Player Agency Or Bust

We argue about what makes a fictional world actually playable as a tabletop RPG setting, and why “cool premise” collapses when players start asking normal questions. Along the way we pull examples from Candlekeep Mysteries, Inform 7, Daggerheart homebrew, and a long list of anime and game worlds to figure out what supports real player agency.
• Pluto banter and a “companies would monetize it” reality check for weird claims 
• Candlekeep Mysteries as a toolbox for episodic tabletop adventures 
• Rat god chaos and why different groups solve the same scenario differently 
• Shemshime’s Honey and the problem of clues that do not lead to conclusions 
• The “quantum culprit” mindset and letting player theories become answers 
• Inform 7 vs Twine for interactive fiction and narrative game design 
• Starting with story vs starting with map and why scope kills projects 
• Daggerheart homebrew classes and designing mechanics that teach flavor 
• One Piece as a campaign frame and reflavoring over reinventing rules 
• Gate fantasy critique and why consequences and world impact matter 
• Stargate and Star Trek as stronger “portal” models with clearer stakes 
• What makes Naruto, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, and Fullmetal adaptable or not 
• Public domain and cozy RPG limits with Winnie the Pooh 
• Random question detour on emoji habits and communication cues 
Look it up!

Transcript

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Pluto Jokes And Corporate Logic

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello across the multiverse. I wonder if our signals reach Pluto yet. Welcome into Richard and Carl Present Deep Space and Dragons. Pluto is not a planet. I'm Richard, hating on Pluto for no particular reason.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

Uh and I am Carl, and I mean like you know, it's 7.5 billion kilometers away, so I I don't know. Far 4.5 to 5.5 hours to travel between Earth and Pluto. So, I mean, uh this podcast hasn't reached Pluto yet.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

I mean, unless someone's picked it up and carried it for us, like just a convenient alien pirate radio station.

SPEAKER_04 0:39

Oh yeah, but they're not they're not getting this episode for at least four and a half hours.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

So, this kind of reminds me of a comic I saw this morning. And it was the idea that someone deprogrammed his buddy, a flat earther, by explaining if the flat Earth was flat, the edge would be commercialized to make money. There is no version of reality where Disney World wouldn't build a comp wouldn't build a park on the edge of the world. So apparently, if you take a crazy phenomenon and explain if it worked, companies be easy to make a killing in blank. It kind of is the most rational argument you can make to someone in their conspiracy. Because Carl, if remote viewing and dowsing worked, would the oil companies not be employing these psychics at mass? Oh, they definitely would. Right? Like, for example, if Aura's homopathy and remote prayer worked to heal people, would Big Pharma not have like a weird, dystopian, kind of like a child labor factory where people are forced to pray towards their leaders to heal them? Like, there would be I kid you not, if prayer healed wounds magically, which I'm not saying that religion is wrong. I'm saying that faith healing, if it was proven effective, there would be horrifying camps set up that did nothing but pray for the well-being of a certain political figure, and then somehow it'd be inexplicably alive despite living a life of cheeseburgers. Well, I mean I know, right? I decided to like put a little spin on that and make people really question the tenets of reality here.

Candlekeep Campaigns And Weird Choices

SPEAKER_03 2:16

So since I do not have dowsing powers, allegedly, what's new with you?

SPEAKER_04 2:23

Um well, so I mean, uh, not so new with me. I bought the uh Mysteries of the Candle Keep uh anthology book for DD. This has come up surprising frequency. Well, yeah, well, you see, because um I want to actually use the content that I purchased, so I uh you know started a DD campaign and then it fell apart because you didn't play Daggerheart, yes. Those frickin' vampires. Uh anyways, um side note, uh, I don't think there's any proof that I ever had a spleen.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

So there's a friend of mine who has, I think it's anaphasia, where you they can't picture something in their head. Okay. And they've made a very good point. Doesn't Mop make more logical sense that the rest of us are lying about hallucinating vivid 3D images in our brains? Like the idea that our eyes move over the text in a paper which tricks our brain into hallucinating a dragon. How are we the ones being like, oh, it's crazy you can't do this? No, no, no, no. It's insane that you can. I don't believe you. I thought it was a figure of speech. Where people are like, oh, I can picture it. They were just yapping. And I'm like, you know. From a rational point of view, it is weirder that we all can like not we all, but like a decent percentage of people have varying powers of self-inflicted image hallucination. Is actually like, yeah, us being full of crap is simply the more rational explanation.

SPEAKER_04 4:01

Well, uh, anyways, the point the point of the matter is um that my D campaign fell apart.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Oh, I need to give a disclaimer. To those listening to Richard and Crawber's and Deep Space and Dragons, there is no point. There's never been a point. We're a comedy podcast. Don't sue us, don't take us seriously. But I do need to mention that one time Wizard of the Coast and Pinkerton mercenaries to receive booster packs. Look it up! Uh I just can't let them get a free pass on that. They can get a free pass on a lot. Like, yeah, Candorkey Mystery is a great book, but they did send the villains from Red Dead Redemption 2 to require recover booster packs once. That did happen.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

Anyways, um, I uh waited for a while to see if my DD campaign would start up again, and then uh I found a different group and restarted my campaign. But obviously, I don't want to run the exact same adventures. The first time around, disagree with that philosophy, but I'll get back to you on that. But so the first time around, I I ran uh the uh uh Joys of Extra Dimensional Spaces for Panel Keep Mysteries, which is 10 out of 10, would recommend everybody should play that adventure.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

It's so good. I think I've mentioned I've used that one in both Daggerheart and Shadow Dark and 5e.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

Yeah, it's just such a well-written adventure. Um absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Although I do need to give disclaimer, so I do love running different groups through the same campaigns because I get great joy in watching different people tackle the same problems. Like, the party literally stole the rat god statue out of the shrine and teleported it out into the hallway, and then just had this awkward eight-foot-tall rat god statue at the bottom of a stairwell. Yeah, okay. It's like total dog with a license plate, they actually stole it and then weren't sure what to do with it. So they had this petrified rat god statue. And this ends with them blowing it uh up to free the god, and then thousands of rats fleeing. But the rat god offered them a moral choice you never got, which was would you everyone who's cur So what they learned about the lore that you didn't was the like in the ratification was actually curing their wounds. So people who are injured, like had a chopped off arm, would grow back a rat arm, or if you had a cut, it would recover by being ratified, right? So the more where rat you were, the more of your illness it was suppressing.

SPEAKER_05 6:29

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

So the rat guys god said, You have an option. I can either drop my blessing and everyone gets all their injuries back, or I can turn everyone who's cursed fully into a rat and they're healed completely. What do you choose? So what did they choose? This ends with eight characters dying in this hospital. Oh no. And then I went around the table and I in Deggerhurt's style and went like, tell me two people who died, and the first person's like, Well, the first guy beats his wife.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

Oh yeah, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

And the second one is just and then basically describes you know that dude who's been like stealing the blood of the youth to try and unage himself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that guy was and like I see what you're doing here. The people I'm trying to make this tragic, you're like, actually, the worst two terrible people died, and I feel fine. And then the other party members didn't quite commit to that bit, but I do find it funny to be like describe who died as like just an awful person. Like, damn you, you got me.

SPEAKER_04 7:33

Uh where my playthrough I uh managed to release the the plague and and petrify everyone in the sewers. Someone already died in my playthrough too.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

But what's really uh technically everyone in your playthrough is cryogenically frozen. But also the rat god itself was petrified. And it was trying to like talk people into freeing it. Right, right. So it just they stole the entire statue out of its shrine thinking it would depower it, which it did, and then just had it awkwardly at the top bottom of a stairwell and weren't sure what to do with it from there.

SPEAKER_04 8:07

You you don't think that party would have plenty of experience with statues. Instead they blew it up. Considering how they get how poorly they treated Philip when he got petrified.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

To be fair, that is kind of what they did for this thing too, is they shattered the petrification, releasing it across the world. I like I was pro-playing it too, being like, it's the god of plagues and plenty. Plagues and plenty, or plenty of plagues. And then like the one party member being like, plagues are natural, and the other one's being like, I don't think we should release the plague god. Like, I understand your argument that we should save and protect the spirits. I don't know if we should release the plague god onto the world. That could be bad. I I need to end the story and I'll let you continue. So of the seven kingdoms under the empire, I on the spot made the kingdom lord uh ruled over by Lord Alberta, which sealed away the rat god and prevents all rats from crossing into his borders. I like it. And after a hundred years of keeping all rats out of their territory, the plague god is sending the full force of every rat in the continent towards this one city that imprisoned him. And I thought you'd really appreciate this idea that the rats, after being kicked out of Alberta, reunited and are launching an attack of mass scale for vengeance. Tell me you wouldn't watch that Disney movie. That'd be great. That is a great movie. Or would be a great movie. But please continue. I completely derailed that and I'm fine with it.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Well,

Shemshime’s Honey And Quarantined Horror

SPEAKER_04 9:40

so I mean, yeah, I I really do enjoy uh the joys of extra-dimensional spaces, but there are several adventures in in the book. And uh the I ran one adventure. Uh it's called uh Shemshime's honey. That sounds romantic. Shimshimei's bedtime run. Um and the the plot of this one is that the party gets quarantined in uh in an inn known as the Firefly Cellar. Uh okay. Because everybody wakes up in the morning and they're humming a uh cursed tune. And so then someone who recognizes the cursed tune is like, okay, we gotta quarantine this and figure out what's going on uh before it spreads to the rest of the Campbell Keep. So they lock the door and everybody has to try and solve the mystery of what's going on with this cursed tune. Um I'm not I'm not sure that I like like the Joyce of Extra Dimensional Spaces is a mystery.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

But it's also like very straightforward what you're doing. You know what it actually is? So it's not a mystery. Like just the candle keep mysteries, what the campaign actually is, is it's actually Doctor Who episodes.

unknown 11:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

It is you come across the weird thing of the week, you go explore a location, you learn to view different people from different perspectives, and then you go back on your adventures. It is so structurally similar to like Doctor Who or Star Trek episodes. Where it's not really a mystery, it's uh explore a thing, explain a phenomenon. Like, I'm thinking about uh it's an episode of Lower Decks where they turn on a machine that emits strange energies that turns one of the characters into a floating head, and then they have to crush him with a boulder. And that's the kind of adventure that I think would fit in nicely in how they wrote the Candle Keep mystery adventures. If you go to a planet, clean up the painting, it activates an ancient mural, it turns an NPC into a floating head, and then you have to crush their body with a boulder and then take them back. Sounds about right.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

Yeah, I mean, I suppose so. Um the first time I ran the adventure, um I I don't know exactly what went wrong, uh, but it it just didn't run very smoothly. Uh I ran it with a different party a long time ago. Uh this time, I feel like the adventure ran much more smoothly. Uh, but even once the party had all the information that you're supposed to get on how to defeat Shem Shimei, um they would never have figured it out if I didn't tell them basically. Like I didn't exactly like tell them, but it's like, oh yeah, you know, the Shem Shimei needs to be crushed by something heavy. Roll for history, and then they roll for history as like, and you remember that there's this giant sta uh hanging sculpture of a book that you could break the chains to drop on him to kill him. I mean, I wasn't that straightforward, but I mean I was with my rat god. I felt like the the mystery, like the clues that led up to solving the mystery and the mystery itself, like the adventure is divided into several events. And you can just choose when you want the events to happen to move the story along. Um but like the the clues in the bread rooms that they that they're supposed to follow just don't really feel like they actually helped them solve the mystery very effectively. Okay. Oh how to uh defeat the the ultimate evil guy?

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Well, it's kind of like and we talked a little bit about this when we ran that adventure. But remember how the qua they called it like the quantum culprit where you didn't decide who was the guilty person until the party had reasonably suspected someone as the guilty person?

SPEAKER_04 13:47

Right, yeah, when when we did Daggerheart and the um that was the dual thief. Uh wish thief. Special wish thief.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Yeah. Um so it's this idea that when you're running a campaign for someone, the solution to the puzzle should probably be the most interesting thing they come up with. Or if you want to be spicy with it, the second or third most interesting thing, because you're allowed to like have them invent their own red herrings. But it should be within the range of things they came up with. And if you didn't design it in a way for them to reach the conclusion you wanted them to reach, I typically just let them have it if it's close enough.

SPEAKER_04 14:28

Well, it's like you say, it it's it's hardly even really like a mystery per se. Like there's there's no actual crime. Uh it's just, you know, oh, everyone's cursed. How do we solve it? And I don't know if that's it.

