, isn't it?
Dave:Well, next time we'll go, 261 episodes? Blimey. How do we get there? But it is bonkers, isn't it, frankly? Yeah.
Dave:We've done this 260 times, plus a little bit more with our RPG a day things that we did. Yes.
Matthew:Yeah. But yeah.
Dave:260. And people are still listening. So thank you, folks. But anyway, what's on the show today, mate? Come on.
Dave:That's what that's
Matthew:your Not only are they listening, but they're supporting us via our Patreon. So we've got a new patron to thank in a little while. So that will be the first item on our agenda. Then we've got, obviously, news from the world of gaming, and that is going to include hot off the presses, my free RPG day report. Oh, yeah.
Matthew:I went to my local game store, and I picked up some swag, which I will tell everybody about. Then then we've got some Old West news, which is really, I imagine, quite a short update, but who knows? It may extend into a longer conversation. Who can tell? Us, never.
Dave:We are we are perfectly concise to the word and to the syllable. We never go on without good cause. Yeah.
Matthew:And then I'm going to explain where babies come from. In the Old West, that is. So be ready for that one.
Dave:I mean, you know, the the the principles are they they do kind of come from the same sort of place regardless of where you are. But yeah.
Matthew:Well, yeah, I guess I guess so. Where do babies come from in the nineteenth century? This this is a set of rules that could work for Versen just as easily as it were the old Western. A mummy when
Dave:a when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much.
Matthew:We are system agnostic. They both roll their resilience roles. Actually, that won't work for Versum, will it? Because we don't have resilience.
Dave:Anyway No. I'm not you've I'm
Matthew:getting off the subject.
Dave:You've now just blown the whole point of the feature as well. So
Matthew:So It's not the whole point. I wrote words on this. Thousands. A thousand words.
Dave:Think you've you've led with the lead, I think. You know, you certainly haven't seen it. That's true. Yes. Cool.
Dave:Yeah. So we've a good show, but let's kick off. Yeah. I think we have a a new patron to welcome and to thank, don't we?
Matthew:Yes. We do. And that is Sebastian Schmidt. Thank you very much, Sebastian.
Dave:Indeed. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And obviously, as always, thank you to everyone who who supports us. And Sebastian, get yourself on the Discord.
Dave:It is TM, the nicest place on the Internet. And come and join the conversation there. Come and join the crowd. That would be really cool.
Matthew:No. That was that was that was easy. We did that almost professionally, Dave.
Dave:I know. I know. Well, we have done it 260 times in one way in one form or another.
Matthew:So Yeah. I guess so.
Dave:We should be
Matthew:getting Well, we haven't had 260 patrons.
Dave:No. I know. But we've had this we've had this section about new patrons, even if we
Matthew:haven't had
Dave:a new patron. And so after 260 attempts, we ought to be getting reasonably good at it. You'd have thought. Wouldn't we?
Matthew:Yeah. That that is true. Can we can we move on to the world of gaming now similarly professionally?
Dave:Let's please do that. Yes.
Matthew:So, the biggest news, surely, in the world of gaming is we've just had RPG sorry. Free RPG day at stores all around the world.
Dave:Nice.
Matthew:And I went to our local store, the game shop in Aldershot. Well, our not your local store, mate. Your local store's somewhere in Stevenage, I imagine. But
Dave:Well Carry on. Well I've I've yeah. Anyway, carry on. Finish. I'll I'll say something.
Matthew:Intriguing. No. No. It's not that exciting.
Dave:No. No. It's not that exciting. But go on.
Matthew:So it suddenly dawned on me a couple of weeks ago that maybe maybe I should be playing a game at Free RPG Day. Maybe I should be running a game that is for sale at the local game shop. Mhmm. And that being Trails of the Old West. So so I I put my well, I I said, is it too late to put my name down?
Matthew:And they replied saying, oh, actually, somebody's just dropped out. So there's space
Dave:available. Cool.
Matthew:So that was great. And they they they put a nice little thing on Facebook, and obviously, I announced it on our socials. The most exciting thing about this there were two very exciting things about this. One is that the game was booked up when I arrived at the shop. Nice.
Matthew:Actually, one person then phoned up to drop out for reasons, I guess. But it was nice. Sometimes when you do this sort of event, unless it's D and D, particularly at the game shop in Aldi Shop where D and D is a big thing, you know, some games on on free RPG day had to be canceled because there simply weren't enough players taking up the option. But it was nice that we have players to do it. But particularly, and this is the most exciting thing, we had a player called Jules, Julian, who had driven all the way from Dorset, and he's a Kickstarter backer, Dave.
Matthew:Wow. And he'd come specifically to get VRPG day at the game shop to to play my game, to
Dave:to wow. That's cool.
Matthew:Have a game there. So that was very exciting. He arrived a little bit late. Not not massively late, but I gave me time to explain the rules to the other three players because he'd never played any, freely games before. And and yeah.
Matthew:And then was great throughout the whole thing. He, we were doing what I've decided to do is take one of the, the campfire tales that we're putting together, which are relatively short scenarios, actually, but all but add on to that couch generation, life path couch generation beforehand so that I thought, you know, let let's see once again whether whether the life path gives you characters that you could work with. And, of course, it does 100% of the time. And I thought I said, you know, you kinda wanna be a you know, gonna be bounty hunters in this in this adventure because it was Las Vegas legacy. Yep.
Matthew:So, yeah, you might wanna bear that in mind in some of the decisions you're making. And we ended up with well, first of all, the interesting thing is we ended up with people from all around the world. We had somebody from East Asia, somebody from Canada, somebody from South America, and the nearest person to the Old West was somebody from the Pacific Northwest Of America. So that was lovely. You know, the the two d six Dice Oil is designed to average out really on kind of East Coast and European immigrants, but it was really nice to have lovely diverse mix.
Matthew:And then they had great careers. So the guy from East Asia ended up wandering with Native Americans for a bit, then joining the army as a scout. The the guy from Mexico started off as a train robber and then became sheriff. And since he'd become sheriff, I I quickly changed the story and made him sheriff of Los Angeles.
Dave:Yeah. Las Vegas.
Matthew:Las Vegas. Yes. And then we had another just down and dirty cowardly outlaw who who'd managed to win a a mine off somebody and so got the miner 40 niner talent.
Dave:Ah, cool.
Matthew:And immediately went to the shops and bought some dynamite.
Dave:I was gonna say, did somebody
Matthew:have some
Dave:dynamite there? Excellent. Yeah.
