Feb. 1, 2025

Sarge, Norma, and Harmony - Troupe Style Play with Andrew Beauman (Out of Orbit)

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Season 4 Esoteric

Andrew Beauman brings Sarge and Norma to the table, and we create Harmony together. Sarge, Norma, and Harmony are survivors of a spaceship crash hoping to make it back out of orbit.

Andrew and I discuss troupe-style mechanics and playing multiple characters - and how that changes the way we create characters. We discuss finding empathy through TTRPGs and learning that not everything is made for our perspective.

These characters are built for Out of Orbit, currently Kickstarting as part of Zine Month.

Andrew Beauman is a game designer and artist with a background in graphic design and marketing. His first game was published through Zine Month 2024, titled Battle School. He also co-hosts a podcast called One Shot’s Tavern about exploring new ways to tell your story through different games.

You can learn more about Andrew at:
https://www.characterswithoutstories.com/guests/andrew-beauman

What's Your Damage? is a Fifth Edition actual play podcast taking place in a homebrew world based on Filipino mythology.

Whatcha Doing? is an interview podcast talking to creative people about the trials, tribulations and triumphs in their projects.

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Cover art by The Curiographer
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Thanks for listening, and may all your characters find their stories!

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:00.520 --> 00:00:03.678
I think that we're very precious of our characters, right?

00:00:03.698 --> 00:00:04.629
Like, rightfully so.

00:00:04.649 --> 00:00:06.679
They, in a lot of ways, are our children.

00:00:06.679 --> 00:00:08.570
They are projections of ourselves.

00:00:09.179 --> 00:00:14.500
It kind of goes back to the ethos on game design for me of like, you don't exist in a vacuum.

00:00:14.599 --> 00:00:22.300
You are the sum of your experiences, but you're also some of those relationships and the way that you've interfaced with other people's complicated stories.

00:00:22.929 --> 00:00:26.239
The way we move forward is by inviting people into our stories.

00:00:26.599 --> 00:00:29.379
And keeping a perspective that's bigger than ourselves.

00:01:09.049 --> 00:01:15.650
Hello friends! Welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled.

00:01:15.918 --> 00:01:16.620
I'm Star.

00:01:16.778 --> 00:01:23.099
This episode I'm joined by Andrew Beauman, a game designer and artist with a background in graphic design and marketing.

00:01:23.429 --> 00:01:27.918
His first game was published through Zine Month 2024, titled Battle School.

00:01:28.060 --> 00:01:34.679
He also co hosts a podcast called One Shot's Tavern about exploring new ways to tell your story through different games.

00:01:35.204 --> 00:01:36.465
Andrew, welcome to the show.

00:01:37.185 --> 00:01:38.799
Hi, I'm very glad to be here.

00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:44.689
So we're going to be talking about a game that you actually designed and you'll be kickstarting today.

00:01:45.950 --> 00:01:46.459
Oh, yeah.

00:01:46.810 --> 00:01:47.209
Yep.

00:01:47.260 --> 00:01:48.909
It's it's all getting started.

00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:50.590
Zine Month is kicking into high gear.

00:01:51.090 --> 00:01:52.649
Tell me a little bit about Zine Month.

00:01:52.650 --> 00:01:53.219
What is it?

00:01:53.640 --> 00:01:59.780
Yeah, so Zine Month is it's it's kind of been a thing outside of just Kickstarter, and it is.

00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:02.909
Um, on Backerkit and a couple other places as well.

00:02:03.109 --> 00:02:11.460
But it is the collective effort of a lot of creatives to produce zines and TTRPG products in, in smaller book form.

00:02:11.759 --> 00:02:15.919
Obviously zines have their own history outside of TTRPGs.

00:02:15.968 --> 00:02:18.308
And what makes a zine a zine?

00:02:18.310 --> 00:02:20.530
I know you did a video of that recently.

00:02:20.905 --> 00:02:32.474
I think my books typically extend a little bit outside of that into more traditionally published books, but they're small, you know, so I still think of them in that same broad umbrella.

00:02:32.655 --> 00:02:42.044
Um, but yeah, during the month of February, people launch their crowdfunding projects to bring their product into reality and get it into people's hands.

00:02:42.104 --> 00:02:48.245
And it was a huge push for me in starting in game design to just pull the trigger.

00:02:48.594 --> 00:02:50.694
Make a project and see if people like it.

00:02:50.914 --> 00:03:00.469
The huge benefit of doing it through Kickstarter is they are an insane marketing engine being effectively a nobody without an audience.

00:03:00.469 --> 00:03:02.360
I wasn't doing a lot of TikTok.

00:03:02.379 --> 00:03:03.659
I wasn't doing a lot of social media.

00:03:03.659 --> 00:03:10.598
We had just started our podcast, didn't have a lot of audience and was able to get a good following for the project.

00:03:10.599 --> 00:03:17.539
I was able to more than just fund my goal and really get launched into actually being a game designer.

00:03:17.740 --> 00:03:28.870
And now, no, I'm not like, making a living doing it yet, but I am doing it full time by way of a very supportive partner So zine month is very close to my heart and I am excited to be doing it again

00:03:29.219 --> 00:03:31.639
What made you decide to get into game design?

00:03:31.949 --> 00:03:43.838
So I, I mean, my history with gaming goes back to late high school, but with anybody that ever touched 3.5 D&D or Pathfinder, you were hacking everything.

00:03:44.199 --> 00:03:47.610
And if you really only were inside of that bubble.

00:03:47.865 --> 00:03:49.754
That was the only option you had.

00:03:50.134 --> 00:03:52.025
I didn't know about other games.

00:03:52.025 --> 00:03:57.025
I didn't really know about even Vampire the Masquerade or other things that would work.

00:03:57.025 --> 00:03:59.344
I was like, well, it's it's this or nothing.

00:03:59.625 --> 00:04:01.375
It's a D20 no matter what.

00:04:01.655 --> 00:04:04.314
And that was just, you know, an ignorance.

00:04:04.614 --> 00:04:10.875
Getting into the space and just having pretty much only access to the immediate people around me at the local game store.

00:04:11.025 --> 00:04:17.324
And so I was hacking 3.5 for years and years and years and then eventually moved over to 5th edition.

00:04:17.975 --> 00:04:20.624
Yeah, I just had always had tons of ideas.

00:04:20.624 --> 00:04:21.783
I had wrote a lot.

00:04:21.783 --> 00:04:26.485
I had lots of homebrew methods for handling things at the table.

00:04:26.524 --> 00:04:37.875
And when I kind of finally left that bubble, I was getting into Cypher at the time and Cypher really rewired my brain on how a game could work.

00:04:38.084 --> 00:04:46.665
The role of the GM specifically becoming so much more of a facilitator and a transparent communicator rather than God.

00:04:47.334 --> 00:04:47.774
Yeah.

00:04:47.904 --> 00:04:58.514
And this weird power dynamic with the players and it really gave me a lot of freedom to relax and not feel like I'm the man behind the curtain.

00:04:58.795 --> 00:05:22.345
It's a lot of pressure to feel like you're commanding this amazing narrative and you know, the Matt Mercer effect of like needing to really make this compelling narrative for your players and, and taking that and saying, what if we were doing that together instead of it just being on me and nobody needs to be under the illusion that I am the one making this work, but we're working together to make something we both enjoy.

00:05:22.625 --> 00:05:24.824
So that shift was huge for me.

00:05:25.053 --> 00:05:28.324
And that's when I was like, now that I know that things can look differently.

00:05:28.610 --> 00:05:29.810
Let's make them really different.

00:05:30.040 --> 00:05:41.050
Let's take the things that I struggled with at the table and really facilitate a different kind of play style that I think people crave and maybe don't even realize it.

00:05:41.379 --> 00:05:45.278
So the game that you are Kickstarting is called Out of Orbit.

00:05:45.608 --> 00:05:49.129
What were the inspirations for the mechanics in this game?

00:05:49.579 --> 00:05:56.180
There's a system, it's not exactly published yet, but my system I started with was Entwine.

00:05:56.480 --> 00:06:00.550
It's all about your actions do not exist within a void.

00:06:00.839 --> 00:06:03.920
That goes for life and the mechanics of this game.

00:06:03.939 --> 00:06:18.709
And it was built around you making decisions in a game that are about what everybody's trying to accomplish as opposed to individualized glory and spotlight moments being something that you're just waiting for.

00:06:18.983 --> 00:06:27.514
Round over round, just kind of waiting for your turn, hoping to do something crazy and cool that only gets foiled by somebody else doing the exact same thing.

00:06:28.004 --> 00:06:29.343
That drove me nuts.

00:06:29.495 --> 00:06:35.834
You know, so to be reactionary, I was like, What if we just work on making cool stuff happen together?

00:06:36.115 --> 00:06:38.944
And sure, you can handle that by way of actual communication.

00:06:39.103 --> 00:06:40.233
I highly encourage that.

00:06:40.723 --> 00:06:43.244
But also the game facilitating that.

00:06:43.639 --> 00:06:47.420
Being a priority was was something that I wanted in my games.

00:06:47.730 --> 00:07:08.968
So Battle School was the first attempt at using Entwine in like a combat sim focused game, whereas out of orbit, the inspiration was taking this kind of collective approach to mechanics and porting that into one of my favorite properties of all time, which is the show Lost.

00:07:09.355 --> 00:07:17.134
Lost is complicated, people have a complicated relationship with it, a lot of people feel strongly about it.

00:07:17.204 --> 00:07:26.923
I say to a lot of people, if I didn't like meandering narratives that ask more questions than they answer, I wouldn't play TTRPGs.

00:07:27.444 --> 00:07:29.685
That's not to say that an ending doesn't matter.

00:07:29.685 --> 00:07:31.524
It's not to say, you know, anything else.

00:07:31.524 --> 00:07:33.535
I'm not making a huge defense of the ending.

00:07:33.545 --> 00:07:34.504
You can think what you want.

00:07:34.714 --> 00:07:43.994
But I liked what the show did in terms of using their narrative structure of flashbacks and a huge group of people that we're getting to know.

00:07:44.454 --> 00:07:47.504
And I was watching it again for the who knows how many times.

00:07:47.663 --> 00:07:50.134
And I went, how do I do this at the table?

00:07:50.394 --> 00:07:54.745
This is not a way that we tell stories at the table in any games that I've played.

00:07:55.309 --> 00:08:06.038
And so I began to look into troupe style games, such as like Band of Blades, a little bit of Ars Magica that was way more involved than I was ready to dive into.

00:08:06.038 --> 00:08:19.798
But, you know, Band of Blades being a Forged in the Dark game and taking a like approach to like a military troupe that then goes out on missions and then advances that camp along was, was really interesting to me to have that cycle of gameplay.

00:08:20.149 --> 00:08:21.430
So that was a big part of it.

00:08:21.439 --> 00:08:24.019
So taking Entwine, making it troupe style.

00:08:24.019 --> 00:08:35.179
So we all are owning a group of characters as opposed to my singular character that I am embodying was a new thing to try out and play with.

00:08:35.208 --> 00:08:37.168
And like I said, there's other games that have done it.

00:08:37.169 --> 00:08:38.350
But for me, it was new.

00:08:38.695 --> 00:09:04.034
Again, it kind of went back to that core design principle of you being a part of the grander team, you know, playing this game together to tell a narrative that we all find satisfying and sharing those characters, you know, giving each other the opportunity to invest into each of the characters as opposed to just, again, being focused on individualized narrative satisfaction.

00:09:04.434 --> 00:09:17.153
Those are a lot of the main goals going through it, but very early on, if you know anything about the show, one of the biggest things that they deal with is flashbacks, and I knew I had to figure out an interesting way to use that.

00:09:17.534 --> 00:09:38.474
Narratively, I was excited by the aspect of diving deep into character backstories in the middle of gameplay, and finding ways to deepen that well of, of the characters, rather than just having your 10 page back story that you might be trickle feed to the other players throughout the course of a campaign.

00:09:38.845 --> 00:09:55.889
And again these characters are shared so we get to contribute and we get to weave a complicated web of all of these characters maybe having overlap in their past at the same time as finding ways for that to inform and define the character sheet and how we interface with the rules.

00:09:56.318 --> 00:10:00.479
So, everything you do in this game is made up of your experiences.

00:10:00.839 --> 00:10:10.120
Your sheet looks a whole lot more like, like a spreadsheet full of backstory details and events that have happened to you on the planet that you have crash landed on.