SPEAKER_03 14:44

And it turns out there is cheese in the gel packs on the Voyager ship. And they had to like breed the mongooses to eat the cheese to clear out the ship to continue their way back to the Delta Quadrant. I don't actually remember how that episode ended. I just remember that cheese was messing with their electronics.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

Uh, in any event, um like you say, Joy's the best in emotional space is a great great uh adventure. Uh Shimshima's breadtime running? It's okay, it's fun. Uh, but I don't the one heist adventure I ran from uh the keys of the golden vault uh was very very much so a heist. Oh, it was like it had all the elements of heist and it was like.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Oh man, was Dragon Deep water uh not a heist at all? Uh zero out of ten for branding on that one. You gotta change the name to something that made sense. Because they're like, here's our four villains, and I'm like, it wasn't a heist. No heisting happened. Mm-mm. It was more like Watersteam plays the cops.

SPEAKER_04 15:53

But uh the the heist book seems like it gets the flavor right on point. Uh, where uh the uh looking mysteries kinda comes off more as like paranormal investigators.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

And I'm gonna throw some shade at Daggerheart right now, because I usually am pro-Daggerheart, but hey Daggerheart, we'd be talking about your adventures if you had any. I still think like it's kinda wild. Like, we watched this quick start guide and they're like the any awards are going where people are like voting for like gaming's best project. I'm like, their quick start guide is really good, it's probably gonna win an award. Shame there's no adventure that goes with it. I mean, you could download mine, but like I'd like to see how I would have really liked a template of what an adventure looked like before I tried making one. That would have been great. Yeah. Like I still don't know how I would do a dungeon and dagger heart, because I haven't seen a dungeon and dagger heart.

Making Mysteries Solvable At The Table

SPEAKER_04 16:55

Uh but the point of the matter is that not like the canoe keep mysteries definitely has their place, and I haven't played through all of the adventures. Most of the ones that I have, I actually like do enjoy. Although, like, say paranormal investigator is not exactly a mystery.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

Well, it's funny is like there's full paranoid of paranormal investigator games like Eldritch Horror, Candela Obscura, etc. etc. Like Paranormal Investigator is like a very solid genre. Like, uh, give it like uh we're gonna run in like you make it happen in noir era Chicago, you make everything black and white or sepia toned, and you have like Cthulhu in the background. There's like that's a solid genre for that kind of thing. Yeah. Although I do find for those kind of things that you want to drop the player count down. Like an investigation is dependent on how much your players are investigators by nature. Right, right. Where like DD, as we kind of talked about when we were talking about how no one ever wants to actually play DD as DD, except when they do as their favorite form of DD. Is when you're like, oh, we're going into a cave full of goblins, there's a lot more freedom for your level of engagement to be different across the players. Right. Like the stakes of like Forgotten Realms adventures, like even extra dim like, oh, we're exploring a house in a pocket dimension. That doesn't really require you to like plan ahead or interact with NPCs or like work with your teammates, not really. It just means, hey, go on your silly wack-a-doodle adventure and have fun. Yeah, yeah. I'm not really going anywhere with that, but I am gonna kinda segue into our topic today, unless there's some new Carl story I missed.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Well, I mean, no. I mean, sort of on point. Uh I uh We really like uh the It Welcome to Derry. Uh, and Betrayal of the House on the Hill is a is a game where uh you explore a haunted house. I do love Betrayal and the House of the Hill. Um, and they released an It expansion. Uh but the It expansion is ex is specifically for uh third edition of Baterial at the House on the Hill, which I didn't realize each edition actually releases uh a full new set of scenarios. I thought they were just my own rules updates to the existence of the screen. Oh, okay, he's out there doing a monopoly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but apparently Or a D D 5.5E. And uh in third edition, you actually choose scenarios. There's like four scenario or five scenario cards, uh, and then uh each scenario card has its own haunt table uh that you uh what haunt was revealed determines who the traitor is and whatnot. Okay. But one of the one of the scenarios was uh paranormal investigators.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Excellent. On a somewhat completely, not even remotely related note, so they start putting out a new ghost in the shell anime. And it is in such a no-win scenario, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. But imagine if you will, the first time your product is adapted, they make the mo one of the best cinematic masterpieces of all time. Yeah. They had to make a fair number of changes to the source material to do this. So the new Ghost in the Shell anime is almost a one-to-one recreation of the manga. With two things they've done because they wouldn't the manga would not be allowed to be aired on TV. So they had to like put in mild censorship. Okay. So in the orgy scene, they put people in bikinis, and for gratuitous violence, they have like a digital like censor smear over the exploded corpse, which is actually really funny in character when you think about it. Okay. So they like kind of worked into the building that the gratuitous violence just kind of censored, but they censored in a way that matched the aesthetic of the show. Okay. So they're like, the characters are bubblier and quippier and more expressive, and it's more cartoony, because that's what the source material was. And it's this weird paradox where I'm like, this is an amazing adaptation. Right. Too bad it's being compared to like an actual art house film. I'm just like, oh man. I think they made the right move, tried to be like, oh no, we're gonna go like more high energy with this. Cause the no-win scenario of being like, hey, we're gonna make a reboot of an anime. I was talking to my brother about it, but like, I don't even think they have the ability to make it the way they used to, because they don't have the people who'll color in every individual window on a cell while wearing one of those like jeweler's glasses while cackling to themselves. Like, we don't have the same level of mania that we had when the people assembled this the first time. Because we have like basic labor laws and things now.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

Well, and that mania has largely been replaced by AI now, too.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

Not even AI, like the idea that you could digitally copy. It means that no one's going in with a Q tip to color the windows, each one a different slight shade. Like, yeah, the technology to make something like the original simply might not exist. Oh, I'm just gonna give a 30-second mini AI rant, and then you can say what you're going to say. Okay, okay, okay. AI is the most advertised at me thing I've ever seen in my life. I believe that there are genuine uses for it. I believe that the marketing on it has it overhyped and it's not as impactful. It's more like the speculation of how it'll impact is doing more impacting the actual product. But I will say this. How come I haven't seen a good product made with it yet if it's so good? That's it.

SPEAKER_04 22:47

Well, one that's to follow you up on that tangent. One of the ads that I keep getting because of the FIFA World Cup, uh, is there so someone who has long fingernails getting hyper game? Uh remake your image to support your team or whatever. And then they, you know, draw like different uh team logos on the fingernails or whatever. Well the fact that it's like oh yeah. Um I really hate that uh the advertisements for AI are telling us to use it for such petty, insignificant like projects. Well, it just seems like everyone's saying that it's this like resource-intensive, like uses a lot of water, uses a lot of energy, uses a lot of space, um and the far-reaching implications are like potentially society-ending. Um but then they're like down here saying, oh yeah, you should just use AI to make an image of your fingernails painted a different way. It's like why wouldn't you just like pay someone to paint your fingernails then? Well, not even pay someone, just paint your fingernails.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

You could just do that for over 50 cents. I mean, I successfully was able to get my nails painted. Like, I could successfully paint my fingernails team colors if I wanted to. I'm disabled.

SPEAKER_04 24:15

If you paid someone, you could get someone to actually paint the team logos on your fingernails, such as the AI is doing to this art to this image that doesn't actually exist.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

I'm just saying in the time it takes you to line on and sign up for this AI tool and put in your credit card, you could go to the dollar store, spend one dollar, and find any one of your artsy friends and be like, fingernails, and they'll be thrilled. I have a decent number of friends that if I just held up my hands and be like, paint my fingernails, that'd be the best day ever.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Anyways, uh what I was going to say is that I mean, unless nothing new happened with you there, Richard, uh, I guess we can segue into a into our topic. I

Taco Bar Planning As Game Design

SPEAKER_04 24:56

got a couple little new things.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

So, like, first, I can't really talk about my job because it's a research position and technically it's proprietary research, but it involves reading. So I've started my research project, and then today after our session, I'm going to a potlock and I'm making a make your own taco bar. So I'm gonna like put up all my taco toppings in little takeout containers and line them up so people can assemble their own tacos, because that should prevent picky eaters almost completely. Right. And I'm gonna ask your thoughts if I'm missing something. So here's my current plan for what is in my taco bar. Okay. Beef and taco spice, no vegetables in with the beef, just straight up beef and taco spice, just classic taco beef. Right. Uh take on chicken carnitas, where I take some chicken breast, slow cook it, toss it in like an orange sauce, and make like a carnita filling. Okay. Uh black beans for vegetarians taco filling. Cilantro lime rice. Diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, other shredded cheese, pickled onions, jalapenos, salsa, sour cream, and maybe a little tin of guac. So that's what I was going to bring all in separate little takeout containers. Oh, and a bag of tortilla chips and flour tortillas. Flour tortillas don't really need to be reheated to have as a taco, you really don't need to do that. And then I find that if I have like the rice and the chips, people can like make a taco bowl or make nachos or whatever. And I've kind of like freed myself from having to care about them. So my question is, do you think? So, do you think I got this? Anything missing? I might also throw in a corn salad just because, like, as a topic option.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

No, no, I I think that all sounds like it's a very like traditional well, I mean, I don't know much about tacos, I guess. Maybe it's not traditional.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

Oh, it's definitely quote white people taco night doo-do-do.

SPEAKER_04 27:07

But it sounds like it would be uh, you have all the ingredients that I typically associate with with tacos.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Alright. Because I figured two proteins and then a vegetarian option. And like I said, part of like the strategy is to load everything in my cooler bag in their little like metal takeout e-containers and line it up nicely. Should stop people who have food sensitivities from being little bitches. Because like there's actual medical food sensitivities. I care about those.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

And then there's a little bit of what do you mean there's mushrooms in with the beef?

SPEAKER_03 27:42

I'm just trying to prevent that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if I was making it for my loved ones, it wouldn't be every ingredient in a separate container. And there would be like some fine diced ha habanero sautéed in with the beef, like. There's things I would do that I'm probably not gonna do in this case.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

That definitely makes sense. I mean, habanero spicing with a beef sounds delicious, but not everyone likes spice.

unknown 28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

I want tacos, but I don't want them to hurt me. Then you're a coward and a weakly and then yeah, that's pretty much new with me as I'm doing this research project and doing other stuff. But the what's new with me directly goes into this week's episode tactic because I'm planning to mine you for data.

Inform 7 Vs Twine For Writers

SPEAKER_03 28:25

So, one of my big projects I've mentioned on a few episodes is teaching people how to code in Inform 7 and using that as a game design tool for literature students. The idea of here is the simplest tool I could build a writer to write a video game. And Inform 7 isn't the simplest one, technically Twine is, but it's the simplest one that's a video game. So Twine will let you make a choose your own adventure novel. It is really easy to literally go turn to page 37, turn to page 112, and just have the branching, and you can get pretty fancy with it. But I don't think that hits how we picture most genres of video game. Where in Form 7, with the idea that you're interacting with the world of like it picking up objects, putting them down, moving through a space. I think moving through a space is what makes it feel more like a video game. Where clicking through a branching story, even like a nice telltale game, doesn't really feel like a video game if you're not moving through a space 2D or 3D. But I'm curious in your thoughts on that one. Is like the thing that makes it a game the moving and interacting through space?

SPEAKER_04 29:40

Well, I mean, uh eons ago, um I made uh interactive PowerPoint presentation. Um where uh it was basically a choose your own adventure. Uh and uh you could uh click on the different like you could click on arrows to move to different streams and you can have different options that came up.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

And for our listeners who are gonna um actually me, I'm aware the actual definition of a game is about creating a certain win state scenario. Like I could pull up the actual definitions, it's in my paper somewhere. But I'm talking this is more like a conceptual fireside chat, not a dissertation. Don't at me, bro. Um, if anyone um actuals me in the comments, I will happily mail you a copy of my 40-page dissertation. So you can read it. I will happily prove my points. Um actually. I will mail you in and we don't just have 40 pages to deal with. Maybe 80 if I formatted well, actually, I think I could print through like Amazon KDP and like make it like pocketbook size and like hit the page count I need to print it. Sorry, I went off of the attachment. I'm like, wait, can I just put my paper as in a book format? That's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_04 31:01

But uh the point being that this uh PowerPoint presentation, um I mean it follows all the same basic rules of uh twine story where you Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

One of my studies in one of my earlier papers was literally about how students interacted to one of those choose your own adventure style powerpoints and if it made them more engaged or not in the class. So the TLDR on that one is people are more engaged if they can choose which page to flip to, but they're a bitch and a half to prepare. That's true.

SPEAKER_04 31:38

Um, but I the the visual element, if you add the visual element to Twine, it suddenly does feel a little bit more like a video game because you're actually seeing.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

Oh, Twine you can effortlessly add the visual, by the way. It is easy to add pictures to Twine. Almost effortless. You just put in brackets the image link location in the folder. Sorry, almost effortless if you're familiar at all with tur I I forget how not tech savvy some of my classmates were during this project. I shouldn't say effortless, but I should say relatively solvable. Right, right. Conversely, you can do that within Form 7 as well, where you can bind an image to each room. Hmm. I'm choosing to not do that because it creates such an egg using graphics and sound and other features to your game does balloon dev time exponentially, not linearly.

