Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
Capybaras Don't Care, And Neither Should Your Wallet When looking at Dnd, MTG and Rodents of an Unusual Size
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We dive deep into the world of brand loyalty and how it affects our gaming choices, from trading card games to tabletop RPGs, questioning why we remain loyal to companies with questionable ethics.
• The ethics of emergency pizza delivery for wildfire evacuees and the problems with tip-based compensation
• Richard's unexpected capybara encounter at High Park and celebrating post-graduation achievements
• Why Magic: The Gathering's "Universes Beyond" sets represent corporate greed over gameplay design
• How Flesh and Blood cards offer a more ethically-produced alternative to Magic but struggle against established IP
• The challenge of convincing D&D players to try Daggerheart despite its improved game mechanics
• Discussion of why Monster Sanctuary can't compete with Pokémon despite offering better gameplay
• Random questions about being isekai'd into magical worlds and using Pokémon as lease negotiators
Support indie game developers and try games like Sea of Stars, Expedition 33, and Monster Sanctuary. Check out Daggerheart's free YouTube videos and starter kit to experience a more ethically-designed TTRPG.
Follow all things Richard and Karl, and check out "The Minuet of Sorcery"
https://linktr.ee/rajkevis
Testing, testing. This is Richard Arthur John Keebus. I reporting in for Deep Space and Dragons.
Speaker 2:And this is the captain of the ship going through Deep Space with the dragons Carl.
Speaker 1:Nice. I love the joke that it's like I have four names and you have one. I considered when I was like updating our website portfolio, to go Carl anonymous as your name.
Speaker 2:No, I mean I know I don't, uh, we don't try to get political or or social, social kind of stuff like that. But I mean I've read a book and it's called stuff White people like.
Speaker 1:I've referenced this. I think we have went through an episode on this actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, one of the things in this book is uh, having multiple middle names yeah so I mean, I'm not, I'm not. I'll leave it up to our audience to to assume what our ethnic identities are. Uh, given our geolocation, that they may or may not have discovered.
Speaker 1:Uh, and various pictures that are easy to find of of a certain uh, raj kivas see, that's kind of funny because, like for like branding and tagging, I get the occasional uber for raj and just kind of roll with it. I don't hate it and like it was a go-to at the law firm I interned at which is funny, raj, and I'm like I don't hate it and it was a side effect of my choices. I don't really like my acronym KDAP oh, you've given them so much data now. Oh, that was a mistake.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying Raj, at least is a word, but KDAP no one's ever gonna rajivus is like an interesting way that plays out.
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't actually hate that. I think I like that better than my actual last name. My last name is a typo and I haven't figured out like a solution, like I think I need to like put an accent or something or like an umlaut, like there's some kind of punctuation thing I can do to fix this right, because a lot of people will say kevis to the point where when I was filing my grad work, it had me like do an audio recording of the pronunciation.
Speaker 1:My name, I'm like key vas, k-e-y-v-a-s. Yes, you can do this, I believe in you. I'm like they're gonna get it wrong. I'm gonna get raj kevis. It'll hurt. I'm going to get Raj Kevis.
Speaker 2:It'll hurt. That's a pretty good segue to what's New With you, what's New With Me? Okay, all right, so super mini movie review. I'm giving you exactly one minute and I have a timer going. My fiance and I went and saw the live-action Lilo and Stitch.
Speaker 1:That could be this entire episode. I have so many thoughts on that, oh no.
Speaker 2:Well, my super mini review, keep it under a minute. Lilo and Stitch the original didn't have very much magic or crazy technology, so it was already somewhat more grounded than the other animated movies that's ironic transition.
Speaker 1:It transitioned into a more grounded and emotional, heartfelt movie as live action and I ended up liking it more than the original so my like 30 seconds, because good flash pick is there's one thing to do near the ending of it which shows like an anemic shift in the entire somology of the movie.
Speaker 1:That ruined it for me, because it was like they basically entrust her to the state at the end, instead of the idea that you would give up your college to take care of your family for years.
Speaker 1:And it's like a weird societal shift to be like, no, her older sister shouldn't give up her dreams to take care of your family for years. And it's like a weird societal shift to be like, no, her older sister shouldn't give up her dreams to take care of her sister. I'm like that's an interesting moral, but was not the moral presented originally. And it's like kind of like a weird societal shift in a way, to be like, oh, if my brother didn't go to college to take care of me, which is kind of what happened. That's like people sacrificing to like their personal thing for the value of family. Now it's like, no, no, this can be the state's problem and she should go off and live her life because she shouldn't be beholden to family. And I'm like I don't know the views on family and culture I could, like I said, I could do a full two hours on just that shift.
Speaker 2:But stitch is also my favorite disney princess uh, my fiance's review of of lulu and stitch live action was seven out of ten.
Speaker 1:Uh, there wasn't enough, elvis correct, like every part of that's correct. It's one of those things where it's like the movie gained nothing for being in live action. But here's my hot take as someone who went through the entire Disney original Stitch show and the unrelated Stitch anime. Stitch is a concept of literally an alien, murdering bioweapon, forearm, bioweapon, dual gun wielder who crash lands in a relatively chill place. It's basically the plot of Full Metal Panic, but with Stitch. Yeah, okay, chill place. It's basically the plot of full metal panic, but with stitch. Okay, because it's like he's hyper intelligent, but it's also a doofus. And there's just there is moments in the original I love so much where it's like what do you mean? You had to change the heart, had to change the heart, don't know what to tell you. All right, you're free to go. You're free to go. So, yeah, you did keep it within the time limit, good job. We will not dwell on stitch too much, uh, but does beg the question of why disney never made a smash bros maybe they will, who knows?
Speaker 1:I think it's too late now, although I have a full unrelated rant about how fighting games are good based on their one-player mode, but no one's figured that out yet, because it's the one-player mode that trains people to play the two-player, and a fighting game of a good one-player mode will do better than a fighting game of a good two-player mode, which is deeply ironic.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then I have a second mini-movie review.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't give you less time. Go, this one will be under a minute as well. My fiance and I have been re-watching all of the Final Destination movies. The one we most recently re-watched was number three, and I was worried that it was going to start to go towards being campy, because I've never seen it before and because that's just the way those genre goes while the 2006 CGI they used very sparingly, but it was a little bit distracting because it's so bad.
Speaker 2:I found that the movie took itself very seriously. It was a little bit distracting because it's so bad. I found that the movie took itself very seriously but didn't really feel like it felt like someone else was trying to cash in on the idea rather than continuing the story. So overall decent movie, but it just felt disjointed from the other two.
Speaker 1:So it's like I think I've said it before it's just so hard to land the third movie in a trilogy.
Speaker 2:Hmm, Well, I mean they made references to the other two movies, but one of the things that held it back from feeling like it was part of the same story was no recurring characters. One of the things that held it back from feeling like it was part of the same story was no recurring characters.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting for something like Final Destination because it's like I don't think it needs recurring characters conceptually.
Speaker 2:It doesn't, but that really helped tie the first two together. And there's this mortician that he seems to have some knowledge about death and what's actually going on, and he appeared in the first two movies to kind of help explain the exposition and whatnot, and he just wasn't in the third movie. And so then they had to add a different element to help with the exposition and whatnot, and he just wasn't in the third movie. And so then they had to add a different element to help with the exposition, which again pushed it further away from feeling like it was a genuine continuation of the story.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's fair. It's one of those things where it's like despite taking a full, like six months course in horror. It's one of those things where it's like despite taking a full, like six months course in horror, it's like I never really try and think of it as more than like I find that's a genre that just works best to standalone movies. Also, we never actually mentioned ghostbusters in our reboot quill episode and that's been drilling in the back of my brain for a while because I did it twice. That is rice like I think they reboot quilled it three times.
Speaker 1:But anywho, I mentioned that because, I'm sure destination it's like was it a reboot quill then?
Speaker 2:uh, no, it was very like. Like I said, they did reference the other movie, they just didn't bring back any other characters and the exposition and style and tone were all just slightly different, which just made it feel like someone was just either cashing in on the idea or they had a similar idea and the studio wouldn't green light it unless it was part of a franchise yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1:That's rough, the idea where it's like, yeah, your movie's good, but I think it'd be better as a star wars miniseries yeah, yeah, you know that's like that's the studio interference, I think I don't know if there's any history there, but I would love to know, like the backstory, of how many movies are like scripts for unrelated movies that get established IP slapped on it. Like I'm like you, gotta wonder if something like Air Bud 6 Super Pups had anything to do with Air Bud. Just like, hey, I got an idea for this movie.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then the last thing that's new with me is actually I don't know if ethical question is the right phrase.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is already getting spicy. You have my attention.
Speaker 2:So I work at a redacted pizza place. I mean, I'm sure by now I have exposed where I work and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like honestly, if they split us like 200 bucks. We'd shout them out as a sponsor every episode, and by us I mean me specifically, because I want a new board game, but that's unrelated.
Speaker 2:But anyways, saskatchewan and I mean all of Canada, I mean all over the world actually, really, but there seems to be a significant number of wildfires throughout Canada. I mean all over the world actually, really, but there seems to be a significant number of wildfires throughout Canada, and Saskatchewan has already had several hundred this year alone.
Speaker 1:Climate change. Oh sorry, that was weird.
Speaker 2:But unfortunately sometimes people have to evacuate and I guess I don't know for sure if Red Cross has an actual government contract. Well before you ask me a really specific ethical question.