00:10:10.500 --> 00:10:21.139
I don't know if I mentioned yet, but the twist I'm taking on Lost is a spaceship traveling through frontier space, which is my setting, sci fi, far future, corporatocracy stuff.

00:10:21.549 --> 00:10:27.428
Uh, you know, think Alien and Cyberpunk and all that stuff mashed together, but with more of a frontier spin.

00:10:27.929 --> 00:10:37.970
But yeah, your spaceship crash lands on a weird planet and you can't get a signal off and you're stuck there and you have to survive with this group of people and maybe one day get out of orbit.

00:10:38.330 --> 00:10:39.529
Roll title credits.

00:10:41.190 --> 00:10:42.340
I think it's funny.

00:10:42.409 --> 00:10:47.879
Most of the sci fi games that I'm familiar with don't actually take place on a planet.

00:10:47.894 --> 00:10:50.475
Like they're very much like we visit a planet.

00:10:50.674 --> 00:10:51.054
Yeah.

00:10:51.134 --> 00:10:52.934
Most of it takes place on the spaceship.

00:10:53.075 --> 00:10:59.615
And you know, maybe this was intentional or not, but it's nice that you didn't have to worry too much about spaceship mechanics.

00:11:01.033 --> 00:11:01.063
Right?

00:11:01.294 --> 00:11:01.835
Yeah.

00:11:01.903 --> 00:11:04.884
No, it's, there's, there's so many cool ways to do it.

00:11:04.933 --> 00:11:14.445
And actually a lot of the Entwine system came from me building a rule set for Cypher for ship mechanics.

00:11:14.653 --> 00:11:18.375
Basically the idea of we're flying a ship, right?

00:11:18.375 --> 00:11:22.284
So in that instance of using Entwine, we are the ship.

00:11:22.804 --> 00:11:30.514
And the way that I use my role in the ship, maybe as the gunner, is going to directly affect you flying the ship.

00:11:30.585 --> 00:11:34.433
And so if I'm just unloading the guns, maybe it throws us off a little bit.

00:11:34.433 --> 00:11:39.909
And so all of the actions then went into a pool that affected the DC for the entire round.

00:11:40.179 --> 00:11:50.860
And again, that's when I first was like, I think there's something here mechanically where my actions and my choice of actions should have some effect on the people around me.

00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:54.980
And we could then work together to do a better job of working together.

00:11:55.139 --> 00:11:55.698
Yeah.

00:11:56.105 --> 00:12:03.605
When I think of Lost, I think of how each person has a different relationship with the collective of survivors.

00:12:03.815 --> 00:12:10.294
This is probably one way that your game would differ from Lost is that in Lost, it's not like they were all friends on the plane.

00:12:11.163 --> 00:12:14.033
They weren't working together to fly the plane or anything like that.

00:12:14.184 --> 00:12:28.994
But there's something I can see a correlation there in terms of a group of people that are banded together with a singular purpose, which is to survive, and that each person within that group has a lot of impact, not necessarily for good.

00:12:29.043 --> 00:12:36.803
Obviously, some of the people are causing conflict or trying to get their own without thinking of the needs of the collective.

00:12:36.854 --> 00:12:40.485
Do you think that there's space in your game for that kind of conflict as well?

00:12:40.714 --> 00:12:41.453
Oh, absolutely.

00:12:42.539 --> 00:12:43.899
Lost is a drama.

00:12:43.960 --> 00:12:44.919
It's a sci fi.

00:12:45.149 --> 00:12:46.068
It's a drama.

00:12:46.419 --> 00:12:51.039
It is all about getting upset and yelling at each other until we figure out what's wrong.

00:12:51.370 --> 00:13:02.230
The way that I'm hoping to facilitate that is it almost functions as a safety tool at the same time as an opportunity and that is the fact again that we don't own these characters.

00:13:02.279 --> 00:13:06.090
And so we are working together to build the drama.

00:13:06.269 --> 00:13:11.929
And so if a character becomes a problem for the larger group, It's because we all chose that.

00:13:11.940 --> 00:13:12.320
Yeah.

00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:17.710
And we moved them or narratively it felt like it made sense for them to become a problem.

00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:31.100
And that in and of itself, I think it takes the pressure off, you know, wanting to be a dissenting force in a party and in a D&D kind of setting is narratively interesting, but can bring with it a lot of issues.

00:13:31.120 --> 00:13:32.190
It could trigger people.

00:13:32.210 --> 00:13:34.620
It could cause actual table conflict.

00:13:34.970 --> 00:13:40.139
You know, there's a lot going on when it comes to essentially PvP, but on a social dynamic.

00:13:40.399 --> 00:13:46.389
And like, there's opportunities for like, verbal abuse without realizing it, if you're choosing to be a dissenting force.

00:13:46.438 --> 00:13:57.480
And so, by way of it essentially making it not personal, I'm hoping for the drama of the conflict within a group to be an opportunity to really build a narrative together.

00:13:57.809 --> 00:14:05.299
To just focus on it as a story and have a little bit of arm's length detachment from the character that may be under attack or something like that.

00:14:05.679 --> 00:14:09.730
The approach to building characters in this game is very different.

00:14:09.750 --> 00:14:13.929
Obviously a troupe style game is not something that a lot of people would be familiar.

00:14:13.980 --> 00:14:17.384
There are a lot of different approaches to building characters.

00:14:17.384 --> 00:14:34.625
But I think most people are used to like a D&D style where you have a character that's detailed, that has a backstory, that you're coming into the game with some sort of story already having taken place, or we have a game, a OSR type game like Mork Borg where it's, it doesn't really matter too much.

00:14:34.634 --> 00:14:37.575
You, we roll up a character, they're probably going to die.

00:14:37.945 --> 00:14:40.184
You don't really get too precious about it.

00:14:40.184 --> 00:14:45.044
You're not really worried about owning the character or making them very detailed.

00:14:45.394 --> 00:14:52.875
For me, personally, if I was going to play your game, I think it would be a little bit of a learning curve, just adjusting to that different style.

00:14:53.203 --> 00:14:53.813
Totally.

00:14:53.934 --> 00:15:02.134
Yeah, the first session, I'm hoping to kind of tutorialize the beginning of the game to onboard people to mechanics, but also narratively.

00:15:02.384 --> 00:15:06.644
The beginning of the game is narratively us being introduced to the characters.

00:15:06.995 --> 00:15:10.294
That we as the audience and the director don't know yet.

00:15:10.585 --> 00:15:18.384
So what that means is I encourage people to like, try out the use of the camera, if you've heard that before, for for running a session.

00:15:18.384 --> 00:15:23.703
So the person that's GMing and facilitating this would be able to describe the crash scene.

00:15:23.725 --> 00:15:26.894
So this is the first moment in the game is the crash.

00:15:26.904 --> 00:15:28.884
You know, the ship has gone down.

00:15:29.294 --> 00:15:35.414
You're on an alien world and that camera moves over to the first survivor that we're going to roll.

00:15:35.735 --> 00:15:51.244
Characters are called survivors in this just because they hopefully survive, and the camera arriving at that survivor prompts the first player, doesn't matter who, to roll up using a roller table the first character that we're looking at.

00:15:51.654 --> 00:15:56.563
And, um, one that's kind of the narrative, narrative architecture of the beginning of Lost.

00:15:56.583 --> 00:16:02.563
Like, we just kind of zoom in on somebody's eye, we get introduced to them, we dive into their backstory a little bit, we cut back to other stuff.

00:16:03.134 --> 00:16:07.424
So the camera kind of arriving on the first person, you then get to roll up this character.

00:16:07.674 --> 00:16:15.149
You roll their background, that could be their role on the ship, it could be their job or history beforehand.

00:16:15.149 --> 00:16:16.850
They could be a con artist.

00:16:16.889 --> 00:16:18.659
They could be the pilot.

00:16:18.690 --> 00:16:22.009
They could be an asteroid miner, you know, all kinds of stuff.

00:16:22.350 --> 00:16:30.120
And this, if anything, is maybe the broadest umbrella that you could kind of consider the class of the character.

00:16:30.429 --> 00:16:33.989
But it just becomes what is called a tag on the character sheet.

00:16:34.419 --> 00:16:43.989
It is just another thing that you can call on in order to roll better when we're actually dealing with the dice confirmation mechanic and rolling tests and stuff like that.

00:16:44.229 --> 00:16:47.068
So the first thing is you roll background, then you roll hobbies.

00:16:47.109 --> 00:16:53.469
This is a lighthearted, you know, almost like a weird thing that's not necessarily directly related to their background.

00:16:53.469 --> 00:17:03.544
Like they might be at the pilot, but they also might just like be really into martial arts for some reason, you know, or they could just be an animal lover, you know.

00:17:03.565 --> 00:17:07.953
And again, this is a tag that gets called on for relevant situations.

00:17:07.953 --> 00:17:16.804
So even if the pilot, you know, happens to be an animal lover, maybe she is now in a situation where she's dealing with a potentially hostile beast.

00:17:16.804 --> 00:17:24.545
And she kind of wants to roll in interaction with that beast to maybe calm it down instead, because she's an animal lover you can call on that tag me roll a little bit better.

00:17:25.250 --> 00:17:29.490
And then we get into the negative tags, which is going to do the opposite.

00:17:29.660 --> 00:17:31.359
And that's going to be like a character flaw.

00:17:31.529 --> 00:17:33.309
They could be a very selfish person.

00:17:33.509 --> 00:17:35.109
They could be a kleptomaniac.

00:17:35.140 --> 00:17:37.019
They could be a compulsive liar.

00:17:37.059 --> 00:17:39.369
They could just be insanely insecure.

00:17:39.390 --> 00:17:42.939
You know, this is where we get into the kind of classic flaws situation.

00:17:43.288 --> 00:17:46.759
And then the last negative tag is more relevant to the current moment.

00:17:46.759 --> 00:17:50.480
And this is the first event that gets logged on a character sheet.

00:17:50.865 --> 00:17:52.744
And that is their injury.

00:17:53.034 --> 00:17:54.773
They just went through a spaceship crash.

00:17:54.794 --> 00:17:56.355
What just happened to their body?

00:17:56.615 --> 00:17:57.934
They could be untouched.

00:17:57.964 --> 00:17:59.585
They also could be dead.

00:17:59.804 --> 00:18:03.284
And that's interesting because you can die in character creation.

00:18:03.775 --> 00:18:04.684
Why does that matter?

00:18:04.744 --> 00:18:09.085
I find it interesting that if we roll, say, the pilot, that maybe she died.

00:18:09.480 --> 00:18:16.759
And now, if we ever find a ship or something to hopefully get off the planet, we don't have anybody that has experience flying it.

00:18:17.150 --> 00:18:22.819
It's like a form of resource attrition, right out the gate, of limiting what pool we might have.

00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:24.539
The chance of dying is pretty low.

00:18:24.579 --> 00:18:29.990
Like, it's, it's, it's rolling, you know, a one on a D20, for sure, during character creation.

00:18:30.484 --> 00:18:31.305
That's pretty much it.

00:18:31.315 --> 00:18:36.535
You roll up, uh, your health and drive, which are the only numerical stats on your entire sheet.

00:18:36.634 --> 00:18:38.035
And then you've got a character.

00:18:38.194 --> 00:18:45.835
You're gonna probably do two or three characters during character creation, where the kind of round robin the camera moves throughout the crash site.

00:18:45.875 --> 00:18:48.964
And we get introduced to these characters by you rolling them.

00:18:49.325 --> 00:18:55.365
And then kind of just defining a sentence or so about how you see this character being interpreted.

00:18:55.394 --> 00:19:03.484
And depending on their injury, they might become the very first dramatic scene we have to deal with because they're bleeding out and we want to save them.

00:19:03.775 --> 00:19:13.184
So that's kind of the weirdness of, of character creation in this game is we are through the course of play, and this is thematic of the game, we're discovering who these people are.

00:19:13.434 --> 00:19:20.494
And we're diving into their backstory, and then we all get to play with those levers of what's dramatic and interesting for us.

00:19:20.855 --> 00:19:23.644
Imagine, we're zooming into this person's eye.

00:19:23.684 --> 00:19:24.654
Who is this person?

00:19:24.654 --> 00:19:26.055
Who are we bringing to the table?