SPEAKER_04 32:35

Well, so but the point I was trying to make is that in terms of text only, choose your own adventure, but doesn't feel like a game. When you add a visual element, it does feel more like a game. Uh but you are right that that the more you give the player that visual feeling, or or the more you give that player that feeling that they're actually exploring interacting with the world, uh, because it like the the interactive PowerPoint, for example, uh you would basically have to create a uh separate series of slides uh for every possible inventory state when they pick something up, if they arrive at a room.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Actually, amusingly enough, so there's a game that came out on Steam last week that I added to my library. And it was called I'm just pulling up the exact name, because it's one of those things where the name is longer than it needs to be. Okay. Uh Verteus Tales Witch of the Dark Castle. And this game apparently was made by one dude, an animator for vanillaware who does Unicorn Overlord in a couple other games I really enjoy. And it's literally just a digital choose your own adventure book, like it says page numbers. Okay. But it has an inventory, and how it handles the inventory is when you're in a fight, you roll a dice, and then your inventory will like modify the dice rolls, and then whether you win or lose changes which page you flip to. But there has been inventories in choose your own adventure novels for years. And the idea is all you'd have to do is put in like go to page 37 if you go north, go to page 37, you go south. If you have the stick, go east, and then you track the inventory on a pen and paper, like you have a scratch pad where you're writing it down. So it's not that you have to have a special page for every item, it's that you can only take the item route if you have it. So it'd be like, if you have the sword, go to 37. So if you don't have it, you just can't flip to that page. The technology to do that in adventure novel does exist. But the adventure the choose your own adventure novel doesn't really allow you to test the boundaries of the system. So when I've been working on these in Form 7 projects, and I'm gonna put this question to you. So I've given you in Form 7 and download you the ability to use it. So you now have the ability to code in this language magically. And I say to you, make a game. Do you start by making the map of where things are, or the story of what happens?

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Um That is a good question. I mean, probably to more so this the story first. Uh, and then m map locations to the story.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Like, I was thinking a lot about like Orc Arena of Time or even Original Metroid, where it's like for the way the maps of those games are designed, I have to wonder like what actually came first. Cause if you make the world of every here's I've just made all these zones and I've made these dungeons, and then put what happens in them afterward, that might actually be like an easier project flow than if you do it the other way of here's what I want to have happen, now I need to bend the game to work for the story I'm telling.

SPEAKER_04 36:14

Well, I mean I I think it's about the levels of ex of abstraction. Uh because like I say, you know the choose your own adventure game or an adventure novel. Doesn't exactly feel like a game. Like it that it feels more like it's it's a story that you're reading and you can just follow different paths.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

Um so I do laugh though when modern games get shit for that, like what was it, Night of the Old uh one of the newer Star Wars games, like sure is me walking down hallways that I have to go down the specific hallway, it tells me so the cool thing can happen. Sure does have a lot of the cool things happen in cutscenes I don't control.

SPEAKER_05 36:56

Hmm mm.

SPEAKER_04 36:58

Um, but so I do feel like conceptually you you I would choose doing like a choosing your own adventure kind of thing first. Uh and then like I said, flush out the rooms, flush out the items afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Um like as a thought experiment, I've kind of been doing the reverse. So, because I run so much tabletop games, right? A lot of my design experience comes from creating open-ended areas that cause players to do things. Like, as you were mentioning with that unsolvable puzzle earlier, of there's no reason they would reach that conclusion logically. And there's a lot of like early DD things that are like Oh, White Blue Mountain has a few of them where they're like, and then when they throw a grappling hook through here, it hits the illusion wall and follows through, and I'm like, this seems susp weirdly specific. Right. So it's like Creating space for people to play is like a lot of T T RPG development versus telling them like the number one thing bad GMs do, or I have the story I want to tell, and my players will be my Sims through my story. I just think it's an interesting place to be, like Zelda Orcarine of Time definitely feels like more effort went into the world than into the lol story. Like if you removed all the text from Orcarine of Time, you'd probably be fine. Hmm. You could probably beat that game in its entirety without English. And lose very little. How do you feel about that one? Because a lot of people are like Orcaria of Time, best game ever written.

SPEAKER_04 38:44

Uh well, yeah, no, I I don't think it's the best game ever written. I think it was a technological marvel when it came out. Uh but I do think that there's more interesting written stories with more compelling villains and and protagonists.

SPEAKER_03 38:59

Like, let's be honest, The Legend of Zelda is just the Princess Bride, but slightly worse.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

Well, and like Link is just just a generic self-insert character.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

Yeah, that's the part I'm completely fine with, weirdly. So there's a big debate whether or not you want your protagonist to have character or not for designing a lot of things. Because like choose your own adventure novels to really let you embody the character. The character pretty much has to be a nothing burger. Right, right. Where like a lot of visual novel protagonists will be super bland and then they'll make an anime of it, and then you'll be like, God, the protagonist of this anime is bland. I'm like, yeah, they were never designed to have character. They're designed to have all the death of Bella Swan from Twilight.

SPEAKER_04 39:45

Right, because you're supposed to be that character.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

Exactly. So for Link, especially being the ambiguous could be any gender, could be whatever character it was, really accidentally helped Nintendo a lot. Like, Nintendo wasn't trying to be woke here, but a lot of people could identify themselves as Link because Link was so crappily drawn.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

Yeah, but see, then you look at some at video games that are more modern video games that are more complexly written, and you get like the most popular game of all time is like Grand Theft Auto 5, pretty much.

SPEAKER_05 40:21

Which you reach on.

SPEAKER_04 40:24

But but if you're playing through the story mode, you're playing with characters that have their own little equips and dialogues, and they they have a story that like Technically it's Minecraft.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

Sorry, I had to um actually your fact check a most popular game of all time.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Technically it's Tetris followed by Minecraft, but Right, but I mean Tetris and Minecraft don't really have well I mean Minecraft does have four.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

Well, we're saying for the sake of like this argument we're talking more about narrative things because that's where we're what our topic is. But it's interesting to look at so in two and third, we have Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, which have exact opposite approaches to this.

SPEAKER_04 41:07

Exactly. Those characters are actually like characters, and and you're following a long story, and sometimes you do get forced, you know, railroaded by a cutscene sometimes. But like this the writing is far more engaging in those stories, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

So to kind of like give a bit of a summary to pivot into where I'm planning to redirect this topic. So we have choose your adventure style stories, which is clearly written, clearly authored. You maybe you play a blank slate, maybe you don't. But the idea is that this is a story being told to you that you have agency over adjusting. You can put weapons, you can put items, you can put whatever you want in one of these stories, but at the end of the day, you're just kind of advancing your route through the story. Right. Then we have the m in Form 7 method of you create a space, you walk through it, you interact with objects, and it creates a lot of unpredictable interactions, like if I hide an Easter egg, a player will try to eat it or try to throw it and play around with it in ways that the architect can't really predict. Yeah, yeah, okay. And then you have the DD method of you're just creating a sandbox for your players, and the harder you try to tell a choose your own adventure story with DD, the worse your campaign will be. If you're literally doing it like, oh, there's two options they can pick here, and then they get to tell their story that way, they will always inevitably pick the third option. You'll be like, hey, do you want to go against the Xantrum or do you want to go against the Red Brands? And they'll be like, actually, we're gonna open a bakery. So to kind of go where we're going and where I my original question to you was is So, another thing I did this week because I was bored, is I made some Daggerheart content.

Homebrew Daggerheart And One Piece

SPEAKER_03 42:57

I didn't put up on the HGIO, I just kind of made it for me. So I made two character classes first that I'm kinda tinkering with. The first one I made is the mage. The mage is a bone and codex class. Okay. So you know how the wizard has healing magic and no one has ever used their wizard to heal? Right. So I made like a free array slash Rhiner Loot Mage, where it's like, yeah, you have your codex spells, but you also have bone for moving fast battlefield control, knowing your enemy. And a lot of their powers are built into when you use a spell. So you know how like your spell weapons and dagger heart just shoot generic magic, but no one ever really uses their staff to shoot a magic bolt. Right. I specifically made a class that was when you go to shoot a magic attack, you can add fire to it to burn them over time, ice to it to slow them down, or thunder to it to hit their stress. So the idea was if I tell people add flavor to your generic spell attack as a mechanic, it'll kinda teach them they can do that. And then the other subclass has one of those cool pocket dimensions where you can pull weapons in it out of that gets perks if you hit them with a spell, then hit them with a melee weapon afterward. Right. And then I made a Plague Doctor who's all about balancing the four humors and all about autops and corpses. But the third thing I made is the thing that's actually relevant for this conversation. Okay. The third thing I made is I decided on a whim to make an ill-advised one-piece campaign frame for Daggerheart. Okay. So, and I will literally give you a link to this, because I never sent this to you ironically. You did not. So, on a whim, I want to see how hard it would be to make One Piece run in Daggerheart. The first thing I was trying to figure out, honestly, was which anime would be easiest to make a Daggerheart campaign frame out of because I didn't want to make a useful product. Right. Because I can already hear the comments in the Discord server.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Why would you make an original idea? You should make an original idea. That's lame.

SPEAKER_03 45:09

The same people who are wearing their one-piece pajamas. And sometimes the thought experiment of taking something you love and seeing how to express it in another form as a form of fan creation is legitimate art. So I made this campaign frame, which largely is basically a document that just explains how you could use one-piece logic in Daggerheart successfully. And I tried to build it with minimal changes to the system. Because another thing people love to do when they make something homebrew, and 5e was the worst for this. They'd be like, here's 5e Dragon Ball Z. It's a 300-page document that explains how to do all these Dragon Ball Z mechanics in DD. Okay. Instead, I worked about how to express the existing mechanics so they would work. It's like I made reflavored the mechanics rather than invented new ones.

SPEAKER_05 46:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 46:05

And the idea behind that was yes, if you create a new mechanic for literally everything, just make your own game at that point. Like, you do hit a point of diminishing returns. Yeah, yeah. So I have given you access to this document, but this idea was, and this is kind of my topic I was going for, is what settings lean themselves naturally to these inform 7 style explorations or TTRPG settings that players would enjoy and play in? What lends itself well if I'm just out here being a criminal and stealing things? So, I mean, in in terms of One Piece.

SPEAKER_04 46:48

Uh I I do think that so no, yeah, yeah. One Piece would probably actually is probably pretty perfect uh because um you're just going from island to island, uh, and the islands let you explore, the islands give you potential for role play, they give you potential for dungeons. Like the uh the islands hit all the pillars of of D D where combat, exploration, and roleplaying. Um and I mean it's not exactly the same for all TTRPG systems, but I do think that that is a pretty solid basis for any TT RPG having those three um pillars. Um and so like something like One Piece, where again like you're going from island to island. Um and uh just gonna be cleared up. Nope. Anyways, um I I do think that One Piece is the only the only thing that I would say about One Piece, uh that it would be really hard to capture uh unless you're like offering people double fruits as a way to like change their class.

SPEAKER_03 48:10

So that was the part that took me a while. So how I did it is one of the campaign frames for Daggerheart is called Motherboard, and it's their sci-fi-based one. Okay, and it basically makes a claim that spellcasting in this setting is science. Okay. So One Piece has like three plot points. That is how their power they have three power systems because of course Oda has three power systems. Right. First is hockey, which lets you blast things, punch things, give yourself armor, see the future, etc. etc. Yeah. The second one is double fruits, which do random bullshit. And the third one is the random gadgets and shit they find on the adventure. So a chunk of this document under domains is where I explain that actually, if you're playing a wizard, you're using gadgets.

unknown 49:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 49:07

If you're playing uh Bard, you're probably using hockey and gadgets in combination. And the idea is that, like, here's some examples of how to reflavor things. Because Nami, for example, who is a normal human who allegedly doesn't have magic, is able to shoot lightning bolts at people. Right. And they shoot lightning bolts at people by being like, I use this stick that fires pressurized air to create an updraft, to create a current, to cause a lightning bolt to hit somebody. Or we have a robot firing laser blast from their hands that's powered by cola. Right. So, like, I basically made an example version of each character being. I added a the only new mechanics I added were new weapons. A crew experience, and a devil fruit transformation. The devil fruit transformation I made super lazy because people overcomplicate things. Right. What it does is you describe your fruit's power and give it a name, such as rubber body, reindeer human, create and control smoke. You gain an experience that matches your fruit's power at a bonus equal to your tier. When you use an attacker and ability based on your fruit, you can mark a stress to increase its range by one, or you can add this experience to your evasion or your thresholds. If you're in water, you're restrained and vulnerable and you can't swim. So the idea is you just write in an experience that has a fruit name, and then you can spend a hope to add it to any role if you can describe how your power does it.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Hmm, I see.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

So, in like what would fit on an index card, I've now given every single Drevel Fruit canonic use. And then later it says, like, if you're a spellcaster and things, feel free to weave your devil fruit in, and there's a mechanical benefit to doing it. So if you're like, I'm gonna give myself the hand hand fruit because I want hands, and I'm going to use Reign of Knives. Actually, Reign of Knives is me shooting a bunch of hands at you. Done. You spent a hope to use your devil fruit to shoot a bunch of hands at me. So I kind of like mechanically incentivize weaving your fruit into your powers, because if you weave it into your powers, your dice roll goes up by one. Right. So that's kind of how I approach that, but where I'm sort of going with this though is if I wanted to make an Inform 7 game based on One Piece, it would take me the rest of my natural life. Right, right, right. Because Inform 7, you're kind of doing it on the measurement of rooms. So the game Zork, like the big famous Inform 7 game, had about a hundred rooms. Okay. And if you consider a room as like an area, a unique area of space you had to enter that contains like a fight or some puzzles or things. Mm-hmm. Every chapter of One Piece probably has about two or three worth of rooms to explore. Of course. If I were to make One Piece in an Inform 7, where you go on your boat, you say sail to, you go to your islands, and wanted to cover just the canon locations, that would be thousands upon thousands of rooms for a fan game. And then if I add in all the other locations. I think this is the problem DD has too. So D put in salt marsh and had boat mechanics and salt marsh. And didn't use them really. You'd like sail around the coast, and most of the things were like landlocked. And it's because making a map of a world of islands is a huge undertaking.

