The final Episode of our Legend of the Five Rings series with David Gordon Bursesh. We discuss the character creation process, the problems with this game, and the frustrations of trying to level up.
The final Episode of our Legend of the Five Rings series with David Gordon Bursesh. We discuss the character creation process, the problems with this game, and the frustrations of trying to level up.
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Amelia Antrim 0:00
Welcome to the final episode of series 29. Everyone. I'm really excited to bring you this discussion about legend of five rings one of my favorite games, we really get a chance to dig into some of the great parts and not so great parts of this game in this series and it was a lot of fun. I do want to remind everybody that if you'd like a different take on this game, the Asians represent podcast has been doing a read through over on their twitch stream. We will put a link in the show notes to the YouTube videos of that. It's an ongoing thing. I think they're doing it weekly right now. But you can definitely take a look over there. They have some very interesting takes. And I'm honestly really excited to see their thoughts on the game as I go through. With all of that out of the way. Here's the episode
Welcome back to our discussion episode. Last time we created characters for legend to the five rings. This episode we'll be discussing the character creation process. We are very excited to welcome back David Gordon buresh. Do you want to reintroduce yourself for our audience and tell us a little bit about the character that you made?
David Gordon Buresh 1:39
So Hi, I'm David Gordon buresh I write David the five rings, legend of the five rings block on cardboard Republic and I have been covering letter vibrating as a news topic for more than six years. I created two gashi protein was a scorpion orphan who found his way to the Takashi mountain with the assistance of his servant, his family's servant, and now has chosen to pursue a life of justice from the shadows.
Ryan Boelter 2:26
Oh incredible. I love all five Batman.
Amelia Antrim 2:31
Very good.
Ryan Boelter 2:34
Awesome, Amelia, why don't you tell us what your character?
Amelia Antrim 2:37
Sure I made Cooney to my way. My way is more interested in learning about the creatures of the Shadowlands than eradicating them. They are a little too interested in it maybe and as a results have a little bit of the Shadowlands taint and maybe you learn Somehow
Ryan Boelter 3:02
I don't think there's a movie about it. I'll never tell
Amelia Antrim 3:11
what about you Ryan?
Ryan Boelter 3:13
Um, I created Sylar Neptune. Again, I eat a material. I have the unicorn family of the eg me shodo master school. She's a little bit of fighty a little bit of magic key and a whole lot of something I don't know, a lot of us pretty much a lot of love. She's got a lot of love for the person that she has a karmic bond with, which is Haruka. So basically, she knows pretty much wherever, whatever direction hook is in and whether or not she's in danger pretty much at all times is pretty sweet. She is tasked with protecting the daughter of the great family daimyo who I have named Sammy. Um, of course after seven and that's kind of an interesting thing because if you follow the Sailor Moon lore or the story um Haruka actually falls in love with who soggy at some point in the series, and that is ripe for some drama. So I think that'd be really nice if that found its way into this theoretical game. Um, yeah, so certainly Neptune and l fiver
Amelia Antrim 4:46
Yeah, so got sailor Neptune got Batman and then we have whatever I made.
David Gordon Buresh 4:54
You basically made yourself Actually best.
Amelia Antrim 5:03
Like I'm over here making an actual character and
David Gordon Buresh 5:09
I always go to the I fell upon the oldest of tropes of always be yourself. But if you can't be yourself be Batman.
Amelia Antrim 5:17
Yeah. Sage wisdom.
Ryan Boelter 5:22
Absolutely.
Amelia Antrim 5:23
All right, let's go ahead and dive into a segment that we call d 24. Your thoughts? Your thoughts?
Ryan Boelter 5:29
All right. In this segment, we want to talk to our guests about their thoughts on the character creation process and how it relates to this system, and two other games.
Amelia Antrim 5:40
So we're gonna get the cliche question out of the way, we're just gonna start right off. Can you tell us how you got into RPGs in the first place? How did you end up here
David Gordon Buresh 5:48
as well? Oh, boy. So there I was a young adolescent boy at the age of 12 hanging out with my newest, best friend who had this fun new thing he wanted to introduce me to called heavy metal and d&d. And I'm not even joking those are actually legit. So what I was 12 by Best Buy my new best friend cuz my dad just got remarried. And I moved in that way. Josh Biddle got me playing Dungeons and Dragons because he played it with his older brother. And, you know, also got me into like, battle and electronica. And, yeah, that was sort of it. From there. I went back and like after like, a month or so living in that area, okay back with my parents, or moved in with my mom came back to my mom and wound up being living in Northeast Kingdom in Vermont as like the only kid who played d&d. So I converted to other kids to playing d&d. Like and That's how I became basically a DM at the age of 13.
Ryan Boelter 7:06
Gotta do it.
Amelia Antrim 7:07
Yeah, that's what I hear. Everybody keeps telling me that they're like, well, I guess if you can't find anybody to play the games, you run the games, and I still don't run the game.
David Gordon Buresh 7:18
It was easier when we were young.
Amelia Antrim 7:21
Uh huh. Is it everything? Like you're just so sure of yourself? You're like, I'm, I can do this. I know what it is. Like, you have no clue.
David Gordon Buresh 7:32
You don't know what you don't know. So that's true. That is true. But oh my god, I looked back at some of those stories that I ran. And it was dragon lands and it was so I don't even know what it was. That dragon lands.
Ryan Boelter 7:48
I found an old notebook that had my actual adventure scribbles? written out dialogue, written out scene settings. When I was maybe 14 or 15 that is so cool. And it was garbage
Amelia Antrim 8:10
blew out my mic when I left. Oh, that's really cool. What a cool treasure to find.
Ryan Boelter 8:19
Bad. I can see through the lens of today, how passed me thought this is great. And at the time, it was fantastic. But oh my gosh,
David Gordon Buresh 8:32
man I I created my entire like sub ethology based on playing scape and breaking out into like, concepts of order versus chaos and so, so deep on the nerd scale.
Amelia Antrim 8:49
What this tells us is that you have grown as a person. Uh huh. There. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, I didn't start playing until I was 16. But even I looked Back on that game and I'm like, oh, that wasn't very good. Like, yeah, no, we're doing that was an interesting story. Those were not complex characters. That was that was garbage.
David Gordon Buresh 9:13
But we had fun.
Unknown Speaker 9:15
enjoyed it
David Gordon Buresh 9:16
and that's a good choice. I didn't know better.
Ryan Boelter 9:21
Awesome. So then can you tell us about your personal process for picking and creating characters in pretty much any role playing system?
David Gordon Buresh 9:31
Now am I am I talking about picking and playing creating characters for being a player or being a GM? Because when you're creating a character as GM, there's an entirely different process as you are well aware. I mostly GM.
Ryan Boelter 9:45
I want to say for actually please.