Matthew:And and then we had the guy from Canada was a French Canadian who effectively became a steakhouse salesman and used his steakhouse to great effect throughout the adventure as well. So that was lovely to see. They all got well into it. Every time we play you know, what I love about that particular adventure is you give them the situation and then say, what do you do? Where do you go?
Matthew:Yeah. And every group I run it with makes different choices there and handles things in different ways. And then the dice oh, god. Trouble dice. I love Trouble Dice Day.
Dave:That's music to my ears, that is. So So,
Matthew:you know, they were they were very good at count you know, I'd I'd told them, you know, the best thing you can do if you've got, trouble is can you and you can afford it, is probably actually just buy the trouble off. But, know, sometimes they couldn't or they chose not to. And there was a lovely scene where the first place they approached and I I love their technique here. They went to Isabella to spoilers here, but their target's mother is in town, and they thought, well, he might be visiting her. Let's go and see what she can reveal.
Matthew:She turned out to be a stubborn old lady that had already been visited by bounty hunters because they totally failed their role. But she did I I I didn't want them walking away with nothing. So I she did let out a clue or two about the bounty hunters. So, they became aware of the German bounty hunters. And then, the sheriff said, well, surely, if any bounty hunter comes and tell, they ought to be registering with the law.
Matthew:And I said, well, have they done that? Why don't you make a retrospective role on your authority to see whether they came to, you know, identify themselves to you? Yeah. And he did and had to push his dice and got a bit of trouble. I think he got two bits of trouble in the end, but he succeeded.
Matthew:He was able then to go, oh, yes. It's those two Germans, he knew about them, and they had been to see him. But then the trouble they rolled of the second trouble column and really, I wanna look at what the wording is. I can't remember what the wording was, but it's something a bit like they know something about your past. So, obviously, he I said, these bounty hunters recognized him as being the train robber even though he changed his name.
Matthew:Nice. And made it clear that he changed his name. They you know, he said, you know, you got an inkling that they they know who you are and what you've done. So that was that was lovely. So then, obviously, there was a bit of tension between him and there.
Matthew:It was just I I love this game. I love this game. If it was the only game I could ever play forever, I'd be quite happy, I think.
Dave:Well, again, this does sound a little bit self congratulatory. But at the moment, I mean, I'm I'm loving you know, it it it's kind of my favorite game at the moment. Yeah. To run But I
Matthew:did pick up some other games. I I I didn't go crazy, but, of course, there's a table of other free taster games and things like that, which everybody could pick up. And I picked up a couple, one of which was a little multiverse Marvel multiverse role playing game sort of expansion thing about the Avengers sort of taster session there.
Dave:Mhmm. Okay. Cool.
Matthew:And looking at it, I mean, you know, if you wanna play in the Marvel universe, then then it looks great. There's some nice illustrations. There's lots of characters I know. There's a little adventure. I don't know whether there's any rules in here to actually be able to play this just off this table.
Matthew:Kind of
Dave:More of a setting thing than anything else.
Matthew:Yeah. 16 pages. It's in a kind of comic sized format, American comic sized format. And and it doesn't have much in it, and I don't haven't yet read it enough to say, can I actually play the game? Or is this really just a preview for something that owns the game that with a little adventure that introduces the Avengers in it?
Matthew:The other one is more interesting. And first of all, I met Will there, one of our patrons. Hi, Will.
Dave:Nice.
Matthew:And Will pointed me at a game called I can't remember what it was called, but it was kinda cyberpunky. And it comes from a company called Son of Oak Game Studio. And he explained it's got quite an interesting system in it that's a bit powered by the apocalypse, bit blades in the darkish. It's beautifully put together. But I I said, I don't like particularly.
Matthew:It's it's always too cyber and not enough punk. Mhmm. He said, well, I've also got this one, and this is a more generic fantasy setting, Legend in the Mist. It's called the rustic fantasy RPG. So I picked that one up instead to look at the rules, but I am intrigued by that one.
Matthew:Comes with some lovely pre gen characters, just three. But I thought I might have a go at running it. And like a like Days of the Dark and and and those sort of games, it's a matter of you've got an archetype and you make some choices, and then you start playing, basically.
Dave:Right. Okay.
Matthew:So so, yeah, those are the thing I those are the things I picked up. But then at the end of the day, as I was leaving, they said, if you've played a game, you get one of these. And there were just three of these in their pack. And I don't know how I feel about this. I I thanks to the game shop.
Matthew:I'm very pleased to have it. But do you remember the older D and D, cartoon?
Dave:Yes. I do.
Matthew:Kids cartoon, which at the time, I hated because I was a serious D and D player. I'm all playing game player. Hardly played any D and D. And this was just making mock, really, I felt, of everything that D and D was. You know, it was a bunch of kids in a fantasy world, and, you know, they they didn't ever kill anybody.
Matthew:They always used their, you know, their their weapons, know, did were always more about defense and blocking and and making people, you know, imprisoning people rather than killing orcs or anything like that.
Dave:It's it's not a bad philosophy though, frankly, given that D and D is so much about slaughtering every orca that you can find regardless of their or Yeah. I mean You know?
Matthew:Well, as you've said it, it it, you know, it it's great it's great lesson to teach kids about life in general.
Dave:About restraint and about murder isn't the solution. No. Exactly.
Matthew:So Yeah. You know,
Dave:I think you're on the wrong side of history there this
Matthew:time around. Yeah. But also, it's not what D and D's about where murder is definitely the
Dave:Well, is true.
Matthew:Thing. So That is true. But, you know, now there is a huge sort of retro love for that game. And I've got a lovely enameled, huge pin badge. You know, one of those ones with the you you poke the pointy bit through your
Dave:thing and then Like a
Matthew:put a clasp on the other side. There's two pointy bits, it's so big, of Hank the ranger with his flaming arrows.
Dave:Oh, nice. Nice.
Matthew:So that was lovely. And, yes, I and and and so the other three players hadn't done any, yeah, Zero Energy before. They were very much d 20 players, so I warned them they might not like the dice ball. And I think there were some roles where they went, yeah. I've yeah.
Matthew:I this is why I don't like this dice ball thing. But but they all had a whale of a time. I don't know whether I knew them bought them, but I left before they'd finished their shopping in the shop.
Dave:Right. Yeah. You should
Matthew:Anyway, you
Dave:shouldn't tell them in advance that they're not gonna like it. You should say, this is different and it's great. And you're gonna love it. It's much better than rolling one d 20. That's for sure.
Matthew:Well, of course, I did word it like that, but between you and I.
Dave:Fair enough. Fair enough. Just wanna make sure you're getting the right message out there, mate.