Why Gate Fantasy Settings Fall Flat

SPEAKER_03 52:46

Because if you want because you kinda have to make an earth for your boat adventure, really.

SPEAKER_04 52:53

Okay. So I was actually I was actually thinking about this. Uh, what setting would make it a good TT RPG?

SPEAKER_03 52:59

Um ironically, any that make good TT RPGs will also make good in Form 7 games, probably.

SPEAKER_04 53:07

Um I actually have a little bit of a tangent, a little bit of a sonic question for you related to this, but um the uh the awakened hunter gate story arcs.

SPEAKER_03 53:23

Uh it's it just seems perfect. Sorry. Um The Awakened Hunter Gate?

SPEAKER_04 53:30

The Awakened Hunter slash gate. Uh because because almost always the Awakened Hunter storyline also involves the gates with the monsters that come out and people go in them to explore the said dungeon.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

I would rather die though. Because listen, listen, Bud Pal. You could easily do any Ikasai by just doing 5e and saying I was an incel who was hit by a truck as your backstory. Because they all just take place in DD. Like, you could literally run a solo leveling campaign by your base of operations is Tokyo or Toronto or wherever, and then when you go through the portal, and then you just literally open something from your frickin' Volo's guide or your Tales from the Yawning Portal, run one of those verbatim, and then just leave and return to where you were.

SPEAKER_04 54:25

Well, see, part of the reason I say that it makes it perfect T T RPG is because you get modern day Earth, so if they want like modern T. I think it is the worst possible setting. You think it's the worst possible setting?

SPEAKER_03 54:41

Okay, so a well-designed TTRPG naturally leans a player into quote roleplaying. And the more distance they can get between what they would do as a person and what their character would do, the more immersed and better the experience can be. The problem with Ikasai Power Fantasy Slob for role-playing is it allows a person to roleplay a version of themselves and almost completely negates any kind of immersion in the story. Cause if you're literally just running it pure video game of hey, you sign into DD, you build your character, you go clear a dungeon, you come home. I don't think anyone would roleplay in that setting. I think they would just turn it into a loot grinding video game. Cause they're almost too familiar with it. Like if I told you make your OC for solo leveling right now, I don't think you do a particularly good job. Because there's no touchstones. There's no touchstones to build a character around, because there's no plot hooks in any of this slob.

SPEAKER_04 55:49

Well, I mean, uh the party that you normally run 2T RPGs with is is extremely interested in political intrigue. Uh and so it's like the the modern day setting uh would lend well to to do that role for the firmly disagree, and here's why.

SPEAKER_03 56:10

No? So here's the thing about political settings. So in something like Fire Emblem, where you play, like, oh, I'm a disgraced prince or whatever, it makes sense for you have your character to have the social capital to play the political game, but have the incentive to still be an adventurer. In the modern world where wealth and distribution are so far removed from talent and ability, you can't play the political game in a contemporary setting and have a day job being a useful member of society. Like there's no version of reality where if you're playing your wizard in a soul-leveling setting, that I roleplay a scene where you meet the president. All the politics is usually independent of the characters in these settings. Jin Woo never actually just runs for office.

SPEAKER_04 57:02

That's true.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

So, like, I do think that it's kind of like, oh, I'm gonna make a video game that's every video game, and then you end up being no video game. Cause solo leveling is just it's basically built on Diablo mechanics. But has completely separated the consequence of the adventure from the setting at large. By having people enter pocket dimensions to go on adventures, their adventure can never actually impact the setting. So nothing Jen Wu does changes the world. Which is insane for someone who can recreate the universe. To have literally no impact on people's day-to-day life. I'm right, aren't I? He never actually changes anything. It's more like he uses his superpowers to fight against the other superpowers, so everything else can remain status quo. So there's no real politicking that would happen. It's kind of like the bigger the scope you make the politics, the harder it is to gamify it.

SPEAKER_04 58:12

Um I kind of disagree. Like there's a lot of I've read a lot of these this style of story. Uh where um there's some level of politicking uh certain guilds control certain gates. Yeah. So then you can't. But the players that don't do it. It happens in the background. The players get to go and they choose which guild they want, which enables allows them to access certain certain gates, or maybe they might have to break into another guild's gate, or maybe they have to negotiate with the guild to to be able to go on a specific adventure. Uh you can place plotlets in specific gates so they have to go places like um and then also like say the gates themselves are like a log line canvas where you can run whatever adventure you'd like within the gate.

SPEAKER_03 59:04

Where I still kinda think that because we're using this contemporary modern framing, that people will just play themselves. And and I'm gonna say the thing that's the most infuriating thing people post online, but kind of true. Why would you run this setting over 5e? What are you gaining from anchoring it like this? Because negotiating with guilds over territory, I think, would be more compelling. In the fantasy setting. Cause then, like, well think about it. What's more interesting? Oh, I had to break into a grey labeled building so their other superheroes don't jump me? Or I had to break be into an enemy kingdom to go on my mission.

SPEAKER_04 59:56

Well, it goes back around to back around to this the scope. Um, like you're saying that that one piece just has way too much scope, there's too many rooms, there's too many options.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

I might be wrong though. I do think if someone gave me the intellectual rights to One Piece and I had three years, that would be the best TTRPG I'd ever played. Am I wrong? From island to island in exploring? If you actually had the full map, so you didn't have to follow his route, you could follow any of the like 20 routes through the different lines and things. If you had access to the full history of the setting. And you knew how it ended, yeah, you could make it an amazing One Piece T T RPG. One Piece's biggest problem right now for gamification is it's not finished. So it's not only that the scope is insane, but also I can't finish the scope. Cause like every One Piece campaign would have the same problem at the end. The fucks the One Piece.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:02

What is the One Piece?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:05

And if you don't know what that is, you can't really end the story. But like, yeah, part of my problem with uh using solo leveling as an example. And also if you use a genre for the space uh scope of this conversation, let's try and go to specific IPs or two, not like genres. Because the argument is, hey, could I make a good Ikasi genre game? I guess. I mean, I'm gonna push back tons because I do think that most people I've known for dropping DD and things would be insufferable in a solo leveling game.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:45

Are you conflating Ikasai with with the Awakened Hunter slash gates system? Because it was like a lot of the the awakened hunter slash gate systems that I've that I've I've read are not Ikasai's. They are in fact their own fantasy settings.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:01

That's fair. I'm gonna let you have that. So let's call it gates for now. You're right. There was some verbal conflation going. So we're gonna call it the fantasy gate setting.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:09

Which for the record because I definitely agree that Ekasai uh is just lazy and why are you not running D. Like, there's there's no point to running Ikasai PC RPG, because it's just like the why did you uh it doesn't really make sense. Yeah, like Ekasai as a genre just doesn't really make that much sense in general.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:35

Like if you told me, hey, you should run Rising of the Shield hero as a campaign like counterpoint, I run DD. And if you want to be if you want to be accused of rape in your backstory for whatever gross reason, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:51

Um But something like Sentence to be a Heroes. Oh bad.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:56

That would be such a I'm gonna run that at some point. Oh man, it has three things I love about it that I would just That campaign frame for Daggerheart would be so clean and easy to add to. Because like, you add in the mechanic of every time you die, you delete a detail off your backstory. You have the there's a bomb around your neck, and then the magic system of oh, you equip these glyphs and your spellcasting is a number of glyphs you have equipped. Like, you could pretty much run it as written, but add in that, like, the glyphs are solar powered and life force powered. Like, yeah, that'd be a dope setting to run. Like, you have to kill these god monsters, and then humanity's trying to sell you out, and they summon your corpse. Like, oh, that's good stuff. Zero hesitation to run sentence to be a hero. Which for the record isn't enough of a setting you would make your own game on it. It's absolutely a plug-in for any fantasy TTRPG, but it's a good plug-in. Because the core gimmick is really good of you're a suicide squad with a bomb around your neck trying to like. Ah, that was a great setting. If I had the rights to that, I would make that Inform 7 game in a heartbeat. The protagonist is just bland enough it could just be anybody.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:13

But so uh coming back around to the the gate system, uh, my my actual question, uh, because and and in the end, almost all of these style stories, uh, the protagonist becomes a god that overthrows the system which gave him their power. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:31

So I think part of this is gonna be an ironic statement. So I've read a fair number of them, and to remove the conflate and just focus on where in the real world there's gates you go through, MacGuffin system, and on the other side of the gates is typically DD. I think the solo and solo leveling is actually kind of built into the genre. Oh? Is the genre depends on the protagonist being the most special person. Okay. So it's like it's such a built-in power fantasy. I don't know. Like, I don't think I could get my group on board to play one. I'm not entirely sure what their reasons would be, but I think the idea that, oh, this takes place in the real world, but you go through these fantasy portals is just not that good of a pitch.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:20

I know I just I I feel like from a mechanical perspective, it's like um there there's a a hierarchy of heroes, um, and then you know, in the real world you're trying to work your way up through the hierarchy, so you have access to better dungeons. Uh, and then there's a party system because they in I mean the most of the stories that the hero tends to go off alone, but there are always parties of heroes in the background uh going and doing other dungeons and and whatnot.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:52

I just think it doesn't give a lot of like so a lot of my like more invested DD players will invent the town that they're from. Um, event pieces of their backstory and really try and like build their share of the world. And I think a lot of that is missing with this idea that the adventure's not taking place in the setting the characters live. So, like to kind of flip-flop this on

Stargate And Consequences That Matter

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

you. So I have a Stargate T T RPG sitting on my shelf. Yeah. Stargate is basically the same concept if you go through a portal to your adventure world, but the big difference is instead of getting seemingly arbitrary JRPG mechanics shoved in, you just have a gun. You just go with your gun on your adventure. Go on your adventure with your team, come back, and then any alien technology you stole, you kind of like integrate. How do you feel about the Stargate setting versus the There's magical gate set? Because the magical Okay, I'm gonna be mean for a second. The magical gate system creates questions that the authors of these stories themselves are not prepared to answer. Like, why does the government actually do nothing? How do any of this work? Like my DD player would immediately ask, why do I have hero powers? And I do not think a lot of these stories are prepared to answer the why in any way.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:18

Like I say, I've been reading a lot of them. Maybe that's why it's on my mind as potential TP. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:23

I think this is some cost fallacy where I'm like, I don't think this would work well. You're like, nah, I'm gonna double down. Could be.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:31

But um I mean, a significant number of them are essentially like uh the new energy source, which is also the cause of the gates, in most cases mana, uh uh permeates the world, and some people react to it to uh gain superpowers. What am I like poorly end up in the hospital? I don't know. I just feel like that's actually a pretty common theme, is is people reacting poorly to the saturation of this new power uh ending up in the hospital, and that being a motivation for a character to explore the dungeons to find a cure.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:10

I don't know. I just feel like people would build characters they've seen, and it doesn't really give them the tools to build characters with unique motive. Let's put it this way, there's exactly one motivation for every character in that setting. Oh? Well, think about it. Your character's only motivation can be I need to clear the dungeon for a reason. Right. So, in a well-designed uh DD party, for example, you have characters that are approaching pro problems through different angles, through combat, non-combat, negotiation. Sometimes it's I want to start a band, other times it's literally I want to make a bakery. You kind of lose a lot of that when the show is systematically set up that you're supposed to clear a dungeon every week. And like, I don't know, and then so one of my series I did enjoy in that genre was Tokyo Gate, where a portal opened and they send in the special forces with machine guns and helicopters into like Fancy World. Yeah. And I just really enjoyed where a person pulls out our RPG and shoots a dragon off a rocket. Right. But like, part of me for the solo leveling genre is this idea that Because we said so you're a fantasy character is just kind of weird. Like it's like we're give people modern setting, but tell them every object in the modern setting is useless to you. Cause like our player can't bring a gun. Cause the system doesn't power up guns. Cause it said so. I feel like there'd be a lot of me saying because I said so in this setting. But also, yeah, cause like. Imagine you're running a solo leveling campaign. And I say, Cool, can I drive a tank through the portal? Can I drive a tank through the portal? Yeah. Am I allowed to do that? You can. Cool. Do you have the stats for a tank?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:09