David Gordon Buresh 9:49
So I am a mechanic's nerd in that I love studying how things fit together. And so that like, the first thing I do when I sit down with a game system is I, the best way of putting it is if you've ever had one of those people that you see, like you put them in front of like a clock, and they literally take the clock apart entirely, and then put it back together. That's how they, that's how they appreciate it. That's sort of what I do to role playing games. Okay. So I do that. I generally find like, anywhere from like, two to three to like a half dozen interesting parts of how to get it to work together. And again, these are not necessarily powerful, but they're interesting. They're fun. They're, they're challenging, and then I sort of go Okay, well, that's something cool to have over there. Then I sort of look at what everyone else is playing and go okay, how do I slot myself into This social dynamic and still have some cool, neat tricks that I can do. And how can I help get the story that everybody wants told to go forward? So I generally try to find I'm one of those people that I try to fill the niche. And I almost always play a character who, if nothing else will push story forward. Hmm, and will wrap the spotlight and shine it on other people.
Ryan Boelter 11:30
That's awesome.
Amelia Antrim 11:31
I love the idea of like pulling a game apart like that. I mean, that's obviously something that we spend a lot of time doing too, is like looking at the mechanics and how they contribute to the kinds of stories that you're trying to tell. And we talked a lot about the strife mechanic and the approaches in this game and what they do for the way that you tell stories in a game and I love picking apart like the pieces like that.
David Gordon Buresh 11:55
Every element tells a story and whether that's art or rule or word, every element of a game tells a story. Either you do it deliberately, and you have a vision of the story and you try to guide all pieces towards that. Or you don't, in which case, you get this clunky thing that's rattling down the road at far too fast velocity is probably going to fall apart at any minute. Both of these are fun experiences. Yes. Yuck. anyone's? Yeah, I said, One of these is going to last a whole lot longer down the road. And one of them is palladium.
Amelia Antrim 12:37
I mean, like, look how long it's been around two though, and like the mechanics of the early games are very different from what we have now to and are clunky in lots of ways that they shouldn't be. So sometimes you fall in love with them anyway.
David Gordon Buresh 12:53
And in many ways, I see a lot of the a lot of the issues with the current iteration is not enough innovation. And, man, some of the sins of the older editions, we don't talk about third edition. Yeah, talk about the third edition there is literally for the longest time one of the lead writers of one of the lead writers that third edition had up on, like their signature on various forum threads was how do you explain the art of the duel? And their response? It was a dark time for the rebellion. Okay.
Amelia Antrim 13:33
Look, there are things you're proud of, and there are things you're less proud of.
David Gordon Buresh 13:38
Not every not everything is good. And right. Yeah, that's just design truth. Mm hmm.
Amelia Antrim 13:47
How do we think character creation in this game stacks up against other games that we've played?
David Gordon Buresh 13:54
It's long. Yeah, it's very long. It is long. It is the longest character creation in art history.
Amelia Antrim 14:05
Is that Yeah, yeah, I Yeah, yes. Because the other one was a point by and so like, as soon as you know what the points do you can pretty easily like, check check check.
David Gordon Buresh 14:14
Yeah, yeah. You don't have to answer the 20 questions.
Ryan Boelter 14:18
That's true. It was optional, wasn't it? Yeah, true. Yeah, this one kind of forces you down that 20 questions, which is really interesting. But ah, gosh, it's, it takes a while.
Amelia Antrim 14:31
Yeah, this one forces you into a full session zero. And I think it's a game that benefits heavily from doing those kinds of things with your group. I think this is one where doing character creation by yourself is certainly something you can do. You can sit down and answer all the questions on your own. But I don't think it sets you up as well as sitting down and doing it as a group.
David Gordon Buresh 14:57
Yeah, one of the criticisms I do have for this Again, I think that what it does is an amazing tool to do that session zero is there aren't enough prompts in the book to guide that session zero. And it's too easy for the party to build a puck for the players to build a party that literally has nothing in common. Mm hmm. And has no reason to be getting along and no reason to be going on doing the story together. That really does put a lot of onus on the GM to sort of No, go No, no, no, no, no, we got to tie these people together. We got to bring them together. We got to have you got a you could have that character. Cool. We're going to take that character from your from your question 16 and put them in that person's question 17
Amelia Antrim 15:45
and in many ways, question for you about that though. Do you think that that is a fault of this particular iteration or is that a fault of L five r in general, because I feel like the way That the clans are set up that like, that's why everybody plays their Emerald magistrate game, right? Or why you play either that or you play a single climb game. Like I have never played in one
David Gordon Buresh 16:12
that wasn't one of those two. And I. So I've been playing, I play this game for a long time. I've run it for a lot. And you are absolutely incorrect in saying that one of the biggest problems is how do we get everyone in various different clans together? Because you're literally taking people who might be from the same Empire but they're not from the same nation. Basically, that's what three clans are. They're nations unto themselves. And they have
Amelia Antrim 16:42
so many of them have beef with each other. Yeah, like why would you have a lion and a crane and the same party? Why would they want to do anything together? Exactly.
David Gordon Buresh 16:50
And that really falls on the GM. And then the story you're telling and basically what you have to do is you have to tell a story that's either bigger or smaller than the story Your clan problems. Yeah. And again, like I like, is this version of the game worse? No, absolutely not. It is. But it's a it's a problem to solve, I have our RPG. And if anything, I think the full session zero, a GM who has gone through character creation on this two or three times should have the comfort level to go No. These are the things that I throw into this, my addendums to these questions to make you have those connections to those reasons to be bound together.
Amelia Antrim 17:38
Yeah, I do feel like that's something that's definitely missing because there are a lot of games that we've talked about, like, they kind of fall in those two categories, the ones that are like I sit down and I make my character and I bring them to the table and then we would do a session zero. And then there are the character creation things where you're asking questions as a group and you're going and you're doing back and forth and you are doing that work. Building together. And, and this one is doing something in between you where I'm telling you things about the world. This is what my upbringing was like these, you know, this is what my parents think of me like I've built this whole history around my one little character. And it it doesn't tell like we built three very different characters. We'll see when we get to our fanfiction section but like our characters have legit nothing to do with each other. Yeah, that's very true. Thank three different games.
David Gordon Buresh 18:28
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan Boelter 18:30
We all have our own personal stakes, our own personal histories, our own personal like lives that don't intertwine in any logical sense.
David Gordon Buresh 18:42
Nope. And so yeah,
Ryan Boelter 18:44
how do they get together? That's, that's, that feels to be missing. Yeah. Now, there were a lot of opportunities, I think during the character creation process to add like some Similar links, because that whole like, family, ally section or whatever, that was like very name one or more people that your character knows and did something for or whatever. You could expand that to like five dozen people if you wanted to. And of course some of those people are going to be probably related to others, or the same people that other people in your group know.
Amelia Antrim 19:35
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that we could have done. It's not a thing that the game
Ryan Boelter 19:40
does. It doesn't guide users.
David Gordon Buresh 19:43
Yeah, it doesn't guide you there. Yeah, so the game puts a lot of that into question five, which is who is your character's, Lord? What is your character's duty to them? Because the assumption of the game is that you are all serving the same Lord. Sometimes Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 20:00
Right But like I said, which brings you back to either your clan or your Emerald magistrate.
David Gordon Buresh 20:06
And also the Imperial legionnaires could also all be what am I like I got one of my favorite promises. Congratulations. You're all the founding members of a new minor clan. Family Fun Why? Or one of my favorite games that I actually ran which was Congratulations, you're all contestants at the Topaz championship and the lion clan attack during the hunting competition. And you are the only ones who escape. Good luck.