Speaker 1:I want to go on the record to know that if Saskatoon burned down and I knew that there was pre-made pizzas you were about to put in the oven, I would stand on people's charred ashes to get a free pizza. So my ethics may not be trusted, but please continue.
Speaker 2:But so so. Red Cross is the organization that helps find accommodations for evacuees and provides food and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to my knowledge, Red Cross is just good. So let's see where you're going with this yeah, red Cross is just good.
Speaker 2:They let's see where you're going with this. Yeah, red Cross is just good. They do lots of good in the world. But they call my workplace and they're like yeah, we had a bunch of evacuees come to this hotel and they came in last night and we want to serve them lunch. Do you have the capacity to make 60 large pizzas like six zero and get that delivered within an hour and a half?
Speaker 1:I'd say, if we went across a couple of stores, probably, actually you probably could do it.
Speaker 2:We did it. I went back, checked to make sure we had dough, got the dough guys to make extra dough, and then we just, we just powered through it and it might have been like an hour and 35 minutes, but we go and we successfully deliver these pizzas to the evacuees. So that part is a success story for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But on the logistical end it was a difficult hour and a half trying to deal with other orders while trying to make this big order, make sure everything gets out there on time and whatnot. And they come in and they pay and we gave them a really good deal because it's for evacuees and we don't want to be generous, but we obviously can't just give away 60 large pizzas without any prior authorization or notice. Yeah, I agree, it's a good deal, yeah. And then they come in and they pay and they say that they can't tip the driver because it's a corporate car.
Speaker 1:That's fair.
Speaker 2:Well, that's kind of my ethical question is like the I want to be a part of doing good for these evacuees. That's kind of my ethical question is like the I want to be a part of doing good for these evacuees. I don't want to disparage Red Cross, but like they put us in a rather difficult situation and they were unable to express appreciation for the. You're not going to like my answer, even like a dollar.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to put this in very simple terms. You're not going to like my answer to that, even like a dollar, so I'm going to put this in very simple terms. You're sitting down. Are you prepared for this, mm-hmm, why wouldn't you then take 40 bucks out of the till and give it to the driver for their?
Speaker 2:hard work we did Well, not 40 bucks. I gave him an extra 10 bucks.
Speaker 1:But the reason I say that is like so for charities, right, red cross is built on government-based funding, which means every penny they spend needs to be accounted for on a receipt, which means you can receipt food orders from charity. You can't receipt tips. They literally couldn't with their funding, because what's to stop you from giving your buddy that charity money for tipping you a pizza and giving them a large tip so they could not do it? That's just how charity funding works. Ironically, a photo of the receipt.
Speaker 1:But we are not allowed to pay tips with the club budget because we then couldn't prove it was being used for the club.
Speaker 1:Ah, yeah, okay, so I'm saying that yeah, if you're, the thing I was going to got you on is a tip based economy is bullshit and everyone should just pay their drivers and pay their staff. And the idea of tips was literally used as a racial control method so people could give more money to white servers in the states and the rest of the world laughs in our tip based culture because it's just insane for large, profitable corporations to not pay living wages to their full-time staff but expect them to act like staff. So it's like. I fundamentally disagree with tip-based jobs being a thing and Uber shouldn't exist, like legally speaking. I don't even know how you got the ability to be like, hey, we can just undercut drivers by not actually having any kind of quality control on our service. I have a full other rant about Airbnbs and how you skirt around housing codes and those just shouldn't have been legal in the first place because you should have had to have every Airbnb and be inspected by your city. But ethically, speaking like yeah, they couldn't.
Speaker 1:That's the actual fact of the matter. So it's not that they didn't want to. They literally couldn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, the Red Cross itself couldn't, and I suppose it is somewhat unfair to expect the individual to have any capacity to tip.
Speaker 1:Odds are the individual was not being paid above minimum wage, if they were being paid at all. So it's like the person picking up your pizza makes less money than your delivery driver. So that's my ethical thing. It's like should they have given a tip to the driver? No one should give a tip to everyone. We should just stop now the idea that you can privatize and make it that the rich get to choose how much service workers are worth on an interaction by interaction basis.
Speaker 1:Just think about that for a second. That this red cross employee got framed, even for a second, as someone who is delivering pizzas to displaced people could be ethically dubious because they didn't give the delivery driver extra funds for working hard. And you think where the onus on that should actually be. And you did the right thing here. I was so prepared to call you out and be like hey, you reward the delivery driver for working hard because you guys are doing the right thing and probably can get a tax deduction on the giveaway. There's a very good chance you can take that stub and be like hey, I gave this discount to them, so as a tax deduction I'm going to deduct the discount I gave to the red cross because it was charity and then end up exactly where you were before.
Speaker 1:So that's my libertarian rant of the day, slash socialist rant of the day depending, because, ironically, those opposite philosophies both agree that tips shouldn't exist, because hyper capitalism is you pay the labor for the work and hyper socialism is people shouldn't have to. You know, basic survival, food, shelter should be a human right, and both these things have reached the conclusion that some asshole profits if you have private citizens just pay premium for the same product based on their individual emotional whims by making it a guilt trip. Also, we love to talk about equality in society and people get better tips if they're physically more attractive and if they're disfigured, differently abled or disadvantaged, they'll just get less money working the same job. But it is somehow a legal system. I hate tips. Can you tell? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:I just Then. I also. It's like, aside from the virtual signaling, I suppose you might call it even there's not much of an incentive for us to help Red Cross out in that situation again where they put us in like we gave them a really good deal.
Speaker 1:We actually managed to do 60 pizzas, you saved live. Like, the incentive is pretty solid. Is these people in an emergency situation got food and your reputation gets improved? Like, also, you should sleep better at night. Like there, you could just do a good thing. You're allowed to do that. You're allowed to do that, fair enough. Also, well, I mean a hot take too. An even hotter take.
Speaker 1:If more was done to fight climate change in the first place, when scientists all agreed on this unilaterally 60 years ago, then you wouldn't have to make panic pizza for people displaced by fires like this should be. Like oh, this is a rare circumstance that happens on an odd occasion once in 10 years. I will just suck it up and suffer slightly for the good of humanity. And I don't think that giving your driver a tip would really have changed the mild, slash, severe inconvenience that that many ores at once is, although, to look at it, incentive-wise too, and this is going to sound kind of sassy about it.
Speaker 1:So when you do your initial business transaction with a potential business partner, you give them an exceptional deal. Like my ghost rating rates are lower than they normally be right now Because that positivity and word of mouth gets you more deals. I'm going to be mean here 100 guaranteed pizza sales at a discount is still more income than 20 unguaranteed sales Fair. So unless you gave them such a discount that by not selling 100 pizzas you would have made, unless it inconvenienced your sales to the point where you actually made less money than you normally would have taking that deal, the incentive is the bulk pricing. The idea that a person could call you up and order 100 pizzas is good because you make money on those 100 pizzas and I feel, I have faith that you and your boss did the math here to make sure that those hundred pizzas didn't cost you more money than it took to make them in staff labor and expenses.
Speaker 2:And in fact you had an above average profitable day as a result. My boss doesn't even know about that 60 pizza order. You know he listens to our podcast, right he might? I mean his nickname is Angry Bird, so we'll see how mad he is tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Because, yeah, that's my argument is, what happens is if they order you 60 pizzas every week, that's 60 pizzas guaranteed sales and you still make money.
Speaker 2:So that's your incentive. I just hope that they can be more organized so that it's less of an inconvenience for everyone. Yeah, I'm sorry that they got inconvenienced by that fire, so that it's less of an inconvenience for everyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry that they got inconvenienced by that fire. No, no, no. I suspect that in my city which I probably already name-dropped, but it's redacted now because I said so yeah, hobbiton I suspect that in the city of Hobbiton we are the only store that would have been able to send out 60 pizzas within an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:Well, I know that's not true because I also lived in Hobbiton and worked at a store that could have sent out 60 pizzas in an hour.
Speaker 2:And you would have had enough dough for the day. Oh, absolutely we did school lunches. Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so check your privilege. Punk All right All right, all right, it's so rare for me to like specifically be like actually you're wrong because I've done it before. That doesn't happen often.
Speaker 2:I do wonder how many places would have, or perhaps even did turn them down because they just couldn't handle that volume.
Speaker 1:though None of them, I think, because, like working in food service with your margins so short, like I was kind of saying earlier, most discounts are calculated that the discount is to offset the potential loss of business because you are slammed at full capacity but you'll still get money, like Right.
Speaker 1:The idea is that, oh, you made 60 sales, depending when they made that call. It's not like you turned down 60 sales at full price to get 60 sales at reduced. You still managed to handle your normal workload. So I don't think any pizzeria wouldn't try, because that's at some places that's like between the hours of noon and four, more sales than you would have got all day. That's true. So, like, from an ethics point of view, yes, help out the red cross. From an unethics point of view, bulk orders are awesome because once you actually get the momentum going and you're just doing the same thing a hundred times, those are the best orders. What sucks is the I want sauce on half feta, on the other half double toasted crust and then fold it into a calzone and put frosting on.
Speaker 2:Like, the worst orders are the ones where they order, like you know, 40 small pizzas and they're all different and they have all these special things, and then they want you to like label every single box with a name. Yep. It's like like, oh, that's such a hassle, yeah so, but again it does generate that word of mouth. That is, you know, we are actually capable of taking on that volume and those extra special requests yeah.
Speaker 1:So my rationale when I was a kitchen manager and I got an order like that would have been hey guys, we've got a big one coming up and then we make a bunch of these pizzas Someone fucks up to Massimilar. I give everyone a free pizza for lunch. I tell my boss. Hey, I got 60 pizzas went through. Pretty sick, huh. So I'm going to stay late and make more dough. I'd be like, alright, sweet.