Well, so uh obviously as a part of creating your setting, you're going to create the the variety of different objects that would be required for it. Like that's I don't have a obviously I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:22

Except, and this is kind of my quip on this one. So say your job is you were literally hired to adapt solo level specifically into a T T RPG. Uh-huh. You wouldn't make a stat block for a tank. Because no one in that setting has ever used a tank.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:40

True.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:41

I don't know. I do think a lot of our train got derailed because I'm like, I don't like your idea, and you're like, well, instead of finding another idea, I'm gonna argue why you're wrong and people would totally play in my awesome solo leveling campaign.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:53

Oh, I'm not saying people would totally play my awesome solo leveling campaign, and I don't think solo leveling specifically uh would be the right genre, would be the right actual like source material, but but solo leveling is also just part of that generic slop of gate stories.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:13

Because like if you came out swinging like this specific gate story does X, Y, and Z, and here's why I'd be good, I'd probably would have been less dismissive. But you're like, here's a genre that's extremely mid. You should use this incredibly mid thing, and I'm like, out of all creation, your first thought is solo leveling would make is what I would do for my T T RPG brand tie-in. Like, let me rephrase the question even more. You're specifically given an intellectual property and told to make a TTRPG out of it. What would be your favorite thing to be handed? What would be your least favorite thing to be handed? And we can kind of go through it that way.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:52

Well, so my I was actually like I had mentioned, this would probably derail the conversation even more. But it's like, do you do you think that the uh gate style story could actually be fixed either to become a TTRG RPG, or it's just as a general concept, because like I say, they they all seem to end with you become a god and overthrow the system.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:18

Uh no, I don't think it can. I think the fundamental flaw is people are borrowing mechanics from cooler things. And they're not willing to create enough lore for your players to drack on and become a co-creation process. Because a TPT RPG at its root is a collaborative to storytelling experience. And I don't think these stories are set up to let people build out the world with you. Because they're kind of fundamentally based on holding back information and constructing it in extremely linear ways. Like a solo-level video game, even if you're like, oh, you can run to whatever portal you want to fight, you would still kinda have to fight appropriately leveled things, and there's no lore attached to what's in the portal. Because as we mentioned, you could build like this intergate guild scenario of, oh, I'm gonna go into red flang territory to go into red fang's portal to get my golden knife. But I just don't think people can daydream about being in these settings effectively, unless they're the main character.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:25

Okay, but so like uh Digimon Cyber Slews.

unknown 1:13:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:30

Um basically had the two worlds, your digital world and the real world, and then you do a lot of your mystery solving in the real world, and you do your combat in the digital world. Um I mean I it's not exactly a gate system, but it's it's a similar conceptual frame framework.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:52

I know if I was DMing for that, first off, if I was making a digim on TTRPG, I would not use Cyber Sleuth, I would use World. Oh? So Cybersleuth of hey, you're in the city jumping into computers, solving computer crimes. Part of that one is I kind of said this with the gate one, is everyone kind of has the same party role in that one. Like things that where you naturally form yourself like a band of five who have different like archetypes, let players play off each other better. Cyber series probably wouldn't be, or like Mega Man Battle Network probably wouldn't be where I would go. Now, the original Digimon season one plot of you're a kid at Summer Camp, a portal opens up, and you're thrown in the middle of a beach with cell phones upside down, with a bunch of phone boosts and giant beetle trying to kill you, describe the name of the gecko in front of you. I can work with that. Cause then your players feel like they're free to build the story based on their actions. Cause even if it's a lie, you need the player to believe that their actions change the story. I'm not sure in the Gates example, or even the Cybersleuth example, really, that their actions would have consequences. Cause like in Cybersleuth, for example, if you made it that players could hack into any computer, unravel the mystery however they want, they wouldn't really be able to shift where the plot is going with how that kind of game is presented.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:21

Okay, but so then we we come back around to One Piece, um, where you're going from island to island. Um, and I mean I guess I'm not super familiar with One Piece itself, but like how would you ensure that they feel like they're impacting the story when it is so episodic island to island?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:43

Oh, super easy. So the first thing you do is you have each player invent an island that they're from. Step one. Okay. Just invented bullshit island, because the setting literally means you can make any islands you want. Right. And then in one piece, each island arc is a campaign that determines the fate of the people living on that island specifically. So if we went say I am not expanding and I'm just going, oh, I have made every location Luffy has gone to.

unknown 1:16:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:12

Luffy is presented with Alabasta with three options, really. Well, four. Option one, overthrow crocodile and put Princess V V on the throne. Right. Option two, sell out Princess Vivi, and become a warlord of the sea. Option three, knock both people on and claim the island as his territory and just conquer it. Or option four, actually, I'm with the navy and I want to figure out that crocodile's committing crimes and arrest him. So your approach of how your version of the Straw Hack crew goes to each island drastically affects not only the future of the island, but like what kind of pirate you are. If you're even a pirate. You can run a navy campaign. And your job is to go capture Luffy. It's like all I think what I'm kinda getting on with this one with One Piece versus some of these other stories is to be a really good TTRPG setting, the bad guys kinda need to be playable. Like not saying they would be, but you need to have a setting fleshed out enough where the other side that are you aren't controlling are complex enough that if your players wanted to play from that angle, they could. Right. Because in DD, you don't have to be good. And the game, everyone, 99% of people decide to be good. But you don't have to be, and I think that's important. If in solo leveling you decided Fuck all these guys, you still do the same things as if you decide, oh, I'm gonna team up and work together. If Jin Woo wasn't an asshole, it really wouldn't have changed his arc. Okay. Because he doesn't actually have agency in his story. To the point where it's a story mechanic that he has to do what the story tells him to do. And I'm using solo leveling because that's the example I'm familiar with. Like imagine a DM, a bad DM who has a story in their mind who says, Carl, if you don't go to the next dungeon, I'm gonna have a giant snake attack you. That happened. That was like episode four.

Picking Anime Worlds That Actually Work

SPEAKER_04 1:18:27

I mean that's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:28

So Where like if you're to tell something like Naruto! If you take Naruto out of Naruto, it makes an amazing setting. Take him, throw him the fuck out. Five ninja villages, different elements, going on assassination missions and things while a villain builds his tries to collect the Pokemons to end the world. Great setting. If you make yourself distant enough from the main characters who have main character syndrome.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:56

Um okay, so then like uh something like Speed Grapper. That would be interesting. I'm curious to see how you would do that. Well, I'm just just curious because like the setting itself is fairly generic. Uh, but the acquisition of powers and uh the the mystery of what the villain actually is trying to do, like it I mean you could almost just play that as just straight D in the modern world with magical powers kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:31

I mean, I don't think I would. I'd probably use like Blades in the Dark or a more heist-based system. But I think the big difference between speed grapher versus solo leveling is speed grapher, you could play the Mr. Switengu campaign. You could be like, actually, I'm playing this game to collect as much money as possible to collapse the economy of the government. Because it's like there's because Mr. Switengu was an antagonist but wasn't the main villain, so it's like there's enough people in setting you could build that out to there's a world where you go to a BDSN club and get superpowers that have a side effect that kills you. And different characters are doing different things. Like if you played the Suitengu campaign, you would hate photography guy. Who keeps sniping you with his wide-range camera. Or if you played his photography guy, you would hate Mr. Switegu with his awesome blood wings and vaguely established organ transplant powers. But like, do you do you kind of get where I mean about like the openness of the world?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:35

Um I suppose. Like, I I I kind of see that, like, yeah, the the um the stakes for the individual adventures in the gate system would not be very high. Well, like, let's put this into perspective.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:49

So if we go with Speed Grapher and you decide to blow a building up, people care. It's on the news, the building has been blown up, and then your characters can like go to jail or be shot by SWAT. Like it basically gives your ex your actions consequence. If you're in solo leveling to go inside a gate and we're like, oh, the people are sent in the gate, and you ripped out all of their hearts and ate them, and then just beat up a widow of three, there'd be no actual game consequence to your action. Which I think would just result in people being terrible players. They would almost get bored because like one person would be like, oh, I set the goblins on fire, and then I'd be like, okay. And it's like when I'll like play a when I play as a PC once in a while, I'll be like, I cast waterboard to make other players tell me no, you're not allowed to waterboard this man. But yeah, speed grapher would be interesting. I know you come into some limitations where like the scope isn't big and the bullshit powers are bullshit, but it's I think it'd be workable.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:10

Yeah, well, I mean you would make some of the bullshit powers at least match your system.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:16

Yep. And also, if I got a license to do speed graphers specifically, I'd be so confused. I'd be like, is there supplemental material or something? I'm gonna. Alright, gonna see what I can do, guys. Because it's a relatively low scope story. I'm like, alright, you're giving me 24 episodes. Hmm. I have less to work with than a season of Shark Tank, but I'll do what I can.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:41

Uh well, okay, so I mean if we're gonna if we're gonna touch on the big three, um Naruto Dragon Ball One Piece. Uh what about what about Bleach? So do you do you think Bleach would make a good TTRPG setting?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:57

Yes, with many asterisks. So many asterisks. So Bleach has three interesting settings, and one bland one they didn't really get into. So, if you do bleach, and your idea is Hey, Uohara has requ uh acquired four characters of various bleach-related ancestries, and you have to go like fight Hollows on missions. It's like Bleach's real story is almost in the past. So Bleach is interesting if you make it a we're a Shinigami. And there's all this, like we go and kill Hollows, sure, but there's all this weird politics and nobility and sketchy. Like, there's Bleach has a lot to work with. But I think if you made your campaign be like a Borotovo, this takes place after Bleach, you would struggle a bit. You'd almost have to like go like when the Thousand Year Blood War happened the first time, make your character. Cause like I think it's there, but it's very disjointed. Like, I'd love to make a Bleach RPG. But like to make players play into that setting, I think the more you couldn't really do what the show did of Ichigo runs around and his powers make other characters show up who kind of help maybe. I think if you're literally like, hey, you are here's your squad of low-rank Shinigami being sent out on a mission, I think you could do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:31

Well, I'd the the more interesting angle would actually be, like you say, in the past, uh, here's your squad of Quincy's.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:38

Right? Or like your mixed squad of I kind of enjoy, like, oh, you're a third-party faction in the war because there's Orankar, Hollow, Shinigami, and Quincy's going around, and you're like not extremist on any. Like, it's interesting because the Shinigami and Quincy's are both very much extremists. Well then you'd be playing someone like like the Bizards. Yeah, like if you're like Yeah. So like there's a lot you could go with with it. Like, it would be an interesting setting. I do think the having it take place in the modern day, you could do that. Like, you're a group of substitute soul reapers, you could make that work. But like, I don't know. Inventing your antagonist would be a problem. Because it's like Bleach kind of has like doubt Bleach where it is at now is interesting. Like, I was saying for One Piece, you could approach all of the problems in One Piece from different angles. Like, the alternate timeline of oh, I'm playing as Marine Luffy for this playthrough is a fascinating story of itself. Right. Because One Piece all of the characters' actions have rippling consequences, vast rippling consequences. Like, Luffy punches out one guy in a bar, and then as a side effect, he now is a fleet. A thousand chapters later. Bleach and I blame Aizen for this, likes to be like everything that happened was part of my master plan and had it happen that way. Doesn't really kosher with player agency very well. So it's like, I wonder if the solution to make a Bleach RPG is to have Ichigo never be born at all. And it's like you the protagonist stumble across it's like if you were instead of Ichigo were just a random person that Rukia gave powers to, and then you met your squad of like rejects, maybe. It would take some finessing. Cause I think if setting is really interesting and its power system is actually more interesting than the other two. Like the eye of a sword that's a piece of my personality that transforms into a tactical nuke. There's like a lot of play there. Right. Or like, oh, I have a list of a hundred spells, but I haven't actually filled the whole list, and I don't actually have a hundred, I just want the number to be bigger. I would love to take on this project, but I admit it, it would be the hardest of the big three by a wide margin to make playable. Yeah, that's that's fair. And then Hunter Hunter's a lie. Hunter Hunter on paper would be amazing for this, but in practice would not. So, Hunter Hunter, you have this sick power system. Great power system. You would literally just pick your class and your subclass, and as you level it up, it'd be like more things you can do in that field.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:31

Right. However, it would actually work perfectly for for dagger hunt, because you basically have your your your main trait and your special and your secondary trait. So it's like your main domain and your secondary domain. It wouldn't really do well for the specialists that just kind of get everything, but yeah, but you can almost map it one for one.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:51

Like it'd be pretty easy to say bone or enhanced people of the bone. Like I would probably take each domain, not each class. I'd tell take each domain. And say which of the six Hunter Hunter schools it falls in. Right. Like, Grace and Splendor would be manipulators, conjurers would be codecs and whatever. Like, you get the idea. Like, it'd be pretty easy to map it. And then your blade and your bone and your melee ones are also Nen, you're done. However, Hunter Hunter doesn't use the setting of Hunter Hunter. And it's infuriating. They show us a map, and people love to tell me Hunter Hunter is good world building. Then why did it spend 200 episodes in a video game? Yeah? Why did it spend 200 chapters just in North Korea with the Chimera ants? And why are they on a boat leaving having not explored their whole map? None of the places on the map actually have things there, and it infuriates me. Because the setting's great. You go through an awesome exam, get a license, and go on missions around the world with your squad of friends with your eclectic superpowers. But I would notice real quick that the map was empty. It's like freaking Fallout 47, where they're like, hey, we have an open world follow-up, but we didn't populate the map with anything. Honestly, Greed Island would probably be my TTRPG, and I would just make it Greed Island. I mean, it wasn't innovative, but it was kind of cool. No, just because it's complete. Just cause we know where all the things are and what you do in it, and like the goal of hey, you have to collect these cards to leave would actually be like a reasonable thing you could make. Although the Ned doesn't have anything to do with the magic cards in Greed Island. The end of this rant is Hunter Hunter inexplicably doesn't work for this project, and I'm bitter about it. Because it's like you guys didn't do the work. I'd have to do so much world building for a said series that allegedly has good world building.