Matthew:Yeah. It it it I said, you know, you gotta get more into the story. You gotta the the you know, you can't necessarily predict how successful you're gonna be with a dice So you you gotta take the punches as they come and
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Trust in the dice to give you a good story. And and I think they did. I think they did. But also, I reckon there were sometimes one of them rolled 11 dice, I remember, and pushed it, and I think didn't get a success. So you can feel that moment of Yeah.
Matthew:I should print some more of those stickers, maybe with an old west
Dave:Yes. That's cool. That's a good idea. Yeah.
Matthew:That's That's the way
Dave:that's the way it goes sometimes. You know? Failing is fun. Failing is fun.
Matthew:Yeah. And the beauty of trouble is, you know, you can make choices about how much fun it is as well. As long as you've got one person lost their faith. One person the guy with the dynamite had to spend his last trouble his last point of faith on not playing himself up with dynamite.
Dave:Excellent.
Matthew:Which which felt good.
Dave:Yeah. Nice. So Well
Matthew:And they all got there. Even if you're
Dave:trained in using them with dynamite, it's still dangerous stuff.
Matthew:Well, when you push it when you push it
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:It's still dangerous, and he pushed it and failed. Or and yeah. And would have got a trouble dice, but I
Dave:But he's bought it off.
Matthew:Bought it off with his last
Dave:Last point. Now, that's nice. I like that. That works really well. Cool.
Dave:That sounds like a great game. Sounds like a really good game. I mean, the the the times that I've run the the Las Vegas legacy, it's always worked out. The ending has been different every time, but it's always been brilliant. It's always been a lot of fun.
Matthew:Oh, yeah. The the these guys kind of accidentally found Martinez Okay. Without necessarily kind of believing he was in the room. I think I I think they went up the stairs in in a place that for future gamers, I I won't mention Yeah. And convinced occupant to let them into the room.
Matthew:I think kind of expecting it to be another clue towards where Martin is was.
Dave:But there he was.
Matthew:Martin is. And then he said, because they'd they'd kind of made him believe that they were friends of one of his allies. He said, you know, are you the guys that are gonna bring the cart to get me and my mother out of there? And they were obviously, they went, yes. Yes.
Matthew:We are. Go and buy a cart. Yeah. And but then they they arranged it so that one of them came with the cart and blew him out of there, but the others are waiting in ambush.
Dave:Yeah. And so
Matthew:An ambush that involved dynamite, it has to be said. So that was a yeah. Again, an ending I've never I hadn't experienced before.
Dave:Yeah. I mean, this particular game, this particular scenario is one where the player characters are or have the opportunity to be kind of very, if evil is the wrong word, but bad people. But they do there is a moral decision to be made. But actually, in all the games I've run, they've continued to basically be the bounty hunter rather than see the moral issue and then make a different decision. But in one of them, it was really quite gruesome where they they they wanted to deal with the two bounty hunters, the two German bounty hunters first.
Dave:Yeah. And so they basically set upon them by surprise, and one of them set their dog had their guard dog and set their guard dog on them. And the guard dog got a critical hit and rolled 60 something and basically tore the guy's throat out and killed him. And this was like, okay, suddenly, is getting a bit gruesome. But, yeah, that fight didn't last very long.
Dave:But, yeah, I mean, it's yeah. That was good because that was one that we that we wrote as an actual play short for the Kickstarter, which obviously as part of the Kickstarter stretch goals, we then are producing and putting out there as a PDF, which all our backers should be getting. Not imminently, but we are working on it. So it's it's coming. So so
Matthew:Hold on. You're you're segueing into old west news here. So
Dave:I know. I'm jumping ahead a little bit, aren't I? But anyway. Okay. So that was a very long chat about your tells the
Matthew:obvious Yeah. Sorry. I was just No. That's cool. Just was just enthusiastic about the story.
Matthew:You know? Yeah. It it does it makes me makes me want to tell you about my character. Other things have happened in the world of gaming though. Possibly the biggest news for those of us who well, not you and I, really, Dave, because No.
Matthew:I mean We are interested in neither d v D and D nor nor Critical Role. Yeah. But the two sort of lead designers of the last edition of D and D have joined the Critical Role publisher, Darrington Press. Yes. So that's quite big news, I think.
Dave:Yeah. I mean, I I saw this story. I think, like you said, because because none of that side of things really interests me at the moment. It was one of those things that just washed over me without really taking the time or the interest to look into the implications of it. Yeah.
Dave:So tell me, what are the implications of it?
Matthew:Well, for you, mate, the implications are pretty massive because here you've got a new creative team at Darrington Press, and they may be looking for new writers, and you should always be selling your services.
Dave:Oh, that is true. I'm I'm very good at whoring myself out. I'm very good. I'm very bad at whoring myself out. Mhmm.
Matthew:So so that may that may be worth some some some way of getting in contact with them and Mhmm. Offering your services. And I think, you know, if one of the things you can say about the last run of D and D is they did do quite a lot of production of supplements and stuff like that under them in in the fifth edition. So Yeah. Maybe maybe there's some opportunities there to to do, I think.
Matthew:But for the rest of us, you know, if you if you like Dagger Heart, which is their their their big game, which I haven't even had a chance to play.
Dave:No. Me neither.
Matthew:So I can't comment on it, but I know some of our patrons have supported it and stuff. And it'll be interesting to see what they do going forward. It suggests to me that they're not just going to churn out stuff at Dagger Hart, but they've got other things they want to do in Tarrington Press. You know, maybe new new rule sets and stuff like that because well, we'll just wait and see. Yeah.
Dave:Well, it looks like Dagger Hearts sold out from their first print run very quickly. So it seems to be doing very well. I mean, it looks nice from what I can see. I've never I've never had my hands on the book. But yeah.
Dave:Okay. Cool. Interesting.
Matthew:Tomb Raider. That was an interesting bit of news about Tomb Raider. And I thought interesting about licensed properties. Evil Hat were developing a Tomb Raider RPG and couldn't come to an agreement with the IP holders about certain artistic decisions within that and have dropped it. They'll they will do something with the same mechanics because they quite like the mechanics they were developing.
Matthew:So, you know, kind of Tomb Raider with the numbers filed off. But given that they have worked so closely with the guy behind the Justin files to produce the Justin files while playing game and some other stuff, Atomic Robo and things like that, you know, they're they're not newcomers to the world of licensed products. And No. I just thought it was interesting that both parties, I imagine, said, okay. This isn't working for us.