00:19:26.454 --> 00:19:34.605
Yeah, so I've got a couple prepared here, but the first one that I like to talk about that I've worked on a couple times is, I call him Sarge.

00:19:34.795 --> 00:19:47.484
He is that classic gruff, ex military kind of guy from everything that we can see on the outside is a very rough person, but there's probably more to him than that.

00:19:47.624 --> 00:19:49.734
But that's not how most people experience him.

00:19:49.924 --> 00:19:56.884
When I roll him up, he rolls ex military, potentially like mercenary now that he's left the military.

00:19:57.124 --> 00:20:00.354
And then, uh, we roll on his, his hobby.

00:20:00.604 --> 00:20:04.624
And I kind of flesh it out a little bit further than what gets rolled on the table for him.

00:20:04.634 --> 00:20:05.394
Cause I had an idea.

00:20:05.809 --> 00:20:08.579
The thing I rolled was carpentry, and I was into that.

00:20:08.599 --> 00:20:09.420
I like that.

00:20:09.619 --> 00:20:18.449
But I was like, maybe he's just really crafty, and he just likes crafts, and I wanted to dive into that, and I was like, what weird thing could he collect?

00:20:18.749 --> 00:20:21.269
And I was like, he collects ceramic cat plates.

00:20:21.689 --> 00:20:28.480
I don't know why yet, but I think that's just weird and interesting, and it's juxtaposed to what people would expect from him.

00:20:28.859 --> 00:20:33.449
It's a narrative opportunity for us to discover the depth of Sarge.

00:20:34.054 --> 00:20:43.284
And then I rolled, you know, on his flaws, and I found out he's an overconfident gambler, which is absolutely terrifying for the military trained individual.

00:20:43.663 --> 00:20:48.095
You know, again, exciting potential for, uh, how he would play out at the table.

00:20:48.345 --> 00:20:50.325
And then we just roll on his injury.

00:20:50.605 --> 00:20:54.115
I love roller tables because they're serendipitous, often.

00:20:54.194 --> 00:20:56.414
Often they make gobbleygook, I get that.

00:20:56.424 --> 00:21:00.805
But more often than that, I feel like they just do something magic.

00:21:00.884 --> 00:21:03.565
I love that, uh, for him, he has a broken leg.

00:21:03.624 --> 00:21:08.444
And so, he is not really able to move around very easily right out the gate.

00:21:08.453 --> 00:21:09.535
He is limited.

00:21:09.839 --> 00:21:16.130
He may be a very capable individual when it comes to keeping people safe, but right out the gate, he is not in a good situation.

00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:20.940
He probably doesn't feel very useful when he would want to be.

00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:26.950
Maybe he finds his, his self worth in his ability to protect and take care of people.

00:21:27.194 --> 00:21:29.214
And again, something interesting.

00:21:29.214 --> 00:21:29.914
Well, good luck.

00:21:29.924 --> 00:21:32.295
You're not getting around very quickly right now.

00:21:32.414 --> 00:21:35.094
You're the equivalent of a turret.

00:21:35.095 --> 00:21:37.193
You can shoot your gun, but you're not moving.

00:21:37.354 --> 00:21:39.535
And again, that's, that's a big deal right away.

00:21:39.535 --> 00:21:44.125
You know, that is maybe the leg needs to be set by somebody with medical training.

00:21:44.144 --> 00:21:46.394
And that becomes a moment pretty early on.

00:21:46.690 --> 00:21:51.819
That's the amount that you would normally get introduced, and it would kind of be limited to that.

00:21:52.190 --> 00:22:02.739
And that would be all you'd be expected to do, is just like talk about it in that way as you're rolling it up, and write out like a sentence that kind of sums them up, because you don't know them very well yet.

00:22:02.894 --> 00:22:08.875
You know, much like in a TV show, it's just that brief character introduction of like, Oh, OK, I don't really know who they are.

00:22:08.875 --> 00:22:10.505
This is the vibe that I'm picking up.

00:22:10.545 --> 00:22:15.404
And we know a little bit more than if you're watching a show, then, you know, just the camera passing over them.

00:22:15.414 --> 00:22:16.855
But the depth isn't there yet.

00:22:17.055 --> 00:22:21.765
And this is kind of where, like, you might roll a character that's just never interesting at all.

00:22:22.664 --> 00:22:23.575
That's fine.

00:22:23.875 --> 00:22:25.253
We just won't play them a lot.

00:22:25.263 --> 00:22:27.355
We won't dive into their backstory very much.

00:22:27.375 --> 00:22:29.325
And then maybe down the road you will.

00:22:29.384 --> 00:22:39.404
And you'll find out they are interesting because at the surface, they were just one note boring, but somebody was inspired or had an idea and they really fleshed them out further.

00:22:39.640 --> 00:22:43.859
And then we can kind of get into like the flashbacks because that stuff logged on Sarge's sheet.

00:22:44.049 --> 00:22:48.599
So the flashbacks are a narrative opportunity to deepen that well.

00:22:48.710 --> 00:22:49.048
Right?

00:22:49.048 --> 00:22:54.470
So I've talked about developing these characters, but for Sarge, you know, he's going to go out on missions.

00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:55.799
He's going to come back to the camp.

00:22:55.808 --> 00:22:57.088
He's going to take care of his business.

00:22:57.088 --> 00:22:57.970
He's going to do what he's going to do.

00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:05.619
But as he gets played by myself and other players, whenever he's up against something that he needs to roll, he has to look to his sheet.

00:23:05.815 --> 00:23:14.244
And if military, overconfident gambler, carpentry, if those don't play into what he's doing, he's rolling basically flat.

00:23:14.335 --> 00:23:16.284
You know, not a whole lot is helping him out.

00:23:16.605 --> 00:23:23.473
So that's an opportunity for a player to say, I'd like to do a flashback and we get to dive into Sarge's backstory.

00:23:23.653 --> 00:23:27.134
I won't break down all the mechanics of what's required for a flashback.

00:23:27.134 --> 00:23:30.815
But in short, if you're familiar with microscope, it's like running a scene.

00:23:30.994 --> 00:23:37.329
And we at the table get to improv a flashback moment in Sarge's history.

00:23:37.480 --> 00:23:46.640
The person playing Sarge will present the table with a question, and they will describe the scene a bit, and then we play a little improv scene to find out the answer to that question.

00:23:47.019 --> 00:23:52.489
So the question that I started with, um, and I, I've named this flashback Under Fire.

00:23:52.859 --> 00:24:01.128
The question that would have been presented to the table is what was the moment when Sarge realized he wasn't cut out for military life anymore?

00:24:01.398 --> 00:24:07.709
I would also probably describe the scene a bit, um, and then these are the notes that I wanted to probably take after the fact, so I'll just read that real quick.

00:24:08.048 --> 00:24:14.960
So during a Gorgon skirmish on a desert planet against some locals, Sarge was working with new recruits fresh out of battle school.

00:24:15.128 --> 00:24:18.480
He was being really hard on them, and they were messing up a lot.

00:24:18.664 --> 00:24:22.825
One of the kids who he was most hard on, he clearly made very nervous.

00:24:23.144 --> 00:24:28.644
While Sarge was screaming at him, the kid was fumbling around with a mag, and stepped out of cover, and got shot in the head.

00:24:29.044 --> 00:24:30.744
Sarge didn't speak for a week.

00:24:31.084 --> 00:24:35.054
This is all stuff that we would kind of improv and discover in the moment.

00:24:35.055 --> 00:24:45.055
Maybe I'm just being Sarge, and you know, you could be playing as the cadet that I'm yelling at, and then you could be like, and then while I'm fumbling with the mag, I step back and bow.

00:24:45.055 --> 00:24:47.273
I, you know, horrible moment happens.

00:24:47.664 --> 00:24:55.005
In that moment, everybody at the table is like, Oh, you just decided the answer to this question in a really intense way.

00:24:55.015 --> 00:24:56.784
We wouldn't have talked that out before.

00:24:56.805 --> 00:24:59.865
You know, we would have set the scene and said, Sarge is there.

00:25:00.075 --> 00:25:01.684
He's just yelling at cadets.

00:25:01.723 --> 00:25:06.095
And then you would feel inspired and be like, Oh, this is an interesting way to answer that question.

00:25:06.454 --> 00:25:09.545
And then as we discover that, we zoom back into the moment.

00:25:09.855 --> 00:25:21.194
And now he's probably, one, more careful about staying in cover, and two, this is a deep well of things that we could call on for any number of reasons to play into his ability to keep his mouth shut.

00:25:21.224 --> 00:25:24.013
You know, how he talks to other people.

00:25:24.023 --> 00:25:30.294
You know, like, we can call on this flashback now for a lot of reasons because we just got a lot deeper into who he is.

00:25:30.799 --> 00:25:35.910
Would adding this to Sarge's character have a mechanical benefit?

00:25:36.079 --> 00:25:46.108
Yeah, so the flashbacks and events become equivalent tags to the background of, like, ex military and, and all that kind of stuff.

00:25:46.108 --> 00:25:52.710
So this is where it gets into more of the mechanics of the system, but, uh, brief on it is you're always rolling 2D6.

00:25:52.750 --> 00:25:55.460
It's just how we interpret the 2D6 that changes.

00:25:55.539 --> 00:25:56.619
So there's three degrees.

00:25:56.964 --> 00:26:00.065
There's rolling 2d6 and taking the lowest result.

00:26:00.253 --> 00:26:02.075
There's rolling 2d6 taking the highest result.

00:26:02.275 --> 00:26:04.204
And there's rolling 2d6 and summing them together.

00:26:04.315 --> 00:26:06.845
You do that by calling on a number of tags.

00:26:07.115 --> 00:26:08.894
No tags, you take the lowest.

00:26:09.164 --> 00:26:10.964
One tag, you take the highest.

00:26:11.154 --> 00:26:13.535
Two tags, You take both and you add them together.

00:26:13.734 --> 00:26:16.035
And that's how you get your magnitudes of rolling.

00:26:16.565 --> 00:26:20.595
So you can pull on two tags that feel relevant to the task at hand.

00:26:20.964 --> 00:26:22.555
You're rolling a heck of a lot better.

00:26:22.913 --> 00:26:24.784
You're never really like rolling neutral.

00:26:24.784 --> 00:26:29.055
You're either just bad at it or you're, you're actually have some experience with it.

00:26:29.414 --> 00:26:38.365
And which adds to kind of the swinginess of kind of letting people play into their story and their trope rather than it just being arbitrary numbers.

00:26:38.654 --> 00:26:41.224
It's always tied to who they are and what they've been through.

00:26:41.884 --> 00:27:06.184
The swinginess of it also makes me think about how survival stories like Lost are often, if I was thinking about what are the dice rolls that go into some of these decisions that are made or some of the things that occur, I would think, yeah, this is somebody who rolled really poorly and they got shot, and this is somebody who rolled really well and they discovered that there's this underground bunker with a bunch of supplies in it.

00:27:06.204 --> 00:27:07.054
Yeah, totally.

00:27:07.075 --> 00:27:18.023
And I think that like, it's fun because there's so many times where at the table you think, Oh, I've got all this backstory for this character, but like, I feel like they'd be good at this.

00:27:18.085 --> 00:27:20.204
And like, there's so many GMs that are great.

00:27:20.214 --> 00:27:27.789
You can like kind of petition the GM, be like, "Hey, like, can I have advantage on this? Because it feels like it would make sense in my backstory." And they can do one of two things.

00:27:27.789 --> 00:27:28.859
They can say, "Yeah, totally.

00:27:28.859 --> 00:27:36.869
I'm on the same page as you." Or they could be like, "Well, that's not on your character sheet, and I'm not just going to give that up for whatever." But you know what I'm saying?

00:27:36.869 --> 00:27:43.539
This is basically codifying that mental process and putting it in a game where like, that's how it's supposed to work.

00:27:43.898 --> 00:27:45.898
You're supposed to feel inspired.

00:27:46.184 --> 00:27:58.484
By the fact that you feel like this character might be drawn to this task specifically, or you could make a negative tag if you're like, "No, I actually should be bad at this." And I want to put that on my sheet.

00:27:58.763 --> 00:28:04.884
But it's a negative tag only right now, like that Under Fire flashback could be a negative tag later.

00:28:05.084 --> 00:28:07.184
And that's something the GM can call on, right?

00:28:07.523 --> 00:28:10.763
It's like maybe it's a social interaction with somebody younger than him.