Amelia Antrim 20:41
Nice happy start. Yeah, I started in a game as a Topaz at the Topaz championship. I have not had it be attacked by a lion.
David Gordon Buresh 20:49
So therefore there's the ongoing joke that whenever you go to the Topaz championship, the least important thing is the Topaz championship.
Amelia Antrim 20:57
That's true. I have not heard that adage. But It's true.
Ryan Boelter 21:03
So I want to say that I, cuz comparing fifth edition to fourth edition directly, uh, this one seems a little bit more like, follow these steps and you'll have a character whether or not you have like a theme in mind, per se, whereas fourth edition feels a lot more almost open ended after you pick your, your family, your clan and all that sort of stuff in your school. Like all the advantages disadvantages, the point bias, it's just like, here's a bunch of stuff. Bye bye, whatever you want and it'll balance out to whatever. Um, this feels a little bit more guided and structured and and I guess easy even those long then fourth edition was
David Gordon Buresh 21:59
completely agreed. on that one honestly, again, it's like with the fourth edition is very much build your character then fit them into the story. This is build your story, then fit your character to your story. Now try to fit that into the bigger story.
Unknown Speaker 22:15
Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 22:17
I do like that it really strongly encourages you to pick mechanics that match the narrative, so that you're not just pouring points into those things that you can get your character to rank to by the end of character creation. Yeah, like I'm all the skills and if I buy one rank in every skill, I'll be ranked two by the end of character creation, and this character will be good at nothing. Uh huh. So I like that you you come out with a person that has this identity and a little bit of history and all of that kind of stuff. I do wish that it did a little bit more to connect those people. Yeah, other and I don't know how much of that It is possible given like your ninja and your gear eight, like there. Those are very personal things and your questions about like this as an individual, but it feels a little bit lacking.
Ryan Boelter 23:15
Yeah, it feels very traditional in that sense. Yeah, like, you know, DND, all that sort of stuff. It kind of leaves, especially like the 3.5 in earlier editions would leave the How to yours. How does your group get together? Just up to the whims of the group and the GM, which that kind of feels like it's kind of come to this as well, this addition?
David Gordon Buresh 23:42
Yeah, um, which is,
Amelia Antrim 23:45
how much of that is a holdover from trying to like mimic the previous additions?
Unknown Speaker 23:51
Right.
David Gordon Buresh 23:53
I definitely think that's one of the things that does hold us back and one of the reasons actually I say path of waves as a must buy Because path waves introduces another set of 20 questions that are appropriate for non clan samurai. Oh, and changes a couple of things like, what is what in like Question four is rather than how do you stand out? It's what gets you into and out of trouble. Hmm. And like Part Three is like question five is what is your character's past? And how does it affect them? And it also has things like a table for sample Uri, and sample ninja. Oh, nice. Which, while Yeah, it's really good to sort of have like an idea of what could be there like having just 20 sample ninja Oh, right in front of you. Really does sort of help streamline the process because again, it's just so open. Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 24:59
yeah. I know in the in the current game that I'm playing or GM had said, if you want to wait one or two sessions before you decide what your ninja and your Giri are, that's fine. Because you don't really have a sense of like, what the story is or who your character is, or you know, like, even though we've built them, there's still some of those open ended things of like, what what am I really doing here? Yeah. And it's so broad of like, What do you want? Like, Emilia as a person doesn't know that? Why would I know that for my character that I've just met 30 seconds ago. I don't know what their life dream is.
David Gordon Buresh 25:41
Exactly. And I think
Amelia Antrim 25:43
it's also a very different mechanics than any other game has. Like, there is no other game that has like a ninja and a girI that way too. So to sit somebody down who hasn't played this game before and be like, make up these things that are in conflict. You're gonna play your story off of ready to go. Yeah, that's a lot to ask of somebody.
David Gordon Buresh 26:05
I mean, a lot of games have that in some form, though again, again, it's just sort of like world darkness has the nature and demeanor system. Hmm. Um, it again, it's just and, like I'm thinking of fate and some of their, like, Ninja and Geary really work like compels in fate systems where you have these traits that are things that can be called upon you or you can invoke and sort of compelled sort of as a blend of either the new Jim Carrey or the advantage disadvantage system. So what whereas I do definitely think though that like, the concept of this is your turmoil. And this will, like you need to build your character. So these two things are in conflict, however, I think is really useful for getting in that mindset of you're playing this conflicted character. Who is going to break?
Amelia Antrim 27:03
Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 27:05
Who is going to try to reach for these two things at the same time, and either fail spectacularly? Or will actually manage the whole both of them. But unfortunately, that means they're connecting the circuit and now they're going to explode in flames. Right?
Amelia Antrim 27:22
Which is fun. Mm hmm. But like in a cool way.
David Gordon Buresh 27:28
People, as I suppose one of the pieces of advice that I gave people with building characters is is build somebody who you think would be absolutely miserable trying to survive in a normal world?
Amelia Antrim 27:41
Yeah, I mean, you build sad characters in this game, like, these are not like happy, fulfilled people.
David Gordon Buresh 27:50
They're not supposed to be their sobriety, the stuff of legend. Exactly.
Ryan Boelter 27:57
Well, how did the mechanic mix of character creation reinforced the feel of Legend of the five rings.
David Gordon Buresh 28:06
I would definitely say the fact that it is the Well for one you start with the rings and just that the family, this is your clan, this is your family. This is your school. This is your rings This is your world. Now who are you really? Hmm. I think that is absolutely hammers home sort of. You think in many times you think of your character as somebody in relative to this society before the self.
Amelia Antrim 28:39
I think you get a good taste of like what some of those approaches are going to look like. And when you are choosing why you pick certain rings or like looking at your clan and your family like certain families have additions to certain rings and you can kind of see why. And I think because of that Like ninja and Giri to you're already getting an idea of the fact that this is a person in conflict. This is a person that like, has some kind of internal turmoil that they're working through. And I think running through the questions that way gives you a pretty solid idea that that is a thing that's going to be central to the gameplay. Yeah. What do you think as somebody who hasn't played this game?
Unknown Speaker 29:32
Well, I mean,
Ryan Boelter 29:36
I get the like, it really hammers home the importance of the clan, family and school and and how that is supposed to completely define your character in a way, and then you get into the, the things that kind of positively and negatively affect your character effectively. And as well as the thing, your duty versus your desire, all that sort of stuff kinda tells you that these are going to be characters that are conflicted within themselves on pretty much any given time. So that that feels straightforward. The rings are emphasized as important, the aspects you can see that those kind of are there but I think going through character creation itself, the aspects don't feel as important without having played the game before.
Unknown Speaker 30:41
Um, it
Amelia Antrim 30:42
gets harder to see how the rings would affect the way you do things
Ryan Boelter 30:45
right exactly. Like I like I could see on the character sheet like here's the here's what the dice mean. And I and I really appreciate that. Um, I can see that the hot value in your rings and the higher value in your skill is going to help
David Gordon Buresh 31:05
succeed.
