Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to My deficit. I am one of
Speaker 1: your hosts, Dan Fernandez, and sitting across from me as
Speaker 1: always is my co host. Anyway, how's it going, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? Doing good? Filling a freshened up ready
Speaker 1: to go rage to talk about tabletop This is a
Speaker 1: fun subject. There's so many This is going to be
Speaker 1: very interesting episode. I mean all our episodes are interesting,
Speaker 1: but I like that it's going to have turns and twists, betrayal,
Speaker 1: u so death, resurrection, and then we wrap it up
Speaker 1: with a fun talk with our guest or good friend,
Speaker 1: Emma five who you know. You can watch your playing
Speaker 1: tabletop games almost yeah, every week on hyper ADG where
Speaker 1: you and I. You and I played a live table
Speaker 1: top game for that was a Valiant that's a Valiant comics.
Speaker 1: We if you and I were on a show, and
Speaker 1: we also, yeah, Valiant banquished pretty cool because we were
Speaker 1: made into comic book characters and we actually this is
Speaker 1: just some notificent lore. If you and I ended up
Speaker 1: in a Valiant comic. Yeah, so that's certain that I
Speaker 1: sent to my grandparents. Remember these I used to read,
Speaker 1: I'm in it, I'm in it, I'm in it. So
Speaker 1: today we are talking about table top games, which is
Speaker 1: very broad subject iffy that we chose. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: super broad and and really this is a good time
Speaker 1: to kind of like really nail this idea of the
Speaker 1: show and the future of it, because I know on
Speaker 1: past episodes people have been left wanting more and why
Speaker 1: we didn't cover this or something we might have missed,
Speaker 1: And really, I think our first past and a lot
Speaker 1: of these subjects are going to be very general and
Speaker 1: then we jump in, we zero in, like this is
Speaker 1: a tabletop episode, but I already have a chess episode plan.
Speaker 1: It's going to be all about chess. For all my
Speaker 1: chess heads who are like yeah, you know, they just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you get a check? Bank? Know, I just heard
Speaker 1: that they're going to talk about chess, and I do.
Speaker 1: I met a professional chess player, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: have her on yes, her, which which I don't know
Speaker 1: this might be just catastrophizes because I saw it on
Speaker 1: like the front page read it, but apparently that's like
Speaker 1: a big deal, like female chess players and in the
Speaker 1: ins and outs and like the separation of genders and chess,
Speaker 1: which we can talk about with her at that time.
Speaker 1: But this is just a general kind of scope of
Speaker 1: tabletop just to talk about it, talk about some fun
Speaker 1: stories that happen within it, and just even you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't even know what people are saying when
Speaker 1: they talk about tabletop or when you see Will Wheaton YouTube. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean you literally had a game. It's called tabletop games. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: show um. Yeah, so tabletop games are literally games that
Speaker 1: are played on a table or a flat surface, such
Speaker 1: as board games, card games, dice games, miniature war games,
Speaker 1: which we are going to cover heavily tile based games.
Speaker 1: So and a lot of these can be categor arises
Speaker 1: like adventure, paper and pencil games. Role playing games, which
Speaker 1: we're going to get into is probably the most famous
Speaker 1: role playing game ever. Yeah, and and pretty much yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's probably where we're gonna zero in the most,
Speaker 1: mostly because as of now, tabletop games are synonymous with
Speaker 1: RPGs and games with heavy RPG elements, which is role
Speaker 1: playing games. But you know there are like other games
Speaker 1: like Katan. You know, Dominion was the game I was
Speaker 1: thinking of Dominion, Yes, yes, to cut you off, You're
Speaker 1: deep into moving on, and I was like, I'm not not.
Speaker 1: It's Okay, Yeah, we'll get into war games, which are
Speaker 1: kind of my favorite, but let's talk about the history.
Speaker 1: Deep deep. We still don't have our sound. I know,
Speaker 1: I look, I just like repeating deep dive. We'll just
Speaker 1: clip that for next time. The earliest it looks like
Speaker 1: known tabletop game was a series of forty nine small
Speaker 1: carved painted stones that were actually found at the five
Speaker 1: thousand year old I think this is Yuk Burial Mound
Speaker 1: in southeast Turkey. Um and those are the earliest gaming
Speaker 1: pieces ever found. Yeah, and similar pieces have been found
Speaker 1: in Syria and Iraq and seemed to point to a
Speaker 1: board games originating in the Fertile Crescent and other early origin.
Speaker 1: Dice games were created by painting a single side of
Speaker 1: a flat stick. These sticks would be tossed in unison
Speaker 1: in the amount of painted side showing would be your
Speaker 1: role Mesopotamian dice were made from a variation of materials
Speaker 1: including carved knuckle bones, would painted stones, and turtle show.
Speaker 1: You know what this kind of adjacent to this reminds
Speaker 1: me of cornhole? Do you know the history? Of course,
Speaker 1: this is according at least to my ex who religiously
Speaker 1: so he's from He's from Ohio, which that when dating him,
Speaker 1: I was exposed to cornhole. I didn't know. I up
Speaker 1: in southern California. I don't know if it was a
Speaker 1: big thing or not. Um, but I wasn't aware of it.
Speaker 1: And then they would like, literally the kids in his
Speaker 1: town would make their own corn holes and paint them.
Speaker 1: That sounds so bad. So if you don't know what
Speaker 1: cornhole is, it's like it's like a flat surface, um
Speaker 1: ramp that has a hole in it that you then
Speaker 1: toss bean bags into. And what my ex told me
Speaker 1: was that the history of it is that they used
Speaker 1: to throw corn cobs into our houses. I don't know,
Speaker 1: we might need our researcher to look into that, but
Speaker 1: that's the history. I like that history though. I think
Speaker 1: I think I'm down with the corn cob and to
Speaker 1: an out house. Yeah yeah, No. I learned cornhole from
Speaker 1: the white improv community that I'm a part of out
Speaker 1: here because yeah, grow I don't know about you, but
Speaker 1: growing up and sow our big thing was like, uh,
Speaker 1: what was our big nothing? Pong beer? Yeah yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the big like party game I'm aware of, But cornhole
Speaker 1: seems way more like a backyard barbecue. Throw a little
Speaker 1: sack into a hole through a toilet bowl. But let's
Speaker 1: jump down this timeline. So thanks to our researchers, we
Speaker 1: have a brief time line of game history and it
Speaker 1: starts in b C E with SENA. It's s A
Speaker 1: N E T, which is either senate or Seney. I'm fancy,
Speaker 1: so i'mnna call it say. It's discovered in the pre
Speaker 1: Dynastic and First Dynasty burials of Egypt. Senate is believed
Speaker 1: to be the world's oldest board game, meaning game of passing.
Speaker 1: Seney consisted of a grid of thirty squares arranged in
Speaker 1: three rows of tin and two sets of ponds, though
Speaker 1: the exact rules are the source of much debate. A
Speaker 1: copy of the game was found buried with Tuton common,
Speaker 1: which is funny because I feel like that's tabletop to
Speaker 1: a t which is arguing over what the rules actually are.