Matthew:Let's let's let's quit as amicably as we can. I expect those creative differences will be to do with anti colonialism. I expect. Because by default, the Tomb Raider thing of, you know, white person goes into ancient civilizations and
Dave:nicks Nicks all their stuff. Yeah. It's it's yeah. It's a look that isn't isn't isn't so hot these days, isn't
Matthew:Yeah. And I may, you know, it's never been a thing that, Evil Hat have wanted to kind of celebrate. So I'm sure they had an an interesting twist on that, but maybe one that the IP holders felt was too distant from everything else I do with the IP, but interesting.
Dave:Yeah. It's it's I mean, it's it's an interesting one, isn't it? I mean, you know, I guess there's a question here of how seriously you take, you know, a story like Tomb Raider. You know, and, you know, it's it's it's kind of light hearted fun. But like you say, the the the the context behind it, if you wanted to stop and think about it, is perhaps not, you know, is is not is not the greatest story to tell.
Dave:But yeah. I mean, does that mean that you then can't do yeah. Because Raiders of the Lost Ark would fall into basically the same the same category pretty much. Although Yeah. Yes.
Matthew:Could. You could put homes in the museum.
Dave:Well, you you could argue that in Raiders of the Lost Ark, if you wanted to, you could argue that Indiana Jones is saving those relics from evil people that were gonna nick them and steal them and sell them for profit. Whereas, he's saving them because they're gonna be stolen anyway and putting them somewhere where they are revered and respected.
Matthew:That has long been long been the argument used by the British Museum over the Elgin Marbles.
Dave:Well, I know. Well, that's true. I mean, I mean, actually, at the at the point that they took the Elgin Marbles, there is some truth to that because the Turks were using them for target practice. But the Turks aren't using them for target practice now. There is now we might want to, you know, be offering them back.
Dave:But no, but I think there's so there is there is a line there you could take. But, also, you could just take the game and say, you know, I'm I'm not recreate I'm not reveling in colonial theatre.
Matthew:I mean,
Dave:I'm not playing the East India Company, for example, which would be a bad thing. Let's just have a bit of light hearted fun. But, yeah, I can I can I can totally get that that that there would be some people who would be like, yeah, do I want to have light hearted fun recreating the rape and theft of antiquities from, you know, ancient civilizations that have living descendants still, you know? Or even don't, I guess. But yeah.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:You know, I I don't know. I don't know the reasons why. It's purely my conjecture that there might be something to do with anti colonialism in there. But we won't see, I guess, until whatever comes out that was once upon a time being developed as a Tomb Raider game.
Dave:Yeah. It
Matthew:interests me though. I just the whole concept of turning a computer game, obviously quite a popular computer game, into a role playing game, I'm not convinced by it. It's almost like saying, well, I really like the World of Warcraft universe, the elite universe, the whatever universe, but I wish this computer gave gave me more of an open world, which
Dave:I'm not
Matthew:sure really. I think
Dave:don't know. I think there are different things here. So I think not knowing if there is a deeper back story to Tomb Raider other than just going and raiding tombs and grabbing stuff. It seems to me that Tomb Raider as a role playing game is pretty narrow. It's basically a dungeon delve.
Dave:Go in, nick the stuff, beat the evil guys, and get out with your goodies. You could say something
Matthew:With some cut scenes.
Dave:With some, yeah, with some cut scenes maybe. But again, the the the game process is very, very Yeah. Kind of narrow. The game world is very narrow. That is what you do.
Dave:You're a Tomb Raider, you know, the clue is in the title. Something like World of Warcraft, I mean, you've got an enormous world. Mean, if you wanted to do a fantasy role playing game set in the World of Warcraft, there's no better place to do it because the it's the the world is there and it's immensely deep and immensely, you know, not sure what the word I'm looking for, but it's it's it's alive with so much backstory and so much history. And actually, it's it's a massive world. So I think they're they're different things.
Dave:What you do in World of Warcraft would be much more varied than what you do in Tomb Raider, potentially. So I think maybe it's a bit different. I think the fact that there isn't a World of Warcraft role playing game, I I don't I don't know. I mean, perhaps just the the the the the scale of task to create a World of Warcraft role playing game and get all the the lore and backstory right is perhaps just so big that nobody actually wants to try and take it on. But you would think it might
Matthew:be quite well. It's interesting.
Dave:Think it might be
Matthew:going to a blizzard
Dave:and Maybe.
Matthew:Use your expertise to say, I can make you a World of Warcraft role playing game. Yeah. Man.
Dave:I mean, we would probably do very well.
Matthew:And it would yeah. I'm sure somebody's already got their license.
Dave:Probably.
Matthew:What are they doing with it?
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Look. We we we are we're thirty minutes into this episode already, and we haven't even finished the world of gaming. Not the World of Warcraft, but the world of gaming. A moment ago, you were talking about Tomb Raider being quite limited because all you do is go on a delve.
Matthew:You've been reading a book, Dave. What book have you been reading?
Dave:Oh, I've been reading The Great Dark. So Ah. We were lucky enough to get copies of that for display at Yiga Games Expo, and one of those copies happened to return home with me for safekeeping before we take it to the next one, which again might not be for might not be for just the show on that one. But, you know, I I as I've said to everyone, I've I I don't like reading PDFs. I don't I don't enjoy it particularly.
Dave:But now I've got the book in my hands, I've been sitting down and been reading it. So I've read about half of it so far. And I just thought What are you thinking? I just wanted to briefly reflect. So I So there's kind of two sides to the coin, I think, for me here.
Dave:One, I'm I'm I'm loving the look and feel of it. I'm actually loving this idea as the the next chapter in the story of the third horizon. I think that's it's very cool. I like what they've done with that story. I've kind of I've just got my my head around the slipstream idea because I looked at the map in the at the front cover and thought, okay.
Dave:Well, that don't make much sense. But now having read it and understanding what the slipstream is, that makes a lot more sense. So again, gives you a bit of a feel for
Matthew:Yeah. And there's another map as well that weirdly makes more sense.
Dave:But Right.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. But that's but that's cool. So I'm I'm I'm liking I'm liking that. The one thing that I would say is, unless it comes up later in the book, what they could have done was produced a map of, like, the Lost Horizon in the way they did for the Third Horizon with, you know because the Lost Horizon, these places have been visited even if they haven't been explored properly. Mhmm.
Dave:And give snippets of what's what's, you know, what what's been seen or what's what might be found there, like they do for the map for the third horizon, which I
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. That's a little
Dave:I use those all the time as a as a hook for for a for a scenario. But no, it's looking lovely. I'm really enjoying reading it. I I think the idea behind the great ships is is a really good one. I'm enjoying, I think, what would be excellent intrigue and political play on those ships.