Ryan Boelter 31:06
But not having seen the dice in person and never having rolled any of those dice before. I have no idea. Like it, how much of an advantage is ranked one versus rank two, you know, skill or two versus three in in one of your rings.
David Gordon Buresh 31:32
So yeah, I could see that. One thing that I also want to comment is, while me as a player, have have choices in character creation, if you really think about it, the character doesn't. So we choose the client sure as the player, but every member of the clan, you don't have a choice what ringing skills you get. Choose the family. And that has a little bit of choice you have a little bit of you have a room choice. But there are two skills that you don't get to choose you get those just for being that family. And then you go to school and like okay, now you have some choices now. Now the character can start to express itself through choice. And if you think about choice in character creation as character expression, there's no choice in re clan for the character. There's only a little choice in family, for the character. And it's not until you reach school where you actually start getting that actualization.
Ryan Boelter 32:44
You kind of just blew my mind a bit because now Now you're gonna have me thinking every single system that we encounter when there's an actual choice A that could legitimately Be my character making that choice in life. Yeah. And and what path they could have gone down. Had they not? Had they not chosen what they chose?
David Gordon Buresh 33:11
Yeah. Uh, okay. Just like, experience
Amelia Antrim 33:19
reinforces the, like rigidity of the setting. Yeah, that like, this is you like you are part of this family. Your duty is to this family like this is not negotiable. Yeah. And you know, like that you are expected to do these things. And so like, I think that does reinforce that a little bit,
Unknown Speaker 33:38
but you can choose your school. Right? Well, right.
David Gordon Buresh 33:43
You get to choose their school. As the player you choose the School of your character, okay? The skills you get a choice from the list the techniques, you get a choice from a list, and that's really where the actualization comes in.
Amelia Antrim 34:00
But here's your character saying Okay, these are the things that were Yeah, while I was learning
Ryan Boelter 34:05
that makes sense.
David Gordon Buresh 34:06
Yeah. One of the one of the first one of the very first hacks that I've done, and I've hacked literally this RPG shreds and put it back together several ways was to go this is what the book says your claim gets. Do you do you get pluses? It's like all buying get plus one water. Do you get plus one water? If not, why? How are you in a typical lion? If you don't have the plus one water? Mm hmm. And basically interesting approach that is suggestions.
Amelia Antrim 34:43
Yeah. Which leaves things like way wide open and and does like make it interesting to say, you know, most lion are like this, but I am really bad at being a lion. So actually, you know,
Ryan Boelter 34:57
yeah, well, that kind of would go hand in With one of those questions of like, do you value or whatever what your clan values are? Right and whatnot. And wouldn't it be interesting if you could alter that based upon the answer to that question? Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 35:19
I also have very strong opinions though about those particular questions.
Mostly the choice between a social status basically honor glory status versus a skill. There is at once that thing of like, how can these two things be equivalent? And in truth mechanically, they're really not. Right? Because not been that the weirder the weirdest thing is that you go Why would I ever get higher stats and not more skill points, I need my skill points. I need to be able to roll dice and then we have the curriculum system and why that's a trap.
Amelia Antrim 36:07
Yeah When we get to our section on leveling up I have hot curriculum. I have a feeling we'll get to that. It's it's a thing do you think in the process of creating a character in this game does a good job of setting a player's expectations for what playing this game is gonna look like?
David Gordon Buresh 36:34
I say yes. I would say very much. Yes. I believe it's actually a really good way of setting expectations. Because again, it's, it's these are your mechanics. Let's get them out of the way first, okay. And the mechanics are over here. Let's talk storage now.
Unknown Speaker 36:50
Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 36:53
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of story. In the character creation portion. There was a lot of flavor text that I honestly just did not read it because there was so much on every single advantage or disadvantage had this like little story blurb for the actual mechanics, which was a little infuriating at times, cuz I'm like, just give me a little of what is this thing do?
Amelia Antrim 37:25
I don't care though it's nice that they all do the same thing. Yeah, yeah.
Ryan Boelter 37:30
Yeah, it was nice that it was there. And if I were like wanting to dive deep into the play, I would be reading every single little bit of that and, and putting that into my character. And I can see that if you read all of that. You're going to get a really good understanding of what this game is about and how you kind of play this game as your character.
Amelia Antrim 37:55
I think it does a good job to of setting up the flavor of things being in conflict and things being difficult and hard choices that you have to make. Yeah, it really Telegraph's those things pretty well I think Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 38:16
And you occasionally come across the really cool ones about like if the ghost girl with no eyes comes back don't talk to her don't look to the door until she goes away which is like food right that have very tired Tory Taka
Ryan Boelter 38:36
one of the things that I kind of noticed was that a lot of the choices were one or the other, black or white. It was there was there was very little gray in between.
Amelia Antrim 38:49
Yeah, I could tell you struggling with that. A couple times. It was like do you agree or disagree and Yeah, well, I like some parts of it, but not others. Yeah, like when it came to the question of like, Do you adhere to Bushido? You're like, well, what if I like kinda
Unknown Speaker 39:03
do what if I mostly
Amelia Antrim 39:05
know you either do or you don't?
Ryan Boelter 39:06
Yeah. And it sounds like playing the game. The the Society of broke again has this very black and white mentality this is this is from a person that's never actually played. uh that's just the feeling I get from character creation.
David Gordon Buresh 39:30
Yeah, I'm so that's pretty accurate. So I would say that as the as a game designer, you didn't see the hidden choices, which is you were both a lot of those questions Where are you this thing? No. Okay, what about these selection of things which of these are you and you have to reject the absolute to get to the gradient Mm hmm. And okay, and that's it. So like, the question of like, is your character up? Is your character a paragon of Bushido? If so, get plus 10 honor. If not get a rank and one of these skills. Tell us why. Okay,
Ryan Boelter 40:19
so if like you falter A little bit, yeah, then you kind of get a skill because you're not perfect. At Bushido.
David Gordon Buresh 40:26
Most people aren't going to be these Paragons of Bushido, they're going to have a skill that reflects actually trying to live in the real world. Yeah. And that's choosing a skill off of this list. Tell us why. Okay. And again, the the presentation is a binary is basically that black and white, that binary thing, but it's actually not, but, but it's presented very strongly. As a binary and and again, like I think that's actually one of the one of the one of the issues that FFR has is it's very easy to see the world in binary terms.
Unknown Speaker 41:15
When in fact, you shouldn't, right.
Amelia Antrim 41:21
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a world where there are all kinds of rules, but there are always exceptions to those rules.
Unknown Speaker 41:26
And,
Amelia Antrim 41:29
and some of those questions make that feel like that's maybe not the case. But I think you also do remember to when you're making that question of like, do you agree with Bushido or not? You've also already picked your clan and picked that flavor to say like, these are the kinds of things that my character thinks are important, because I've chosen this clan, I've chosen this flavor to say like, this is the way I want to play. So you've also already made part of that decision.
David Gordon Buresh 42:02
Going back to the honor questions I still get I still have to get to that point. I actually think that if you flipped the order of the choices, if your first choice was, how does your character disagree with attending to Bushido? Get a plus one to a rank and skill of your choice. Or alternatively, your character upholds Bushido at all times and always get plus 10 honor instead. I think that tells a very different story than Are you upholding Bushido get plus 10 honor Oh, if not get a break of a skill. Mm hmm.