Speaker 1: Yeah yet with him, yeah yeah, yeah, all of his
Speaker 1: animals and I think like friends also that thing always
Speaker 1: keep that yeah. Okay, So moving on the fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: b C. We see dice. Actually, so Sophocles claimed that
Speaker 1: Palamedes invented dice in about four and sure enough, they
Speaker 1: found cubicle stones and clay dice during that period. But
Speaker 1: in truth, it's possible that dice were actually developed independently
Speaker 1: by many ancient cultures around the world. I believe that
Speaker 1: did you know that alcohol was also developed independently around
Speaker 1: major cultures? I took a history of This was in
Speaker 1: my deep weep phase when I was in community college,
Speaker 1: but I took it was Japanese, but I also took
Speaker 1: like the history of Japan, and they were talking about
Speaker 1: how Korean in Japan and almost every country found alcohol
Speaker 1: on their own. So there had to be that one
Speaker 1: weird guy and every culture who was like, let's taste
Speaker 1: this rotten juice. It might also be I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure someone will correct us, but I imagine also it's
Speaker 1: just like their limited resources, where like if something did
Speaker 1: go wrong or it was like fermented, it was like,
Speaker 1: we don't have the resources to just throw this away.
Speaker 1: Now that sounds like a very educated guest. And then
Speaker 1: and then eventually what ended up happening was that the
Speaker 1: water supply was so bad that they just ended up
Speaker 1: having to drink alcohol, which is something we should cover.
Speaker 1: We should cover nerds getting drunk, well, well, we should
Speaker 1: definitely cover um the science behind not even that. But
Speaker 1: remember when everybody was making their own beer like like that,
Speaker 1: I mean still yeah, people are real nerds about that.
Speaker 1: Like I was like, oh man, I made my own beer.
Speaker 1: Micro Well, let's dip over to C for a game
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of familiar. Snakes and Ladders. I love it.
Speaker 1: I wish they had kept that name. Snakes and Ladders
Speaker 1: originated in India as a game based on morality, where
Speaker 1: the progression up the board was to teach children about
Speaker 1: good and evil, with climbing up ladders representing good and
Speaker 1: sliding down snakes representing evil. During the British rule of India,
Speaker 1: the game made its way back to the Assures and
Speaker 1: it was taken the US as Shoots and Ladders inte
Speaker 1: by Milton Bradley. Should have been snakes. That's gentrification one
Speaker 1: on one right there, Like all right, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: the snakes out, We're gonna add some shoots. We're gonna
Speaker 1: move on to the first board game, Millionaire. This is
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating stories that we encountered coming
Speaker 1: across this topic. In nine we got Monopoly and a
Speaker 1: lot of people wrongly credit Charles Darrow as being the
Speaker 1: soul designer. And what actually happened is Charles and his
Speaker 1: wife Esther actually went in nineteen thirty two to the
Speaker 1: home of his friend who was a Philadelphia businessman named
Speaker 1: Charles Todd and his wife Olive. So he went over
Speaker 1: to their place and they played a real state board
Speaker 1: game that they had recently learned, and they became fascinated
Speaker 1: by it, and Charles Todd his friend made the Daros
Speaker 1: a set of their own, and then the other Charles,
Speaker 1: so many Charles in this. Okay, So Charles Darrow, listen
Speaker 1: this because this is where the sneaks. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a character from Downton Abbey. By the way, Charles d Charles,
Speaker 1: Charles Daru, and I've made some board games for you. Todd.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, on paper sounds hello, whack uh. You
Speaker 1: know it was like, hey, on paper sounds really whack.
Speaker 1: Like to be like, hey, you guys wanna play a
Speaker 1: real estate board game. I'm like, na, son, let's bring
Speaker 1: out the magic the gathering. Why are you bringing this trade?
Speaker 1: Win was prohibition? Let me see if they were bored,
Speaker 1: very good, quesne Um, Let me see if they were
Speaker 1: bored with their lives and no, okay, listen, because this
Speaker 1: Charles Darrow is sneaky as hell. So he asked Charles
Speaker 1: Todd for like a list of the rules, and Charles
Speaker 1: Todd was like, I've never made them. I guess I
Speaker 1: should sit down and write them. So, in fact, the
Speaker 1: rules to the game had been invented in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: And N three by Elizabeth Maggie. Wow, but she's often
Speaker 1: forgotten in this story. She's the one that created the
Speaker 1: rules for Monopoly. And Charles Darrow in his uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess he might be respected, but in his sneaky way,
Speaker 1: he sold the version of the game to Parker Brothers
Speaker 1: and it became a phenomenal success. And my girl, Elizabeth Maggie,
Speaker 1: she was forgotten. That's just wild. But also I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's it made him millions. It made him millions. Well
Speaker 1: did you know that famous Amos, the black guy on
Speaker 1: the actual cookie, doesn't own the cookie like you. He
Speaker 1: was like, they just snapped a picture and we're like, you,
Speaker 1: well know, they paid him like a trash amount of
Speaker 1: money and then made millions off of it. And then
Speaker 1: he was on Shark Tank making his own cookies. Brand.
Speaker 1: Did he get it? I think so you don't bring
Speaker 1: famous amous on just to deny him, that would be
Speaker 1: And to answer your que the prohibition era was from
Speaker 1: ninety three, so that's why they Yeah, that's where this
Speaker 1: came from. But um okay, So it looks like one
Speaker 1: journalist after another asked him how he managed how Charles
Speaker 1: Starrow managed to invent monopoly out of thin air, and
Speaker 1: he said, it's a freak. That's what he told Germantown Bulletin,
Speaker 1: Philadelphia paper, entirely unexpected, in illogical in quotes, that I
Speaker 1: stole this idea from somebody else. I know. That's that's
Speaker 1: so funny, Like this is a time before Twitter where
Speaker 1: someone would just retweet that and be like, na, this
Speaker 1: is a week explanation. He probably stole that from Elizabeth Maggie.
Speaker 1: But that's our I think you had a trivia on this, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: is about monopoly in general. Basically, humanitarian groups sent escape
Speaker 1: kits disguised as monopoly games to the Allied prisoner of
Speaker 1: war during World War Two, which also says something nice
Speaker 1: about the soldiers keeping them prison. It was like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to be monsters. Let's let him play Monopoly,
Speaker 1: you know this game that like never ends. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that'll keep them occupied while we keep them prisoner. But
Speaker 1: that was real cool. But you know, we're not here
Speaker 1: to talk about your Monopoly sorries, your your bomb. Don't wait, daddies,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about you know, RPG. So, like
Speaker 1: we're going to dip into the history of RPGs. So
Speaker 1: the exact moment when the RPG was born as debatable,
Speaker 1: particularly as the hobby of war gaming, which was a
Speaker 1: big influence on early role players, had been around in
Speaker 1: some form in another for hundreds of years. However, the
Speaker 1: first instance of what people today would recognize as a
Speaker 1: modern RPG came into being with the development of the
Speaker 1: tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons nineteen seventy four. It actually came in
Speaker 1: a brown box with a wood grain pattern. It was
Speaker 1: ten dollars, which was a lot at the time. That's
Speaker 1: about fifty dollars, so it was like the most expensive
Speaker 1: tabletop game. It is still, I mean it's not if
Speaker 1: you get your group to chip in, it's not super expensive,
Speaker 1: but it is when you consider, like a DM needs
Speaker 1: his DM guide, a Monster manual. The player needs players handbooks.