00:28:10.814 --> 00:28:13.513
And Sarge is maybe losing his temper a little bit.

00:28:13.914 --> 00:28:29.064
And then I call for some kind of roll for like convincing this younger person and I say actually have a negative tag so that's gonna work against any positive tag and bump you back down to rolling 2d6 and taking the lower result and so it's kind of like a way of forcing the hand.

00:28:29.095 --> 00:28:34.345
But again, he could be now good at staying in cover and keeping his mouth shut and and that kind of stuff.

00:28:34.919 --> 00:28:44.859
Sarge's second flashback, again, we're diving deep into the quirkiness and juxtaposition of gruff exterior, maybe crafty, softy on the inside.

00:28:44.929 --> 00:28:51.818
And I was, I was wondering what brought that love for this craft and precision and stuff.

00:28:51.818 --> 00:28:54.839
And so I called this flashback Eye for Detail when I logged it.

00:28:54.849 --> 00:29:00.319
But the question was, what caused Sarge to fall in love with these damn cat plates?

00:29:00.615 --> 00:29:02.704
And that's just a weird question, right?

00:29:02.704 --> 00:29:08.753
We, we, you set up these open mysteries and threads, and we don't know the answer until later when we dive into them.

00:29:08.944 --> 00:29:16.464
And so, probably what would happen is, the person prompting it is, is gonna stack the deck a little bit when they set the scene.

00:29:16.565 --> 00:29:22.734
And so they might say he's with a family member and he's very young.

00:29:22.884 --> 00:29:29.683
Maybe he's spending time at their house and then you could chime in or another player would just be like, OK, I'll I'll be his grandma.

00:29:29.714 --> 00:29:30.765
It's like, well, that makes sense.

00:29:30.765 --> 00:29:31.243
Cat plates.

00:29:31.255 --> 00:29:31.815
OK, cool.

00:29:32.015 --> 00:29:34.394
And so then we dive into the scene.

00:29:34.403 --> 00:29:37.365
And this is these are the notes that I would have taken after the fact.

00:29:37.595 --> 00:29:41.365
Grandma used to paint those cats on ceramic plates and Sarge would just watch her.

00:29:41.634 --> 00:29:45.424
He was basically raised by her since mom was always so busy.

00:29:45.605 --> 00:29:49.625
While grandma was painting in her art room one time, she tripped and fell over a tarp.

00:29:49.984 --> 00:29:53.653
Sarge came to help her, nothing was too serious, and then his mom showed up.

00:29:54.079 --> 00:30:00.849
While his mom was helping his grandma, he realized that mid fall she had knocked over the plate that she was working on and it had cracked to pieces.

00:30:00.859 --> 00:30:02.500
She had been working on it for weeks.

00:30:02.539 --> 00:30:09.029
Sarge then spent the next week gluing it all back together, meticulously knowing how hard that she had worked on the plate.

00:30:09.420 --> 00:30:19.109
In this, we get a sweet moment with this grandma that has a love for art and kitschy, you know, stuff and a kid that just cares about his grandma.

00:30:19.390 --> 00:30:22.159
And cares about the fact that she was working hard on it.

00:30:22.398 --> 00:30:25.348
He might not actually care about the cats on the plate.

00:30:25.359 --> 00:30:31.269
You know, he cares about the intentionality that she was showing towards the art that she was performing.

00:30:31.654 --> 00:30:33.125
And he cared to put it back together.

00:30:33.144 --> 00:30:36.585
And the nice part is this tag could get called on for so many reasons, right?

00:30:36.595 --> 00:30:43.934
Like you could easily pull on this for picking a lock or something meticulous, or it could just be crafting his tent.

00:30:43.984 --> 00:30:48.414
Like, clearly, he has a lot of crafty experience, not just in carpentry.

00:30:48.434 --> 00:30:48.694
Right.

00:30:48.703 --> 00:30:51.704
There's one tag, but also he has a huge eye for detail.

00:30:52.039 --> 00:31:03.769
And so now you've got two tags bumping you all the way up to adding your 2d6 together when you're rolling and you've got a way wider mechanical advantage now of succeeding at what you're doing and doing a very well.

00:31:04.230 --> 00:31:11.950
When we talked about doing this interview, obviously there's a challenge here is that you're not coming in with a character that has a lot of information.

00:31:12.654 --> 00:31:21.493
And with a troupe, this is not one character that you would be creating, you're going to be helping to create every single character in this troupe.

00:31:21.923 --> 00:31:24.315
So you also prepared a second character.

00:31:24.334 --> 00:31:25.125
Yes, I have.

00:31:25.384 --> 00:31:26.344
Her name is Norma.

00:31:26.565 --> 00:31:30.615
Norma is a 34 year old woman, um, from a megacity planet of Traya.

00:31:30.765 --> 00:31:34.384
So think like Coruscant, you know, like the whole thing is just a big old city.

00:31:34.605 --> 00:31:38.045
It's the most like cyberpunk y kind of place in the, the setting.

00:31:38.325 --> 00:31:44.144
This sentence is pulled from the things I rolled for her, but she is specialized in conning corporate assholes.

00:31:44.484 --> 00:31:53.654
Basically, she, whenever possible, takes a la Robin Hood style, takes the money she can scrounge together and help her family out.

00:31:53.654 --> 00:32:01.335
But also she uses that money to take trips to untamed planets and get away from the infinite drone of the city.

00:32:01.345 --> 00:32:03.265
She is a wildlife enthusiast.

00:32:03.525 --> 00:32:06.804
So when I rolled her up, I rolled con artist, but I was like, I don't.

00:32:07.099 --> 00:32:09.220
I don't want that to be a negative thing, really.

00:32:09.450 --> 00:32:37.045
So I went with kind of the Robin Hood-y trope of like, helping people out in the undercity and tricking the dumb corporate people and uh, using her wildlife enthusiasm and ability to take trips to some of these worlds to then like, procure goods that she might be able to snake oil convince some corporate person is a magical cure or part of some great like recipe for a stim or new hit drug or whatever.

00:32:37.174 --> 00:32:44.970
And so I rolled up con artist and wildlife enthusiast and then for her flaw I said she was bitterly envious of others.

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:47.029
This was rolled, but again, serendipitous.

00:32:47.059 --> 00:33:00.328
I was like, hmm, maybe these rich people that she's conning, she is deeply, deeply envious of and is struggling with that wealth inequality and desire to be respected by her financial standing.

00:33:00.368 --> 00:33:05.180
And so maybe she hasn't always used the con artist-y bent for good, if you will.

00:33:05.220 --> 00:33:12.460
And so that being kind of the initial roll as we discover her character, I deepen that further by two of her flashbacks.

00:33:12.460 --> 00:33:13.849
So the first one is just hiking.

00:33:14.190 --> 00:33:25.170
Let's say this was a time where like we're out and she's on a mission and I'm like, I just want her not just to be a fan of nature, but like really good at climbing and getting up this cliff face or something.

00:33:25.170 --> 00:33:30.329
So I call on a flashback and the question that would be presented and then improv doubt was.

00:33:30.674 --> 00:33:35.315
Who did Norma meet that changed her mind about people being expendable?

00:33:35.464 --> 00:33:44.355
So this kind of goes back to maybe when she was first getting into her con artist stuff and maybe when it took a spin for good in a way.

00:33:44.555 --> 00:33:51.855
And basically when she was younger she was off on some forest moon gathering samples to trick some, some rich person.

00:33:52.289 --> 00:34:06.219
And met a young guy named Torrin and basically started to, you know, like take Torrin under her wing but then realized that her actions would essentially set Torrin up as a fall guy for the con that she was doing.

00:34:06.328 --> 00:34:09.478
We don't reveal in the flashback whether or not she goes through with it.

00:34:09.909 --> 00:34:15.769
You know, we would find out this is the person that she met that changed her mind about people being expendable.

00:34:16.144 --> 00:34:18.434
And it's kind of just an introductory flashback.

00:34:18.764 --> 00:34:29.925
We don't know the whole story about what happens with Torrin, because we improv'd a little bit of it out, but we end the scene there with the question that later hopefully gets delved into of what happened to Torrin?

00:34:29.954 --> 00:34:31.085
What did Norma do?

00:34:31.373 --> 00:34:32.873
How did she handle this?

00:34:32.925 --> 00:34:35.784
Did she, you know, set him up and screw him over?

00:34:35.795 --> 00:34:39.585
Or did she protect him and change how she was approaching stuff?

00:34:39.880 --> 00:34:46.269
That would be her first, uh, flashback, and where we kind of dive into the moral complexity of what she does.

00:34:46.724 --> 00:34:52.985
Norma's second flashback dives a little bit more into the nefarious side of her again.

00:34:53.144 --> 00:34:59.284
I saw the arc being that hopefully the present we've established that she's a better person.

00:34:59.625 --> 00:35:04.525
So most of her flashbacks are kind of diving into when she wasn't or why that shift happened.

00:35:04.764 --> 00:35:11.284
The first one definitely giving us a pivotal moment where she shifted, realizing people shouldn't be expendable.

00:35:11.655 --> 00:35:20.934
But this one was much more straightforward in trying to dive into kind of her enviousness and desire to be part of that upper crust.

00:35:21.175 --> 00:35:38.025
So simply titled it, uh, Breaking and Entering, the question that would have been presented is "What did Norma steal in her first B&E that gave her a taste of the high life?" And we probably then would set the stage with some characters and dive into improv-ing it out.

00:35:38.204 --> 00:35:41.474
I took some notes on it, and it probably would have played out something like this.

00:35:41.844 --> 00:35:51.019
Norma and fellow street kid Slug go to break into Old Man Trevor's pawn shop to steal back her speed skates that she sold to him last week.

00:35:51.050 --> 00:35:53.889
She needed the cash, but now she wants them back.

00:35:53.900 --> 00:36:02.119
Slug teaches her how to pick a lock, and while they're looking around for her skates, she sees that the case holding the most valuable stuff is wide open.

00:36:02.380 --> 00:36:06.599
She snags a gold necklace worth a few thousand creds because it made her feel important.

00:36:07.155 --> 00:36:08.505
Uh, Old Man Trevor walked in on them.

00:36:08.844 --> 00:36:10.715
Norma got away, but Slug got caught.

00:36:10.744 --> 00:36:11.974
She still blames herself.

00:36:12.284 --> 00:36:14.025
But, she wears that necklace.

00:36:14.525 --> 00:36:15.965
This is complex, right?

00:36:15.974 --> 00:36:22.813
This is regret, but it's also when she first was able to see like, Ooh, I could have these things.

00:36:23.074 --> 00:36:24.164
And she still keeps it with her.

00:36:24.215 --> 00:36:29.764
Maybe she keeps it with her to remind herself to not do that and value stuff over people.

00:36:30.280 --> 00:36:37.320
But maybe she also keeps it with her because it's really pretty and it's valuable and she wants to be seen that way.

00:36:37.659 --> 00:36:43.840
And so, again, you know, now, very simply, this probably got prompted because we have to break into a building and I want to pick a lock.

00:36:44.199 --> 00:36:46.070
But it's it's complex.

00:36:46.099 --> 00:36:48.969
And then you get to use it again later for a litany of reasons.

00:36:49.344 --> 00:36:53.574
My first thought is, is she still wearing this necklace when we meet her?

00:36:53.885 --> 00:36:55.255
Was she wearing it on the ship?

00:36:55.494 --> 00:37:00.164
Has she moved past this feeling or, or is she still holding on to it?

00:37:00.215 --> 00:37:03.454
Yeah, or maybe it's missing during the crash, you know?

00:37:03.643 --> 00:37:12.224
And that could be interesting too, where something happens and maybe we decide after the flashback, like, she had it in the crash but she doesn't know where it is.

00:37:13.005 --> 00:37:21.644
And then it comes up later, and it's important and significant, or maybe she moves on and she lets it go, and that's where I like the Discovery piece, you know?

00:37:22.014 --> 00:37:34.454
I love deep backstories, obviously, but I like the fact that we're on that journey of Discovery, and nothing's too locked in before we do it, and actually, we can kinda retcon stuff with flashbacks.

00:37:34.719 --> 00:37:37.010
We can dive in and figure stuff out.

00:37:37.030 --> 00:37:56.179
Something I've mentioned to you before was, I've had players over the years that have very different playstyles, they handle narrative stuff very differently, and with there being a very GM-full approach to the entire group of players, even though there is still a facilitator in the GM, everybody's getting a lot of narrative control.