Dave:Although, I wonder whether most of my understanding of that is not that I've got to that bit in the book so far, but it's from what I've heard from you and others.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. No. I think everything in the book is on, like, page nine. It says, there's loads of intrigue on the ships.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:That's how I think you've already read that bit.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. I'm loving the look and feel. I I guess I'm I'm the I don't know. I think there is there is very much a question in my mind, and this this is a question that is potentially pertinent to us as well, is how many years zero engine games can you do?
Dave:Because, I mean, naturally, I guess this this feels very much like Coriolis, which on one hand is a good thing because it's familiar and it's it's the evolution of of the third horizon into the lost horizon. On the other hand, I felt like I'd read about 50 of the pages already before I got to them because, basically, it's the same stuff as as the third Coriolis, the third horizon pretty much. I don't know whether that's You
Matthew:haven't got to chapter 10 yet then, I'm just No.
Dave:I'm I'm just on where do I got to? I've just got to I've just read about heirlooms. So I've just reached chapter seven. Just started about the Lost Horizon and the sort of the background and the history, and the timeline. So I haven't got that far yet.
Dave:So I said, this is caveated by the fact that I've only read about half of it. But I'm enjoying it very much, and I I think it it makes me a bit more excited to to play it than I perhaps was when it But first came yeah. So that's just kind of my take. I think I think my comment about it, like I've read a lot of it before, is I mean, I'm not I'm not even sure that's a it's a criticism. It's just an observation that I don't don't think you could get away from that really by, you know, doing a doing a book that is, you know, the sequel to Yeah.
Dave:The Third Horizon. You are that is gonna happen. So it's just a comment, think. An observation rather than actually criticism or a concern.
Matthew:Yeah. And I think, actually, what's very pertinent is something I said at UK Games Expo when we were being interviewed by the lovely people on tabletop.
Dave:Mhmm.
Matthew:That it actually, I think, for many people, not particularly for us when we read the first the the third horizon, but a lot of people, I think, were sort of weighed down by loads of references to what had gone before in the, you know, second not the second of Isaac, I was gonna say, in the first edition of Coriolis, which Yeah. The Free League guys are all fans of and have, you know, built a bunch of their stuff around that game. And that was absolutely crammed full of old lore that may or may not be relevant. What I think this does is although you say you've got 50 things you feel you've heard before, 50 pages, actually that that feels to me a lot more refreshing and not quite so weighed down with all the lore, but rather more of a springboard, I think, for new gamers. You've to remember this is mostly not for the relatively few of us in Free League terms that bought the third Horizon
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:When they were a small company, and nobody was even doing any podcasts about Year Zero games. But to the to the
Dave:How how that has changed, How that has changed?
Matthew:You know, there is a bigger market now, I think, and they're hoping to reach out to more of those people who will be reading all of this for the first time.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:And I think they've done quite a good job of giving us us old hands some nice little, I guess you'd call them
Dave:Easter eggs.
Matthew:Easter eggs. Yeah. Without weighing it down in the way that maybe the first edition did with loads of lore that that we as new readers didn't necessarily understand.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:No. I just thought I'd I'd briefly mentioned that. But yep. Cool.
Matthew:So so maybe maybe next week, you'll be inspired to write or next episode, I should say, you'll be inspired to start building on that law and creating some more stuff. Is that your thinking?
Dave:Yeah. I'm I'm, you know, haven't got the book in my hand. I There is a bit of me that feels like we should go back to our roots a little bit for a while. Well, at least for an episode or two, or at least occasionally. So, yeah, I I I don't quite know what I should look at, but I shall I shall do something based on the third horizon.
Dave:The third horizon? The great dark next time.
Matthew:Yeah. Cool. Cool. Right. What else have we got?
Matthew:Okay. Bit of Old west news we've got. Yep. I don't think we mentioned this before in a previous episode, but our shop is now live
Dave:Indeed. On our website. Our shop is live on the website. Yes. No.
Dave:We haven't mentioned that before. Yeah. That's great. I mean, yeah, I I hate to say it, but well done you, pal, for getting that sorted out. I didn't have anything to do with it.
Dave:So if it doesn't work, it's Matt's fault. If it does work, done, Matthew. So
Matthew:Yeah. And I think it's it's worth saying that there's two so you can find it on our website and it's sitting in a little frame on our website. You can also go straight to it with a link in the show notes, but the actual shop is called bytoto.site. Oh, forgotten what it's called. Dotsquare.site.
Matthew:Bytoto.square.site is if if using it on our site is a pain in the ass, then you can, you know, go straight to it. We haven't put all the shipping prices all over the world in, so I don't know what happens if you're from some part of the world that I haven't put shipping prices in for. Shipping might look quite expensive if you're in The US, but I think I have got to say that if you are a US listener and you wanna get a copy, distribution is gonna take some time to organize into The US retail market. So if if you're excited about it, come to our site and order it there and Yeah. Try and keep shipping prices low as possible.
Matthew:But but I think that's the gonna be the best way of getting it for the time being.
Dave:Yeah. Sadly, mean, sadly, US and other, what we would class as rest of the world, shipping prices are are are are kind of what they are at the moment. They're quite expensive. Yeah. But, yeah, as you said, we are
Matthew:always
Dave:looking
Matthew:at They're not as expensive in The US as they are in Australia, for example. Australia is Australia really
Dave:is is it's it's yeah. It's eye watering, I I hate to say. But, yeah, we're always looking at ways of doing the shipping more cheaply, but certainly for the moment, yeah, it is what it is. But I hope that doesn't put too many people off who might be excited about getting the game. Get in the game because it will give you many many many hours of of entertainment.
Dave:We always when it comes to computer games, I always look at how much it cost and how many hours of of play I've got I've got out of it. And and my my my one good example is a game called seven days to die, which is basically, it's like Minecraft with zombies. Very good.
Matthew:Where Minecraft has got zombies.
Dave:Okay. Well, it's it's it's a build it's a it's a world building game, but with lots of zombies. It's And
Matthew:more zombies than Minecraft.
Dave:I I suspect so. There's a lot of zombies in Seven Days to Die.
Matthew:Yeah. Quite a lot of zombies in Minecraft.
Dave:Anyway, I don't play Minecraft, so anyway. So I bought I bought that game for about £15 many years ago when it was in well, it's still allegedly in alpha, but when it was in early alpha. And I've played about four thousand hours on that now. So so my my my pounds per hour, I haven't worked it out, but it's very very low. So if you think about, yes, it's gonna cost a bit to get the game, but if you're gonna get a hundred hours or more of entertainment out of it, then actually that cost of delivering the cost of the book per hour comes down very quickly.