Speaker 1: I mean lots of people were not saying this is
Speaker 1: the way to go, but a lot of people have
Speaker 1: been downloading the pds of it. But really, like Magic
Speaker 1: has been finding ways to where you can actually look
Speaker 1: up your character sheet and download it for free from
Speaker 1: their website. The startup cost is heavy if you're trying
Speaker 1: to go all out, because you need the mats. The
Speaker 1: mats the like it's like usually a two sided mat
Speaker 1: where it's like hexagonal or cut I want to say cubic,
Speaker 1: but it's not cubic. It's like uh squares, and you'll
Speaker 1: have that that you need your small figures. Every player
Speaker 1: needs to pick out a figure. Lots of times you
Speaker 1: gotta buy the paint to paint that figure, but really
Speaker 1: you could just do it without any of that, with
Speaker 1: all your imagination or even for if you want to
Speaker 1: be more forward thinking. There's a lot of apps and
Speaker 1: programs you can use now where you can like digitally
Speaker 1: have in your characters. You can have a digital map.
Speaker 1: It's real cool. There's lots of ways to go about it,
Speaker 1: but really all you need is a pen, pencil, paper,
Speaker 1: your imagination, your imagination. Yeah, good improv skills, yes, anding.
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about miniatures just a little bit.
Speaker 1: So those are essentially your game pieces. With a tabletop
Speaker 1: war game, you often play with miniatures and you're moving
Speaker 1: them across a battlefield based on a set of rules
Speaker 1: and instructions. You're like making tactile choices, and you're you're
Speaker 1: choosing the composition of your own army, and then you're
Speaker 1: like fighting out over a tabletop and the miniatures are
Speaker 1: often painted by hand, most likely by yourself, And I
Speaker 1: feel like that's a whole other side, Like people have
Speaker 1: made like a living by painting commissions for miniatures, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people, I feel, take a lot of
Speaker 1: pride and enjoyment in this actual aspect of the game.
Speaker 1: Like that's an entire part of a lot of these
Speaker 1: war games. Yeah, but before we dip to deep in there,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Dungeons and Dragon. It was originally designed
Speaker 1: by Gary guy GaX and Dave Arns. You both aren't
Speaker 1: with us anymore, Thank you for everything you did, and
Speaker 1: it was published in nineteen seventy four by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc.
Speaker 1: Then the game has been published by Wizard of the Coast,
Speaker 1: which is a subsidiary of Hasbro, which is like the
Speaker 1: you know, one of the main hubs of tabletop because
Speaker 1: they also produced Magic the Gathering. Uh. And it was
Speaker 1: derived from ministure of war games, as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: with a variation of chain Mail serving as the initial
Speaker 1: rule system. D and d's publication is commonly recognized as
Speaker 1: the beginning of modern role playing. As we said, as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, we're gonna say chain Mail was
Speaker 1: the popular game that was like right before this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah. Chain Mail was medieval miniature of war game
Speaker 1: created by Gary Guy GaX and Jeff Parent. Guy Gets
Speaker 1: developed the core medieval system of the game by expanding
Speaker 1: on rules authored by his fellow like Geneva Tactical Studies
Speaker 1: Association member parent hobby shop owner with whom he had
Speaker 1: become friendly. Guided Games released the first edition of chain
Speaker 1: Mail in nineteen seventy one as its first minto war
Speaker 1: game and one of its three debut products. So chain
Speaker 1: Mail was a war game. Then from there they created
Speaker 1: D and D and then it was all and then
Speaker 1: from there they ruined children's minds with their demonic worships.
Speaker 1: Dungeon and Dragons was accused of fostering demon worship and
Speaker 1: a belief in witchcraft and magic, and by politicians and
Speaker 1: moms and dads. Yeah, because there was a real this
Speaker 1: was an air of like the devil scare, where like
Speaker 1: you know, metal music was turning your kids to the
Speaker 1: devil and they were trying to find like all these
Speaker 1: different things to basically use fear to drive people. Uh
Speaker 1: sound familiar anyway. Yeah, And my my family is very Catholic,
Speaker 1: and I know that my aunt wouldn't let my cousin
Speaker 1: read Harry Potter still doesn't. I don't know if to
Speaker 1: visit the Wizarding World, but it's seen as witchcraft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually why I never got into I got into
Speaker 1: tabletop right around when I started working with Geek and Sundry.
Speaker 1: I did some Dungeons and Ragons a little bit before that,
Speaker 1: but that's when I really jumped into the world, which
Speaker 1: is hard to you know, to avoid when you work
Speaker 1: for the same company that produces tabletop. But yeah, when
Speaker 1: I grew up, I went to a Catholic school, so
Speaker 1: they were always like they said, we couldn't listen to
Speaker 1: k rock because oh my god, I couldn't listen to
Speaker 1: kiss FM if you had to listen to the oldies
Speaker 1: radio okay or at one oh one, I wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to listen to I had to listen to Sinatra, and
Speaker 1: I have a deep love for music from the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and fifties. Another thing that I couldn't listen watch
Speaker 1: was The Exorcist until I was like out of the
Speaker 1: house because of that. But yeah, well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the history of playing cards. For a symbol of international
Speaker 1: harmony and cross cultural cooperation, look no further than the
Speaker 1: nearest pack of cards. Playing cards in their present form
Speaker 1: are the results of ideas and refinements from the last
Speaker 1: eight countries and four comments over the course of twelve
Speaker 1: hundred years. The concept and the technology to make the
Speaker 1: paper they are printed on probably originally in China around
Speaker 1: the end of the first millennium during the Tang dynasty.
Speaker 1: Of the ninth century a d, a princess to Shang
Speaker 1: is said to have played the leaf game. This is
Speaker 1: probably a paper form of dominoes rather than true cards,
Speaker 1: But a hundred years later, the Emperor Mussuan is recorded
Speaker 1: as shuffling and dealing the real thing. Yeah, and cards
Speaker 1: actually didn't arrive until Europe until the mid fourteenth century um,
Speaker 1: either in Islamic Spain or as a result of trade
Speaker 1: between the Mamlocks man Luke's man Lukes of Egypt and Italy.
Speaker 1: So by this time they were already in something like
Speaker 1: their current form that we have today. Uh So it's
Speaker 1: reasonable to assume that the basic mechanics of cards that
Speaker 1: we still use, like the four suit system and royalty,
Speaker 1: and perhaps even like the concept of like taking tricks
Speaker 1: and stuff, were either established in India or the Middle East.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that it wasn't long before cards were influenced
Speaker 1: also by tabletop games like D and D, which created,
Speaker 1: uh the cardboard crack game known as Magic, the Gathering
Speaker 1: your Home and Love. Oh my gosh, I've spent so
Speaker 1: much money. I think we talked about But Mark ellis
Speaker 1: who was on our spoiler review for Infinity War, so
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. If he at his mom's house, he
Speaker 1: still has all of his magic the gathering packs, some
Speaker 1: of them are worse three thousand dollars three thousand and
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars for some of his stuff that he has. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just to get some magic was actually created sooner
Speaker 1: than we actually, I think so Magic was first published
Speaker 1: in by Wizards of the Coast. Magic was the first
Speaker 1: trading card game created, and it continues to thrive, with
Speaker 1: approximately twenty million players as of two thousand and fifteen.
Speaker 1: Magic can be played by two or more players in
Speaker 1: various formats, which fall into two categories, constructed and limited.