Speaker 2:I did have to make more dough, but I did not have to stay late, luckily, nice.
Speaker 1:But yeah, TLDR on that one is.
Speaker 2:Richard hates tips.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I really, really do. There was no ethical quandary, None whatsoever.
Speaker 1:It was just a business transaction. Let's shift it a bit. Let's say I was calling and I was letting pipe industry the specialist in putting lead in pipes and I called you and I needed 60 pizzas for a corporate dinner because we had to stay late to add more lead into the new pipe system. Would you have turned down my 60 pizza order because we are the lead pipe company? No, and our discount would have been close. You probably still would be like hey, can I get a bit of a discount in there because I'm ordering 60 pizzas at once oh no, I, like I said, I gave them a really good deal.
Speaker 2:I, I, I think we probably sold them pretty. I don't know if it was at cost, but it definitely. Uh, we gave them a really good deal.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I put like 20 minutes bitching about tips and like I can't stress enough. It's not about whether or not I think entry level workers should get paid more money. It's that they should be paid consistent money and they shouldn't be rolling dice to pay their rent. And tips are not being used to enrich employees. They're being used to keep them below the poverty line. We literally have laws in place that let you pay people below minimum wage if they make tips, and if they don't make enough in tips, they get boasted up to minimum wage.
Speaker 2:Is that a Canadian law?
Speaker 1:Oh, it was in Alberta, for sure, and Denny's is a server. They give you a minimum. You go below minimum wage, but if your tips don't make it to minimum wage, they have to pay you the difference, right? Yeah, that was specifically. I'm name dropping them. This was a denny's I had an interview for in calgary, alberta, specifically was explaining that you get below minimum wage, but your tips will get you above it most nights. Hmm, I'm going to call them out. Come at me, denny's. You can't sue me. I was in the room. I didn't sign an agreement. Maybe they don't do it anymore. If so, kudos, I'll put that disclaimer Also. We're a comedy podcast and no one should be suing us or taking us too seriously.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean you almost working at denny's sounds like old news. We should. We should hear some new news from from you there, richard so I hate tips.
Speaker 1:The worst part is I still have to give them right, like I can't be the only person who doesn't tip to better society, and that's the problem, right, like I can't just not give tips. So on Thursday, me and some of my classmates now graduated, but we have our actual ceremony next week. Decide to do a meetup Because the GTA is huge. The most convenient location to meet up was High Park in downtown Toronto. Have you been to High Park?
Speaker 2:Okay, sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know specifically that I've been there.
Speaker 1:So we go to High Park, which is it's a park and they have like a foresty, farm-style free zoo area in it. It's like a nice park A free zoo. Yeah, you just, they're just animals, you just walk by and see them.
Speaker 2:Oh, like a petting zoo or like exotic animals like monkeys and stuff.
Speaker 1:So Carl guess like exotic animals, like monkeys and stuff. So carl guess my three favorite animals.
Speaker 2:Uh, I want to see how close you get first well, I feel like fox has got to be on the list not top three, but pretty close, like that big top five okay, okay, um capo bears so perfect. We can stop the game right there.
Speaker 1:So it's near my birthday and we're in Hyde Park doing this meetup, right, and one of my friends goes hey want to check out the zoo, and I'm like what? There's just a free zoo here. That's crazy. Much like you yourself had that reaction. And there's freaking Capybaras. You see, it wasn't like it was a birthday surprise or an elaborate thing. Our meetup just happened to fall around that time. We went from brunch from a really decent restaurant like actually a really good brunch place. I was shocked because usually touristy type places like so this brunch place was in the center of this park, right and I was concerned.
Speaker 1:It'd be like the buffet in the center of wonderland, where it'd just be terrible.
Speaker 2:But it's there, so might as well buffet in the center of wonderland, where it'd just be terrible but it's there, so might as well.
Speaker 1:so my standards are on the floor, so I order my like omelet and toast and things. I'm like this is really good. I wasn't expecting this to be good, I thought this would be novel. So, like I eat my breakfast, we do like like a couple photos, we chat, we cake ketchup, we like want to go for a walk for the zoo and I'm just like I've been on an ascending Capybara memes trend since the Capybara showed up in World Trigger for the first time. Like I am super pro Capybara.
Speaker 1:And I'm just like oh my God, For my birthday, I was given the privilege of watching these capybara eat, and I did not expect this and it wasn't intentional. I'm just having the best day. So like there's some goats and sheeps and like buffalo, buffalo, buffalo-looking things.
Speaker 1:That is the plural of buffalo, yeah, the buffalo, buffalo buffalo buffalo, but it was probably actually a bison or a fuzzy sheep or something. It was not a capybara item. So like we go through, we walk through, we go through the kids play area, we have our day. I a friend of mine gives me a lift back and it was like such a treat on a random thursday to go to the park, hang out with some friends. I don't see that often and see copybaras, so that's like sure I could talk about my writing endeavors and my research project and things where it's like, okay, it's kind of funny to think about.
Speaker 1:So I'm negative one week graduated with my degree and I guess I'm a professional writer because my income's completely being driven from my writing, researching, researching and editing skills right now. So that's kind of wild. It's something like 1% of writers make a living on their writing. I'm like, huh, I guess I win. So like I get my final grades and I got honors, but I didn't get high honors and I'm being kind of salty about it.
Speaker 1:One of my friends got higher grades and I'm like, yeah, but I got a writing job, so I guess I win. Like I don't really know if there's a better thing than, hey, I got high honors in this creative writing program, like I got a book deal. I think I just win. Like I think I won, I think so. Like it's like oh yeah, I went to school to be a paleontologist and now I'm getting paid to go on a dig. That's just a win. And, honestly, in most fields it doesn't happen that often Most people end up adjacent to what they went to school for. Like if you went to school as a music teacher, you'd probably end up being a teacher, or like faculty somewhere.
Speaker 2:That is faculty, true, yeah, I mean you did the program that I was in, uh, did have a minor in a secondary teaching area because, uh, then you're more hireable and you would just end up also teaching the other subject. I wanted mine to be chemistry, uh, but I wasn't quick enough to sign up for the chemistry courses, so I ended up having to take English, but then my degree didn't go through. I didn't follow through, so that's.
Speaker 1:I mean to be fair, you did better than my first attempt at school where my school went bankrupt allegedly. Like to be fair, I'm my second try at school, so like I haven't actually beat you yet, uh. But yeah, like it's kind of funny because a lot of people like I gotta have school and I'm relaxing like nope, gotta have school, send out 100 job applications that day, yeah, but yeah, so that's also I have. That deadly thing of my work is almost all remote, asynchronous work, which means like I even said this when I had like an interview with a client recently where I'm like I want to get ahead of this. And there's a version of myself where I get more material done wednesday, thursday. But there's also an equally likely version of reality where an hour before a meeting, you see two files appear in the minbox.
Speaker 2:I like the brutal honesty.
Speaker 1:I even tell people in interviews when they give the what's your Weakness? I'm like I have ADHD, which means when I focus and lock in, I produce a truly insane amount of work. I don't really get to choose when that is. It's more like it comes in a window, like you'll get it before your deadline, but I cannot guarantee when you'll get it before your deadline. I'm like there's a very real chance I work late one day and then slack the next day to balance off the hours. Never give you a timesheet and you just magically receive the thing you wanted. I don't control these things. It's the wills of the universe. So I guess that's like the big new ones with me. Is that like grad stuff coming up? But Capybara, like I can't stress enough. I saw Capybaras and there's just not a thing on my to-do list this year. They're not an edible you just expect to see next to the goats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I'm a little bit surprised. There are definitely other large parks that have zoos in them, but I didn't realize there would be any free zoos.
Speaker 1:Right Like the version of wanting to go look at the capybaras was just not a thing that occurred to me could be possible. It was truly magical. It looked at me and didn't care, because copy Baras don't give a fuck.
Speaker 2:That's our one F-bomb for the episode.
Speaker 1:Worth it? Totally worth it. Oh, and I guess I've been making hard eyes at the new Daggerheart game. So let's go into this week's topic of card games and TTRPGs. We're going to kind of do like sort of a weird what's new with you to see how this kind of freeforms. So I've been chatting with one of my friends, friend of the podcast who's like really invested in the Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy crossover set. Okay, several of his friends are in like GPs right now, one of them, I think, like top aided at a big event. So I've been getting like random.
Speaker 2:I haven't been, I'm not. I guess I'm not invested in the Final Fantasy set because I'm annoyed about the licensing issues causing the packs to be more expensive and also not transferring digitally, because naturally Square Enix, enix, nintendo, whatever wouldn't give digital licensing rights. So there's the same card but it's actually a unique card if you're playing digitally yeah, there's a lot of things it's like.
Speaker 1:So when they decide to be super smash cards instead and I was having a chat with my friend of mine about it where it's like recent magic sets that haven't been their universes beyond, they've been like pushing the scope of what magic is for the last few years because they had like cyberpunk kamigawa, like recent magic sets that haven't been their universe beyond.
Speaker 1:They've been like pushing the scope of what magic is for the last few years because they had like cyberpunk, kamigawa, their humblewood, mice and med redwall one, their streets of new cabara, gangster hippopotamus, and it's like they've been trying to like just one thing that I've heard people say about a lot of the newer sets are they call them hat sets.