Fullmetal Alchemist As The Gold Standard

SPEAKER_03 1:29:58

I mean, the easy one is you just do full metal alchemist and you're done. Like, the map's already drawn, every city is fleshed out, every nation has like a hundred years of history recorded, the power system just works. And to make your full metal alchemist T T RPG, you just have it happen after Full Metal Alchemists, because like, yeah, the dwarf in the flask was defeated, but people still just have alchemy, and there's just corrupt government officials in other countries, and I think Russia was draining people's blood. And like, once one country makes a countrywide transmutation circle, I'm sure Asia, who's actively hunting immortality, took some notes.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:40

It was like, yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:42

Like, oh man, so many plot hooks of hey, yeah, re la it's like your character saw a solar eclipse happen, died for a minute, came back to life. You currently are are in the Mestris military run by Colonel Mustang. What do you want to do? In your backstory, explain something horrible alchemy did to you. Cause like that'd literally be one of your character plots, because Full Mile Alchemist was about getting something you lost, so you just prompt everyone, what's something you lost that encouraged you to become a character?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:11

Okay, now so uh another uh idea. Um you've read all of D Grey Man, yes, no? Yeah. Do you think that that settingslash exorcist uh mechanics would make a good TT RPG? I think Blue Exorcist. Blue Exorcist is a better better okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:34

I think Blue Exorcist would do the same thing better, because D-Gray Man's a little wack-a-doodle arc cloning at some points. You could do it, like Blue Exorcist at least like sorts their Exorcists into categories. Like, you're a swordzer, you're a wizard, you're a chanter. But like, yeah, modern-day Exorcist just works fine.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:55

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:56

I don't find it mind-blowing, but like. We remember that time in Show and Jump where there was five Exorcist series going at one point.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:04

Oh, I mean, they're they're still pretty like exorcisms. It seems to be dying out, but it still seems to be going strong at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:11

And yeah, the idea that, oh, I have spirit power. Like a shaman king ass setting. I think the biggest problem with that setting is it's almost too obvious. Oh? Well, it's like I make a TTRPG where your character woke up and could see ghosts, and then you have a magical weapon and use them to kill ghosts, and then you go to a magical academy that teaches you to kill ghosts with your magical weapon. I don't know. I feel like Yu Yu Hakushu, Bleach, Blue Exorcist, like a lot of them have tons of overlap. Like, Bleach really only gets interesting when you get into these weird Soul Reaper politics. Right. Where like Blue Exorcist or D Greyman are like, yeah, they're fine. They're fully serviceable settings. Like, if I were to say, hey, in Daggerheart, I'm running it, the setting is Toronto, there's ghosts, you're exorcists, practicing ancient techniques and spirit magic. Also, there's like I think I could just get away with it for the most part. Like, I think it'd work fine.

unknown 1:33:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:14

Okay, actually, uh now I got uh uh one more uh where I think the story was kind of terrible, but I love terrible story, good setting. The irregular Hypto Magic Academy. Yes. Just yes. Just yes?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:31

Using the the tech to encode your spells, uh and uh It had a completely reasonable magic system, your characters ascend magic school like it's Hogwarts mixed with like it's a weird one. I would describe the irregular at the Magic Academy as Hogwarts meets diehard. There's like a lot of times where they're like, okay, I'm a student with like my weird extendo sword, but also we're being attacked by terrorists.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:02

Yeah, yeah. And and I mean, in that particular scenario, the main character is in fact part of like a military black offs group, too.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:10

Like So like there's a like that's a great setting. Obviously, if they're not allowed to be the protagonist. I think I'd keep I'd even keep him in it, though. Hot take. Him running around as an NPC is fine. It's him being the main character that's my problem. As like you die in a mission and a dude shoots you with his magic gun and he'll brings you back to life. You're like, what the hell just happened? I think you become the party's B B E G instantly. If someone was playing in that setting and you're like, oh, you're a group of students who are a squaw or like I'm gonna call it like the public safety club or something, trying to figure out weird things happening at the school, and you see that motherfucker, I think anyone who didn't think this watch the story would assume he was the main villain.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:59

He's shady as all hell.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:04

Yeah, he is. And then, like, if you're letting your players have the agency, the idea that, oh, we learned this guy nuked a cruise ship. We need to stop him. Killing that guy would be such a hard campaign.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:17

That that is true.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:18

Like, uh, he's such more interesting as a villain. We learn this guy with like a crush on his sister works for the US military bombing ships. He'd be more hated than Strahd. Be great. So yeah, I just firmly agree. I'd have to flesh out the magic system a little more because it does just seem to be people be doing magic. You'd have to have rules for that written down. Like, the hypothetical could you make it into Egggerhart? Probably. Probably could just do it. Like, there's a couple people running around of swords. You just use the loophole of like, oh yeah, blade and bone and valor are just types of magic too. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Because there was the one dude with the hit people stick that was the stick you hit people with. So I personally would be fine DMing. It's so funny because you're like, I think you're expecting me to hate. I'm like, no, no, the setting's great. Just that guy. That guy himself sucks, and no one can beat him.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:15

Well, no, I I like you say that I think the setting was really interesting, but I mean, I watched way too much of it. I I don't know why I watched so much of it. It was terror. Because the setting was awesome. The setting was awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:28

But the story was just so like, oh, what the hell? On the flip side, I would like Legend of the Legend of the Hero Legendary Heroes is already a DD campaign. Just is. Like, it's not even a like if I were told, hey, I need you to make Legend of the Legendary Heroes as a campaign frame for Daggerheart, done. All the countries have name, they have signature spells.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:53

But what is Legend of the Legendary Heroes doing that's different from the generic fantasy that is DD?

SPEAKER_03 1:36:59

Oh, it's not. It's just the main characters are doing a buddy cop romance that's a slow burn, where the main character doesn't want to like fall in love because he believes he's cursed. Like, no, no, it's just a slow burn romance in a DD setting. Legend legendary heroes ain't doing shit. I think like the only unique mechanics are specifically porting their the legendary relics they were trying to find. And kind of like they kind of had this thing where like each area had its own unique spell casting, and his thing was he could steal spells with his cursed eyes. So like I would probably literally just add in new ancestories to cover for the magic eyes, where like you can just pick a magic eye ancestry, add in a few custom spells and items, and then I'm done. I think one thing it does that DD doesn't is it's a very much a non-magical race setting. It's very human-focused. But yeah, quite frankly, it's just a DD campaign. I could just I don't even know if I have to do anything. I think if I had the Legendary Legendary Heroes wiki open, I could just DM it. Because yeah, you're like, oh, your job is literally, hey, you wrote this report on magical relics, go find me magical relics, is the most DD-asque concept imaginable. Fair enough. It was a good DD campaign, but if someone told me, oh yeah, he just wrote down his DD campaign, I'd believe it. Oh man, I'd even keep the core cast as NPCs, sure. You can just run into these people. But like definitely not pushing the envelope forward with that one.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:42

Right, yeah. Like like you like I say, like it's pretty generic fancy. Minus the fantastical races.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:50

Yep. And then if I wanted to do Gundam, the problem would be getting five players who are into Gundam enough to want to be a mobile suit squad in Gundam. Because Gundam's an obvious one, right? Like, yeah, I have a TTRPG where you play as a bunch of youth because most of the adults are dead who are in a colony that was getting bombed and now you've been drafted onto a ship that has five mobile suits on it. Done. But like, Gundam doesn't feel like you really have agency either.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:24

Okay, but what about uh a Star Trek Tart G? I'm sure that already exists.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:30

Oh, it already exists and it's great. Like, I would have to find the people willing to play it. Not only does it already exist and there's like 10 editions, but like, there's even one-page versions of it, like Lasers and Feelings, where you choose if you want to your stats are lasers or feelings to solve your problems.

unknown 1:39:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:50

Well, yeah, you're in a spaceship going to Strange New Worlds every week is the most, like, obvious T T RPG setting imaginable.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:58

Okay, but so then, um, like this is this is basically similar to uh a space version of One Piece, where how you go and explore the planets is is more important than the planets themselves.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:13

Oh, yeah, like. For example, I've been playing a Star Trek Voyager game on PC, which is really good, and it's you basically they took every single episode of the show, put it in this game, but let you make moral choices on how you handle every problem, and then they cascade. So, like, for example, there's a port where aliens dying of a phage abducted my science officer and teleported out his lungs so they could put them in themselves. Do I a build new lungs for my person and let them kind of get away with it and negotiate? B, kill them all horribly to send a message. Or C demand my lungs back and offer them some sort of experimental treatment. And then it rolled dice to see, like, this ends with my science officer being dead and me wiping out their entire species. Oh. But like, yeah, in a setting where, like, hey, it's a planet full of mini Hitlers, do you bomb it? That's great. That's great. Like, you have tons of agency. Like, even if your players aren't playing the captain, the agency is you as players, go talk to the captain. And be like, hey, Captain, um, what do we I think. And as long as you as a DM are willing to like let the players have agency to control these ridiculous outcomes, you're like, oh yeah, humanity's now been enslaved by the Borg because you let one get away because you thought it might have feelings. Or conversely, oh, you thought the planet of Hitler's was bad. They're the only place that grew the cure for cancer, idiot. So yeah, Star Trek just works. Just works. Starkate works too. Star Trek is like. I am certain Star Trek and Star Wars have just never not had RPGs going. Like. I don't even know if I'd put Star in the title of something I made because it's so obvious they would just go play Star Trek or Star Wars.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:14

What about Star Ocean?

SPEAKER_03 1:42:23

Star Ocean is kind of I don't know how familiar are you with Star Ocean. Oh, not overly. Alright, so to give you a little bit of a clip note here, in Star Ocean, the premise usually is you're advanced aliens that usually end up crash-landed on like a fantasy planet. But magic in this setting is something that just is a type of science called symbology. And you later learn that it's because technically the entire world's a simulation and magic is hacking the source cord of the world. Okay. But one of my favorite scenes in gaming is where they build a mana cannon covered with magical glyphs, attach it to the back of a dragon, and fly up to shoot the underbelly of a spaceship to knock the invaders out of the sky. If that's not the most TTRPG ass storytelling beat you've ever heard in your life, of using the magical cannon on the back of a dragon to shoot down a spaceship. Yeah, the great setting. 10 out of 10. It's a setting that reasonably has magic and guns and infinite exploration, full player agency, it's a great setting. Alright, alright. 100% would be a good one. Same with Fantasy Star, which is basically the same setting.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:37

Do you think it's easier to adapt a game rather than it than uh anime or or book?

SPEAKER_03 1:43:44

Depends on the game. Definitely easier to adapt a game, though. 100%. Yeah, yeah. Like Orgree of Time, I could just make an Inform 7. Take me a while, but I could probably make it almost a one-to-one deconstruction of it. Some games, like would be a most games will be easier. Like, yeah, you can't adapt Tetris. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:10

But like any game that has a story is gonna be adaptable.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:15

A story and a world. The world part is important. So say you're doing Street Fighter, for example. Street Fighter has enough lore in the characters and locations you can kinda piece together a setting. Like if I were to make a Boky TTRPG. Of oh, you just underground fight clubs punch people. Secret martial arts society. I think many of those would work pretty good. It would I'd have to study more about martial arts to make a like the boxer class and the grappleer class feel noteworthily different.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:55

Okay, but so then like if we were to to go a different martial arts direction and go with the breaker. Um do you think the breaker has enough of a world to try and build GPT RPG?