Speaker 1: Limited formats include players building a deck spontaneously out of
Speaker 1: a pool of random cards, with a minimum deck size
Speaker 1: of forty cards, and constructed players created decks from cards
Speaker 1: they own, usually sixty cards, with no more than four
Speaker 1: of any given Magic card. Magic has played in person
Speaker 1: with printed car or using a deck of virtual cards,
Speaker 1: through the Internet based Magic the Gathering Online, or on
Speaker 1: smartphone or tablet, or through other programs because Magic has
Speaker 1: spun off and done other games like Magic Arena, Magic Origins,
Speaker 1: and Uh. But Magic the Gathering Online is the closest
Speaker 1: online proxy to the actual game because it's just been
Speaker 1: going on for so long and the cars actually hold
Speaker 1: value the same way. I didn't really get into Magic.
Speaker 1: I was extremely into Pokemon and Dragon ball Z, the
Speaker 1: trading card games. Uh. And I know someone else who's
Speaker 1: also super into those anime games, Our guest and the
Speaker 1: five and she's going to be joining us right after
Speaker 1: the break, and we are back, and we are joined
Speaker 1: here with our good friend. You've seen her on Collider,
Speaker 1: on hyper RPG. She is a broadcaster, a podcast host,
Speaker 1: a entertainer of all sorts, our friend m F five. Thanks, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for popping by. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a topic that's very near and dear to
Speaker 1: my heart. So are you literally playing an RPG earlier? Yesterday?
Speaker 1: You were? I was playing a couple yesterday. I was
Speaker 1: not playing an RPG earlier. I was recording some content
Speaker 1: that revolves around the series My heir Academia because I'm
Speaker 1: as well. But yes, I I wasn't. I was doing
Speaker 1: too RPGs yesterday, a digimon RPG and also a Jeopardy RPG.
Speaker 1: Don't even know how that works. Oh man, Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the evolution of RPG just really, because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people think RPGs, they think Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: but role playing games takes several forms. The two main
Speaker 1: ones are tabletop which are the direct descendants of the
Speaker 1: original Dungeons and Dragons, and video games, which have also evolved,
Speaker 1: albeit along a different path from tabletop Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: This shared ancestry to its root of many of the
Speaker 1: tropes that have come to define them to this day.
Speaker 1: Yet despite the common ancestor, there's usually been a great
Speaker 1: difference between how tabletop and video games rpg play, and
Speaker 1: as such of the two types of the game have
Speaker 1: by necessity evolved along the separate path in many ways,
Speaker 1: each adapting two different technology and different markets. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: forget about the video game market because that's for our
Speaker 1: video game. Yeah yeah, yah, I will say. I just
Speaker 1: want to say on the side now, I am not
Speaker 1: as big of a fan. I don't like doing quests
Speaker 1: and things. I just want to fight. Wait you wait, Emma,
Speaker 1: you were on our Crillon at episode where we played Yes, Zenoverse,
Speaker 1: we're playing Dragon Ball Verse. Yeah, we're playing Zeno Verse
Speaker 1: and the whole time, like, I just want to fight people.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go on these quests. He It's
Speaker 1: interesting to me because I think that what initially attracted
Speaker 1: me to tabletop RPGs were video game r because I
Speaker 1: played video games from the time I was a very
Speaker 1: very little kid. And when Final Fantasy seven came out
Speaker 1: in seven, that was the first like j RPG, so
Speaker 1: Japanese developed RPG. Yeah, I had ever played, and it
Speaker 1: was this very heavily story based game, and that was
Speaker 1: what I always had wanted out of the video games
Speaker 1: that I was playing. I mean, my mom always jokes
Speaker 1: that when my brother and I were growing up, if
Speaker 1: she never had to fight with us to go play outside,
Speaker 1: because you know, we'd sit inside and we'd play Sonic
Speaker 1: the Hedgehog for a couple hours and then we go, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go outside now and play Sonic the Hedgehog
Speaker 1: in real life. Right. I think mine the two that
Speaker 1: I that I loved so much, we're Super Mario sixty
Speaker 1: four and Silent Hill. Sure I would. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if those are considered I know, super Mario probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, because you have like on a quest to
Speaker 1: like so yeah, I mean in certain you know, additions
Speaker 1: of Super Mario, certainly, Super Mario Ark J and Paper
Speaker 1: Mario are more sort of considered to be role playing games.
Speaker 1: I think when it comes to video games, typically and
Speaker 1: and and this is prevalent in tabletop role playing games
Speaker 1: as well. There has to be this element of UH
Speaker 1: leveling up. So basically by participating in this story and
Speaker 1: going on all of these quests, so you are gaining
Speaker 1: experience points that then allows your character. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do homework, I have to do that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about our tabletop. Yeah, the tabletopps. Just
Speaker 1: like you heard me say earlier, a lot of RPGs
Speaker 1: kind of stem from the same idea of Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: where you build out a character using different stats, and
Speaker 1: there are so many different systems, and when we refer
Speaker 1: to systems, it's basically the heart and soul of the RPG.
Speaker 1: So you know, a lot of games can be a
Speaker 1: different story than Dungeons and Dragon. It can be more
Speaker 1: sci fi than than fantasy. It can be more present
Speaker 1: day than like a simulated medieval time. But the if
Speaker 1: it used a Dungeon and Dragon system, then it uses
Speaker 1: that same kind of setup using the twenty sided die
Speaker 1: for all the same similar stats. But then you have
Speaker 1: other systems, Like for Valiant Vanquished, we used a different system. Uh,
Speaker 1: the system we used Instead of using a D twenty
Speaker 1: role for allmo every action, we would use a level
Speaker 1: deup dice in system. So like your strongest ability, you
Speaker 1: would use a D twelve versus your weakest one where
Speaker 1: your three or like, your charisma might be like a
Speaker 1: D six. Um. Yeah, and then you would just roll
Speaker 1: the you know, assigned die versus like and D and D.
Speaker 1: If you have high charisma, then you might have a
Speaker 1: modifier where it's like plus four plus three to your role,
Speaker 1: but you're still rolling a D twenty. I did want
Speaker 1: to go back a little bit and talk about because
Speaker 1: when I had tweeted out from our account about, you know,
Speaker 1: asking people what some of their favorites were, we had
Speaker 1: so many people write it's about Warhammer for d k um,
Speaker 1: which that was created by Rick Priestley that back in
Speaker 1: seven actually by Games Workshop. Uh, it's another tabletop war game. Again.
Speaker 1: It's a one that has miniatures that you choose a
Speaker 1: composition of your army, and then you're fighting the same
Speaker 1: thing people are designing and painting their miniatures, which I
Speaker 1: actually it was never. Our friend Joe Star is super
Speaker 1: into that, and I'm I'm sucking never. Okay. So this
Speaker 1: is a funny thing is I never really got into Warhammer,
Speaker 1: but I was super aware of its existence because I
Speaker 1: used to go to this comic book and game shop
Speaker 1: in Newtown, Connecticut called Cave comics, and they had Warhammer
Speaker 1: miniatures on one side, and then they had the D
Speaker 1: and D miniatures on the other one, and it was
Speaker 1: and I would always go look at the war Hammer miniatures,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I couldn't buy the war Hammer
Speaker 1: miniatures to be my D and D character miniatures because
Speaker 1: it was a different game. You don't cross the street,
Speaker 1: you can't do family Guy and Simpson's well fun fact,
Speaker 1: the writer H. G. Wells invented the concept of recreational
Speaker 1: war games. They kind you experienced in games like Warhammer
Speaker 1: and games which were brought, bought, and enjoyed by a
Speaker 1: wider population, not just military professionals. But yeah, Warhammer was
Speaker 1: cool in the sense that you built this army. It
Speaker 1: was super expensive. It's it's proba I want to be
Speaker 1: most expensive for Hammer and time consuming and it is
Speaker 1: very dependent on actually having maps and miniatures on like
Speaker 1: if you were talking about earlier how Dungeon and Dragons,
Speaker 1: Yes you can have maps and miniatures, but it's not
Speaker 1: actually necessary for playing the game, and you need multiple
Speaker 1: miniatures for Warhead. You're building an army to play out
Speaker 1: this war game. And so that's where the kind of
Speaker 1: like painting and minister design comes in because as an army,
Speaker 1: you choose colors that you paint all of your figures
Speaker 1: with and you kind of build it out that way.