Speaker 2:So there was the detective set, where they put on detective caps. So there literally is a card called detective cap that equips two detectives for less than other creatures and then, like the Outlaws of Thunder Junction, they just put a cowboy hat on all the characters. The Aether Drift set they just put helmets on all the characters.
Speaker 2:That's so funny, that's so literal so a lot of these sets the bloom borough, which is the kind of red wall set people really liked because it had a lot of that classical magic, the gathering flavor, so they don't consider that one to be a hat set specifically. But any of the non-universals beyond, non-universals beyond sets have been decried because it's not. People don't feel like it's magic because they're trying to expand their scope but they're not actually putting effort into creating the setting.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of my conspiracy theory, right? Is they're trying to flood it with a bunch of cards that would make sense to be played in these Universe Beyond sets that aren't from them. So it's like they do Cyberpunk Kampunk kamigawa, right? This is a straight conspiracy theory. So they do cyberpunk kamigawa, right, and they release it with warhammer, and they release it with doctor who, and then suddenly it's not so insane.
Speaker 1:So like let's take. Let's take cowboy set and let's take gangster set right. So in file fantasy we got a character riding a motorbike with a greatsword and the set's up to set right. So in Final Fantasy we got a character riding a motor bike with a greatsword and the set's up to that we put in different motorbikes, different greatswords, different summons.
Speaker 1:So it's like, okay, we prime people on sagas, we prime people on animal races, we prime people that we can have Midgar make sense when paired with these non-universe beyond cards. And I have this whole rant about how the sets feel flaky because they're not blocks, they're just sets, so you don't actually give people a year to sit with them. You don't give out a book, so 1 in 10,000 players will read the book and then tell the lore to other players at tournaments until it diffuses through the atmosphere. There was a time where where it's like, okay, ravnica is a year straight of just ravnica. We're going to passively and actively absorb what these characters are and what's going on right when you go through, this week is mice and this week is cowboys. There's no passive diffusion of information, you're just getting bombarded with crap and it's.
Speaker 1:There's a video I was watching that Professor Dungeon Master did the other day, where it's like Hasbro isn't a game company anymore, they're an IP company. They make their money licensing, selling, remixing, using and building money off IP. After all, monopoly Go made them infinity billion dollars, right. And it's like, yeah, they're obviously going to keep doing universes beyond file fantasy, before it's even lunch has made them infinity trillion dollars. That's, that's true. Lord of the rings made them so much money. They made it on the eight o'clock the evening news.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, uh, so I don't remember which episode it was, but, um, I don't remember which episode it was. Our fans, dude. They're addicted to this stuff. There was a random question what's something that you would outlaw? Tips that people do. I don't remember exactly how it was phrased, but people know that Universes Beyond is eroding the base of what Magic the Gathering is, but they still buy it.
Speaker 1:I think I was ranting probably about Gachapon games, eroding the game market, where it's like they still buy it.
Speaker 2:And if I could like tell people it's like no, you need to speak with your wallet and stop buying into the universes beyond so that they actually refocus on the core of the game, which I mean hopefully ultimately may actually be unsuccessful, because, well, how do they reach a new audience?
Speaker 1:Well, here's what's kind of funny about that. My brother kind of pulled this completely into a different zoomed out perception the other day. That kind of stuck with me a bit. Okay, so magic has scalpers and cash value, right. And the scalpers are making things spiking sales, making things look wildly more successful than they are, so they can dish them back out to create FOMO, right. If things look wildly more successful than they are, so they can dish them back out to create fomo right. If you ban the scalpers completely, that hits a big chunk of the problem. If scalping, if literally just buying from a distributor and reselling, if a markup is just illegal, a lot of industries benefit greatly because they're just assholes, right.
Speaker 2:They're like, ah, nerds want their nerd crack, so we're just going to middleman the out of this well, I mean, that does bring up an interesting thing about wizards of the coast, when they took out the msrp manager's suggested retail price, uh, and so then? Uh, you know, nobody knows how much they're supposed to be sold for, so they just sell them for whatever they think it's worth or whatever.
Speaker 1:If wizards of the Coast was an ethical company, with modern technology, you would just buy the magic cards from them, right, like what you do is you'd mark it up where it's like your website is the same as the local friendly game store, so you can either go to your local friendly game store or buy from them and just cut the middleman out of this shit. But I digress. Actually, it's kind of where I wanted to go with this episode to begin with, which is fun. So when I had some funds a while back, I got into flesh and blood cards for a while, partly because I rolled up and I'm like, hey, can I have a bunch of free cards for my club? And they're like here, have free cards for your club.
Speaker 2:Right right, you did tell me that trying to sell my collection, and including the commons, is probably actually going to lower the overall value of the of the of the collection because store game stores have so much bulk garbage cards donate it to schools. That's the ethical thing to do oh, I could donate it to the refugees so they have something to do in their hotel rooms.
Speaker 1:Like, honestly, yeah. So on the topic of brand loyalty so the Final Fantasy Magic brand loyalty is some nonsense. I was chatting with my friend about it. Final Fantasy already has a card game. They've had several over their runtime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ok, so it's like their IP did not need a card game to play their IP. In fact, shoving all of Final Fantasy into one set is vomit-inducing Because it's like, yeah, every creature has to be a legendary creature to put in as many references per square foot as possible and there isn't enough space to do any of the concepts. Really that much justice Makes sense. Like there's a card that's literally instant speed command menu Do you want to attack, defend item or something? And they have. Like there's summon creatures that are a creature slash saga that stay in play for three turns and disappear and do an effect and each turn gets a different saga effect on it. So it's like they have cool concepts, but it's weird because it's like an actual Final Fantasy card game, which yet again, not only has there been several, there's also been several in-game Final Fantasy card games that exist. Like Final Fantasy 7 just has a fully fleshed-out remake, just has a fully fleshed-out card game. They could just sell.
Speaker 2:Well, that comes back to why they wouldn't want to sell the digital rights to Magic to be able to license the game through the Arena client. But that's a tangent from what you're going on here.
Speaker 1:Kind of, but kind of relates to the bigger problem, which is my main thing I wanted to talk about today unjust intellectual property loyalty you sheeple. So it's like let's take flesh and blood cards. They're from new zealand, they don't have a digital client because they did not want digital monetized micro gambling nonsense, right, you can't buy a digital playmat.
Speaker 1:You can't give them money for cards that already exist because, let's be honest, you make physical cards, a digital playmat. You can't give them money for cards that already exist because, let's be honest, you make physical cards, you design them and you put them on your app once you got your pipeline set up. It's just free money, right? Because you're designing for two things simultaneously they support their stores, they send out promos, they really care about their meta of their game, like they have a system. So the way they have a band list for that game is you have your hero, your commander for your card game, right?
Speaker 1:And the cards will either be generic cards that can be used by anybody, weapon cards that can be used by anyone with the right weapon, or hero-specific cards. When that hero wins tournaments, they get legendary points based on how many of these this hero top 8s in big events. Okay, when they get over a thousand legendary points, they move from standard to extended. So what this does in practice is say I'm running Dash, the gunner, cyberpunk, steampunk gunner character, right, if Dash is doing too well in the meta, it'll win a bunch of tournaments and then rotate out. Then dash's cards can be used by the other mechanist heroes or the other gun users, but their dash specific cards are gone and their hero ability is gone. Their specific armor is gone, and what that does in practice is when decks are too unbalanced and win a whole bunch, they leave, and then your cards. You have to rebuild a new deck that's less strong but it doesn't become invaluable, or you have to play in the other format.
Speaker 2:That is something I was actually going to ask about in this podcast. Here is magic just has a time frame. It's like everything within everything within the past, like five years, I think, is what? No, maybe not. Maybe that was just for that foundation set. That is five years, but but they have a specific timeframe where it's like these cards are legal and standard and they just rotates over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they've never, made modern less modern. So modern now can be old enough to vote, but modern, so modern now can be old enough to vote.
Speaker 2:But then so Flesh and Blood, they rotate cards out of standard, like you say, just actually based on tournament performance. I don't expect you to know how the standard format for Lorkana or if there even is any other formats for Lorkana at this point, but I'm a little bit curious about if, if you know anything about how these formats are created for other trading current games like like pokemon, as well as pokemon I'm gonna be real bitchy about it.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is fun. You set me up to be real salty and real toxic and real bitchy. Okay, all right. So we'll start with Namco Bandai cards, which is Digimon, one Piece, gundam, dragon Ball. They are just a for-profit card game that doesn't give a single solitary fuck about maintaining collector value. Yeah, I use two F-bombs. Come at me, fcc. So over my life there has been four Digimon card games with different rules, three Dragon Ball Z card games, three Dragon Ball Z card games, four Dragon Ball Z card games and three Gundam card games. Just that have made it to North America Because what they do is they release the game when the thing is popular.
Speaker 1:When popularity dies out and people stop playing it, they shut down the game, make a new game, relaunch it and make it look like they care. No cards from Namco Bandai Gaming with the way they just vomit out promo cards to move random other merch. Their standard formats will often be like oh, we'll do a rotation, eh, not really. And they're inconsistent. It's like what they decide is rotated, what they decide is banned isn't being handled very intelligently and Lorcana doesn't really have a competitive scene because the scalpers, human beings, don't play Lorcana. If I want to go play Lorcana right now, there's no way I can get my hands on the cards. I would need to build a deck, because Disney scalpers are. They'll cut you for a stitch blanket. I also couldn't get any 1P starter decks because scalpers pre-grabbed all those.