00:37:56.429 --> 00:37:59.599
And so when you're making a character, maybe somebody like Sarge, right?

00:37:59.670 --> 00:38:03.130
He doesn't strike you as somebody that would just, in cold blood, just kill somebody.

00:38:03.494 --> 00:38:14.664
And so if a player were to be using Sarge for a mission right now and they're playing him out, they maybe add a little flashback and, you know, they dive into this character, but then they just straight up kill somebody at the table.

00:38:14.974 --> 00:38:19.273
A lot of people, especially the person that made Sarge, is going to go, "Hold on a second.

00:38:19.284 --> 00:38:20.204
That doesn't make sense.

00:38:20.224 --> 00:38:28.525
Why would Sarge do that?" And so rather than saying, "Hey, you can't do that, Sarge would not do that." Essentially, that moment is still probably going to happen.

00:38:28.835 --> 00:38:35.375
But what I find exciting is when somebody asked me that question, I was like, Ooh, the best way to handle that is one communication.

00:38:35.755 --> 00:38:39.695
But two, like we can say "yes, and" and handle that through a flashback.

00:38:39.764 --> 00:38:41.914
So we go in the moment we hold on.

00:38:42.204 --> 00:38:44.054
Why did Sarge kill that person in cold blood?

00:38:44.074 --> 00:38:44.385
Boom.

00:38:44.405 --> 00:38:45.005
Flashback.

00:38:45.034 --> 00:38:48.295
Maybe that flashback answers the question specifically.

00:38:48.500 --> 00:38:57.429
that that person, you know, maybe betrayed his platoon back in the day and did horrible stuff and killed tons of people and was a very bad person.

00:38:57.429 --> 00:39:11.139
And now we've complicated our story and given him a personal tie to a current moment where he did something that seemed out of character but had justification, even if it was wrong, you know, and in terms of his character and internal consistency.

00:39:11.565 --> 00:39:19.420
And so these flashbacks and the way that we are telling the story gets complicated, but also deeper when those kind of things happen.

00:39:46.434 --> 00:39:51.085
Enter the world of Onisino, where a pale purple sky hangs over a boiling.

00:39:51.289 --> 00:39:52.820
Roiling wine red ocean.

00:39:53.230 --> 00:39:55.900
The final prison of a once powerful god.

00:39:56.050 --> 00:40:00.380
Scattered across this dire sea lie the fallen corpses of more gods still.

00:40:00.780 --> 00:40:02.090
This is the way it was.

00:40:02.590 --> 00:40:04.130
This is the way it shall be again.

00:40:04.548 --> 00:40:06.579
But this is not the way that it is now.

00:40:07.079 --> 00:40:09.210
Now we enter the arcane era.

00:40:09.804 --> 00:40:17.065
Where magic was once the sole province of the divinely blessed, it can now be wielded by any privileged enough to afford the teaching.

00:40:17.235 --> 00:40:43.094
Our heroes, misfits, outcasts, and dreamers set out to define themselves in a world caught between tradition and innovation, none realizing how great Follow the cast of What's Your Damage, as Series 2 plunges headfirst into the home brewed archipelago world of Onisino, a land of magic, mystery, and mirth inspired by East Asian philosophy, Discworld, and the films of Studio Ghibli.

00:40:43.625 --> 00:40:45.655
Available wherever you get your podcasts.

00:40:57.775 --> 00:41:02.235
Let's build a third character to demonstrate how this system works.

00:41:02.394 --> 00:41:03.855
Do you have dice on hand?

00:41:03.905 --> 00:41:05.965
You'll just need a d20 for right now.

00:41:06.224 --> 00:41:06.634
All right.

00:41:06.844 --> 00:41:07.974
I've got my d20.

00:41:08.005 --> 00:41:08.594
Great.

00:41:08.614 --> 00:41:09.934
So go ahead and roll.

00:41:09.945 --> 00:41:13.525
You're going to roll it four times, but go ahead and just, we'll go one by one.

00:41:14.284 --> 00:41:14.585
Two.

00:41:14.875 --> 00:41:15.425
Two.

00:41:15.565 --> 00:41:16.094
Awesome.

00:41:16.125 --> 00:41:17.224
You rolled the pilot.

00:41:18.934 --> 00:41:20.974
So, you're going to be building the pilot.

00:41:21.025 --> 00:41:27.275
You can decide any physical, you know, gender, any of that kind of stuff as we, as we discover who they are.

00:41:27.434 --> 00:41:28.614
Now you're going to roll for their hobby.

00:41:29.094 --> 00:41:29.465
Nine.

00:41:29.664 --> 00:41:30.184
Nine.

00:41:30.215 --> 00:41:30.664
Okay.

00:41:30.715 --> 00:41:31.905
Uh, they like hiking.

00:41:32.164 --> 00:41:32.713
That's great.

00:41:32.985 --> 00:41:34.625
That's super useful in this situation.

00:41:34.905 --> 00:41:35.744
I can imagine.

00:41:35.965 --> 00:41:40.914
I mean, yeah, the pilot likes to, you know, fly over beautiful landscapes and hike through them.

00:41:41.335 --> 00:41:42.903
Now we're going to roll a flaw.

00:41:43.483 --> 00:41:44.054
Four.

00:41:44.204 --> 00:41:45.034
Four.

00:41:45.094 --> 00:41:46.385
Uncontrollable temper.

00:41:46.775 --> 00:41:49.434
So they fly off the handle quickly.

00:41:49.849 --> 00:41:55.190
And then last, we're going to find out, again, zooming into this exact moment, how they are injured.

00:41:55.250 --> 00:41:56.670
So go ahead and roll your last one.

00:41:57.150 --> 00:41:57.670
Twelve.

00:41:57.900 --> 00:41:58.559
Twelve.

00:41:59.139 --> 00:42:00.059
They have a concussion.

00:42:00.199 --> 00:42:00.659
OK.

00:42:00.748 --> 00:42:02.199
That's very dangerous.

00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:08.889
Definitely something that once we start playing, it'd be like, I'm going to need to find somebody to help me out or I'm going to take it easy.

00:42:09.269 --> 00:42:14.400
Like, maybe this character cannot go out on a mission right out the gate because it's dangerous.

00:42:14.940 --> 00:42:19.730
And then, the only other thing that typically gets rolled, if you want, uh, you can roll 2d4.

00:42:19.739 --> 00:42:22.028
This is gonna determine your health.

00:42:22.510 --> 00:42:23.809
So you're gonna roll 2d4.

00:42:24.125 --> 00:42:29.155
And then whatever you get, take that away from 10, and the remainder is how many drive you have.

00:42:29.164 --> 00:42:32.144
So if you have, if you roll a 6, you get 4 drive.

00:42:32.503 --> 00:42:34.494
Conversely, if you roll 8, you get 2 drive.

00:42:34.864 --> 00:42:37.543
Okay, that's a 4, and that's a 1.

00:42:37.905 --> 00:42:40.094
Okay, so 5 and 5, which is great.

00:42:40.485 --> 00:42:43.119
So this pilot is fairly well rounded.

00:42:43.349 --> 00:42:51.050
They can take five wounds, but they also can push themselves pretty hard when it comes to rerolling, certain tests, and exploration.

00:42:51.050 --> 00:42:55.268
So that's another way that drive gets spent is through the exploration actions.

00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:04.320
It's kind of like, you can do a hex crawl or a point crawl where you're diving into the wilderness and rolling up with the different encounters and biomes are, but you spend drive to do that.

00:43:04.784 --> 00:43:10.974
If you only have a couple drive, you might just be the person letting other people lead and just kind of keeping in the back.

00:43:11.105 --> 00:43:12.474
But you're pretty well rounded.

00:43:12.485 --> 00:43:18.385
You can get up close and personal, take some hits, and you could lead the pack heading out into the wilderness.

00:43:18.545 --> 00:43:18.925
So, yeah.

00:43:18.925 --> 00:43:21.713
Do you want to tell me a little bit about who you feel like this character is?

00:43:22.090 --> 00:43:25.760
She's somebody who really had to fight to get where she is.

00:43:26.550 --> 00:43:37.150
And I think part of that, there's the temper arises from a kind of impatience with other people who aren't really able to strive as hard as she does.

00:43:37.190 --> 00:43:41.228
I think there's a little bit of that mentality of like, I was able to do it, why can't you do it?

00:43:41.239 --> 00:43:41.969
Get it together.

00:43:42.509 --> 00:43:45.003
And I think that she's very wiry.

00:43:45.003 --> 00:43:46.809
She's very tenacious.

00:43:47.110 --> 00:43:51.809
She kind of, there's no nonsense about the way she dresses or the way she looks.

00:43:51.900 --> 00:43:52.440
Yeah.

00:43:52.480 --> 00:44:05.918
Yeah, I think what's fun too is like, because she's a very capable person that can just get stuff done, it's not that she is a jerk, but maybe it's she expects the same from others.

00:44:06.268 --> 00:44:10.630
If I can move with this amount of forward momentum, I expect you to do the same.

00:44:10.630 --> 00:44:13.710
Like, not get on my level, but kind of get on my level.

00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:14.960
Do you want to give her a name?

00:44:15.230 --> 00:44:16.429
Ooh, okay.

00:44:16.659 --> 00:44:19.119
Something a little ironic, like Harmony?

00:44:20.659 --> 00:44:21.789
Yeah, that's fun.

00:44:22.409 --> 00:44:37.119
Okay, so, probably, let's say, I'll DM this a little bit, but in a very overview kind of sense, so like, Harmony is at the crash, she probably has met Norma and Sarge, among other survivors, you know, they've set up a little bit of a camp.

00:44:37.500 --> 00:44:40.210
Some weird stuff's gone on around the camp.

00:44:40.219 --> 00:44:47.199
Maybe there's some like local fauna that has invaded the camp and taken what rations had already been cobbled from the wreckage of the ship.

00:44:47.239 --> 00:44:50.250
And everybody knows we are very low on food.

00:44:50.280 --> 00:44:53.369
We we can scrounge what we can right now for a little bit.

00:44:53.648 --> 00:45:00.355
But we need to get out into the wilderness, do some hunting, get something to actually satiate our people.

00:45:00.355 --> 00:45:03.844
But if we're going to be here for any amount of time, we need like a food source.

00:45:03.855 --> 00:45:09.994
So this is like not just getting food, but it's about scouting and knowing some of the immediate area.

00:45:10.043 --> 00:45:20.364
And as a result, they call on Harmony among other survivors to kind of go out and do some initial scouting and get a lay of the land to know what we're up against.

00:45:21.070 --> 00:45:30.460
During that scouting phase, she probably would be leading the pack, entering into new places, and getting a sense of the nearby locations.

00:45:30.639 --> 00:45:34.300
As well as some of the threats and the weirdness of this planet.

00:45:34.320 --> 00:45:43.679
It's, it's not just a lush forest moon like she may have been to before, but It is covered in strange anomalies.

00:45:43.730 --> 00:45:46.340
There's even some weird temporal anomalies.

00:45:46.369 --> 00:45:48.070
Maybe we lost somebody already.

00:45:48.070 --> 00:45:59.699
Where they encountered this weird puddle like anomaly in the area, walking through this forest, and they aged 60 years walking through this puddle.

00:45:59.869 --> 00:46:06.559
And ended up just having to go back to the camp maybe to only die a couple days later because of, they died of old age.

00:46:06.889 --> 00:46:24.030
So we're out on this, morale's a little bit low, and right now they know in order to keep going in this direction, um, where they see maybe some waterfall, hopefully fresh water source, not too far away, they gotta go down, um, this cliff face to get nearby and then maybe reroute another way.

00:46:24.324 --> 00:46:39.465
So if she's up against that and knowing she's got to navigate this cliff face with other people that maybe are not good at climbing, we would enter into like a round based encounter where everybody would declare actions of kind of pushing forward or pulling back and helping the team.

00:46:39.494 --> 00:46:43.114
And let's say you are wanting to do this even better.

00:46:43.114 --> 00:46:45.255
We've already got hiking as a tag that can help.

00:46:45.264 --> 00:46:52.224
But if we really want to get you to maximum affinity on this role, you're going to want another tag to support because pilots not going to help you.

00:46:52.585 --> 00:46:54.054
Your temper's not going to help you.