Speaker 1: And lots of times you're doing orcs, so you got
Speaker 1: to get the color of the orc skin. It's it's
Speaker 1: wild and yeah, So, Emma, what was your first introduction?
Speaker 1: I guess, So, as I mentioned earlier, I was really
Speaker 1: into video game RPGs, and I had a friend who
Speaker 1: I knew from like an acting camp program, and she
Speaker 1: also was really into anime and video games and her
Speaker 1: dadd had been super into Dungeons and Dragons from the
Speaker 1: very very beginning, and it was in the early days
Speaker 1: of eBay being a thing. So this this was around,
Speaker 1: and it was right before third Edition of Dungeons Dragons
Speaker 1: came out, because that didn't come out, I think till
Speaker 1: two thousand. So he had put bids on a bunch
Speaker 1: of uh Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or a D and
Speaker 1: D second edition books like Character the Player Manuals and
Speaker 1: the d m S Guide, the Bestierry UH and modules
Speaker 1: because that's that's one of the things, is it to
Speaker 1: make tabletop role playing games a little bit easier and
Speaker 1: more accessible for people who are daunted by putting everything
Speaker 1: together themselves. They do actually sell modules, which are basically
Speaker 1: these pre written little kits of Okay, so this is
Speaker 1: what this adventure is going to be. Here's all the
Speaker 1: creatures they're gonna come across. These are the non player
Speaker 1: characters or NPCs that can be either helpful or hindrance,
Speaker 1: sometimes depending on how the characters roll. Uh. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: my friend Cassie, her dad Chris, was he had gotten
Speaker 1: all of this Dungeons and Dragons material and he didn't
Speaker 1: really have a group of friends that was as reliable
Speaker 1: to play with as you know, a group of teenage girl.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so he basically asked us if we wanted
Speaker 1: to play Dungeons and Dragons and learn how to do it.
Speaker 1: And I had been so fascinated by the concept because again,
Speaker 1: I used to always play these video games in we'd
Speaker 1: go outside and play video games in real life. So
Speaker 1: to me, this was the opportunity to create a character
Speaker 1: and tell these stories in a new way that I
Speaker 1: previously was just kind of like playing make believe with
Speaker 1: my brother and never um. Yeah, so so yeah, we uh,
Speaker 1: we started our first campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, and
Speaker 1: it kind of has moved on to what you do
Speaker 1: now with your Star Wars show because I know that
Speaker 1: somebody had responded in that tweet, um, with the Star
Speaker 1: Wars RPG that they play? Is that the one that
Speaker 1: you guys play? Yeah, we do. We play on the
Speaker 1: Star Wars RPG that I do over at hyper rpg. Uh,
Speaker 1: I do a show called Pencils and Parsecs and we
Speaker 1: play the Fantasy Flight Edge of the Empire Empire system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Fantasy Flight has been the publisher of Star Wars
Speaker 1: role playing games since two thousand and twelve. Prior to that,
Speaker 1: there were a couple other companies that published Star Wars
Speaker 1: role playing games. So the first one was West End Games,
Speaker 1: which was just Star Wars the role playing game. That
Speaker 1: system was eventually retooled to be just a generic space
Speaker 1: opera RPG, probably when West End Games lost the rights
Speaker 1: to Star Wars, which then went to Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 1: So the Wizards of the Coast and both of these
Speaker 1: systems used actually numbered dice. I think the West End
Speaker 1: Games used mostly like a D six system, so the
Speaker 1: same kind of dice that you would find in pretty
Speaker 1: much any board game. And then I've never played the
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast one, but Wizards of the Coast
Speaker 1: tends to use that D twenty system, so it's probably
Speaker 1: a little bit more reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons. But
Speaker 1: the thing that's really cool about the Fantasy Flight games is,
Speaker 1: as you were mentioning with the Valiant Vanquished, it's not
Speaker 1: a D twenty system. There's not even numbers involved in
Speaker 1: their role playing system at all. It's all just dice
Speaker 1: with symbols, and so certain symbols cancel each other out,
Speaker 1: and depending on how skilled your character is at a thing,
Speaker 1: it just affects the number of kind of good dice
Speaker 1: that you get to roll against the bad dice. And
Speaker 1: then if you have skill ranks, there's like a leveled
Speaker 1: up version of the good dice that's basically a proficiency
Speaker 1: dice that's like, yeah, I'm good at this thing, and
Speaker 1: so then you roll that dice. It's it's it sounds
Speaker 1: way more complicated than it is, Like once you have
Speaker 1: played it and rolled those dice a few times, you
Speaker 1: learn it really really fast. And the thing that's really
Speaker 1: fun about it is that you can succeed at a role.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you know the character that I
Speaker 1: play on Pencils and Parsex. Her name is Killer Fay.
Speaker 1: She is the captain of our our ship, the Yojobo,
Speaker 1: and our little crew, and she's not very good at fighting,
Speaker 1: but damn she charming. She's she's gonna talk in her
Speaker 1: way in and out of situations. So let's say that,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's required fee. It's so to me, And
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say is so fascinating that this
Speaker 1: has become so popular, like the style of RPG because
Speaker 1: it requires a level of storytelling and yes and sure
Speaker 1: and collaboration with other people, and liked, it involves some
Speaker 1: type of like talent to be able to I feel like,
Speaker 1: get with at least with this type of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, this type of RPG in order to get
Speaker 1: your character, you know, the charisma or whatever, in order
Speaker 1: for them to live. Is it like it requires so
Speaker 1: much storytelling and and I have I find that playing
Speaker 1: characters that are more you know, the kind of talker
Speaker 1: characters or even some other kind of support character, there
Speaker 1: is something really fun in that challenge of when you
Speaker 1: do find yourself in a combat situation or go Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not my four day. What am I gonna do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, And I think that's one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things with coming into like RPGs from like a video
Speaker 1: game standpoint, where I feel like in video games you're
Speaker 1: usually always fighting your way out and always able to
Speaker 1: where and I feel like, you know, the the exception
Speaker 1: to the rule would be games like Fallout and Skyrim,
Speaker 1: which are basically built almost very similar. I would say
Speaker 1: they're built on a Dungeons and Dragons system since there's
Speaker 1: like charisma checks and stuff like that. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: that a little bit in uh, like some of the
Speaker 1: Star Wars games to like Knights of the Old Republic
Speaker 1: and the MMO or multi Massive Multiplayer Online sequel which
Speaker 1: is just the Old Republic. Yeah, but you know, you
Speaker 1: have that option where it's like, yeah, you can build
Speaker 1: a character around just talking your way through things, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't avoid it, and now you have to
Speaker 1: use your wits because you know, everything is so linear
Speaker 1: I think with a lot of video games because you
Speaker 1: are held down by the technology g or the engine
Speaker 1: that the game has built for you to have the combat. Whereas,
Speaker 1: like you know, there's been lots of games where we've
Speaker 1: accidentally one shot a whole room of enemies because like
Speaker 1: we had a like a wizard or a mage who
Speaker 1: like turned the ground into ice spikes, and then the
Speaker 1: the DM was like, well they're all dead because I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that they're in a pile of watter. So
Speaker 1: it's just and that is the beauty of tabletop role
Speaker 1: playing games is, as you say, if you are not
Speaker 1: limited by a game engine and what the game engine
Speaker 1: has been pre programmed to do, it is just whatever
Speaker 1: your imagination can come up with. And and Danny brings
Speaker 1: up the idea of improv. It's a lot of yes
Speaker 1: ending and so in my opinion, a good GM will
Speaker 1: go okay, oh my god, what happened Zack? Who was
Speaker 1: Zach who was on our Twitch episode. He was our
Speaker 1: GM for IFFI and I show um, which is a
Speaker 1: game master. So they're essentially act as like the referee,
Speaker 1: the narrator. They're kind of like they oversee uh and
Speaker 1: often try to kill you and zas uh I was
Speaker 1: very disappointed. I GMed a couple sometimes on pencils and
Speaker 1: Parsex will do side stories because you know, in in
Speaker 1: regular Star Wars canon you're getting these side stories with
Speaker 1: Rogue one and the Young Han solo movie, so we
Speaker 1: we also do them and we have players GM those episodes,
Speaker 1: so like Hector Navarro, who I know was on your show,
Speaker 1: GMed one of them, Joe Starr who we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: on this show, jamed an episode, and I've jammed twice
Speaker 1: now and I was a little disappointed that nobody died.