Amelia Antrim 42:39
Yeah, it tells you the expectation. Yeah. That's true that like this is something that your character is expected to do and not doing that is sort of the other option.
David Gordon Buresh 42:50
Yeah, you know, exactly like
Amelia Antrim 42:52
that, like the default is Yes, absolutely. 100% I agree with Bushido because that is that is the face that you're putting on like, nobody would ever be like, actually, I don't really like between you and me, but she does that, right? Like everybody on their faces like Yes, absolutely. What a great idea. And so it's putting that out front and saying like, here's what we expect. But maybe if you don't, I guess here's these other options.
Unknown Speaker 43:24
Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 43:26
That's interesting. Like the the actual way it was written, kind of, either intentionally or unintentionally kind of reveals the the, almost to face nature of people within this world.
David Gordon Buresh 43:45
First, first choice first choice bias is a real thing. Yeah. And I still remember at the play test, where the glory question gave you a random gave you a skill at one rank based upon your clan. If you weren't a good member of your clan, Which is totally how you wound up as wound up with a bunch of Dragon pirates. Hmm. Because if you didn't agree with the way of the dragon handling things, obviously you should learn seat like I think it was seafaring. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 44:14
That makes sense.
David Gordon Buresh 44:16
I disagree. I disagree with the dragon. I'm gonna go be a pirates as well
Amelia Antrim 44:21
on the other end of the map.
Ryan Boelter 44:26
I'm sure there's some Lake somewhere. Get on a
Amelia Antrim 44:30
sailboat on a river. Yep, we go.
David Gordon Buresh 44:32
Luckily they got the main game.
Unknown Speaker 44:36
That was really interesting.
Ryan Boelter 44:39
That's good. Um, so speaking of flaws. What do you think is one of the biggest flaws of character creation in the system? And also what is one of the best parts? Now we don't have a couple hours to think about the perfect dance
Amelia Antrim 45:00
Don't love the provided like distinctions and adversities and things like that, I think, I think because mechanically they all do the same thing, then flavor wise they need to be like really bright. And I don't know that they are
Ryan Boelter 45:19
set the advantages and disadvantages things.
Unknown Speaker 45:23
Okay.
Amelia Antrim 45:26
I think like, I have built characters in this game a lot. And normally picking disadvantages is one of my favorite things in character creation and doing it in this game. I get bored.
Ryan Boelter 45:40
I kind of felt the same way. Um, because I, I was kind of thrilled, picking disadvantages in the other game because it was optional. Right? It was like, ooh, if I take this disadvantage, I can get more advantages over here. That's pretty tempting. I think I'm gonna load Up until the advantages and then I can balance the points. Whereas this game it's like yeah, you're getting to disadvantages deal with it.
Amelia Antrim 46:08
I like what they do mechanically when you're playing the game. I like that your GM can be like, actually your real bad at that you need to reroll. Yeah, I like getting strike for things. So mechanically, that's, that's fine. Yeah, I don't mind having disadvantages. And I always feel like that's the part where our character sort of starts to come together. And the choices in here just feel kind of, and I think because you have to pick so many of them. Yeah, maybe because you picked four. And then there's like another question where you get another one. And it like, it's like, I've looked through these like, 10 times, and I picked the two that I want. I don't know why I'm gonna get a third. Yeah, like, I don't want any others. There's it. It feels very weird because there's plenty of them in there. But I don't feel like Particularly attached any of them right now.
David Gordon Buresh 47:04
I don't know what they should have had is that bothers me they should have had three samples and the rules of make your own Hmm. So, again, as a as a game design consultant, there's a lot that I would love to say about this. But I guess you can't we wouldn't be here
Unknown Speaker 47:31
Fantasy Flight.
David Gordon Buresh 47:34
When it comes, what it really boils down to is there some of the language in this, I think very much has a a bias that is problematic for one. Again, like I like as you called out, it says Like, it's expected for you to be this paragon of Bushido, I actually kind of find that problematic because you're thinking about it makes you think of your character less as a person more as a more as a stereotype. So like that is that is just flat out on the ground one of my big issues and that really does inform like, how rigid the character creation system is. Um, there's also a lot of illusion of choice. One of the biggest complaints I say oftentimes about third edition d&d is it is really easy to build a bad character. It is really easy to build a bad character in this game. And that's, that's a flaw in any character creation. If it is, if a person who doesn't have a degree of system mastery could get lost and build a bad character. That's a bad system.
Amelia Antrim 48:58
Do you like a bad person? Character mechanics are a bad character like interest, really? Because I feel like the choices are so, you know, it's like in this question, you get a skill. And so like everybody ends up with the same.
David Gordon Buresh 49:14
You have to know what skills to pick. You got to be able to think about what rooms you want. The advantages and disadvantages system can be very much gamed. The advantages and disadvantages system is incredibly not flavorful. It's very bland. And again, like, by and large, a lot of my criticism comes down to that. It is too easy to build a bad character. And it's easier to build. If you just added a like a couple choices where where there were guidelines rather than guidelines rather than guardrails.
Unknown Speaker 49:57
Yeah,
David Gordon Buresh 49:59
and I think that's that's sort of a lot of the flaws. So, yeah, sorry.
Amelia Antrim 50:09
Okay, I like I think this is a game like, you know, we talk about flaws a lot in these episodes. And a lot of times people are like, well, it's not really a flaw. It's just a thing that like, if it's not your jam, and then we get to this one and it's like, no, I really feel like this is a flaw and some of that is like I will admit my bias because it's it's a game that I have done this a lot. I have made a lot of L five Ark characters. There was a point in fourth edition, where like, I could make a character without ever opening the book. I knew exactly like what exactly how many points things cost and knew what the advantages were how much they cost, like I could do it without ever touching the bull's
David Gordon Buresh 50:48
eye. I have done that in 10 dimension tables during heroes of Roca gone. So yeah,
Amelia Antrim 50:53
right. So like, obviously, I'm coming at this from a very different perspective than I come at a lot of our games where it's the first time I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh, here's what I felt when I was making this character like obviously I'm looking at this very critically Yeah, um, because I've I've been through it and I know that the things that were hard this time are hard every time Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 51:15
That said, What are the good thing? Because this is a game that I love and like character creation does some cool stuff and last one I think you exit character creation with a with a person with this or with a so much of a realized character, that it's almost a shame to try to jam them into whatever game you're going to put them in. But you exit character creation with such this fully real if you really go into all 20 of those questions and you answer every single last one of them and you think about them like I like we did. Whoo boy.
Amelia Antrim 51:54
Yeah, you come out knowing did my parents love me or no With my parents a really big
David Gordon Buresh 52:03
spine mom okay with the person I've become.
Amelia Antrim 52:06
Right? It's like, I mean, she's she you're not where she thought you'd be. But yeah
Ryan Boelter 52:15
it's interesting. Um, yeah, I like that aspect of it as well. I also like kind of just the, the basic for the most part the the actual character sheet itself. In terms of playing the game, theoretically in my head. It It has depictions of the dice on the sheet it has what the symbols mean. It has the the codes, the seven codes of Bushido right on there, and it has all of the like stuff kind of right on that first page. And then if you want to get into the nitty gritty like details, go to the other pages for your techniques and equipment. I like that. It's very structured well, compared to some sheets that I've come across before. And, and I can tell that if I were to use this, I would be able to actually play the game. Because they would say, Okay, well, how much dice do I roll? Well, maybe somebody would have to tell me that. But I could read them now.