SPEAKER_03 1:45:09

I think it'd be a fun experiment. Cause the breaker. So its power system's already better than some of these fighting games, because they like break into like different directions in schools, pun intended. So it's like your class would basically be your style. The breaker's interesting. Cause it's like, I think The Breaker, Ken Geneshura, Baki, like everyone, even History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi to an extent. All of them are doable, but it kind of runs into the Stargate uh the Gundam problem of you would need five people who are into that genre. Or who are into the martial arts genre. Yeah, yeah. And all your characters will kind of play the same.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:53

So it's something it's like when you when you say martial arts genre, I do think that a lot of people will jump straight to like uh Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which are martial arts Dragon Ball would be incredibly great to adapt.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:10

Dragon Ball Z would not. Dragon Ball of uh, hey, I can blow up a mountain, and I have this Dragon Ball's map is very well done. It's world, its settings, its afterlife, and it's been adapted to like 30 games already. You could easily make the Dragon Ball world, and the quest took of collect seven Dragon Balls to grant a wish and stop the bad guys from collecting them first. First, season one Dragon Ball has a good TT RPG party in it. You got a scientist, a martial artist, a criminal, a pig, an old man. Like, you have a pretty good, balanced, eclectic group of characters with unique strengths and abilities. Right, right. Dragon Ball Z throws it all out. Just throws it out. Throws it out completely. And Dragon Ball, you watch it start throwing it out over the course of it. So Dragon Ball Z doesn't really give enough character identity anymore, because everyone technically has the same skill set and power set. At times. At other times it comes back. Like the parts where they were like hunting for Cell, exploring the labor. Like, ironically, whenever the show lets Bulma do things, it is closer to being a good TTRPG. Hmm, that makes sense. Like, if I made my Dragon Ball Z character classes, they'd probably be martial artist, scientist, wizard. Right? Like rogue. And be the idea that, yeah, we almost have to nerf everybody for this to be a good experience.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:51

But you are right that all the characters in Dragon Ball Z just end up being like Key Blast and Punchy Punchy, and nobody actually has anything unique about them.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:00

And I like to say that if we had the more eclectic cast, and we take something like the Frieza arc, Bulma fighting a crab in a mech suit to seal a Dragon Ball while they tried to bluff out Vegeta, like there's pieces there that if you lowered the scale a bit and like balanced out the classes a bit, it could be done. Like, ironically, if I were to run Dragon Ball, it's just its setting. But give it Daggerheart's power scaling and mechanics. So the premise of there's robots, androids, aliens, dinosaurs, wish-granting orbs, your villains of season one are Team Rocket, your villains of season two are the Russian military for some reason. Assassin three-eye triclops, assassins, tournaments, like if you ran that through a dagger heart engine and just said, listen, the best I can give you is a Kamehameha wave. No, you all can't fly. I think there's enough there's enough world building there you could get away with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:05

But you definitely my question becomes um like martial arts series are are generally doable, but how often do you think people conflate martial arts series with something like Dragon Ball, and then that's why they they're just like, ah, it's just gonna be Dragon Ball.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:23

I don't think they conflate it with Dragon Ball. I think I think it's the artwork you put on the cover. If you put anime characters on the cover and call it martial arts, it becomes Dragon Ball. If you put Street Fighter characters on the cover, it becomes Street Fighter. I think people have seen enough martial arts movies, or at least are aware enough about them. Their brain's actually gonna go Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. I think they're gonna think Jackie Chan Adventures, honestly. Which would be a great setting. So I'm gonna throw that back to you. I have

Jackie Chan Adventures As A Perfect Fit

SPEAKER_03 1:49:57

given you the IP for Jackie Chan Adventures. Do you think? This game works, how would you go about making it?

SPEAKER_04 1:50:04

Uh well, I mean so uh actually it Jackie Chan Adventure almost gives them up the Inuyasha vibes.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:17

First off, I would kill for an Inuasha contract. Oh, that's such a good setting.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:24

But uh I mean the Jackie Chan adventures where they're going around and they're trying to find the 12 talismans, and the 12 talismans keep uh showing up in random people's hands and causing problems, and you have to try and steal them from villains, and then villains steal them from you, and uh like thematically they're very very similar in the Asha and uh Jackie Chancellor.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:48

I was gonna say Jackie Chan Adventures and Dragon Ball are extremely similar. Not Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:55

Yeah, that's also true. Uh where the the scope is so much tighter uh and all the characters are martial artists.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:03

I will say this about Jackie Chan Adventures, though. Jackie Chan Adventures have classes. So yeah. When we look at like the full roster of like named characters at the end, Jackie Chan is a martial artist. Jade would be a rogue. Right. They have two. Uncle would be a wizard for sure. And then they have like the luchador guy is like a fighter barbarian. They get like a they get like a literal like catwoman fen fatel thief who joins up at one point. Mm-hmm. And there you go, you got your full party, like. Oh Matt Wizard of Jackie Adventures is so funny because your wizard is so shitty compared to a DD wizard. Like your wizard just sucks. You're like, oh. I think that'd be hilarious, by the way, to deliberately make wizards actually have magic, but mechanically be the worst class. And your lab guns, which is nice. Like, I think I'd literally have in the rulebook for Jackie Jan Adventures CTRPG. Enemies have guns, but bullets never hit anybody. No one gets shot. Just doesn't happen here. So if someone has a gun, use your martial arts to disarm them, and then throw the clip off a cliff. Because no one ever hits with a bullet in this. You can shoot a rocket at someone and it'll hit near them.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:31

So yeah, then then, you know, the players can go around collecting the talismans.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:37

Um they're all over like so one of the my complaints about the gate franchises is the cities aren't actually relevant, right? They're kind of like your base loading screen. Right. Jackie Chan Adventures plays up the environmental tropes where like if you're in Sweden, you're in a freaking chocolate factory fighting these things. If you're in Canada, you're at the Calgary Stampede specifically, like it uses its setting and weaves it into the adventure. Right, right. Like if in you if you're in New York, you're gonna be fighting on the Empire State Building. Or if you're in Paris, you'll fight in the Apple Tower. If you're in Vegas, you have to have a high-stakes casino royale heist and poker match. If you're in Mexico, you're in an underground luchador competition, like. That's true. So, like, it uses its setting where part of my gate problem is like it doesn't. They all end up on Jeshu Island. They do all end up on Jetu Island, that is true. Cool. That's what I said earlier. I would kill for Inuwasha as a setting, though. Unique classes, weapons, monsters. The only goal is find the shiny rocks. The villains are also stealing shiny rocks. That's a series where you have like full agency too. You could just be a bastard in a New Washa campaign. Do you care about these villagers? Do you really? Are you actually gonna solve their problem? Or are you just gonna take the jewel shard and then leave the leech monsters to eat them? Like, how many fucks do you actually give?

SPEAKER_04 1:54:15

But so that that comes back around to the question. Uh it's like, um as a as an actual like setting, it's like the the jewel itself is an interesting um campaign. But it is a is Inyasha actually an interesting set.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:34

Hundred percent. So Inuasha is mapped to the Warring States Japan era, occasionally uses historical figures in the background, but almost every villain of the week is chunked out of a mythol actual mythological creature tied to that unique setting and feel. Like, the time that Naraku kills a monk to hide within his berry or to create a pit of demons inside the mountain and then eats the mountain and it becomes his body, that's sick. Like, there is versions where, like, oh, brainwashed samurai and demon hunters have jumped out to attack you by this ancient tree that's a forest full of moth people. Like, there's literally a part where they go to like a coastal town where they're bullying the nearby bat demons and they need the bat demonstone. I'm like, no, no, this is a great setting. Because a lot of it's like the geography and the mythology is woven in, like, the frog who ate people, trapped them in bubbles, and was using them to try and make an artificial jewel shard because his wife burned him with acid. Like, that's good stuff. Yeah, okay. So, like, if you're gonna use this Japan as a setting, but like it's built around folktales and actual locations. Hmm. I mean, like, there's a part where they go through there's two golems standing in front of a literal gateway to hell so they can stop halfway there to their dad's funeral, which is his corpse skeleton full of demon vultures. Like, that's a sick environment. That's a sick dungeon. Fair enough. Not me hyping up TV's inuasha. Me saying that if someone's like, hey, make an Inuasha T T RPG, I'm like, oh, this is great. Oh, I can do so much with this.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:09

Well, so then like if a lot of it is about uh the um It's about the flavor and function coming together. Um no one's ever made like just an ancient Greece CTRPG before that.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:29

So first off, it it does exist. I just haven't looked it up. I'm just certain it does. But also, ancient Greek settings, so they did Theros for DD slash MTG. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure there's probably a straight up Percy Jackson setting. Like, yeah, yeah, okay. Just taking a mythology and making that your TTRPG is a solid tactic, but a lot of them have been slowly cancelled or vanished because like you gotta do that respectfully and not just make it a bunch of racist tropes. Ah right. Like, there's literally like Woksha-named TT RPGs, like Ancient Greece. Also, most Western monsters are just in the dungeon master's guy, right? Like, every single ancient Greek thing has just been thrown in DD wholesale at this point. Fair enough. It's not like there aren't unicorns and pegasus and things. But yeah, there's literally TTRPGs called Rome, Life and Death, Warlords of Alexander. Omega. Like Mythic Greece Age of Heroes.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:40

That's not something that you would be interested personally in adapting.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:44

I don't think I could get enough buy-in is the pro like, so say I w like just declaring Greek mythology is a thing to adapt. Like, yeah, I start with a map of Greece, I look up a bunch of fairy tales, I line them up in different geographic locations in Greece. Like, it's kind of funny that I feel like a lot of that mythology has been so already absorbed that most of it's already in DD. Like, I would not have to add anything to do the Iliad in 5e. Like, I'm pretty sure the Golden Fleece itself is already an item of a stat lock, like. The Iliad is just a DD campaign. Fair enough. So yeah, picking But remember though, it kind of skewed a little bit away from the question of adaptation. Cause Right, right. Taking a physical location and making that into your T T RPG just works, but then you're making the T like that's just the full game then and there, like. Right. If I were to take Canadian mythology and try not to be racist and talk to indigenous people and First Nations people and get their accounts of their mythology and make it into a TTRPG and it was signed off on. I could just do that. It's not even a thought experiment at that point. You can just do that. Fair enough. Like, that's just kind of funny, is I do think like if you take British, Greek, if you take all the white people and their mythologies and you put them together, that just makes DD. That's just what D is. Is all the white people mythology shoved together in a box. To be fair, DD literally is just full stale out here taking people's mythology. Thousand One Arabian Knights, every monster in that is in 5e already. Yeah? So to answer your question of could you just do Rome? Yes. Kind of a boring answer, but yes. You can just take a country's mythology and make it T T RPG. That is where they come from.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:00

But you just don't think that that would be a very compelling story because it A is Oh no, it's not a compelling episode of Deep Space and Dragons.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:11

Like, that's just the correct way to do it, which is why it's uninteresting. Like. Fair enough. A lot of like these anime series do just do that of take a place's folktale and reimagine it. Like, if I want to look at Inform 7 games that already exist, every public domain story has had someone try and put one together. Like The Iliad already exists as an Inform 7 game. Like the sources of the sources are already being used is kind of where I was going with that one. Where part of why we're doing like anime and TV shows and things was because it'd be harder and have more limitations. Makes it more fun to dissect.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:55

Um, what about we could go a completely different direction?

Winnie The Pooh Cozy RPG Limits

SPEAKER_04 2:00:59

Um I mean the uh public domain uh is only the the classic Winnie the Pooh. So you can't use like the red shirt. But do you think that Winnie Winnie the Pooh, the Hundred Maker Wood, and all the different characters in it uh actually has anything that could make TTRPG?

SPEAKER_03 2:01:20

Yes, with some asterisk. So life is stressful these days, right? Cozy RPGs exist. Right. Like the way my players have played, I do think it would be not a hard sell to have them play a thousand acre woods one-shot of trying to get the missing carrot back or whatever it is I do.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:43

I don't think I'd have lasting engagement on something like that.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:48

Right. I think people would get bored of the shtick after a while. But however, it would run really well for literal children. Use the like the my little pony TTRPG exists and is surprisingly mechanically sound. Huh. Really? Oh yeah, I ran it for my TTRPG club once. And Critical Role also ran it once as a one-shot, which is funny. So yeah, if the My Little Pony T T RPG exists and the Toon World T T RPG exists, there is absolutely a market for children's media. Winnie the Pooh is a little even low on conflict for that, but 100% you could it probably exists. Now that I'm saying this out loud.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:39

No, no, Winnie the Pooh T T RPG probably does exist. Probably.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:43

Yeah, here it is. Bremblebreck 2, Tale in the Hundred Acre Woods.

unknown 2:02:48

Huh.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:48

Not only that, but Itch.io had a Winnie the Pooh T T RPG jam for everyone to make it when it hit public domain. That's fun.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:58

Well, I mean that was what made me think about it is the fact that the original Winnie the Pooh is public domain. Oh yeah. I mean you can't really use the uh the new adventures of Winnie the Pooh because that's Disney's proprietary.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:09

Yeah, but there is ten entries in this Winnie the Pooh TTRPG jam. So there is ten of them at least that exist from this one source alone. So yes, yes, you can.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:25

But the question is, do you think it would make a good setting?