Speaker 1: I just think it's such a huge undertaking to GM, Like,
Speaker 1: can you talk about what that's like to kind of
Speaker 1: be the leader in it? I mean, I think for me,
Speaker 1: I actually benefit a lot from the fact that I
Speaker 1: have played a lot of Yeah, well, I mean obviously, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I have played as a player a lot. And we've
Speaker 1: been doing Pencils and Parsex for a about a year
Speaker 1: and a half now, so I feel very very comfortable
Speaker 1: with that edge of the Empire system. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: to clarify, Pencils and Parsex is a live show, so
Speaker 1: you can watch Emma and her castmates playing this game live,
Speaker 1: so their storytelling live, They're like having these actions of
Speaker 1: their characters. Yeah. I want to touch on that too,
Speaker 1: because you know, I am uh subscribe to the D
Speaker 1: and D subreddit and that's always interesting because you get
Speaker 1: to hear real people complain and talk about their own
Speaker 1: campaigns that they're having with their friends, and there seems
Speaker 1: to be like a debate, and I think it's balanced
Speaker 1: at both these things where you know there's generally two
Speaker 1: types of d m s. There's the d M who
Speaker 1: wants to work to tell the best story, but then
Speaker 1: you have some d m s who are like playing
Speaker 1: against the players, and there's a huge debate whether or
Speaker 1: not you want to do that. And I think you
Speaker 1: know there's something about the mix of the two because
Speaker 1: you also don't want to be a pushover GM where
Speaker 1: it's just easy and you're just because you're like, this
Speaker 1: will tell the best story, But you also don't want
Speaker 1: to make it grueling for the players where it's just
Speaker 1: so challenging when they're trying not I hated it, but
Speaker 1: I was going to say one time I did accidentally. Um,
Speaker 1: I just was like I walked somewhere and he was like,
Speaker 1: you were in a car, so I like stepped out
Speaker 1: of a moving vehicle. My character day. I feel that
Speaker 1: Bert Jennings, who is r g M for Pencils and
Speaker 1: Part Sex, he is great and he really does strike
Speaker 1: that good balance of he is working with the players
Speaker 1: to tell a compelling story, but he's not going to
Speaker 1: make it easy for us. And sometimes that's in the
Speaker 1: form of we do encounter enemies that are extremely difficult
Speaker 1: to overcome and we have to resort to extreme measures
Speaker 1: to do it. I know that my character personally has
Speaker 1: taken some very extreme measures to overcome foes, but a
Speaker 1: lot of the time it is you know, emotional obstacles
Speaker 1: as well. I think I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's so fun is is everyone's creating. And this
Speaker 1: goes for all role playing games. You have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to create the characters and these backstories, and you know,
Speaker 1: you send the GM information about what has happened to
Speaker 1: your character in the past and what made them who
Speaker 1: they are as a person, and then when the game
Speaker 1: master or dungeon master however you're referring to them as,
Speaker 1: brings those elements in. It's so so satisfying as a player, uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, for me when i've GM before,
Speaker 1: it's it's again number one, being really really familiar with
Speaker 1: the role playing system. I think that it does help
Speaker 1: to have been a player, uh, and also having a
Speaker 1: real love of video games and the idea of Okay, well,
Speaker 1: in order to make this thing happen, you need to
Speaker 1: do this action to trigger it and whatnot. And so
Speaker 1: I just basically create a handful of scenarios and go, well,
Speaker 1: any of these things could happen based on how the
Speaker 1: players attempt to approach this challenge that they need to overcome.
Speaker 1: All of the paths ultimately for me lead to the
Speaker 1: same general conclusion. But I mean, you really think on
Speaker 1: your feet. It takes a lot of improvisation. So I
Speaker 1: had created this character who I had intended for them
Speaker 1: to meet in this medical research facility that these characters
Speaker 1: were in. They were on this rescue mission. And again,
Speaker 1: we're doing the show live on Twitch for an audience,
Speaker 1: and we have basically a three hour time period in
Speaker 1: which to do it. Our sessions tend to last about
Speaker 1: two and a half hours, and so I was at
Speaker 1: that you know, two hour and twenty maybe thirty minute mark,
Speaker 1: and I went, I'm not going to get a chance
Speaker 1: to do this this character. I'll just scrap him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then as we were wrapping up the session, I went,
Speaker 1: oh wait, I'm gonna have these guys meet him at
Speaker 1: the very end and then on a cliffhanger that you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it's uh, it's it's really fun.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy it, yeah, you know. And I had
Speaker 1: a chance to d M for the Black Panther RPG,
Speaker 1: and it really is funny how it flips where like
Speaker 1: I don't know, as a player, sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: you've been going a minute, but as a d M,
Speaker 1: time goes by so fast you just kind of you're
Speaker 1: building the goal post and you're pulling it back. And
Speaker 1: it's easy to understand why most typical uh RPG tabletop
Speaker 1: RPG games can last four or five hours. I don't
Speaker 1: want to stay on RPGs too long because I know
Speaker 1: there's some tabletop heads like it's not just it. So
Speaker 1: we'll jump onto some of these games that some people
Speaker 1: tweeted at us well, and I was surprised a few
Speaker 1: of these I've actually played, like one of them. Have
Speaker 1: you guys ever played um Mysterial? So Mysteriums are really
Speaker 1: fun game. It's set in the nineteen twenties. I'll just
Speaker 1: read like the blurb and then tell you so in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. Mr mcmcdowell a gifted astrologist immediately detected
Speaker 1: a supernational being upon entering his new house in Scotland.