00:46:54.105 --> 00:46:56.525
In fact, your temper might be a negative tag.

00:46:56.545 --> 00:46:56.775
Yeah.

00:46:57.335 --> 00:47:00.445
So you really want something to help you out here.

00:47:00.445 --> 00:47:07.855
So in this moment, the flashback does not have to be necessarily only about climbing a cliff.

00:47:08.164 --> 00:47:09.903
This can be really about anything.

00:47:10.153 --> 00:47:13.605
And climbing just needs to be in there somewhere.

00:47:13.784 --> 00:47:20.164
You know, it just on some level, it makes sense to call on this for the task at hand.

00:47:20.610 --> 00:47:27.659
But, the goal here in defining this flashback and the question we ask is deepening the well of this character.

00:47:28.010 --> 00:47:29.449
To find out more of who they are.

00:47:29.469 --> 00:47:30.250
Because we don't know.

00:47:30.528 --> 00:47:33.099
And don't feel like you have to know the answer to the question.

00:47:33.268 --> 00:47:40.773
Architecture of a good question, and this is not restrictive, but just hopefully to give some inspiration, is to start out with your five W's.

00:47:41.155 --> 00:47:44.775
The who, what, where, when, why, and kind of call on that to frame your question.

00:47:44.864 --> 00:47:50.635
Look for important nouns, people, location, time, and then the result and change.

00:47:50.864 --> 00:47:54.105
Not necessarily prescriptive, but this is where you get to kind of stack the deck.

00:47:54.105 --> 00:47:56.014
So some examples of questions.

00:47:56.335 --> 00:48:01.644
would be, "Why is this fishing trip the last time me and my mother spoke?" You know, we know they're on a fishing trip.

00:48:01.965 --> 00:48:06.284
We know that something, conflict, or life change is gonna happen.

00:48:06.474 --> 00:48:12.643
Uh, another example would be, "What did they say to my father in law to convince him to sell me out?" Right?

00:48:12.643 --> 00:48:14.554
Like, whoa, there's a whole bunch of drama there.

00:48:14.554 --> 00:48:15.704
We know they've been sold out.

00:48:15.744 --> 00:48:16.445
What for?

00:48:16.485 --> 00:48:16.894
Who knows?

00:48:17.235 --> 00:48:22.045
"How did falling in love with my best friend hurt my self esteem?" Well, we can infer a lot.

00:48:22.355 --> 00:48:25.724
You know, like those are kind of just the really dramatic ones.

00:48:25.773 --> 00:48:27.753
It doesn't need to be that complicated, right?

00:48:28.135 --> 00:48:29.273
Think back to Sarge.

00:48:29.304 --> 00:48:30.523
Why does he like these plates?

00:48:30.755 --> 00:48:36.034
It doesn't need to be crazy, but we know that the liking of the plate is a big deal for him.

00:48:36.074 --> 00:48:38.313
And that's kind of the life change moment.

00:48:38.724 --> 00:48:44.583
So I think that in framing a good flashback for Harmony, I want to dive into other aspects of her.

00:48:44.603 --> 00:48:47.014
You know, we know she's got outdoorsy things.

00:48:47.349 --> 00:49:03.028
We know that she is a very confident, capable individual, but like I want to play into maybe some of her vulnerability and maybe the if and how she ever has questioned herself and her own ability to pull things off.

00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:07.920
Because maybe that plays into like a performative aspect of being capable.

00:49:08.170 --> 00:49:14.079
So those are the things that'd be going through my head and framing a question and wondering what the other side to this person is.

00:49:14.309 --> 00:50:01.440
And I would think, maybe I want to introduce some characters that are significant to her whether it's family members or friends I think that in this I might want to introduce just a close confidant individual so I would probably set the stage and say this is just Harmony and close friend who's going through a divorce and she's talking to this friend and being vulnerable about things and maybe the question that I would ask is, "So what did Harmony's relationship in regards to the ex have to do with this conversation she had with her friend when she came to her for advice amidst a divorce?" And then we would dive into that, and I don't, I don't know the answer.

00:50:01.679 --> 00:50:11.840
There feels like obvious answers that people would grab onto of that, but it's an opportunity to either subvert that or lean into it and enjoy the complexity of that narrative.

00:50:12.489 --> 00:50:31.329
I think the capability part of this, she maybe doesn't feel equipped to give this advice, or feels that because maybe she was close, not necessarily romantically, but like just as a friend of the ex that it makes it really complicated in giving advice to her friend who's coming to her.

00:50:31.480 --> 00:50:34.989
And that just created some inner inner turmoil or conflict.

00:50:35.159 --> 00:50:40.489
And then we really just have a backdrop of like they went out for coffee and went rock climbing.

00:50:40.914 --> 00:51:09.025
Yeah, what I think is that when this woman comes to Harmony and Harmony is friends with both of them, that she reveals that the partner or the husband or wife or whoever was abusive, not necessarily physically, but maybe verbally abusive, or she's, there's a side of their relationship that she has never seen or been privy to, and it causes her to reconsider her own friendship with the ex.

00:51:09.480 --> 00:51:10.710
Yeah, that's super interesting.

00:51:11.050 --> 00:51:36.880
I think that what this this leaves us with is maybe her relationship to abusers or her approach to just complicated relationship dynamics and how she maybe does or doesn't feel equipped in that space to maybe mediate, like, she's very confident about what she can physically do and what she can get done, but the minute other people are involved, it's messier.

00:51:36.909 --> 00:51:44.659
Yeah, I would say maybe she has personal experience with being bullied, perhaps even being a bully.

00:51:44.710 --> 00:51:44.889
Yeah.

00:51:44.940 --> 00:51:50.989
Obviously, she has a temper and she expects people to just kind of go along with her and get to her level.

00:51:51.099 --> 00:52:00.630
So maybe it's complicated by the fact that she sees behavior that she personally has done that kind of aligns with that and she didn't recognize that.

00:52:00.889 --> 00:52:12.030
And so this is a turning point for her in terms of recognizing that behavior in herself and then becoming very protective of people who have had that situation too.

00:52:12.030 --> 00:52:35.684
So maybe, you know, in this situation of attempting with a group of people to Do this rock climbing, maybe there's a interaction between two of those people where one is bullying the other and what she gains from, from this flashback in terms of mechanically would be something like able to manage conflict in a group or protective of people who maybe are encountering that.

00:52:35.704 --> 00:52:36.833
Yeah, definitely.

00:52:36.864 --> 00:52:37.735
We kind of have.

00:52:38.275 --> 00:52:46.244
Sarge, who has a bit of a proclivity to yelling at other people, similarly, that aren't doing things in a certain way.

00:52:46.244 --> 00:52:48.255
And maybe he's kind of falling back into that.

00:52:48.574 --> 00:52:52.954
Maybe we had that flashback, you know, this session of him jumping undercover and stuff.

00:52:53.255 --> 00:53:13.945
And so maybe she ends up able to kind of talk to him in a way that reminds him or pulls him out of that space and is able to protect the other person but also recognize that maybe he's experiencing some triggers or acting out of line with with who she thinks he is and and has experienced him so far.

00:53:14.224 --> 00:53:16.884
That's basically what you get to do then you get to roll better.

00:53:16.884 --> 00:53:25.260
You get to climb you get to dive into the drama of these people and they get into fights and they don't like each other and maybe the camp splits at some point.

00:53:25.440 --> 00:53:31.610
Maybe, you know, there's a lot of weird stuff that's going to be discovered while they explore into the wilderness.

00:53:31.630 --> 00:53:36.010
They're going to find very weird like alien life forms.

00:53:36.480 --> 00:53:38.719
They will find all kinds of threats.

00:53:38.730 --> 00:53:39.679
They'll find beauty.

00:53:39.708 --> 00:53:45.260
They'll find an insane landscape that's unlike anything in frontier space they've ever experienced.

00:53:45.289 --> 00:53:51.338
They're going to experience other bizarre anomalies like that one where somebody fell through and aged, you know, 60 years.

00:53:51.750 --> 00:54:03.380
They're gonna do things that they never thought they could do, and we get to go along with them on that journey, discover who they are and who they're becoming, and, and, and hopefully get them off this planet.

00:54:03.778 --> 00:54:31.905
I also love that this creates a potential for developing or complicating relationships between the characters that everyone's playing like I could see Harmony and Sarge almost bonding over this like Harmony pushing Sarge to be better and Sarge in return kind of pushing Harmony coming from backgrounds where they're both kind of disciplined and and maybe a little bit rough around the edges at least at first glance giving them both a chance to grow together.

00:54:32.255 --> 00:54:40.094
Yeah, and I think that it's fun that you could, through the course of multiple sessions, be on either sides of that conflict.

00:54:40.125 --> 00:54:49.764
Like, you could be Sarge the following session, and because you felt that from interacting with Sarge as Harmony, the next session you're like, I get to play into that.

00:54:50.155 --> 00:55:01.623
I get to show Sarge dealing with more of that and dive deeper into his flashbacks and in his history to develop him maybe in a different direction than like I rolled him up when I first started him.

00:55:01.885 --> 00:55:05.423
But we all get to go, whoa, that's cool.

00:55:05.454 --> 00:55:09.795
I didn't expect that in him and I wouldn't have put that in there.

00:55:10.054 --> 00:55:12.824
But Star did and now it's better.

00:55:13.094 --> 00:55:16.085
Yeah, that's, that's the kind of stuff I'm excited to see more at the table.

00:55:16.965 --> 00:55:31.983
And it's, again, it's a very different approach because when you're playing a game or you're very invested in your character, you may not make the choice that makes the narrative more interesting because you're protective of your character.

00:55:31.983 --> 00:55:47.800
You maybe don't want to get them in risky situations or maybe you take kind of like a, "that's what my character would do," in air quotes, kind of approach to it, uh, which can be detrimental to the wider narrative or to other characters in the game.

00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:56.378
You know, I've had situations where, I mean, even I personally, but other people that I've played with at the table, where that has been a complication that occurs.

00:55:56.630 --> 00:55:59.780
I think that we're very precious of our characters, right?

00:55:59.829 --> 00:56:00.728
Like, rightfully so.

00:56:00.769 --> 00:56:02.789
They, in a lot of ways, are our children.

00:56:02.789 --> 00:56:04.650
They are projections of ourselves.

00:56:04.679 --> 00:56:07.210
They are something that we want to take care of.

00:56:07.534 --> 00:56:13.405
Or get something out of, you know, in a transactional way of performance and like exploring ourselves.

00:56:13.695 --> 00:56:20.454
But I think that it kind of goes back to the ethos on game design for me of like, you don't exist in a vacuum.

00:56:20.534 --> 00:56:28.304
You are the sum of your experiences, but you're also some of those relationships and the way that you've interfaced with other people's complicated stories.

00:56:28.335 --> 00:56:35.394
And we get more interesting and better and we grow by discovering how deep people are.

00:56:35.815 --> 00:56:37.945
People that are very different than us.

00:56:38.244 --> 00:56:43.545
I have a hard time talking to people that I really strongly disagree with politically.

00:56:43.875 --> 00:56:49.344
But the longer I talk to them, the easier it often gets, as long as we're able to find those common ground moments.

00:56:49.393 --> 00:56:51.994
And I think that now more than ever, we need to find that.

00:56:52.313 --> 00:56:55.514
And it's hard, and sometimes we have to walk away and say, I can't.

00:56:55.795 --> 00:57:03.155
And I think that that is a thing that, you know, we don't always get to explore in the tabletop is the complicated side of the relationships.

00:57:03.335 --> 00:57:11.844
Because again, because it's not you playing your character, you're playing a survivor that might actually rage quit the group and leave.

00:57:11.873 --> 00:57:12.184
Yeah

00:57:12.193 --> 00:57:13.494
But you're not leaving the table.

00:57:13.543 --> 00:57:14.614
You get to keep playing.

00:57:16.170 --> 00:57:20.510
You know, they might be like, screw you, I'm out of here, I'm going off into the wilderness by myself.

00:57:20.530 --> 00:57:21.750
It's like, great, go.

00:57:22.250 --> 00:57:28.798
And, and I just think that that is an opportunity to be, like, intellectually honest with the arc of a character.

00:57:29.059 --> 00:57:35.650
Because sometimes we're playing a character and we keep it redemptive, we keep it good and fulfilling to play.

00:57:36.025 --> 00:57:38.425
But not necessarily, like, as if it were a TV show.