SPEAKER_03 2:03:30

Here's what would happen with who I am as a person. So wouldn't like I said, for like a one-shot or a few shots or short story arc, yeah, it would make a good setting. It definitely does the job of there's enough space, you can shape the stakes, you can tell a cozy story. If you're playing for literal children, it go over great. However, I would almost immediately end up turning it into Honiblewood or Redwall. If it were me writing it. I'm giving them swords. Sorry. Right, right, right. No, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:03

Because you're right, there is no conflict in one of the boo.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:06

So I'm almost well, I mean, fighting scariness and getting food, like you could get away with it. Like, the smaller splayer conflicts are fine. I'm just saying that if I were given this project, the temptation to give them swords would be overwhelming. Cause that's who I am as a person. So basically, yeah, I would make a t Winnie the Pooh T T RPG or a Winnie the Pooh in Form 7 game. I can just do it. I just personally would be like, eh, okay. Sure. I like I'd do it. And I think it'd be a fine product, but I wouldn't be hype about it, you know? Yeah, Winnie the Pooh is definitely not super culturally relevant to it. Sure is fine. Like, I'd rather do Land Before Time if we're playing this game. If we're taking the like beloved childhood thing and making it into a TTRPG, I'm gonna go land before time where things are actually trying to kill and eat you.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:07

Right, right. And then your goal is to explore the world and find your new home.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:12

Right? Like that one's solid. Plus that way someone could tell me the story of their loving dinosaur parents and I could brutally murder them in front of them. Oh no. So like there's where my interest lies. Winnie the Pooh's a little too optimistic, but like, mm, give me a land before time, or give me a 5-0 goes west, I could do some work with that.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:38

I need traumatic challenge. Specifically 5-0 goes west. Uh I I don't think the original American tale has enough there to I mean maybe it does, but yeah, if I'm basically a 50 goes west would be better, one.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:53

Basically, if I'm adapting a kid's classic, consequences need to matter, and I need a way to just kill my players. Like, I need them to have the risk of death. I'm not saying I'm murdering them in the land before time, but I need them to think I'm gonna. It's important for making narrative stress mistakes.

Final Takeaways On Adaptation And Agency

SPEAKER_03 2:06:14

But we're getting near the end of our episode, so my takeaway from this is Richard hates portal animes. Mm-hmm. And almost out of principle refuses to even entertain the idea of making one. Right. Large well-written fantasy settings turn just into Daggerheart or 5e on their own, like Legend of the Legend of the Heroes, Heroic Legend of Arslan, just work. Right, right. Shocking nobody, super classics like Full Metal Alchemist would work great. But I think my big takeaway from this conversation is that the player needs to be able to change the world in the setting for it to work. And no matter what your genre is, if your story is too linear and like your setting requires the story to be linear, it won't adapt nicely. Right. One piece works great, except you can't end it because you don't know what the one piece is, and I guess you just have to make it up at the end. Right. I probably. Or it's a rock with the word friendship on it, and the one piece with the friends you made along the way. Like Naruto works better as a setting if it happens before the story of Naruto. Mm-hmm. I agree. Bleach would require jumping through some hoops to make it work. Yeah. I know that's gonna reopen the conversation, but what do you think about Yu-Gi-Oh, but there is no card game rules? You're just rolling dice to see who wins the card game. And you're using the setting. Yeah. So like you're using the setting of you're running around challeng like Yu-Gi-Oh, but you're running around challenging people game. No, I don't think Yu-Gi-Oh! would work. I'm kiboshing my own idea mid-sentence, but I'm curious your thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:03

Um Well so I don't really I don't really think it would work very well either. Um like Well, season zero would work a little bit better because the games were more unhinged.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:21

I think the problem with Yu-Gi-Oh is he has a party and they don't party. It's a solo activity.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:30

Yeah, they they definitely, even when they are partying together, they're just standing there on the side, you can do it!

unknown 2:08:36

I believe.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:37

Believe in the heart of the cards!

SPEAKER_03 2:08:39

Yeah. And then Ghost in the Shell's getting its own T RPG, and it's cool. I mean, like Cyberpunk style RPG slash literal cyberpunk RPG is a super obvious setting. Super easy to like mechanicize and build that. Uh, but yeah. So my summary is pretty much you want a setting that gives your players enough agency to affect the story. And a lot of things are rot uh waving around a protagonist too hard for you to really be able to do that. And also, give me a world someone's actually made, damn it. Like, I could do Hunter Hunter, but I wouldn't even do the story beats of Hunter Hunter. Like, I would have to just invent the world around it. Full Metal Alchemist basically comes pre-made in a tin. Full Metal Alchemist's world is so deep and good, you could run a campaign while the story of Full Metal Alchemist is going and have enough stuff to do, you would never meet the main characters. Yeah, that's true. And then, man, Anywasha's Villain of the Week format's actually perfect. Quite frankly. Like, I've been wanting someone to ask me to run the Mininiwasha campaign. I'm like, oh, I am so many Like, I have a campaign frame called Feudal Fairy Tale already written up for Daggerheart. Like, I'm ready to go if someone was like, want to run Anywasha. The big mechanic I'm having is instead of like picking an ancestry, so you know how there's Daggerheart has the combined ancestry? Where you can pick the top line of one and the bomb for another? My mechanic is make a demon, pick two traits and describe what kind of half demon you are. So, like, instead of being, oh I'm a ribbot, you have to make, okay, I have frog ton in dragon scales. Cool, describe what your creature is. So I kind of reverse engineer it. Cause let's be honest, no one's playing a human in Miwasha. No. Maybe one dude. Probably an NPC. Everyone's demon or half demon. Oh, my options are I could be a silver-haired person one-armed person with demon claws that turns into a giant wolf. Or I could be a high schooler. Pfft. That's not a fair Oh, also, I'm just pulling the Icasai out of Inuwasha if I'm running it as a setting. Just not do it.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:00

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:01

Just not do it. No reason. Don't need that. The reason you do an Iekisai for a show like that is they have someone to explain the setting too early on. That was it. That was the point. It's the fish underwater thing. Although they did let her bring stuff. In Anywash's defense, she does mace a bitch and ride around on a bike. No need for that though. I do think it's more compelling to be like, here's your table, build your half demon. Especially like the plot hookup, if you assemble the incredi full jewel, you can be a full demon or a human or do what you want with it. Right. I do enjoy having Anywasha's party running around as NPCs, and then you're like, nah, fuck you guys. We're not gonna give you our piece of the jewel.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:47

Screw you. We gotta run fast.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:49

That's actually kinda great of an idea that like they're a recurring antagonist as well, because they're also collecting it. Who do you think the players would hate more? Running into Naraku or running into Anywasha? Like Maroku's such an asshole where it's like, yeah, every within a 30-foot code gets sucked in and dies. Like, oh shit, run.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:14

The party would eventually figure out the Muraku tactic tactic of just throwing poison at him.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:20

I like the party metagaming to go get themselves cursed wasps to throw at Moroku specifically is funny. I also enjoy putting in a metagaming mechanic where if anyone wants to metagame, I'm like roll a knowledge check to let you know how much your character knows of this lore that you know. But yeah, at the end of this conversation, if I were to say, hey Carl, here's a hundred bucks. I need you to make a Daggerheart campaign frame for one of these settings. What would you pick? And why is it Jackie Chan Adventures?

SPEAKER_04 2:12:57

I probably would pick Jackie Chan Adventures. Um I love Jackie Chan Adventures, uh, and it has a huge amount of potential. Uh uses the variety of locations, uh, gives people interesting superpowers and interactions, gives gives villains and players interesting motivations for what they're trying to do and how they're trying to achieve it. Sometimes just money. Yeah. The idea that there is no uh Jack and Chan Adventures CG RVG strikes me as a little bit like probably exists if you look for it.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:41

Well, it's kind of funny, like if I were to do it in Daggerheart, I think the custom rules I would add would I'd add in the 12 talismans. And I'd make it that all characters can choose to exit the scene, risk it all, or Blaze of Glory, so that way the villains just exit the scene as much as the players do and come back later. And I love the point being like this setting doesn't have guns because guns are not cool. That's the entire explanation. You don't get guns. No no no. You don't get guns, and most enemies just opt to leave the scene when you knock them out. Or shadow demons proof away.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:26

Yeah. I I do think that would be pretty pretty great.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:31

Also, it goes without saying, because there's like 30 fan makes of these. Pokemon works great. Like I really briefly touched on the Digimon premise of you're just in a strange world with your animal companion going on adventures. Yeah. That works great. It's open-ended enough. In Pokemon, what I would do though for TTRPG is I'd probably make it that you get six Pokemon across your team, so that way it's like less bogged down. Yeah, that would make sense. But yeah, you could just. I'm not surprised people are running Pokemon T RPG campaigns. It feels almost too obvious. And I ain't doing Minecraft. Well, there's nothing there. Well, I mean, there is something there, but it's not. I watched the Minecraft movie. I know how this campaign would go. I'm vetoing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:25

I agree. Yep.

Random Question About Emoji Habits

SPEAKER_03 2:15:27

Alright, random question time.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:32

Uh. So was that whole monologue just time for you to find the random questions?

SPEAKER_03 2:15:36

Oh no, I didn't even start looking yet for my random question folder. And I moved some files around earlier.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:42

We are approaching the end of our episode, but we need to rant for another 10 minutes before we look for the random questions.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:48

I like this topic. I think it's neat. It is a fun topic. I mean uh. So, today's random question, which is kind of a little on the bland side, but they can't all be winners. Shout out for being entered into the contest.

unknown 2:16:09

Shh.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:10

What emoji do you use the most? Um.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:16

So, full disclosure, I am Caucasian. Oh no. But I find it really, really funny that you can select the skin tone of your thumbs up emoji. Uh, so I almost always send people a uh a black thumbs up emoji just because I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:37

That's bad. You let me choose. Well, they're not gonna have you take a selfie and it scans your skin tone to unlock emojis yet. That feels like a thing they would do to fight racism.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:56

That feels like dystopian almost racism on its own.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:59

Yeah, I fully believe they'll do this technology where you hold up your phone and it scans and comes up like a hex code for your average, and that gives you only access to those emojis. So that way your phone company maps your exact skin tone for emoji usage. And people will say, like for emoji usage.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:15

Yeah, and not for a specific advertising person.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:18

Oh, not at all. And I'm sure that like I can see what's happening. That's the worst like I think we can go on Shark Tank with this idea and get a grant, like this is one of those ideas that people say is awesome for some reason because no one wants to point out how stupid it is.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:36

Also, so the actual emoji I probably use the most is the kissy face emoji, because I send my fiance kissy faces all the time. At least eight per text message.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:46

I do a lot of winky faces, but I also do a lot of just typing XD for my faces laughing so hard that I can't even emoji it. I think that's probably my most common one. Because I want to be very clear when I'm being satirical that I'm being satirical, because sometimes people believe me, and that's a huge problem. So I have to be very clear in my non-verbal communications that I'm being sassy. Yeah. And I'll see if we got another one. Just checking my class, one of my many Discord servers occasionally will have questions in it. Alright, alright.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:24

Do do do do do just as a random side note, though, uh, you're not allowed to choose the skin tone of your kissy face emoji.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:34

That's somehow worse. I don't know. Like my thing with this emoji choosing is it was yellow. Like, this was a solved problem. No, unless you have jaundice, you were not represented as a Simpsons yellow. Like, no, no, no. To be more inclusive, let's make it that people are broken into specific shades. Uh let's see. Um I think my final question. I think that was it. We only had the one question this week. People need to pay more attention to our podcast.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:16

Well, I mean it would help if we didn't have technical issues two weeks in a row.

unknown 2:19:20

Eh.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:21

Yeah, yeah. But really it's their fault for not appreciating us enough. Let's be very clear. So thank you all for tuning into this Ramble Fest where I basically just like Carl, your ideas are dumb for two hours straight. Some reason you made it to the end, congratulations, you deserve a treat. I recommend a McFlurry. I'm not sponsored by them. I just want one right now.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:44

Oh man, I haven't had a McFlurry in a long time. Right? Whenever uh whenever my fiance says to go for ice cream, I was go to Dairy Queen or Sailor Dan's, the local ice cream store.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:54

You know, almost every restaurant on earth was within ten minutes of me, except Dairy Queen for some reason. Huh. It's kinda baffling. But yeah, thank you all for tuning in.

Farewell And Closing Bits

SPEAKER_03 2:20:05

Mm'bye. Bye.