Amelia Antrim 53:22
I mean, you could be like me, where you've played this game tons of times. And every time you're like, which ones are the black ones? And which ones? remember which ones are skills and which ones are rings?
Ryan Boelter 53:33
Well, yeah, and I see here the skilled beiser white in the rain dice are black. Yep.
Amelia Antrim 53:39
Oh, yeah. But sometimes you make yourself an Excel spreadsheet, and put your character info. Don't write on there, that the ring dies.
Ryan Boelter 53:48
I mean, that makes sense.
David Gordon Buresh 53:49
Though. The ring dice are our red icons on black dice, and oh my god, are they impossible to read? Like as somebody who has who has had a visually impaired player at my table, like I have, that's another thing I have harsh opinions on.
Unknown Speaker 54:10
Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 54:10
But for but again, like one of the things, you're called out the character sheet, I love the character sheet. I think the character sheet is incredibly useful, because it has all of the approaches on it. Yes. Mm hmm. Like all in many ways. If you have the character sheet in front of you, all you need to know is so that number is how many ring dice. That number is how many skill dice. You can keep up to that number. But, and that's all you need to know. So once you have the character, it's really easy to play them.
Ryan Boelter 54:50
Yeah, that's interesting.
Amelia Antrim 54:53
I like the fact that with the questions, it's very guided. So like, as Somebody I mean, it made the point that it's easy to make a bad character. But I do think that somebody who isn't familiar with the game can sit down and look at this and be like, Oh, I just need to answer this question. If I look at this question, it tells me what things I'm picking. Okay, next question. Here's what I'm picking now. Like, it's very clear what the steps are to make a character, which I think is good.
David Gordon Buresh 55:26
As I said, on that subject of how easy it is to make a bad character, Ryan almost exited character creation without a rank of theology, isn't it?
Ryan Boelter 55:36
I mean, that's true.
David Gordon Buresh 55:37
Which means you can't cast spells or you're just going to be really bad. Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 55:43
yeah. I mean, yeah, you're just rolling your dice then so like hope that you don't have a one in any thing? Because you're not gonna meet that tn to that you need for most well?
Ryan Boelter 55:53
Yeah, and I had no clue how that how important that might be. Yeah, because I don't know what those There's been I mean, I see the skill base maybe is that a D 12. And that might have more options than a D six, which is a ring die, right? Yeah, right. I'm looking at a square versus a pentagon on this character
Amelia Antrim 56:16
like in your head, you're you're thinking, Oh, well, like a skill is like there's more choices and but you only get to keep the rings. So like, and you want more of those and
David Gordon Buresh 56:28
they actually have the same chance of rolling blank.
Unknown Speaker 56:32
That's true. Interesting.
David Gordon Buresh 56:34
The main thing is the ring DICE has the advantage of having exploding it has a success and an opportunity face, and it has an explosive success that doesn't have stripe on it. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 56:48
Interesting skills are important.
David Gordon Buresh 56:51
So you can roll so skill dice can just roll better than ring dice. Okay,
Ryan Boelter 56:57
that makes sense. gracious. Yeah. I would have had no clue. Um, if you wouldn't have mentioned theology being important for our shugenja, I would have thought, Well, I'm a shugenja. Of course I can cast spells well,
Unknown Speaker 57:12
right.
David Gordon Buresh 57:15
Thanks. So but
Amelia Antrim 57:17
yeah, yeah, yeah. And unless you go and look at the very specific mechanics of each of the spells, you wouldn't
David Gordon Buresh 57:22
Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 57:24
And I would have I, if I were actually diving into this full force, I would be reading every single skill to see exactly what they do. And then I would have known, but just going based upon this, I guess that's one of the flaws is you can't make an ideal character easily without diving deeper into the book. Yeah, whereas a lot of games like pbta you, you can create a fully fledged character without even opening the book
David Gordon Buresh 57:59
right? There are too many bad choices. Yeah,
Ryan Boelter 58:04
yeah. So
Amelia Antrim 58:05
so on our subjects if things we don't like about this game like I have a podcast called garbage of the firing. So like, this game is bad dumpster fire that we love, right?
David Gordon Buresh 58:17
Like we may hate ourselves for loving it, but we do
Amelia Antrim 58:21
write a thing that I think that we need to address is that this game very frequently falls into that category of problematic Fave.
Unknown Speaker 58:30
Yes,
Amelia Antrim 58:30
there's a lot of stuff in this game, even though like this edition, hands down way better. way less problematic than previous additions by just miles and miles. Yeah. I guess it depends on what edition you're talking about. Because you're also looking at somebody who is still reading and felt like early 2000s law right now. So this is better. Yes, but there's still a lot of stuff in here that is problematic. I think like, we need to talk about that and we need to address it. So, I want to ask, like, what are some things that you think they really could have should have done better.
David Gordon Buresh 59:21
I'm going to let Ryan go first because I read the dissertation. read my blog. About half of them are
Amelia Antrim 59:35
used I love you so much, but
Ryan Boelter 59:37
the the biggest one that stood out to me as a person that hasn't actually played before and hasn't really dived into the lore that much or the history aside from listening to Emilio's other podcast,
Unknown Speaker 59:54
um
Ryan Boelter 59:56
the the ableism in some of those disadvantage It was just kind of glaring especially for for a game that was created, you know, within the last five years. You know,
Amelia Antrim 1:00:13
yeah. stronger. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:17
And I mean, the the route that they took is, you know, physical disabilities are a disadvantage. Yeah. And that's just the stance they had going into it, whether it was that's the way it was in previous editions. So it's expected to be there in this edition. Or just a design philosophy that was kind of held over from the 90s. As as a lot of people that are familiar with palladium are well aware. Boy, howdy does palladium have the mechanics
Amelia Antrim 1:01:00
Like we will hear too for
David Gordon Buresh 1:01:04
mechanics. I like that.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:09
Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:01:10
Because I mean, the platform to game from the 90s and the 80s. And it has the insanity mechanics. It has, like full disability mechanics and like all sorts of things, and it's a staple of games that needs to go away and change. Because it's an extremely a blessed thing to to just kind of put out into the world, especially nowadays.
David Gordon Buresh 1:01:43
Yeah. And I'm going to add to that. We're not just talking physical disability. Correct. Like let's go with cognitive lapses. Yeah, missing memories. Oh, I remember for the longest time epilepsy used to be in here as one of the one of the one of the major issues. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 1:02:10
Yeah, there's one that's like deadly illness or something like that. But like when you read the description, it was clearly epilepsy.