00:57:38.954 --> 00:57:49.364
Sometimes people that we see as a hero and a protagonist that we care about go down a dark path and they don't get redeemed and it is far more narratively satisfying for us.

00:57:49.414 --> 00:57:56.344
And I think that we miss out on those opportunities sometimes in a trad game that doesn't really facilitate that.

00:57:56.844 --> 00:58:05.905
What about your personal experience and your approach to playing TTRPGs informed this different approach?

00:58:06.469 --> 00:58:20.320
I've always been of the mind that I am significantly better when other people are able to crack through my arrogant and confident shell and provide feedback.

00:58:20.534 --> 00:58:26.784
and make me better and I am far from ignorant of my own weaknesses, right?

00:58:26.784 --> 00:58:32.764
Like I, I'm very aware of them, but I, I like to act and move forward in spite of those.

00:58:32.954 --> 00:58:39.860
I think I'm good at that, but it also makes me less accessible feeling for some people that they don't feel like they can speak into that.

00:58:40.010 --> 00:58:46.590
Because I can come off very confident or very strong or very aggressive, it makes me feel less accessible.

00:58:46.659 --> 00:59:01.599
And that has always been one of my biggest struggles emotionally, is feeling as if somebody could fear speaking into me, and speaking into what I might need, because they might think my aggression might push back and be too much for them.

00:59:02.099 --> 00:59:07.050
I've always said in conversations with my partner, like, the worst thing somebody could say to me is that they're scared of me.

00:59:07.210 --> 00:59:08.659
The worst thing they could say.

00:59:09.050 --> 00:59:14.838
I know that I am not without intensity, and I know that people will be scared of me.

00:59:15.219 --> 00:59:29.139
And I think that that struggle throughout most of my life, of deeply, deeply wanting to be received as a gentle, safe person, and knowing that is not how I come off, has been the tension that I have lived in.

00:59:29.559 --> 00:59:43.619
All of that to say, I see the community and close people that are able to collaborate on complicated issues that are willing to speak in and work together on things are going to make me better.

00:59:43.849 --> 00:59:46.108
They're going to make me feel safe.

00:59:46.108 --> 00:59:48.588
They're going to make each other feel safe.

00:59:48.840 --> 01:00:05.769
And our vulnerability and our ability to say yes to the complicated and say yes to being in community, even when it's not easy, is so, so important to all of us having a valuable and quality of life that we want.

01:00:05.974 --> 01:00:17.565
All that to say is I just, I really, really believe in community, and I really love strongly, and I care deeply, and you know, I've been involved in lots of non profits, and I grew up in the church.

01:00:17.793 --> 01:00:28.255
I have a view on community and the place that it has in collective aid and communal strategies that we can work together for something that is better.

01:00:28.454 --> 01:00:50.695
And I think that hopefully that comes through in my games in the way that I desire for people to have a scope beyond themselves to recognize that their actions and the way they live their life has consequences outside of themselves and that the way we move forward is by inviting people into our stories and keeping a perspective that's bigger than ourselves.

01:00:51.280 --> 01:01:02.480
Most people that I talk to talk about how they find commonalities or areas to explore by working through that character, by playing or embodying that character.

01:01:02.889 --> 01:01:08.048
Your approach seems almost diametrically opposed to that.

01:01:08.550 --> 01:01:23.510
But there's something I see in Sarge, for example, that echoes what you were saying about yourself, which is that it may not be clear to people from your exterior or from people first interacting with you that there's a softer, more vulnerable side.

01:01:23.894 --> 01:01:45.605
I think that that's, I mean, it's very much the way I was seeing putting Sarge together is just people are complicated and the way that we receive each other just on any given day is just a slice, you know, it's just a little, little part and they are a deep, deep well of a person that is experiencing reality in a different way than us.

01:01:45.655 --> 01:02:03.344
And growing up with a very, very narrow worldview and a very specifically wired brain, not that it's more specific than other people, but like then learning like how much I had to learn to exercise empathy, you know, it came naturally in certain aspects.

01:02:03.704 --> 01:02:09.655
But like in other aspects, I think I relate more to like even how harmony is like, like, guys, come on, this is not hard.

01:02:09.724 --> 01:02:10.764
Let's let's do this.

01:02:10.793 --> 01:02:15.324
But realizing, oh, this is not how people receive me.

01:02:15.335 --> 01:02:18.275
This is not how people receive my communication.

01:02:18.275 --> 01:02:20.525
This is not how people think.

01:02:20.565 --> 01:02:21.565
This is how I think.

01:02:21.605 --> 01:02:28.755
And I, I try to explore that in the characters I play in other systems where it is much more traditional, where I embody a specific character.

01:02:29.043 --> 01:02:41.974
But what I'm personally excited about playing this game is letting people more quickly and comfortably change those hats and empathize with the greater collective group of characters that they wouldn't maybe play.

01:02:42.195 --> 01:02:51.514
And I know a lot of people that they never, you know, a lot of cishet white guys that have never played a woman that have never explored outside of that identity.

01:02:51.565 --> 01:02:53.224
And it's uncomfortable.

01:02:53.224 --> 01:02:58.293
And for me, for years, that was for all of the toxic masculine reasons.

01:02:58.304 --> 01:02:59.864
It was not OK.

01:02:59.923 --> 01:03:00.905
And it is.

01:03:00.965 --> 01:03:01.934
And you should.

01:03:01.965 --> 01:03:10.923
And that will teach you a lot about the world around you and like discovering, not necessarily like, you know, playing into negative tropes like that.

01:03:11.065 --> 01:03:14.155
Definitely could happen, have a session zero, talk about that stuff.

01:03:14.184 --> 01:03:20.074
But learning, maybe I do identify a lot more intensely with my femininity than I thought.

01:03:20.414 --> 01:03:29.445
And by playing out a character that, leaning into tropes or not, like we clearly put a romantic interest in their life and it's in her flashbacks.

01:03:29.840 --> 01:03:32.730
And I'm playing as her as a cishet white guy.

01:03:32.760 --> 01:03:33.699
This is weird.

01:03:33.820 --> 01:03:35.159
Like, I feel vulnerable.

01:03:35.199 --> 01:03:45.150
And maybe that unlocks something in me that I would not willingly come to the table and say, I am playing a woman that is soft and sensitive and loves deeply.

01:03:45.159 --> 01:03:52.079
Instead, it's like, well, she's the best one for this mission, so I'll pick her, and then I discover that along the way.

01:03:52.289 --> 01:04:08.570
And, I think that, you know, I, I, I say this, like, when I was talking with my partner about, like, we watched the Barbie movie, and I so clearly remember the moment where I'm like, that was such a good movie, but wow is it interesting to completely not be the target audience, right?

01:04:08.619 --> 01:04:11.940
Like for me, it was not that I didn't enjoy it.

01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:14.498
It's that it was like, wow, that wasn't speaking to me.

01:04:14.519 --> 01:04:28.840
I mean, it was in a different way, but it wasn't speaking to me in the way that I grew up with movies almost always speaking to me because I'm a white dude and like I get that experience, but I don't really get that experience until it's not talking to me anymore.

01:04:29.224 --> 01:04:31.644
And I'm experiencing it differently.

01:04:31.675 --> 01:04:38.045
And then I get to also tap into hopefully some empathy that, oh my gosh, other people feel like this all the time.

01:04:38.054 --> 01:04:39.195
This is different.

01:04:39.670 --> 01:04:44.469
And I think that we're, we're, we are creatures of habit and we do things that we find comfortable.

01:04:44.800 --> 01:04:51.849
And I do that with characters that I roll up at the table and I play out, you know, very intellectual, very confident people all the time.

01:04:51.889 --> 01:05:00.079
I love playing wizard in D&D, you know, I love having the ability to do what I need to do and not have to rely on anybody because I deeply need people.

01:05:00.239 --> 01:05:04.699
And I am very insecure and I lack a lot.

01:05:04.980 --> 01:05:07.039
And that's me going, well, what if I didn't?

01:05:07.510 --> 01:05:19.429
And I think that we will explore more when we are put in the situation that gives us the opportunity to empathize and learn about others and the diversity of people that are out there.

01:05:19.539 --> 01:05:20.679
And not everybody works like you.

01:05:21.329 --> 01:05:33.789
Making work, whether that is a TTRPG, or a movie, or a piece of art, a piece of music, that speaks to an audience that isn't really being spoken to is really important.

01:05:34.079 --> 01:05:38.079
The Barbie movie, I mean, for me, as a woman, it's not perfect.

01:05:38.420 --> 01:05:41.099
But so much of it resonated for me.

01:05:41.409 --> 01:05:52.849
And there were parts of the movie where I was crying the first time I saw it because I was, I was so touched or so moved by some of the things that were said where I was like, "Wait a minute.

01:05:48.320 --> 01:05:52.849
Here's somebody speaking my truth."

01:05:52.909 --> 01:05:53.210
Yeah.

01:05:53.260 --> 01:06:05.704
And so I think obviously most of the works that we see in the mainstream are spoken to the truth of being a white man, or at least not really thinking about that actually being a truth.

01:06:05.795 --> 01:06:07.074
Not the default, yeah.

01:06:07.074 --> 01:06:07.414
Right, right.

01:06:07.414 --> 01:06:12.123
There's, there's this idea that like, oh, well, this is for everyone because it's for white cis men.

01:06:12.315 --> 01:06:22.485
I love that your game is giving people an opportunity to try something else and maybe realize that that's what they're usually experiencing.

01:06:22.974 --> 01:06:32.885
I remember aspects of myself that I'm not proud of, where it's like when I started gaming, I was like, guys, can nobody gender bend and like play a different character than their gender?

01:06:32.885 --> 01:06:35.505
Like, this is weird because things made me uncomfortable.

01:06:35.695 --> 01:06:42.244
To be fair, a lot of the times back in the day, it was like some weird guy over sexualizing a woman and making it weird.

01:06:42.244 --> 01:06:45.005
So like that, that was mainly why I didn't like that.

01:06:45.014 --> 01:07:06.034
But like, Also, it was something that was new for me and I grew up with that toxic masculinity and I'm like this needs to be defined and clear cut and I'm scared of my femininity and I don't want to be perceived as something other than I am and I wasn't very in touch with like how I approach sexuality and it was just not, it was not comfortable at the table.

01:07:06.045 --> 01:07:11.545
This was not a space where I was ready to do that, but I found myself so much more comfortable.

01:07:11.820 --> 01:07:30.570
As I saw other people exploring themselves, becoming more vulnerable and being open to changing aspects of themselves and then having friends come out as bi, gay, whatever thing that they discovered through the course of their life and through play that they didn't know before.

01:07:30.949 --> 01:07:46.489
I have discovered a lot about myself, and I've, I think I first started to realize that I wanted to better understand my relationship to femininity through role playing out a romance between an NPC and one of my friends.

01:07:46.869 --> 01:08:07.199
And like, being like, that wasn't gay, that was cool, you know, like, that was cool, that was satisfying, that was interesting and narrative, and like, I was like, how do I make this narratively fulfilling for him, and for this NPC who doesn't exist, that's a representation of myself, I remember that moment so long ago, and I was like, did we just do that?

01:08:07.545 --> 01:08:10.835
And like, it was weird, but that pushed me.

01:08:10.855 --> 01:08:13.184
And like, as a GM, I get to experience a lot of that.

01:08:13.554 --> 01:08:24.975
That's why I see this game as very even though there's still a GM, but it's really a facilitator role, and it is encouraging everybody to experience things in a more GM-full way where everybody gets to do that.

01:08:24.984 --> 01:08:28.265
They get to play a little bit more than they're used to.

01:08:28.274 --> 01:08:31.845
And I, when I'm a player, it's like, I feel trapped sometimes.

01:08:32.055 --> 01:08:36.604
I'm only this character and I don't get to play with levers outside of myself.

01:08:36.725 --> 01:08:44.324
And I think the beauty of being a GM is you have such a, like a wide latitude of permission to interface.

01:08:44.625 --> 01:08:45.625
Yeah, I crave more of that.

01:08:45.654 --> 01:08:47.654
I crave that for other people.

01:08:47.734 --> 01:08:52.765
Because I don't think it needs to be restricted to just the GM who's god over your game.

01:08:52.774 --> 01:08:53.885
Like, that's insane.

01:08:54.234 --> 01:08:58.935
We're all equals at the table and we should be contributing in different ways.