Speaker 2:Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So where kind of my overarching theme on this episode is and where I was going to go into, like the D&D versus Daggerhut stuff later, is people's intellectual property ban loyalty is insane. So flesh and blood you could play professionally. Their tournaments have much higher prize support. Their mechanics are balanced, their games innovative, all the lore is original. They pay their artists, they pay their writers. They're an independent new zealand company that doesn't have big money backing them.
Speaker 1:Their cards have maintained value. Really they've been really careful about it to like keep cards relevant and rotate them so that your valuable cards will stay about the same value the entire way through the game where you can play a deck competitively and it's like each deck will have like a couple money cards in it if you want to build like a tier one deck. But you can win a tournament with a tier two deck by just being better than the other guy, right. So it's like their game is really player focused. It's literally called Flesh and Blood because they want you to play it in curve, for sitting in game stores Makes sense.
Speaker 1:Any ethical Magic player would have switched to Flesh and Blood already if brand loyalty didn't exist. Hmm, the moment Magic said, hey, you can't have our Final Fantasy cards and the stores can charge however much they want for it because we don't have a recommended price and also our tournament prize support's down. But you can go play Commander if you buy our Commander set, where we then ban cards deliberately, knowing we are printing them to sell more packs, but no one's going to jump over because they've sunk so much cost, time and energy. Like there is no reason you should have any loyalty to Wizards of the Coast. You should be showing up to tournaments with photocopied proxies you printed. Like fuck them Because, like they don't care, when I started with magic they would literally, based on our tournament points, send us promo cards in the mail and envelopes I.
Speaker 2:I don't remember if this made it into the last episode recorded man.
Speaker 2:I've had such a toxic mouse today, which is weird because I'm in a really good mood um, part of the reason that I am wanting to sell off my collection of the cards that I don't actively use is that I don't really like the direction that Magic the Gathering is going. The hat sets are like they print some cool cards, they print some cool themes, but like they're just vomiting out more and more cards, and so it's like, even if I want to build a new deck, every week there's 500, 600 new cards to go through that might fit with my deck, uh, and some of them are going to be more expensive because they're licensed products. Now, um, some of them are going to be impossible to get a hold of because the the whole debacle with secret lair printings and like, well, yeah, it's just, and then decreasing tournament support. Like it's magic, the gathering is setting itself up to implode and that's the thing like but I do enjoy the game.
Speaker 2:I do enjoy the game enough to be like, yeah, if I have some magic decks and someone else knows how to play, I can just be like, hey, let's sit down and enjoy the game. I do enjoy the game enough to be like, yeah, if I have some magic decks and someone else knows how to play, I can just be like, hey, let's sit down and play the game itself. The core mechanics are still enjoyable enough. So there are some cards that I do want to keep for nostalgia and to actually be able to play and use, but I don't really need a giant bulk collection of what I've counted so far is around 6 000 cards. Um, that, uh, it just sits there and takes up space and I don't really need to be buying more from this clearly unethical company, uh, which unfortunately, uh, also is part of the dnd.
Speaker 1:Uh, ip right well, that's what's interesting about it is that like so for flesh and blood. For example, I bought a christmas kit for like 80 bucks. That was their idea of commander, where it was like a four-player game with specific rules on how to play it multi-way I can't remember what they called it, but it was their equivalency to commander and had four commander decks and they gave each one like a different specific play style. Like one was a bard deck that was all about bribing other players. One was like a sniper deck that was all about targeting and that a mechanic where you could only attack the player to your left or your right and when someone got knocked out it changed to his to your left or your right right, so you couldn't like have all five people maul one person. So, like this little commander set I got I busted out a few times at club nights and things and it's such a player design product. And then I would get the commander cycles for final fantasy and I'm like you want me to spend like 400 to be able to use this as functionally a board game. But it's like most people I know are still playing magic and what's weird about brand loyalty is say I were to make strictly better ethical magic, like I go back and make because a lot of games want to start, they want to compete with magic where it is now not before magic started and they suffer from complexity bloat and magic itself suffers a lot from complexity boat.
Speaker 1:When I first started playing magic, a two, two for one, really good card didn't have any text on it, just a two, two for one, really good, right. Or like oh, I'm a two, one, first strike. I'm like that is amazing. We have cards that have saga cards with that are enchantment creature, saga spell that have a mana cost, that are a creature that get lore counters that tick down, that then flip to a different creature type on a two-sided card that have as much text as the opening prologue to Lord of the Rings. Because when they've been doing this universe beyond, a side effect is that they have a massive complexity bloat right.
Speaker 1:And then these namco bandai card games I throw shade on. They don't have self control at all. So in their first set they'll be like here's a creature of 3 000 power. And the next set they'll have here's a creature of 4 000 power. The next set they'll be like here's a creature of 4 000 power that costs zero mana, that punches your opponent in the nuts and you can't even keep up with your cards because every set makes your last set completely worthless, right, right, so Flesh and Blood is taking this measured approach. But structurally, magic is a unit collecting card game where Flesh and Blood is more like a fighting game style, where each card can attack, block or energy.
Speaker 1:So say you were to sit down and make structurally better magic Wouldn't be hard. I would just remake Alpha Magic and fix all the design errors. Right, it would be nearly impossible for me to sell it because it's too similar to Magic, so I couldn't be able to sell people on this new game. Right, where Flesh and Blood's like we know that, so we're going to make it play differently so you can. It's like you need to get it. So people are playing both games at once and then wean them off. And most of these Namco Bandai just makes magic. Now it's like, yeah, dbz cards is just magic without mana. Digimon cards is just magic without mana, with a grave flipping mechanic.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure One Piece cards is just magic, which is funny because the more fighting game designed card game makes more sense for an anime Like, if you have a leader and most of your cards are attacks, you don't burn through your material as much. That Dragon Ball card game probably has over a hundred Gokus With different subtitles and from different chunks of the show. I remember at one point where they're like each color, they like rebooted the game while it was going because they like made their webcon, uh client one slightly different. They're like here's a dragon ball card game, here's a dragon ball fusion something or fusion world online version, whatever. And they're like yeah, are we have three leaders for each color and each color gets a goku. And I'm like no one's favorite character is goku what are you?
Speaker 2:oh so like? One's favorite character is goku. It's funny because the nerd I am.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'd love to make a game that milks an ip. But when you generate your own ip, you get longevity because you can make the stories match the mechanics, not make the mechanics match the stories, right? So, wizards, when they first did ravnica, for example, the goal of ravnica was to do this is a set all about two color combinations. And the original ravnica was like we're going to do four colors in the first set, four two-color combos, then three, then three in our block, so all ten will have representation and you learn four guilds at a time. And they literally structured it to be like if you build Izzet in the first set, then you can build Gruul in the second and then you can build Rakdos in the third and they, like launched it. So over the course of the block, if you're building two or three color, you're getting support.
Speaker 1:But they invented the setting to justify this is the two color set. So the guilds, all those concepts were so they could build sigits for everything, guild gates for everything, split color. They invented hybrid mana. It's like, yeah, we're gonna spend a year building these two color things out and then they're like, oh, we're gonna do this next set. That's tribal, so we're gonna spend a while fleshing out this theme. When you invert it, you get the let's take sephiroth. You get the sephiroth card that you sacrifice seven power creatures to did it and they set up as a combo that you have sephiroth sacrifice eras. It gives you counters to did it, a transformed sephiroth power creatures to da, da, da, da, da and they set up as a combo. They have Sephiroth Sacrifice Aerith. It gives you counters to da, da, da, da, transform Sephiroth. And I'm like that's what killed Yu-Gi-Oh is when you build your cards to do ridiculous comical shit for lore, not building your lore so you can build your reasonably designed cards.
Speaker 1:So we're like an hour in and mostly talked card games, but I got most of my points across. So where I'm going next is from running like TTRPG Club. People are obsessed with D&D. They only play D&D. You've probably experienced this too. You run a lot of TTRPGs, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, or play it D&D. D& is is the one that I know, and fifth edition, uh, was ridiculously streamlined compared to previous editions and I just haven't really had a good reason to switch aside from wizards of the coast being unethical and see that's what's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:So I've tried probably 20 plus ttrpgs at this point, because I made a point to trying a new one every week in club because it was the ttrpg club.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like fifth edition we've talked about this on the podcast before has a lot of design relics in it that if you were to build a new game you wouldn't have.
Speaker 1:There's just some odd interactions, like, for example, in order editions, owning a stronghold was a thing, right. When you try and mechanically do that in fifth edition rules, it doesn't really work. And they like in dnd 5.5, which they refuse to give a number or sensible branding or naming for you to tell what's the new stuff like they try to do it like a dlc patch and I, low-key, hate it because it's like the new edition of dnd isn't worse, it's probably better, but it's not new. So it's like for me it's almost impossible to sell my players like I could make students play whatever I wanted. I was the only game master and they showed up to club and I'd make them play a game, whether they liked it or not, or they could just not play a game but, my core group of friends are like yeah, I play dnd partly because I watched a bunch of critical role or dimension 20 or what have you.
Speaker 1:So I just kind of innately know how this game works and I bought books and I've sunk in time and it's hard to get someone to move into a new game, especially if there's a startup cost. Even though tt rpgs technically have none, most people will buy a book or something or other. Right, they usually will. You don't have to, but most people do well, okay.
Speaker 2:So then, bringing this back around to dagger heart, which is critical roles, uh, alternative to dnd, so um, yeah.