Speaker 1: He gathered imminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary
Speaker 1: seance and they all have seven hours to contact the
Speaker 1: ghosts and investigate any clues that can provide to unlock
Speaker 1: an old mystery. So and then there's like unable to
Speaker 1: talk and amnesiac ghost communicates with the mediums through visions,
Speaker 1: which are represented in this in the game by illustrated cards.
Speaker 1: The mediums must decipher the images to help the ghost
Speaker 1: remember how he was murdered, who did the crime, where
Speaker 1: did it take place, which weapon caused the death. The
Speaker 1: more mediums cooperate and guess well, the easier it is
Speaker 1: to catch the culpriate. So this one is really fun.
Speaker 1: So basically one player is the ghost and it's almost
Speaker 1: like a cool version of charade. So one players a ghosts,
Speaker 1: all the other players are these mediums, and you're trying to,
Speaker 1: like like they said, you're trying to find out the murderer,
Speaker 1: the murder weapon, in the place they were murdered in
Speaker 1: the house. And so you have a board with all
Speaker 1: these different places in the house and everyone is assigned
Speaker 1: a different murderer a different place and a different weapon,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to help these players with these art cards.
Speaker 1: Now I read that before cracking it open, and I
Speaker 1: chose to be the ghost, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this shouldn't be too rough. But these art cards are
Speaker 1: very abstract, like it's it's it's really doesn't show you anything,
Speaker 1: so you have to use clues, like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: see if they have any pictures of the art cards.
Speaker 1: Like they're very like it's like a like flower in
Speaker 1: a in a ring and like it looks nothing like it.
Speaker 1: So you'll have to do things where like because you
Speaker 1: can give them any number, like there's a number of
Speaker 1: cards you can give them, so like sometimes I will
Speaker 1: give them all red cards because it took place with
Speaker 1: someone who murdered them had red hair. You have to
Speaker 1: do tricks like that, so it's very complicated. Those are
Speaker 1: like tabletop board games that I feel blend the like
Speaker 1: heavy Nerds stuff like D and D, but also like
Speaker 1: it's not something that you know Grandma's gonna pop out.
Speaker 1: Like another one like that that our friends Christopher Smith
Speaker 1: Briant and Ryan Leslie Fisher have every month, they have
Speaker 1: a werewolf party. It is the most fun game ever.
Speaker 1: I love it for anyone that hasn't played Werewolf, it's
Speaker 1: very similar to that if you wear you have I
Speaker 1: think it's four maybe werewolves, four or five werewolves and
Speaker 1: everyone else is kind of like a villager and everyone
Speaker 1: has to put their head down so you don't know,
Speaker 1: and people are ratting each other out, and then there's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's so many cool characters in it, and like they
Speaker 1: just really get into it and then you see friends
Speaker 1: turn on each other. It is I highly recommended. It
Speaker 1: is just so much. I always thought like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like going to go play a game, and
Speaker 1: it is like the most fun game, especially if you're
Speaker 1: good at line. But yeah, we're gonna get into some
Speaker 1: more of our favorite games and once if you're a beginner,
Speaker 1: ones that you want to check out right after this
Speaker 1: and we're back. Yeah, I where Wolf so much fun.
Speaker 1: You know what. I've killed a couple of people. There
Speaker 1: was a couple of times I fooled people. I was
Speaker 1: also like, h killed people and that's going to be
Speaker 1: your legacy. Um, so what are some other ones? Uh?
Speaker 1: If I'll start with you that you would recommend to people,
Speaker 1: either just starting out, or ones you know that might
Speaker 1: not be RPGs that are just yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: perfect one that's for someone just starting out really trying
Speaker 1: to dip their foot into tabletop is Star Realms. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's like twenty bucks for a deck that's big
Speaker 1: enough for two players, and if you get real like
Speaker 1: gung ho about it, someone else can buy a deck
Speaker 1: for twenty bucks and you can use two decks to
Speaker 1: make it a four player gain. But it's a very
Speaker 1: similar deck building game like Dominion, and it's very simple.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's on just a sheet of paper
Speaker 1: that kind of teaches you how to play it. But
Speaker 1: it's easy to learn, difficult to master, and it's and
Speaker 1: it's fun because it's just a deck of cards. You'll
Speaker 1: have um, you'll have a buying space. So basically the
Speaker 1: way the game works is you have life and then
Speaker 1: you have currency that you get from the cards you draw,
Speaker 1: and you use the currency that you get from the
Speaker 1: cards you draw to buy other cars. It's from the
Speaker 1: middle of the um of the field will say, and
Speaker 1: you use those cards that to either attack or to
Speaker 1: get more currency to buy other cards. And there's different
Speaker 1: factions within those cards that kind of combo together. And
Speaker 1: what's cool about it is you're balancing your ability to
Speaker 1: attack versus your ability to buy cards, because you know,
Speaker 1: obviously the more cards you do that do damage, they
Speaker 1: might not be able to afford you stronger cards that
Speaker 1: may be more expensive. It's a very fun game, very
Speaker 1: easy to learn, and super cheap, very easy entry the game.
Speaker 1: I think the other side of the rules is the
Speaker 1: play Matt too highly recommend if you're looking for just
Speaker 1: a nice, fun deck building game that that will be good.
Speaker 1: If you're also into trying it out but don't really
Speaker 1: want to play it. They actually have a free app
Speaker 1: on the app store um on I think both Android
Speaker 1: and Apple. Look up Star Realms. You can drive the
Speaker 1: game out for free just with an app, and then
Speaker 1: buy the deck of cards on Amazon for twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Another fun game that I like to play super Fight.
Speaker 1: A lot of us have played, um I remember they
Speaker 1: had a super Fight. Normally they have something set up
Speaker 1: at like the cons and stuff to play. They'll pull
Speaker 1: in you and I played, didn't we have? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: super Fight is basically it's kind of like a card game,
Speaker 1: like you're given cards where you have to Fight as
Speaker 1: this like character so the ones I'm looking at now
Speaker 1: or Abraham Lincoln writing a segue with a long metal claw.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. Yeah. It's a very fun game. It's like
Speaker 1: it's it's a party game that you can play. You
Speaker 1: draw a character and an ability, and then you're the
Speaker 1: person next to you does the same thing and you
Speaker 1: argue to the rest of the players why you're ye Fight.
Speaker 1: You can be absurd as hell. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically
Speaker 1: like a cool more adult apples to apples. It is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, it relies on your wit and improv I
Speaker 1: feel like to be able your charisma as It's just
Speaker 1: so fascinating to me that it's like it relies so
Speaker 1: much on you, like being able to win people over
Speaker 1: with your storytelling slash arguing abilities. Absolutely no, I I
Speaker 1: love super Fight and there's all kinds of expansion decks
Speaker 1: to It's like, if you're really into anime, their anime
Speaker 1: super Fight decks and it's a it's a very good time,
Speaker 1: I think in terms of if you did want to
Speaker 1: get into tabletop role playing and are intimidated by the
Speaker 1: many many dice involved in playing Dungeons and Dragons, which
Speaker 1: is also another cost of it. There's a really great
Speaker 1: role playing system which is called fung Shui. It's by
Speaker 1: Atlas Games. You can actually download all of the stuff
Speaker 1: for it, and the concept behind it it is is
Speaker 1: it is an action movie RPG. You only need six
Speaker 1: sided dice to play. So just go opening. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: go open any of your your don't wake daddy, okay,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if he had any crackers in
Speaker 1: my bed, you know, all those good ones. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go on eBay and order that, right, don't don't definitely
Speaker 1: died when you mentioned that. She's laughing. I remember. It's
Speaker 1: so well anyway, Uh yeah, it's really fun and and
Speaker 1: on there they have different modules you can download. There's
Speaker 1: like a two hour starter pack, there's a twenty minute
Speaker 1: just like quick game, and and it's designed for just
Speaker 1: everything to be super fast. They have all the character
Speaker 1: sheets for you on there, so it gives you whatever
Speaker 1: little like modifiers you have. But literally it's just like
Speaker 1: constantly rolling D six. You're you're making up your attacks again.