David Gordon Buresh 1:02:15
Yeah. Huh. Yeah. And I mean, also and I'm just going to wear as I was flipping through. Guy, you shouldn't name culture or appearance is a flop. Yeah, yeah. So codified racism right there. Right. Yeah, that's true. Yuck. Which again, okay, your fantasy culture is depicted as racist. Yeah, okay, that's a problem. And it becomes more so when you when you approach the funnel That legend of the five rings. Yes, I'm going to talk about the elephant in the room. Please. The budget of the five rings was written by white American dudes for a primarily white, primarily American, primarily male audience in the 1970s. I am Yes, I am mixed racist. I'm indigenous, but I'm also white and I own that. And I was one of the audience that they wrote for. And in many ways I still am the audience that they're writing for, even though I've become far more aware of the problematic nature of this. They the even this game, even this version of the game that has sensitivity readers, and has these things is still this game was built on the foundations laid by oriental adventures. Mm hmm. It was already antelope adventures when it was owned by Wizards of the Coast. Yes. And this is basically it whenever it tries to be pan Asian that's a problem because it's also very Japanese and Japanese isn't pan Asian and you can't have it both ways. Yeah. And Asian heritage is more than just clothing food and phrases in a book and yeah it's it's this game is still deeply deeply deeply problematic it has gotten better and like the the oh five are the oh five horror I fell in love with was, wasn't it? I look back on is going Oh, why did I love this so much. And it's because of the community And I will I will own that to the day. The day that I die is that it's the community. It's the sports fan. It's the love of my fellow gamers. hmm
Amelia Antrim 1:05:11
yeah, I mean in For me it was this is the first time I had played a game that had like a serious tone instead of something silly. And so like, that's what drew me in was like, Oh, this is the first time I could play a game that like told tragic stories and like very different kind of game. But yeah, that doesn't make it better or okay. I
David Gordon Buresh 1:05:36
I'm very glad that this version of the game has moved to the point where a lot of the codifies sexism is gone. They're still, they're still very much like QA Chico is still a problematic character on certain levels, but they've done a lot to try to really they've done a lot better but it's still got a long way to go. And again, It's there's there are problems with depicting a Asian fantasy as a violent traditionalist codified culture which worships the this this code of murder basically, which is not what Bushido really is, but is on some level with this version we're given. Yeah, is this code to justify violence. And that's, that's so that that's so deeply wrong and just doesn't do justice to these to the beautiful stories that have been produced by these cultures. And these reach in amazing histories that are out there that if this is your game, Way to that like it was for me go through that gateway, please. I have wonderful recommendations to make. And yes I still love this game and it hurts me when I love it. And that's probably says something about me
Amelia Antrim 1:07:16
Do you think that this is something that like a future addition could redeem if they put enough work into it? Or do you think that like, inherently the way the story of alpha bar works and the way that we understand how to play this game and like what makes l five RL five R will always be problematic. Like this is a discussion that Jude and I had at one point on garbage to the five rings to have like, I don't know if this game didn't have 25 years of history and like fan backing and community and lower. Like if this is a game that people would be like yeah, this is okay.
David Gordon Buresh 1:07:52
If this game was made in 2020 as it as it was, it will not be this game could not be made today without the Without the 25 years, and that's a good thing. Yeah. And like if it had been made 2018, the bonzai controversy would have killed it.
Amelia Antrim 1:08:11
Oh my god. Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 1:08:14
And oh, a version of Legend of the five rings that was made by Japanese voices for a Asian audience, that even even an Asian American audience would be so different from what we have that I don't I don't want to say it would be unrecognizable, because there's a lot of things I love in this game that I would love to think that aren't bad. Right, but it would be so different. I would love to see that game. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I would love to see that game. Right. And I think it would be different. It would be Very, very different from what we have that hunks that I think that there there is a lot to praise about this game. And I will always say LGBT representation is so good in this game. And like the fact that the fact that the starting module has a trans or trans or non binary depending on how you wish to interpret it, canon PC, yes, man, three, three women, ri men, and then a non binary or possibly trans or gender fluid depending on how you wish to interpret what is said about them. It's up to you to determine how that character expresses themselves. It has an IT HAS transgender characters written into the lore in its lead. Its first fiction had a lesbian who is in charge of a clan, and which is basically she rules one of the nations that make this empire great.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
So cool.
David Gordon Buresh 1:10:03
Given two hot blooded brute sudden reveals that she's like, I wasn't this random person I was the grand plan champion the entire
Amelia Antrim 1:10:12
time. Kidding. You thought I was a nobody in here. I like Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, the thing is that like, and I think a lot of ways it's so frustrating, right? Because you're like, look like you're, you're on the right track. And but I think there's some level of like a reckoning that I've had to do to say like, this is never gonna be all the way Okay, yeah. What do I do with that? Because I do love this game. And like, there is a lot to love here. But there's a lot that like, it just will never be okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's complicated.
Ryan Boelter 1:10:52
from an outside perspective. Somebody that hasn't been in in this game. At all effectively I can see taking like the concepts of the court intrigue the concepts of you know the social battle system the the actual battle system all that all that sort of stuff mechanical stuff um and if you alter the problematic setting elements get get rid of them make the setting better all around and everything I can I would still see it as this could be five or it might not be broke again right but it still it still would to me feel like the same sorta game.
Amelia Antrim 1:11:54
Yeah and I think that like coming at it as an outsider you can say that Yeah. I think coming at it as somebody who has any kind of history with the game, like the lore and the story has always been really, really important, right? I mean, and that's the thing is that like with the setting, there are novellas. There are short fictions released every so often like the flavor text on the cards for the LCG. And like the tournament story decisions and things like that. So to like, take all of that out. It isn't
David Gordon Buresh 1:12:26
anymore. There is right Eric cutter in an L five our story, named after a PC I played in an official winter court game. Wow. And she is that character that I played. That's awesome. And that's like there's in in the Atlas of Roku God. There is a paragraph about a restaurant I created for a story that got picked up by the head writer with that's an awesome restaurant. I'm making it candidate. Yeah, yeah. That's the promise of L five or so problematic faith. Yeah, yeah. be problematic. And I will never get angry at anyone ever for telling me that this is a deeply problematic game. Yes, right.
Amelia Antrim 1:13:17
Yeah. Because they're not wrong. Mm hmm. Um, I'm looking at the clock and it's like, 1115 I'm so tired. Um, um, we have our fanfic section next,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:30
um,
Amelia Antrim 1:13:33
where we we try and like tell a story with these characters.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:38
Um,
Amelia Antrim 1:13:41
is there a story to tell?
Ryan Boelter 1:13:45
Sir, there has to be right.
David Gordon Buresh 1:13:48
So let me pay the picture. Okay,
Amelia Antrim 1:13:52
I'll sit back and listen.
David Gordon Buresh 1:13:55
So the strangest sorts of people get trapped in by the Past during a sudden snowfall in the winter. And the situation is that you never really know who's going to get stuck there. It's the most traveled, pass and all of rope have gone. It's literally what connects the northern Empire to the south and Empire. And it's held by the yogo family. So you know, nobody out there is up to any good. But people get stuck there. Because early snows happen, and when there's a really bad early snow. Three people among a small crowd of others get stuck in what is ultimately was a city never designed to be people to stay in. And there are other things there. And they're the only ones who managed to discover that for one reason or another, that there is somebody going around, killing certain people and taking their face And when I say taking their faces I'm not talking like oh, it's going to replace them. No, I'm really talking about they took a knife to the person's face and started wearing it and now that's them. And that's how you get a T shirt again, Joe who is trying to trying to get home to her one true love while protecting her dime iOS daughter, a vigilante togashi monk. And the Cooney witch hunter who knows too much. Because who else can you trust in this town?