Speaker 1:So for critical role, they're more ethical than wizards. So critical role puts out their standard reference document, which is the document that's like hey, you can use these rules to make whatever you want, right? And critical role is pretty much like yeah, you can use these to make whatever you want, just don't stick the Critical Role logo on it. If we don't endorse you. Have fun. And their standard rules are like, I'd say, like 90% of their rules. They have every class in there and every subclass in there where 5e is like, you get four classes as examples and one feat as an example. But what's weird to me is like all right, so I'm reading the Daggerheart rules and they fixed a lot of things that bugged me about D&D. So, for example, they have movement where their movement is close range, medium range, long range, very far, and they're like here's a little chart if you want to use the tiles on your grid, but it's by like tiles, right, it's like oh yeah, it's five tiles away, not feet. No one's doing trigonometry. Their initiative system is interesting. Where you don't roll initiative, each player just gets to take a turn. When a player fails a roll or rolls higher on their bad dice rather than their good dice, then the GM takes a turn. The GM has these fear tokens that basically mean when a player rolls and gets a fear dice or something plot-wide relevant happens, I can use these tokens to take a DM turn whenever I want. Right? How it works is, if you're in an ideal world when your players are playing fair, you don't even track how many actions. It's more like they take actions until the dm finds the need to jump in until they failed. How it makes sense for an enemy turn to happen? Right, and they have an optional rule. It's like each player gets three beads and after they've done three things, they have to wait till everyone's done three things before they can go again. But if you want one player to do like a super cool thing, it takes three turns in a row. They can provide the. Everyone else takes their turn. So it's set up as this like back and forth, right, right. And then their main mechanic is players are rolling 2d12s because it creates that bell curve of extremely high and extremely like low rolls are less likely, right? So that means your modifiers and your stats matter more so if you have like a plus two to strength and you're very much more consistently getting in the eight to ten range. It matters. So they like make their new game. Where it has enough interesting enough rules, you level up your level up features or you pick a card and that's your level up feature, plus some like stat stuff. Ok, so each class gets two types of cards and, like I'm not going to spend this time in this episode to explain all the rules of Dagger Art, but I as a DM, I'm like, ok, matt Mercer played D&D for the last 20 years. Yeah, he hired a bunch of game designers to make their own indie ran dnd equivalency and he pays his artists, he pays his writers. You can see the design team in the launch videos. They're doing their interviews. He has instructional videos how to play it. There's campaigns where you ran it.
Speaker 1:I think one of playtesting suggestions made it into the final games. I'm like 80% sure of the rule suggestion I gave where they're just like yeah, you can't keep taking turns. I'm like here's an optional rule I use where I gave each person three beads for their turn. I'm like huh, I wonder if that was literally my suggestion, because I was playing with. I even said in my suggestion I'm playing in a group of kids at a university and they're not good at naturally knowing when to give up their turn. So I put in this mechanic where they got to do three in a row max and then they could just sit there for a minute.
Speaker 1:But like it goes from level one to 10, because no one ever went past that in D&D in your life Right, it's level. It's damage system is that instead of hit points it has hit points. But it's you have like damage tiers and you roll damage to see if they take one damage, two damage or three damage. Right, so it like works that they have like you mark off armor to reduce the tier of damage you take. Like it's set up in a lot of ways that have less micromanaging. There just isn't spell slots. Instead it's like you get you mark off stress or damage.
Speaker 2:Like it's really well engineered but so I mean, it's the point that you're getting to, the fact that, uh, because of brand loyalty, uh, you have difficulty finding any sort of group to actually play dagger heart that's what I'm trying to figure out.
Speaker 1:So there's a few dnd equivalencies I've tried to get players to play like shadow dark simplified dnd, and call of cthulhu is more elaborate, and mazes is simpler, where pathfinder is more elaborate. Like, I played all these games. The thing with dagger heart is I don't know if people are going to be putting out material for long enough for me to convince people to buy in if that makes sense and it's like even with a TTRPG, I can generate infinite campaign like my brain alone. I could easily run an indefinite Daggerheart campaign Right, you've had me DM, you know this is true. An indefinite dagger heart campaign. Right, you've had me dm, you know this is true.
Speaker 1:But it's like products coming out for dnd also reminds people that they like dnd. So it's like these new releases are partly important to just like remind people that their hobbies alive and healthy and people are playing it right. So they're like watching their dnd podcast, their dimension 20s, their critical roles, and it's like I don't know if critical role themselves are willing to go all in enough to be like yeah, we have multiple shows that run on our new system and we have multiple other people playing our game like because they made their like other game. They're like one shoddy game called candela obscura which was like their Eldritch Horror-y type RPG and I ran one of those. But like people, it's weird High fantasy and low fantasy make more sense to run an ongoing campaign than a murder mystery. Right, like you can't really do your Elder Horror or Supernatural mystery, at least I as a DM can't really run one of those that would run more than like five sessions right, because the mystery gets solved.
Speaker 2:And then what do you do? Yeah, you have to find a new mystery right.
Speaker 1:so unless I'm like willing to just read sherlock holmes books constantly and hope players don't read them or they put out new adventures really frequently, or like fantasy, it's easier to like subgenre, like if you're running free reign, you can just throw in a shooting exam and then throw in a murder mystery and then throw in whatever. But if you're running a Street, Fighter campaign.
Speaker 2:Just as an example, one of the D&D books that I recently bought was the Keys to the Golden Vault, because it has heists. Yeah, heists are sick and they're like single contained episodes and it's like you can just throw in a heist to break up the flow of the game to make it more engaging and interesting, and then bring back fresh ideas when you go back to whatever your main story is.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely Like one session for D&D. I ran a municipal election In its entirety Right, or one time I literally did the murder mystery where, remember, it was like oh, it was in fact the necromancer. All along I was parodying the movie. Clue, specifically when I was doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did enjoy that.
Speaker 1:Right and it's like they did, like the crossover books of hey, you could use any D&D, you can use these few Magic, the Gathering settings if you want, blah, blah, blah. And I just like owning books. So the Daggerheart book, which I don't have at the moment and I may make hard eyes at people for someone to birthday gift me, this thing is a beautiful welcome to TTRPG set. So the character sheets literally have written on them prompts for what your backstory could be. Fill in the blank for your friends, dev an overworld map with instructions on how each player needs to dibs a location and attach it to their backstory. So it's like the session zero kit where you build your characters all together because your level ups are card based. It's like, hey, you guys can play the same class but you can't take the same cards. So it's like there's only two of each race, two of each background and one of each ability. So it's like we're gonna both gonna be wizards you'll have different spells with, just like how the starter gets physically set up.
Speaker 1:So I watch critical role, just do their session zero, and I'm like man. I just watched a two-hour video where they just did a session zero and it was interesting because when you have people pre-gaming the campaign of like okay, here's a map of barovia. Each of you tell me a place that matters. It's good design. I just don't know like I'm confident I could show up once with this and set this game down. It's like all right, let's play this game. We'll go through the session zero and then go direct. We'll do a one hour session zero and then play for three hours, get to level two. But I don't know if there's enough societal momentum that this game won't just stop existing after six months, like, for example, critical Role did a goofy one shot and now they're doing their like eight episode miniseries.
Speaker 1:And Matt Mercer's like I'm making this Dark Souls, elden Ring inspired. He got really lucky because that Expedition 33 game just came out which is like Dark Souls, elden Ring inspired. He got really lucky because that Expedition 33 game just came out, which is like Dark Skull Elden Ring expired. That everyone I know played the shit out of and is completely on board to do a dark, edgy, french-inspired campaign, right. So it's like I don't know.
Speaker 1:To ask this straight up to the question to you Do I try and move my players of 10 years to a new game that I think, as a dm, is objectively better but has less stuff, or do I stick with the existing game that they passively absorbed lore for the last 10 years? Because that's another thing worth noting people just know dnd lore and they don't even know why. They know it like oh, people all have a vague idea of tiamat, the red wizard, of fey, if you go, the underdark and the drow. Most people can kind of understand what that's supposed to be and it's probably because dnd was just lord of the rings, just was like first edition was a lord of the rings board game. Let's be honest, it's not a coincidence that one of the first races they had was Halfling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, so, like D&D and Magic, have this inherent advantage, which lends to the brand loyalty, of being extremely culturally significant, even if you don't know anything about those games specifically. There's so many movies and games and books that borrow ideas from Lord of the Rings and D&D and Magic, and some people don't even realize that that's where the idea came from.
Speaker 1:Right. And it's like also, since D&D is, strategy was steal everything. A lot of things that they recognized are just in dnd because they stole everything, like there's a stat block for a jabberwocky. They weren't the first mimic chest, those bastards right, like they took like every religion mythological creature they could find and then copyrighted a bunch of them. So, like they released their new edition, they're like yeah, you can't use their copyright names like strad and this and that. And I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah. And some people on the internet are like I'm outraged. I'm like why are you outraged? They're gonna protect the intellectual property parts. They've always were gonna do that. They're not just gonna give you strad nice try. But it's like yeah, ironically, most dnd books, if you're willing to do basic math, can be used to play any TTRPG engine. There's no reason I couldn't run Curse of Strahd with Daggerheart. I just look at similar creatures in Daggerheart, replace their locations in Curse of Strahd and I'm done.