Speaker 1: It's it's all that idea of collaboratively telling us a story, yeah,
Speaker 1: rather than focusing on doing a lot of math. Holy crap. Y'all.
Speaker 1: Don't Wake Daddy unopened is fifty dollars. That reminds me
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, whenever I keep going back and I'll
Speaker 1: buy my N sixty four, then I'll sell it, then
Speaker 1: I'll buy another one like I did that in college, um,
Speaker 1: after I sold my original one from like middle school
Speaker 1: or elementary school. And the games, some of them are
Speaker 1: still so expensive, especially I think, but they're not fifty
Speaker 1: dollar Don't Wake Daddy. Okay, Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I just a to pitch Storm, which is a lot
Speaker 1: like Super Fight. Yeah, it's a very fun concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's super fun. These are all like just fun ones
Speaker 1: to play with your friends. I think you're you're dealt
Speaker 1: card where you essentially have to like pitch as writers.
Speaker 1: You're pitching essentially to like execs and getting them again
Speaker 1: with your charisma. So if you're not a very um,
Speaker 1: if you're not able to win people over, I don't
Speaker 1: know that these games can actually help. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I can help to try. And I think that
Speaker 1: that that in of itself is what is so great
Speaker 1: about tabletop games, particularly table top role playing games, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: if you're playing dungeons and dragons and you fail a role,
Speaker 1: it's teaching you how to cope with and adapt to
Speaker 1: failure in a very safe setting. Oh yeah, that's very
Speaker 1: true because there's there's no long term consequences for you,
Speaker 1: you know, missing when you swing your sword at an orc.
Speaker 1: But if you know what I mean, even throw your
Speaker 1: characterstead well, there is that. There, there is that. But
Speaker 1: you can roll a new character the dragons, or they
Speaker 1: could use a resurrection spell on you. There's there's so
Speaker 1: many ways to to creatively adapt to your failure, and
Speaker 1: that is a really important life lesson I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but all my big ballers out there who are like, nah,
Speaker 1: not expensive enough, you definitely check out Warhammer, take out
Speaker 1: a loan for the house, and then with that you'll
Speaker 1: be able to get If you have painted your miniatures,
Speaker 1: even if they're not from Warhammer, UM, send them to me.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to see them. I'm not like
Speaker 1: our friend Joe Starr. He has a whole set up
Speaker 1: in his house and he just like paints them. He
Speaker 1: posted on his Instagram and stuff all the little dudes
Speaker 1: that he's painting. Um, all the little dudes and do
Speaker 1: debts that he's painting. It was more important for me
Speaker 1: when I was playing Dungeons and Dragons growing up to
Speaker 1: draw artwork of my characters. That's a big thing. That's
Speaker 1: like just flooding the D and D subre artwork of
Speaker 1: people's character. When if he and I were at hyper
Speaker 1: at hyperp G and I think someone probably did this
Speaker 1: for you too. Someone made miniatures of us. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we have them, the hero that have been clicks figures. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So um. But even that I was frightened by. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to paint me. I'm not
Speaker 1: good at it. I need to paint mine. Mine has
Speaker 1: um a couple of Because I'm well known on the
Speaker 1: internet for my love of porks, there are some little
Speaker 1: teeny miniature porks that are like on my character's a
Speaker 1: little hero clicks. Yeah. I was like, this is such
Speaker 1: a We're definitely gonna revisit this topic again because there's
Speaker 1: so much to color. Obviously, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: do a D and D episode, have to do a
Speaker 1: Warhammer episode. We're gonna have. Don't worry y'all, this is
Speaker 1: just the basics. Yeah, you get into the deep stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what I like to think about. With a lot
Speaker 1: of these is, uh, we're covering the basics and then
Speaker 1: we can go further like for a Comic Con one,
Speaker 1: We're definitely we're gonna do an E three episode and
Speaker 1: an anime Expo episode. So but definitely don't let that
Speaker 1: hinder you from telling us what you would like to
Speaker 1: see in the Warhammer apps. What do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about, some personal gripes you might have with the game,
Speaker 1: or you know the depth that you may be in
Speaker 1: because of the game, because we love the game, guys.
Speaker 1: If you didn't get it by now, Warhammers expensive all right, y'all?
Speaker 1: Em Where can people find? You can find me all
Speaker 1: over the internet wherever m A fives are sold at
Speaker 1: my name. I'm at m A Fife on Twitter and
Speaker 1: on Instagram that is where I mostly am. Also be
Speaker 1: sure too, since we are talking about role playing games
Speaker 1: here check out Pencils and Parsects are Star Wars role
Speaker 1: playing game where we use the Edge of the Empire
Speaker 1: system on hyper RPG every Wednesday night at eight o'clock
Speaker 1: pm Pacific time. And yeah, I'm doing lots of other stuff.
Speaker 1: You can find me hanging around the showdown a fair
Speaker 1: amount over on Collider I pop up every now and
Speaker 1: then on stuff at screen junkies. So yeah, I am
Speaker 1: a woman about the internet. Stop that business. And we
Speaker 1: have a new uh anime show over on Hyper's YouTube
Speaker 1: channel called Anime Club where we are. It's basically we're
Speaker 1: treating it like a book club. So we're just picking
Speaker 1: anime series that we like and we're talking about in chunks.
Speaker 1: So right now we're talking about combob which is super fun. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm at MS Danny Fernandez M S D A and
Speaker 1: I F E R N A N D easy you
Speaker 1: can catch me play and don't wait, daddy, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: order it right now. If you, if you and M
Speaker 1: L you guys come over and play it with me.
Speaker 1: Should definitely come over and play. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the nostalgic nineties kid. What else did we have during
Speaker 1: this time? This? That? What's that? Mouse trap? Mouse trap trouble? Oh?
Speaker 1: There was this great game called thirteen Dead and Drive
Speaker 1: where you can just get killed by various objects in
Speaker 1: the house scoring like coming after you, not in an
Speaker 1: enchanted way. It would be like a chandelier falling kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um gosh, what else? Many many versions of
Speaker 1: the clue I've played a lot of Clue with a
Speaker 1: kid same. You can find me if y w A
Speaker 1: d I W E on Twitter and Instagram, and make
Speaker 1: sure you follow Nerdificent on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram on all
Speaker 1: those platforms. And if you're really enjoying the podcast, please
Speaker 1: give us a five star review. I've already laid down
Speaker 1: the rules of what you're gonna get when we get
Speaker 1: certain amounts of reviews. I'm gonna put that on paper
Speaker 1: so I don't forget, but definitely definitely tweet at us
Speaker 1: what you'd like to hear. What where did you like
Speaker 1: us to zero in on in future episodes which you liked.
Speaker 1: You can keep what you didn't like to yourself, but
Speaker 1: you know I love y'all. Thank y'all. Stay