01:08:59.203 --> 01:09:01.114
It doesn't need to be that way.

01:09:01.114 --> 01:09:04.375
But I don't look at GMing as, let me dictate.

01:09:04.484 --> 01:09:06.095
It's, let me ask questions.

01:09:06.145 --> 01:09:09.645
Let me prompt you with opportunities to build the narrative.

01:09:09.685 --> 01:09:12.414
And there are things that I will make for this table.

01:09:12.604 --> 01:09:19.354
I'll make lore and I'll make things that I'm excited about, that I want to give my friends as a gift, but I don't see it as holy.

01:09:19.385 --> 01:09:22.493
I don't see it as like sacrosanct, don't touch it, I'm in charge.

01:09:22.514 --> 01:09:25.335
Like, I want them to put their fingerprints on it.

01:09:25.354 --> 01:09:25.784
Yeah.

01:09:26.215 --> 01:09:26.234
Yeah.

01:09:26.244 --> 01:09:28.034
I just want more games like that.

01:09:28.034 --> 01:09:28.564
So I make them.

01:09:28.869 --> 01:09:48.614
The other thread I pick up on when talking about this is, and we mentioned this a little bit when we were talking about how you build characters in OSR games, and how so much of it is on a roll table, and there's a serendipity to making a character that you didn't expect and kind of forcing you into making a choice that you wouldn't have made.

01:09:48.614 --> 01:10:02.314
And I think that your game does this in a similar way, but allows you to be a little bit more in depth with it, because I think a lot of people, when they're creating a character, whether it's subconscious or conscious, I think there is a level of knowledge there.

01:10:02.510 --> 01:10:04.609
That you are exploring something about yourself.

01:10:04.630 --> 01:10:10.159
We recognize patterns in the way that we play characters, but we often struggle to move past them.

01:10:10.159 --> 01:10:17.210
And I think your game forces people to do that without telling them that you're forcing them to do that, which I really like.

01:10:17.800 --> 01:10:18.859
That's what I'm all about.

01:10:18.918 --> 01:10:30.869
It's totally manipulative sounding, but like I just I love, like I said, I did not experience the world with a lot of empathy for a very long time and learning that I hadn't been doing that right because it was not conscious.

01:10:31.354 --> 01:10:33.854
Learning that I hadn't been doing that just changed my worldview.

01:10:34.104 --> 01:10:35.904
I want people to experience that.

01:10:35.935 --> 01:10:40.534
I want people to give a shit about each other and learn that they.

01:10:40.545 --> 01:10:41.524
Yeah, I don't need to preach.

01:10:41.533 --> 01:10:41.975
You get what I'm saying.

01:10:42.743 --> 01:10:44.335
I care a lot about this.

01:10:44.704 --> 01:10:48.975
Games are so important for that because of the exploration piece.

01:10:49.114 --> 01:10:54.814
And I think that we're willing to accept certain ideals when we're not, you know, like when we're playing.

01:10:54.904 --> 01:10:58.583
I remember the first time I played a cleric, it was like five years ago.

01:10:58.939 --> 01:11:06.949
I was watching clips the other day, and it's like I played a cleric of Dendar, the Night Serpent in D&D, and I wasn't like distinctly trying to be evil, right?

01:11:06.949 --> 01:11:15.520
I wasn't edgelording it, but like, I did have to go into it, and I'm like, why would somebody follow the Night Serpent who wants to eat the sun?

01:11:16.140 --> 01:11:18.250
And in the world, why?

01:11:18.350 --> 01:11:32.309
And so, like, I had to, like, make doctrine and, like, use my religious trauma for evil, but like make logic of his belief in in following this deity that is terrible and awful.

01:11:32.399 --> 01:11:36.909
It was an exercise of empathy and going- one, how do cults and indoctrination work?

01:11:36.909 --> 01:11:40.369
But also, like, what are maybe the positive spins on this?

01:11:40.369 --> 01:11:44.510
Like you think about how people talk about the Eucharist or communion.

01:11:44.774 --> 01:11:45.564
This is the body.

01:11:45.564 --> 01:11:46.194
This is the blood.

01:11:46.395 --> 01:11:47.404
That stuff sounds dark.

01:11:47.854 --> 01:11:52.175
Sounds very dark when you aren't experiencing it as a cultural norm.

01:11:52.194 --> 01:11:52.555
Right.

01:11:52.555 --> 01:11:56.314
So I was like, What if that's like how we received some of this stuff?

01:11:56.574 --> 01:12:01.823
Take these weird, dark, evil D&D deities and like, oh, it's just the body and the blood.

01:12:01.835 --> 01:12:02.564
No big deal.

01:12:02.814 --> 01:12:04.503
And build a thing around that.

01:12:04.533 --> 01:12:11.514
And that for me was huge because I was like, oh, this is not about painting somebody as other and evil.

01:12:11.805 --> 01:12:20.994
It's realizing they have a different cultural experience with this idea of godhood and the relationship with mortals and all that stuff.

01:12:21.005 --> 01:12:25.784
And then even creation and reality and what should or shouldn't happen.

01:12:26.144 --> 01:12:27.935
Dendar's all about fear and nightmares.

01:12:28.079 --> 01:12:31.420
I remember improv-ing out with a friend that I was corrupting a paladin.

01:12:31.439 --> 01:12:34.000
OK, I was corrupting a paladin to follow the night servant.

01:12:34.189 --> 01:12:35.560
He's like, I need to conquer my fear.

01:12:35.560 --> 01:12:39.760
I'm like, no, like you need to realize that you're afraid and that's OK.

01:12:39.899 --> 01:12:44.229
Like that was the kind of stuff that I was exploring and going like, that's not what I thought would come out of me.

01:12:44.399 --> 01:12:49.289
And like this evil cleric is like giving somebody a therapy session.

01:12:49.630 --> 01:12:51.399
That's not about being evil.

01:12:51.409 --> 01:12:59.000
It's not about being scared, but it's about realizing that fear is part of us and accepting that that's what games can do.

01:12:59.020 --> 01:12:59.979
And I love that.

01:12:59.989 --> 01:13:01.869
And those are some of my favorite memories.

01:13:24.189 --> 01:13:27.500
Sarge, do you have trouble trusting someone?

01:13:27.920 --> 01:13:30.710
There's not so much the trouble of of trusting.

01:13:30.760 --> 01:13:33.189
It's just recognizing that.

01:13:33.545 --> 01:13:41.255
It's, it's so much more of realizing that I am responsible for the people around me and what I do.

01:13:41.630 --> 01:13:45.399
Has a very, very deliberate effect on, on them and their safety.

01:13:45.859 --> 01:13:52.220
So it's, if somebody were to come to me and be contributing and doing something significant, I'd happily give that to them.

01:13:52.229 --> 01:13:58.889
It's just a matter of trusting myself to give away that responsibility and be alright with it.

01:13:59.279 --> 01:14:06.329
Cause there have been times where I've trusted others and handed that off and seen the consequences of someone not being worthy of that trust.

01:14:06.739 --> 01:14:14.529
But as long as they recognize the, the responsibility that goes with it, I think that they're worthy of another try of, of, of being given that trust.

01:14:14.930 --> 01:14:17.409
Norma, is it hard for you to trust someone?

01:14:17.779 --> 01:14:24.539
Yeah, I, uh, I've not been able to see people worthy of receiving my trust.

01:14:24.609 --> 01:14:29.239
And, uh, the world's full of horrible, horrible people that don't give a shit.

01:14:29.585 --> 01:14:39.125
They don't care what you're going through, they don't care where you came from, they just want something from you, and they aren't going to give you much to work with.

01:14:39.185 --> 01:14:46.333
They're always going to give you less than they take from you, and it's up to you to protect yourself, it's up to you to protect people you care about.

01:14:46.554 --> 01:14:57.404
So I'll trust somebody if they're close, and they've earned it, and they've got the, the legacy with me, but I can probably count on my hand the number of people that I would say I trust.

01:14:57.984 --> 01:15:04.755
Thank you, Andrew, for coming on the podcast and for sharing Sarge and Norma and building harmony with me today.

01:15:04.944 --> 01:15:12.104
I will be putting a link in the show notes to a guest page where people can find all of your socials and everything you want to share with them.

01:15:12.164 --> 01:15:14.545
Are there any projects or anything you'd like to talk about?

01:15:14.975 --> 01:15:21.895
If you like the kind of stuff you heard, um, a lot of it is true of, of my first game, Battle School, which you can get right now.

01:15:22.114 --> 01:15:28.704
I, I'm excited about what we're doing this month with zine month and out of orbit is going to be funding all month long.

01:15:28.744 --> 01:15:37.663
I'm also going to be hopefully doing an actual play, which, uh, you'll be able to find on my socials, do a couple sessions, dig into it, little play test games and still in development.

01:15:37.789 --> 01:15:39.239
But, uh, you can get everything.

01:15:39.250 --> 01:15:43.000
Um, I'm sure we've got links in the description, stuff like that, but it's andrewbohman.

01:15:43.000 --> 01:15:43.409
com.

01:15:43.569 --> 01:15:44.460
I'm on itch.

01:15:44.489 --> 01:15:45.909
I'm I'm all over the place.

01:15:46.019 --> 01:15:49.389
The world's changing in terms of social media, but we'll see what's next.

01:15:49.550 --> 01:15:50.609
This has been such a pleasure.

01:15:50.609 --> 01:15:51.710
Thank you so much for having me on

01:15:55.789 --> 01:16:00.260
For my recommendation this episode, I'd like to introduce you to a podcast called.

01:16:00.555 --> 01:16:01.484
Whatcha Doing?

01:16:01.994 --> 01:16:08.385
My friend Matt decided he wanted to talk to people about creative projects they're working on and it's delightful.

01:16:08.793 --> 01:16:11.793
Hearing people talk about their passions is a fun listen.

01:16:12.145 --> 01:16:14.725
I'm not biased even though I'm Matt's first guest.

01:16:14.734 --> 01:16:16.114
I promise.

01:16:16.505 --> 01:16:19.024
Please share the podcast with a friend.

01:16:19.295 --> 01:16:22.305
Word of mouth is the best way to find new listeners.

01:16:22.640 --> 01:16:25.829
Your recommendations help me immensely.

01:16:26.029 --> 01:16:28.449
Thank you to all my listeners spreading the word.

01:16:28.689 --> 01:16:30.220
I am so grateful.

01:16:30.550 --> 01:16:34.500
One of the things that any creator wants to know is what people think of their work.

01:16:34.789 --> 01:16:38.720
For podcasters, it can be especially difficult to get feedback.

01:16:38.918 --> 01:16:45.289
Reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify are a great way to let me and others know that you love the podcast.

01:16:45.729 --> 01:16:49.180
I read every single one and treasure them.

01:16:49.569 --> 01:16:53.449
Did you know that you can now leave comments on individual episodes on Spotify?

01:16:53.809 --> 01:16:58.489
If you're listening there, I encourage you to leave a comment and let me know what you think about an episode.

01:16:58.789 --> 01:17:09.109
You may have also noticed a link in my show notes that says, "send us a text message." If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future episode, or just want to leave a comment, send me a message.

01:17:09.460 --> 01:17:18.198
I started a newsletter! As our social media landscape is forever changing, this is one way to make sure we can always stay in touch.

01:17:18.359 --> 01:17:25.199
If you'd like to get a behind the scenes peek at the podcast, follow my other projects, and be notified when a new episode drops.

01:17:25.569 --> 01:17:29.460
You can find the signup form in the show notes or on my website.

01:17:29.939 --> 01:17:34.750
You can find me on Blue Sky Threads, Instagram, and Facebook as Characters Without Stories.

01:17:35.039 --> 01:17:39.788
You can also listen on YouTube at Characters Without Stories or just follow the link in the description.

01:17:40.168 --> 01:17:47.189
I'm currently accepting submissions for non D&D characters with a strong preference for creators from marginalized communities.

01:17:47.595 --> 01:17:51.234
If you'd like to share your character, you can go to characterswithoutstories.

01:17:51.234 --> 01:17:53.965
com and click submit in the navigation menu.

01:17:54.364 --> 01:17:58.755
Thanks for listening, and may all your characters find their stories.
Andrew Beauman Profile Photo

Andrew Beauman

he/him

I'm a game designer and artist from Michigan. I created Battle School and Out of Orbit, as well as the Entwine RPG system.