Speaker 2:Right, because the core story content isn't what makes it D&D.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like the maps and the story and things, I could just I absolutely could just run Curse of Strahd and Daggerheart, like me specifically. I don't even think I'd have to do the math beforehand. I think I could just look at a D&D stat sheet, know what goes on a Daggerheart stat sheet, and make the mental math in my head and then, yeah, like things that are like a 15 wisdom check, I'm like all right, and Daggerheart, that is a sense check. Okay, make a 13 sense check and, like you, just kind of have to relearn the language. They also got rid of constitution, because constitution was never a stat. You actively rolled.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:They're not wrong, but yeah, that's kind of where I was kind of hoping to go with this episode was more the bigger question of brand loyalty and ip versus better game. Like to give a little example, I recently played a game called monster sanctuary, which I think I told you about, which is like a platforming rogue-like Pokemon and it's the best Pokemon game I've played in a long time. And there's a few games I've played in my life where I'm like this is just objectively better than Pokemon. Hasn't even moved the needle. I could not convince anyone to play this Monster Sanctuary game who's a fan of Pokemon. They would rather just play their Pokemon game that crashes from the frame rate of having threesome floors stand behind you.
Speaker 1:Oh, also, I probably should have put this in our podcast. Don't sue me, nintendo, but my goodness, is Nintendo trying to do skeezy licensing agreement? You don't own your Switch or your video games nonsense. But that's a full episode title. Yeah, but I've been at this for a while. I used up a lot of the bandwidth here. What are your thoughts about all we've discussed today, friend?
Speaker 1:oh, oh yeah I'm supposed to mention that I've been using frederick as a recurring npc in my current campaign. I'm running and it's like I've been trolling players with the existence of your NPC from a previous campaign and they recently found him in the jail cell in a tabaxi village and a full metal alchemist clapped his hands to make himself a hammock and he's drinking a smoothie out of a coconut. And they asked him the obvious question why don't you just escape? And he said, and I quote, because I broke the law and I'm in jail and I'm sure they'll figure it out that does sound like something that would do, so the party members actually have a conspiracy theory that cedric is shadow's ex-boyfriend, because one of my players is playing shadow again and like they avoid cedric in a way.
Speaker 1:It's like, is that like your ex or something you're like? No, much worse, you don't understand. So like party members are gossiping about shadows connection to thedrick and it just makes me happy. I love a 10 year old setup for a five-year-old yeah, five-year-old setup for a joke is pretty good because like I'm literally showing them having him collect, like his infinity gems, one at a time, each time they see him right, right, because his whole goal was to build an infinity gem to, to be worthy of being, uh uh, acolyte of the god of the dwarves yeah, so I'm fully intending to pay off his entire plot arc in the background of this Tome of Annihilation campaign.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That was the point of this episode, but I got some good bitching in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I don't really know how to answer your question, because it's like these cultural juggernauts until they implode themselves by being greedy and unethical, they're just going to keep pushing out content and being physically in people's faces to remind them that it's like, yeah, I like that thing and overshadowing uh, better work that has been done in the background. I don't really don't really know what to do about it, aside from waiting specifically for wizards of the coast, but for any major company, uh, to just implode from their own unethical activities.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like one of my friends made a comment years ago when, like, I'm like, hey, I got a playtest copy of the avatar campaign and they said something to the effect of I don't want to play in that setting over dnd because I don't think you can do this show justice. Like I, it'll feel cringy if existing characters and no make cameos. It'll be awkward. I'm not on board with this. It's interesting because it's like that's probably like the better take because, yeah, avatar will be an mtg set shortly. That's one of their next announced ones.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a ttrpg I can already play if I wanted to, although I don't love the engine behind that one. I'm drawing a blank of what it's called, but it's like more role play focused. I think it's the powered by the apocalypse engine where I'm at my core strategist. So I like to have some tactics in my games. Right, but it's like it's interesting because I always champion indie authors and indie magazines and indie stories. Now, right, like I'm a canadian lit person, my social media feed is mostly hey, submit to these local publications. So, like, on the micro level, my strategy is promote creative, interesting stuff. That's half of what we do on this podcast is, if something's cool and interesting.
Speaker 2:We tell people about it because it was cool and interesting and then we tell people about a lot of garbage because we, you know, want them to avoid garbage yeah, like this episode.
Speaker 1:I'm like play monster sanctuary is really good and you've never heard of it. Don't play pokemon, scarlet and violet. It's the third most profitable intellectual property in the world. They should not have had frame rate issues. I like a full angry rant with with my brother with this earlier, where I'm like when they get to the nintendo switch and they're like oh yeah, not every pokemon can show up on sword and shield, and I'm like but you literally sell an app for us to move pokemon around as a separate service, like I like we were talking gameplay wise.
Speaker 1:You can make a better pokemon game. With less pokemon it's easier to balance. By restricting your favorites, you force people to try new combos. Black and white did that it did really well. Ruby sapphire did that it did really well. But when your brand is, you want to catch them all and we're collecting services to catch them all. Even if you don't put all the pokemon in your game, they should all work on your game right, like if you made a magic the gathering video game. Looking at you arena, you should work with all the cards, even if you're not even like you don't want every magic card in standard, it'd be terrible, but like they should be all on here, right, like the fact you can't play commander on arena is the most baffling decision ever made. Hmm, just doesn't work, and you're a trillion dollar company.
Speaker 2:Fuck off, we're moving into automated territory now.
Speaker 1:I'm mad about this. Like there's three things that drives me nuts about the state of affairs for just the Final Fantasy, specifically me nuts about the state of affairs for just the final fantasy, specifically one I couldn't have it even if I wanted it, because my friendly local game store will upsell it, scalp it. You can't order it online. I physically couldn't get it and it would cost me hundreds of dollars. Two right, it's such like a cash grab, where it's like these cards are designed to be flavorful first and functional second then even once I get the cards they won't work in anything Like.
Speaker 1:you've heard me complain about Commander for years, where it's like one person who knows what they're doing shows up with a competitive Commander deck and then I can't build my Chocobo Jack and have fun. Which is what I would do with this Final Fantasy sec is I'd run the Chocobo Commander and run the Bird Matters Tribal Deck because it's stupid. So, like my three magic problems are, I can't afford it. The cards don't actually work for their intended function and I'm not supporting where the product's going. And it's like if any of those three problems were fixed, if the cards were cheap, if the cards maintained their relative value or if the company were good people, I could justify it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, those are all pretty valid points.
Speaker 1:And how long is it before? Instead of D&D giving us Magic crossover sets? They're going to Universe Beyond and just make everything in 5E's engine and we'll get Final Fantasy, the Magic the Gathering book. They're going to universe beyond and just make everything in 5e's engine and we'll get Final Fantasy, the Magic the Gathering book. And then doesn't Final Fantasy have its own game? Avatar has its own game. But I could see Avatar getting a Magic the Gathering set, then getting a D&D book and it's just yeah.
Speaker 2:Unification and monopolies are bad I agree but with that maybe we should, uh, yeah, move, move into a random question.
Speaker 1:I just want to angry rant because I'm in a good mood.
Speaker 2:But yeah, random question, here's I don't have a random question this week for you, I'm sorry. Sorry, I haven't thought of one.
Speaker 1:Alright, here's what we got. This one's kind of interesting. If you were to ink a side into a magical world, do you think you would become the king or be burned at the stake?
Speaker 2:If I were isekai-ed into a magical world and you have all of your current.
Speaker 1:You're isekai-ed into a magical world. And You're Isakai into a magical world and you have the ability to summon any piece of modern technology you want. Do you think you'd become the king or get burned at the stake? So you show up in I don't know, paranoid Mage, but you can just summon a smart Tesla. Not only do you have all your knowledge, you can manifest it.
Speaker 2:Paranoid Mage is a bad, bad example because, uh, that's kind of largely like the, the magicians are in the background of the real world. Okay, fine, let's go with legend of the shield hero. That's an effectively garbage one effectively garbage one, I can summon any modern technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think you become?
Speaker 2:the king or be burned at the stake I'll.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you my answer instantly.
Speaker 1:So, a good friend of mine, I'm going to go with Mr O for this context Once told me something when I was considering briefly going to school to be a police officer. I wanted to be a police officer, I wanted to be a Mountie once upon a time in my youth. Okay, and he said, and I quote, it'd be the first day on the job. You say, hey, you're under arrest and you get stabbed in the face and be dead Because you're a very stabable in the face person.
Speaker 1:And I think if I got ecocide and had access to all my knowledge, all my little looshing all my knowledge, all my little looshing all my cunning I can't shut up and I'm getting burned at the stake because I'm telling people what I actually think. I'm not being smart enough to like. I'm like, summon gun, kill the king and then get burned at the stake for witchcraft immediately. Like I like open uh, I open a modern hospital institute, free health healthcare, and then get assassinated by the nobles Because I just ruined their lucrative medicine business by giving them antibiotics and being killed for it.
Speaker 2:So I think it would be dependent on what exactly the setting is. Shield Hero there is some amount of magic, so I think I could sneak in modern conveniences that I could pass off as magic and eventually just like build that into it. I think that I could succeed maybe not necessarily become the king, but become wealthy and influential in an isekai world through the careful summoning of like, say, summoning a laptop to be able to do like presentations and whatnot and then also like record ideas and yeah, I think what it comes down to is I think you'd be fine because you're more low-key than me.
Speaker 1:I think I would drastically change the entire status quo of that world, but I would not be alive to see it yeah, I think maybe eventually I would change the status quo of the world. But uh, you'd have a pizzeria you'd just be like feeding adventure. Like you'd end up like delicious and dungeoning it. Like you just like use your like ecossign knowledge to live a good, regular-ass life. Let's be honest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hopefully, but no, I don't think I would become king. That's the.
Speaker 1:Okay. This next one is particularly unhinged. So you're getting a new house, mm-hmm, and you need to have someone negotiate your lease. So you're getting a new house and you need to have someone negotiate your lease. However, the landlord Is a talking Meowth and you have to let one of your Pokemon Negotiate your lease. Which Pokemon are you having negotiate your lease agreement With the landlord? Meowth, which Pokemon?