Dave:I often think about it where I'd go out and have an expensive dinner once in a while, which might cost me, you know, 50 or £60 a head these days. And actually, 50 or £60
Matthew:for a game
Dave:that gives you many many hours of entertainment is actually not not a bad deal. So that's kind of the point I was trying to make. So Yeah. I said,
Matthew:I I hope the prices don't break good point. The other exciting well, the other thing to bear in mind, if you live nearer where we can distribute into retail, say, you know, there are shops now in The UK that you can just go and buy it, not least Game Shop, where I delivered a couple of extra copies to them yesterday. If you want the exclusive stuff, and the exclusive stuff includes our cloth covered version of the book, our dice tray, and until they run out, and they will run out very soon, our trouble dice, you can only get them from us. You can get the standard edition of the game and the GM screen from the retail market. But if you want the exclusive stuff, you gotta come to us.
Matthew:And interestingly, our first order that we've had since I started was from a German customer. It obviously well, I don't know whether they've got the Corebook, whether whether they got it from a tobacco or or something else, And they were coming back for the accessories. Nice. We were able to send them those accessories earlier on this week, which is great. Which
Dave:is brilliant. Yeah. Cool. What else have we got to say?
Matthew:Well, you know what? I was going to say that we'd talk a little bit about the work we're doing. Given given the time we've spent talking already, I think we might talk about most of that next week, but we could just reassure people that we are working on
Dave:That make that's not a bad idea. Yeah.
Matthew:On Gold Country and on I'm doing the solo rules a little bit. I've I've had some ideas about that that we will talk about that next week. Tell you what, if you don't manage to do the Corvio list thing, I'll put a piece together on my thoughts on the solo rules in the early version. Shall we say that?
Dave:Okay. Cool. Cool. That sounds good.
Matthew:And what else? Oh, and I'm about to start layout on the on the campfire tales
Dave:and pictures. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. We've got we've we've got some art coming as well commissioned for those.
Dave:So that's that that they are they are in the pipe. They are moving along. So that's all cool. But yes, we can talk a bit more about that next time because we have because because you spoke for about half an hour about your game at the
Matthew:game Yes. I just realized how excited I was. Yeah. That's a chunk of the time.
Dave:Yeah. I mean I mean, know, playing those games, I mean, every one of them has had some really good moment. And then, you know, kind of the one of the ones that I really remember was when we played with Fiona and her crowd from What Am I Rolling?
Matthew:Oh.
Dave:When when at the end, one of them got shot, and it was like, you kinda died to save the others. And it was just it was emotional. You know? It was
Matthew:I've linked to that video on the front page of our website.
Dave:Excellent.
Matthew:Most of the videos on the Internet are available from our website, but that one's on the front page because Yeah. That was just so good.
Dave:That ending was just pretty. And the players were just great. So it was really cool. But yeah. So
Matthew:you So
Dave:yeah. A result
Matthew:of the
Dave:game that we played a little while ago
Matthew:Wanna talk about sex?
Dave:Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex.
Dave:Sex. Who's having it? How are they having it? And who are they having it with? No.
Dave:No. No. That's the wrong wrong wrong podcast. Sorry. That's the podcast where we make lots of money.
Dave:Not anyway, yeah, sorry. I'll shut up now. Go on.
Matthew:Right. Well, we kind of I kind of explained the concept in my essay, but we just came up with we we wondered, you and I, a few weeks ago when we were playing tales of the odd west, whether we had missed something out of the rules, and and it's about sex. Okay. We admit it. We left something out of the core book.
Matthew:Well, I'm not sure we did. But I pointed out what seemed to be an apparent omission of Dave's when we were playing our last session. And I will say, if this is an actual omission, then I'm laying the blame at Dave's door. My reasoning is this. Dave always wanted Tales of the Old West to be a generational game like Pendragon.
Matthew:I'm not sure I ever agreed to this. Well, I guess I did because I let Dave say it still and even commissioned a family portrait image to back up the idea. But my argument has always been that the West was only the wild West between the end of the civil war and the turn of the century. So we are only looking at forty years. Forty years is, I guess, long enough for three generations to be involved at a pinch.
Matthew:The stories of the West don't necessarily reflect that. Lonesome Dove has a father son relationship, which the father refuses to acknowledge, and there is the occasional grandpa with he, but not many. But Dave insisted. So it's generational, and there was even a family illustration to prove it. With that said, I asked him in the last session, how come it's so goddamn hard to have a baby in the Old West?
Matthew:Some context here. My character, Marion Freeman, was married in a previous adventure, and this was the first turn of the season since that joyous occasion, and I suddenly realized there was no real way to see if our union bore fruit. Both Freeman and his wife, Grunya, were ill actually, so it's unlikely we were conceiving anything. My point is, Pendragon has a role every winter to see if any of your dalliances or marriages have resulted in a baby. In Tales of the Old West, you have four turn of the season roles, which should result in four times as many babies.
Matthew:But in fact, rules as written, your chance of conception is much, much lower. A roll of 74 on this season table, which I remind you is a d 66 table, means a child is born in your family or that of a compadre. So this means a one in thirty six chance of rolling 66, and then another d six to see if a stalk brings a baby or something else, including a really, really fine horse. It's actually a story hook, not a way of determining if efforts to procreate are rewarded. That's the omission.
Matthew:Or is it? The simplest solution is of course that I tell my GM, my character and his wife, Gronje, are trying for a baby and they make a note that in three seasons, there will be an adventure involving a newborn or childbirth. And it's at this point, it's time for a trigger warning. The rest of this discussion is going to be mentioning, among other things, miscarriages, complicated labor, and possible infant mortality. If you don't want to listen to that sort of stuff, skip to the end.
Matthew:The art photographer, Natalie Leonard, created a scene of childbirth in the West as part of a wider series of pictures. I'll put links in the show notes. In the commentary, she says something important. The overriding touted memory of the Wild West is that childbirth was simply dangerous and that many mothers and babies died. What we overlook is that many mothers and babies survived.
Matthew:One of those mothers was Calamity Jane. If players and GM want to create a degree of uncertainty around pregnancy, and from that possibly some story too, we can create some more complex rules. Let's start with conceiving a child. This would be a seasonal role, like your business role, and as such, it can't be pushed. When we discussed it during the session, we quickly decided that the role would be on resilience.
Matthew:All you need is one success to conceive a child. I have to say, we might have been a bit patriarchal in our on the fly idea. I think we quite enjoyed the idea that the man would make a resilience role to conceive the child, and the woman would make a labor role to deliver it. Labor. Get it?