Speaker 2:Am I having to negotiate the lease with landlord meows? Which pokemon? I'm having to negotiate the lease with landlord meows?
Speaker 1:and note it has to be a pokemon you yourself have captured and used in a game. It's not hypothetical. You have to like, cite which pokemon specifically, to the best of your ability you can.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:So I'm feeling this is a cheeky answer, but my Espeon and Umbreon from remember my Magic Bounce Espeon Right, it's pretty cool. I have faith that if, like Miko, was a psychic cat, I could trust Miko to negotiate, so I'm going to go with my Magic Bounce Espeon specifically. I feel pretty good about that, so I'm going to go with my magic bounce espion specifically.
Speaker 2:I feel pretty good about it. I I'm gonna go with chatot nice, uh, because it is technically negotiating for me, but it's kind of like it'll just pass the mention, like literally record messages, and pass them back and forth. Uh, it's a bullshit, but I think you're good to go.
Speaker 1:I also thought about being like, oh, I'm going to just bring an Arceus and be like, hey, you should give me a discount as God stands behind me intimidatingly.
Speaker 2:I do think that the best Pokemon I guess, as a general category, the best Pokemon to choose would be Psychic-type and the best Psychic-type is Mewtwo. To choose would be psychic type and the best psychic type is like you two, like you would.
Speaker 1:Just, you would get you the best lease for sure. Although, like I said, like a meowth is pretty dumb, like the team rockets meowth, I don't know like, I think deploying a cat might be more effective than deploying a god, because that meowth has taught gods to go to hell and has absolutely learned language to impress a cat. That's true, all right. And we do have one last random question. You're handed the infinity gauntlet, but you're only allowed to make an extremely petty change. What do you do? No, you want the change to be so petty that no one actually notices. You did it out to someone. They get in their aware.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think I would make specific customers that I do not like forget that TJ tj's ever existed.
Speaker 1:Oh that's. That's real petty. Like I love that. Like part of me was gonna like go big grain and be like, well, I can't cure cancer because people would cash on. But just like everyone goes into remission slowly, but like it's not petty enough, like the prompt, like clearly, whatever fan this is wants me to be a petty bitch about it. Right, like that's. The goal of the question is not to make the world a better place. You know what I'm doing. I have to make the world a better place. I'm getting rid of press to tip screens. I'm literally just like, but not like magically removing them. I'm like making it. The legislation was retroactively passed in all the parliaments making it illegal to ask for tips when you're a machine like I've just banned tipping machines. No one remembers I'm getting banned. But you tell someone oh yeah, tipping machines are banned. They're like yeah, that makes sense. So I've just banned digital tipping machines, particularly at places that don't have customer service that's the catcher, so like tj's pizza.
Speaker 2:There's still a tap to tip screen, but the self checkout at walmart no I, I, I know someone, uh, they uh had to pay the impound lot to uh get car out and the debit machine had to tip prom. Yeah, I'm getting rid of all the tip proms.
Speaker 1:Those can go directly, just be gone.
Speaker 2:So ridiculous? How is your service having your car impounded?
Speaker 1:It's like those can. It's pretty petty, like that's high on the list. I don't know if it's petty enough, but I kind of want to make it like a phone update goes out that requires someone to text before you call. Like a service comes in that you'll be receiving a call an X amount of time. It's like whenever you go to call someone it gives them a text and you have a timer before you can actually call, so you can't call anyone without texting them first.
Speaker 2:That'd be great oh, that would be funny that's pretty.
Speaker 1:That's pretty petty, but pretty good, and I mean, I already santo, snapped someone away like no one missed that person he liked to hear about both smash bros.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I'm surprised you even remember that it was a he at this point. They were so disintegrated. I'd probably also like I'm going to be honest, after today's episode weird hot take, I think I would Thanos snap printing errors in the set of Magic that all of the pictures are slightly misaligned. So none of the cards in the Final Fantasy set are legally playable Because there's just an error on the printing press.
Speaker 2:That would be funny.
Speaker 1:Pretty good. There's some fun that could be had with it. Actually, I know what it is.
Speaker 2:I'll take back all of those including curing cancer.
Speaker 1:For something slightly more important, Okay, I'm making Ice-type be immune to water and resist Steel in Pokemon.
Speaker 2:Resist, Immune to water, that one kind of makes sense. But resist Steel the Titanic.
Speaker 1:Icebergs very famously break metal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. No, I mean Ice being super effective against steel, but resisting steel, I don't know.
Speaker 1:So I did the math the other day. Ice needs to resist, because ice only resists ice right now. Right, which makes an ice subtype bad? The first one is if ice added a water immunity, that makes a lot of. It's really good for Mamoswine, it's really good for thingsamoswine, it's really good for things that just splash Ice-type. Because Surf is such a common attack. It makes Dewgong have an immunity against Lapras and things. It's a good one to have Steel. I'm not as sold on, but it's like I want to do something because right now Ice is weak to so many things that it needs some resistances to balance out. So ice type aren't just bad, I don't know right so it's either.
Speaker 1:I'm open to suggestions here, so my first one is the water immunity feels like an obvious one that does feel like an obvious one I think I'd take away its fighting weakness. Yeah, I think I'd take away its fighting weakness because that one's just kind of weird.
Speaker 2:So, to summarize, your petty Infinity Stone's snap is to rebalance Ice-Type.
Speaker 1:Yes, because it's just they keep making bulky ice types that are just worse than being bulky water types. Yeah, that's true, there's so many bulky ice types. Like they decide that ice is a bulky type and gave it a bunch of physical weaknesses and special weakness to rocks and weakness to fire.
Speaker 2:And you know, no, no immunities, not even resisting itself, right.
Speaker 1:so, like ice resist. Like ice should be straight up immune to ice and resist water or immune to water. Resist ice, like, yeah, it's just, it's such a good offensive type, but it's like it's a weird situation where a pure water type of Ice Beam is better than being a water ice type. Gyarados is a better ice type Pokemon than Lapras, poor Lapras, right, so I'm like it wouldn't take much to fix it either. Hmm, but yeah, that's my petty change. Hmm, but yeah, that's my petty change. That's extremely petty, right, like that should be petty enough.
Speaker 2:I think that's probably petty enough yeah.
Speaker 1:Also, how long do you think it takes someone to notice that, like the new Pokemon game comes out? Because, like I didn't even retroactively change it, I just changed it going forward. So when the new Pokemon game came out, ice was rebalanced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess it's an Infinity Gauntlet, so it would retroactively Right, so I think I would change it to like I think I'd make that change retroactively. Have taken place in X and Y, I think.
Speaker 2:When they introduced Fairy-Type.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a good spot to make the change they introduced. Fairy-type Ice gets upgraded. A single NPC says due to climate change, ice and Pokemon have had to adapt. I think that's brilliant. I think that's the best part of the whole bit. Due to climate change, we've noticed Ice-type Pokemon have gotten more resilient than they used to be is a sweet way to introduce that and then like send out a spiel or something. I think like if I had to make a different, really petty one back when I played more magic is, I'd probably Thanos snap that. Dual lands should never have been rares. Ooh, they should have always been uncommons because they're required to play the game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are essentially required to play the game.
Speaker 1:So that's another one is I'd make all dual lands uncommons unless there's something really obscure and janky like it's like I'm a dual land that turns into a vampire. I'm'm like, okay, fine, that could be a rare. But.
Speaker 2:But it better do something more than just be a land.
Speaker 1:Yep, all right, that's all I got.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I feel like you said 10 out of 10, no notes. My idea was perfect, so yeah you nailed it.
Speaker 1:Bad customer doesn't remember is a pretty solid like yeah, I can't think of a single place I've worked where I wouldn't want to do that Like. I do find it funny. It's like the one snap to you're like, all right, it'll be annoying, going, no it's. Oh, it's like a permanent, like weird hypnosis. Like if someone doesn't tip you, they just forget that store was there.
Speaker 2:Then all the dragons are like oh, suddenly we're making more tips.
Speaker 1:Right, that's such a weird business strategy. It's like, huh, we have less business, but our customers are better, all right, well, let's wrap up here. Thank you all for listening to Richard and Carla present Deep Space and Dragons. I'm a weirdly aggressive but in a peppy mood. Am I just bitchier?
Speaker 2:the happier I am, richard episode was just you know uh basically unethical companies that uh have unjust brand loyalty due to their legacy status. Well, that was your takeaway?
Speaker 1:my takeaway is that that you should I I was trying to be more optimistic of hey, the things you like. If there's ethical versions that exist, you should go support those to be the change you want to see in the world. Stop giving your money to things that make you angry was kind of the point I was trying to get at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you just sounded angry yourself.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I ruined the pic. I should just tell people like the takeaway for this episode is go watch Delicious Dungeon that got cheated its Anime of the Year award. Go watch Free Run that got cheated its Anime of the Year award. Go watch Free Run that got cheated its Anime of the Year award. And play some cleverly inspired indie games like Sea of Stars and Expedition 33 and Monster Sanctuary and, I guess, check out Daggerheart's free YouTube videos and their free starter kit. There we go.
Speaker 2:Optimism. There we go. That is more of an optimistic takeaway as well. As you know self-care, you know make sure you're hydrated, exercise, get your blood checked perhaps, yeah, you don't want to find out that you're dying just on a whim.
Speaker 1:You want to make sure you got some heads up for that. Bye, bye, I do enjoy that. I made that the title of the last episode.