Matthew:The clue's in the name. But thinking about it, I later decided to make some changes to that original idea. The first consideration is that it should be a bit easier to actually get pregnant than on a single roll, which you can't push, testing a relatively undeveloped ability. Given that if you're trying for a baby, that single unpushed roll represents the two of you going at it hammer and tongs for three months. And note well, it takes two to tango.
Matthew:Why should it only be the man who rolls the dice? That led me on to another thought. Marion's assumption is that Gronje wants a child. But is he correct in that assumption? If both partners roll on resilience, or in this case the GM roles for Gronje, then there is the wonderful possibility that the role could be cooperative or opposed.
Matthew:In Gronje's case, if she doesn't want to get pregnant, she might be using Savin and Penny Royal to try and avoid pregnancy. So I suggest both characters make a resilience role. If it's cooperative, then there is a much better chance of success and extra successes count towards bonus dice when the labor role is made. But if it's opposed, then the character that wants a child might have to get more successes than the character who doesn't. And in the case of Marion and Gragnier, that might be secret.
Matthew:So my role for Marion might have got me a couple successes. I might be sure that Gronje is pregnant, but when she isn't showing by the next season, only then might I get an inkling that she doesn't want children. But let's assume that she does and skip forward three seasons and think about the labor role. Unlike conception, this is not a seasonal role and can be pushed. There are, again, two thoughts behind this.
Matthew:The first is that this is a singular event, not a, shall we say, a regularly repeated effort. Secondly, and maybe controversially, this is an opportunity for trouble rather than a binary success or failure. Though the woman is going to be making the role sorry. Though the woman is going to be making the role, she can, of course, be helped. Not just by people with the labor ability, but also by people with doctoring.
Matthew:I'm not getting into the current overmedicalization of childbirth. Remember, the doctoring ability in this game might apply to, yes, to patriarchal university trained doctors, but it also applies to midwives and more traditional childbirth techniques. Even with this help and any bonus dice won in the resilience rolls three seasons before, the labor should be prepared for. The mother should try and build up a good pool of faith to buy off what trouble she can. I did think about a specific childbirth trouble table, but, actually, I think trouble can be rolled on the conflict stroke physical table, and most of the results there can be adapted to the situation.
Matthew:Critical injuries might mean the newborn is left with a permanent disability or potentially the death of the mother. But preparing well for the delivery, finding everything the mother needs to make the success as risk free as possible, might even turn out to be an adventure hook itself.
Dave:So it's not so much about sex, actually, is it? It's more about childbirth and about children. So yeah. I mean, I've got I've got a kind of a couple of things to say. I think, you know, and you do do call this out, like, kind of the content warning.
Dave:Not everybody would want to play, you know, the potential horrors of pregnancy and childbirth and the medical concerns that come with it in the game. So if you don't want to do any of that, that's fine. You know, you can just you can just play that you could just play this way and have baby arrives, the baby doesn't. Pregnant or not pregnant, you know, which is basically what Pendragon did. You know, you could you could have a child die in your winter roles in Pendragon, but it was it, you know, it wasn't something that was, you know, leered over or or or or really delved into.
Dave:It was just, you know, fact of life, I guess, back in the day.
Matthew:Yeah. But also, you know, at that time in the history of gaming, I don't imagine, frankly, that Craig Stafford was thinking that many women would be playing this game.
Dave:There is that too. Yeah.
Matthew:Pregnant women or, you know, women for whom this might actually feel like a real close and personal issue.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. So Well, and and I know, I mean, we we we have some, you know, friends and patrons who who issues around children is a very, very strong red line for them, and it's not something they wanna play, which is absolutely fine, of course, because it can you know, it's in a very it's a very emotive thing. So that that that's fine. But yeah.
Dave:So but I think so, yeah. I I echo your content warning. Absolutely. I think that's cool. One thing I would say, I know I know you blame me for this.
Matthew:I blame you for everything, Dave, of course.
Dave:That's that's true. So I mean, you know, that that that kind of that kind of softens the impact of the blame though, doesn't it? Because everyone just says, well, blames Dave anyways whether it's his fault or not, so you so it probably isn't Dave's fault. In this case, I accept, actually, this was a bit of an oversight. So I think in Woah.
Matthew:Shit. I wasn't expecting that.
Dave:No. I think it was, Dave, because you're absolutely right. I mean, the the chances of of Rowling having a child on the turn of the season tables Yeah. I haven't worked them out, but it's pretty but it's pretty low. And I think kind of that turn of the season table is about having an unwanted child or having an accident in my head.
Dave:Yeah. Rather than the, you know, my wife and I, or my husband and I, if you're playing a woman Mhmm. Actively want to have a baby. And we are going to behave in such a way that is going to improve our chances of having a baby. Back to sex, obviously.
Dave:So so, yeah, I accept I accept the criticism. That was an oversight. Actually, think, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit in the in the session where we had it. We kind of came up with the answer, which you've you've talked about in your essay. And I think it's quite easy easy to do that.
Dave:Yeah. And and I think the way you've described there is is is fine. Absolutely. It's gotta be a joint endeavour. And in fact, if anything, it should be the woman having the greater impact in terms of making dice rolls and stuff than the father, really.
Dave:Because, you know, the father's job is done quite early
Matthew:on. Yeah. But Dave, I know how you like to roll dice.
Dave:So In terms of the biology I wanted to provide
Matthew:you with the opportunity.
Dave:No. No. No. That's absolutely fine. So I think that's all that's all good.
Dave:And, you know, and that is something I want players to or at least, you know, if at least if that's what they the way they wanna play the game, I want players to aspire to having a family. I want players to aspire to building, you know, a new place for them or, you know, or or, know, preserving their place in the world for their family and their and their friends, which is which is great. On the point about generational play, I've got two things to say there. One, yes, whilst the period of what would strictly be called the Wild West probably only lasts forty or fifty years at the most, I think, you know, our heads have been broader than that in terms of okay. We landed the game in 1873, but our heads have been a bit broader, or at least mine has.
Dave:My perspective has been a bit broader than that in terms of the possibilities of this game. So, you know, immediately, with our first supplement, we're going back to 1849.
Matthew:I have a point to make on that, actually.
Dave:No. Okay. No. Well, that's cool.
Matthew:And my point is this Yep. Is that it's not an omission at all. What we cunningly did, Dave, is we cunningly thought, well, there's a lot of information already. There's 300 pages in the core, but we just can't fit room for this. But when we go back in time in our next supplement, which we will call, I don't know, Gold Country or something like that, and that would put us, you know, a good generation earlier, that's when we need to start talking more more explicitly about generational play.
Matthew:You it's coming, actually. I I I said in the essay I blamed you, but only afterwards did I think, well, actually, no. Is he playing four dimensional chess here?
Dave:Oh, yes. Of course. No. But my other point about general generational play was we always had it as an idea. The whole point of the tale of the season is generational play.
Matthew:Which is why I was blaming you for not having how to have kids in a game that you said was always a
Dave:good choice. I'm but I'm now arguing against your cunning plan, which if you told me about before we started recording, we could have made this sound so much better. But no.
Matthew:Yeah. No. I'm sorry to spring that on you now. Having written it down, I did in the verging of it, I thought, all right. You don't make sense of it in gold, don't you?
Matthew:Anyway
Dave:But, yes. So, yeah, accepting that it is a relative compared to something like, you know, Pendragon, it's potentially quite short a short period of generational thing. And it might not be, you know, the the norm might not be that your dead player character is then succeeded by your child. It might be that you're succeeded by a sibling or a close friend or a cousin or something. Because again, just the timings might not work out.
Dave:You know, by the time your player character dies, your child might only be five. So it might not might not work quite so well in that sense. But it does, though, I think work potentially well. Again, like, you know, the coming plan that we always had about the Gold Country being set twenty or twenty five years before the Korberk obviously means you could play characters in the Gold Country who have a family, and then you could play those children in the eighteen seventies in the Korberk. Well done us.
Dave:We haven't just made this up.
Matthew:Well done us for thinking about that. Yeah. And not making a mistake at all.
Dave:Insightful and intelligent game creators who look ahead and see all the prospects and possibilities. They weren't just rushing to try and finish a book and completely forgot that something was missing at all. Never. No. No.
Dave:But that was cool. And I think it's interesting. I think it it does and it obviously brings another thing for a player character to care about. Mhmm. And it brings another thing for a player character to defend or to potentially risk losing.
Dave:But also, like your point about whether, you know, your partner actually wants to have children.
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Who knows what Grainne wants? Maybe she doesn't want to have kids.
Matthew:Now I will say here, don't let me put ideas into your head about what Grainne wants.
Dave:You know, I love This is
Matthew:a generational game, Dave. That's what you keep telling me, Dave. So
Dave:I love the fact that throwaway comments from you, Andy, and Tony have all led to multiple scenarios for me, which is brilliant. Now Andy made the mistake of reminding me he had a sister, And that led to the whole last scenario, which is which is great fun and I really enjoyed it. But, you know, I knew he had a sister, but I'd forgotten all about it until he reminded me and said, oh, I ought to tell tell you a bit about my sister and I'm gonna write her a letter, but I'm not gonna tell her where I am. But tell her that I'm alive. And thought,
Matthew:thanks Sandy.
Dave:That was a that was tactical error on your part. But, no, it was I love it. That's one of things I love
Matthew:story hook, Dave. It was a story Absolutely
Dave:a story hook. Yeah. As is most things in the game in one way or another, Which is what we did intend. So forget about all this little stuff. We did intend some of the good stuff that's come out of the game.
Dave:So that's quite cool. But no, that was good. Nice essay. Well done, mate. I enjoyed that.
Matthew:Cool. Right. Okay. So we've ended up the show with not one, but two. Two ideas about what we're gonna provide in two weeks' time.
Matthew:Yeah. So let's
Dave:It'll be it'll
Matthew:and see what we actually manage to do in
Dave:the hard. It'll be a lucky dip for you listeners, dear listeners. So
Matthew:Yeah. I mean, I guess I guess, ideally, Dave, it would be better, I think you're right, for us to go back to our roots and do choreoes first Yes. Rather than do two vaguely Toto related things.
Dave:No. That's absolutely And that and that's the intention. It'll only be if for whatever reason I can't get it done, but I I be okay, I'm sure.
Matthew:Cool.
Dave:But quite what I'm gonna talk about yet, I don't know. I need to finish reading the book.
Matthew:Yeah. No. That's good. That's good. That's good.
Matthew:That's good.
Dave:One last thing before we sign off. I will say that the one thing I do miss from the book, the the great dark, is is a ribbon. Really wish it had a I really wish it had a ribbon.
Matthew:You, mister, we don't need ribbon, but I'll sit down.
Dave:I know. I've I've got a 180 degree turn from where I was before. And similarly, with dice trays, a 180 degree turn. I'm, you know, I'm I'm a growing human being. I am prepared to to grow and learn and do things differently.
Dave:Unlike
Matthew:actually, I took two gate two two copies of the book, obviously, because I've got two copies of the book, because I wrote it. So I'm allowed to have a deluxe copy for me to play and a standard copy for the table. But it was really handy before the game to think, well, you know, they're gonna want to look at talent. So let's just bookmark the talent chapter
Dave:Yep.
Matthew:And leave that on the table for them. And obviously, the life path chapter, I bookmarked that one as well. So that I was able to say, if you go to the back bookmark, that's what know, that's where you find the life path and so on. And it's really it is really handy. Ribbons are really useful.
Dave:Yeah. I am a convert, and I thought you would appreciate hearing that from my own lips. So after all, don't really like ribbons. That's probably ribbons. They're a waste of time.
Dave:But, no. I wish I had a ribbon for the great dark. But, yes. Cool. Right.
Dave:We've probably talked enough for one day, don't you think?
Matthew:Yeah. I think so. It's been a real pleasure. We you you said before when we when we first made contact to record the show, you said, oh, we haven't actually spoken together for two weeks since we last recorded. And that is know what, Dave?
Matthew:I'll have missed chatting with you. It's always a laugh. It's really good. We should record this, you know, like, regularly every couple of weeks or something like that. Yeah.
Matthew:Just to
Dave:make
Matthew:sure Yeah. We stay in
Dave:That would be a good way of doing it. But it yeah. It was weird because, I mean, over the last, I don't know, probably year, with everything going on, we've we've been all over each other, if that's
Matthew:what more often. Yeah.
Dave:Yeah. All the time, one way or the other. But, yeah, thought this last two weeks, no no messages on our on our, you know, on our effect chat thing. No no emails. No no rude I texts.
Dave:What's going on? Right.
Matthew:Well Cool. Don't worry. I will be sending you not just rude texts, but also threatening emails for the
Dave:next couple
Matthew:of weeks.
Dave:That's what
Matthew:I'm remind you that I'm here. Cool. Well In the meantime, though, it's goodbye from me.
Dave:And it's goodbye from him.
Matthew:And may the icons bless your adventures.
Dave:You have been listening to the effect podcast presented by Fiction Suit and the RPG gods. Music stars on a black sea