Amelia Antrim 1:15:40
Huh? Okay, well, fine.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:45
I would play this game.
Ryan Boelter 1:15:47
Yeah. No, that sounds fine.
Amelia Antrim 1:15:49
And I promise I'm not the one stealing faces. That's the scary part. Yeah, I would never ever in a million years set a game in Baden pass, but like That is probably perfect. I have my own like strong personal opinions about
Unknown Speaker 1:16:05
it and of course you do
Unknown Speaker 1:16:08
water I still have
Amelia Antrim 1:16:10
I have like a little sticky note that was on my map pointing to bait and pass that says this place sucks. My map is not up anymore but the little sticky note is still on the back of my doors
David Gordon Buresh 1:16:23
so in the new pan it's actually a small city.
Amelia Antrim 1:16:27
Yes, I know I was reading that in. In CURTIS STONE I put something on Twitter and I was like who knew they probably like half an RV users. Yeah.
David Gordon Buresh 1:16:36
Well, though, that's explains where we found the first dead body. Oh, back behind the armies.
Ryan Boelter 1:16:43
Was it armies or
Amelia Antrim 1:16:45
do you have the meat?
Ryan Boelter 1:16:51
Oh, Roku Gan Arby's? That's where this fan fake one. Yep, yep. You're welcome. Listen
Amelia Antrim 1:17:02
All right, well, okay, let's go ahead and get into our advancement discussion and take it up a level. A level.
David Gordon Buresh 1:17:10
Oh boy. Sorry. Congratulations. Awesome feeling Congratulations, my good friend. The good news is since you did not take ranks of theology early on one Yep. You can now spend x speed in a really efficient manner to get up to rank to who because the way advancement works in this game is a little bit of a little bit of a twisting nightmare. of have a combination of trying of trying to figure out how to best spend your XP while combating both character advancement and fear of missing out. Yeah, ha. And two characters with the same XP would could wind up being on vastly different levels of power simply because of the curriculum system. Hmm. And that's before we bring in titles. So the way the curriculum is again, this is Dave putting on his GM had to explain this because you need a GM had to explain this. So the curriculum system is at each rank. You have a selection of, I believe 124567877 things that you can spend XP on, which counts full XP For example, the eye shadow or the shadow master can at rank one by any scholar skill, courtesy skill, design skill, survival skill, rank one water invocations, the invocation sympathetic energies which is a rank to water and vocation and the ritual cleansing right okay and get full speed towards this. Now, you can buy any invocation of rank one, any rank one ritual, any rank one Shuji
Unknown Speaker 1:19:44
but unless that are on that list, you don't get full XP.
Amelia Antrim 1:19:48
You have to keep track of those XP, because you don't rank up until you have spent a certain amount. Yeah, and you only get full accounts. For spending them in that certain way. So every level, it's a skill group three skills, a technique group and a technique.
David Gordon Buresh 1:20:09
Okay? Not always a technique, but sometimes usually a technique.
Amelia Antrim 1:20:15
And so you have to spend XP on those things. In order to move up to the next level, you
David Gordon Buresh 1:20:21
don't have to be on those things.
Amelia Antrim 1:20:23
Right? Right. You can spend XP on whatever you want. If there's a skill you want, and it's not in that rank of your curriculum, you can still get it, that's fine. But that XP will not fully count toward moving up in the progression. So
Ryan Boelter 1:20:38
it only counts this. Is this the reason why they call them schools? Because, yes, it's so complicated that you need to actually like take a class to figure out
David Gordon Buresh 1:20:49
how to go to school how to actually level up.
Amelia Antrim 1:20:52
Yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you. I generally save up my XP for several sessions before I do. Decide how to spend it because it hurts my brain trying to figure out what I should be spending my XP on. Haha.
David Gordon Buresh 1:21:07
Now, that's what you get it ranked one at rank two. So provided you get through rank one, which most people eventually do. So you have to get all of them before you can get to rank two. No, no, you don't have to get any of them. You just have to spend enough XP. And if they're on the chart, you get full XP. They're not on the chart, you get half. Oh, that's okay. So Ah,
Amelia Antrim 1:21:34
right. So you could spend six XP on anything. But it can only count to three and you have to spend like, what is it 24 or something like that to get through the first
David Gordon Buresh 1:21:45
20. So if you spent six XP to raise a ring to two, you only get half that you only get to count three of that. But if you bought the technique which cost three that also gets you three. So now you're at six
Amelia Antrim 1:21:59
now So it very much like puts you on this track of like things that you could like what your character can look like later in the game, which frustrates me because it's like I can't build the like every time I make a Cooney purifier, it's gonna end up looking fairly similar. If I want to rank up at all and you want that like the rank six abilities that you get are super cool and super flavor yo and it frustrates me to death because it is almost impossible to get there.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:34
Like so
Amelia Antrim 1:22:36
it would take so long and so many sessions to get to that cool ability and I feel like that's where the school is really shine is in that rank six ability
David Gordon Buresh 1:22:44
the rank six ability by the way your school is at the end of your church, you may spend one or more avoid points to unleash the powers within an equal number of nice shadow talismans, destroying establishments and freeing the entities within me admittedly performed with each of your employees. occations for which these televisions were created reducing the tn by three. Wow. So you spend like four void and cast for spells?
Unknown Speaker 1:23:10
Yeah, all at once.
Ryan Boelter 1:23:12
That Yeah, that's powerful.
David Gordon Buresh 1:23:15
Do you remember remember how your rank one had all those skills? So your rank two martial skills, still has design, theology, survival rank one to two Earth and vocations. Remember how last time was water now what's Earth? Hands of the tides? Well, that's water, but it's a rank three water. By the way, if you don't learn that, like so say for example, if that was something you wouldn't normally get access to. You don't learn it at that rank. You could never learn it in the future. Hmm. And then artists
Amelia Antrim 1:23:46
Really?
David Gordon Buresh 1:23:48
So yeah, the fear of missing out is a thing in this.
Ryan Boelter 1:23:52
So once you pass a rank, you can't go back
David Gordon Buresh 1:23:55
can't go back.
Amelia Antrim 1:23:58
Right. It was just spent invocation at that one, you can spend the points on it, but you will still only get half points because it wasn't in that.
Ryan Boelter 1:24:06
Is that what that little symbol before the little diamond ends? Yeah, a little diamond. Yeah. So that means you could miss out on this. If you don't get it at this rank. Well, you still have access to it later on.
David Gordon Buresh 1:24:17
You just don't get full XP towards it.
Ryan Boelter 1:24:20
Okay, so I could buy it for half XP. I mean, half XP worth Yeah. Or effectively double XP.
David Gordon Buresh 1:24:28
Right, exactly. Now, this sucks, though, when you have a technique that you normally don't have access to like, if you are a Shinobi and get access to certain Ninjutsu techniques, because nobody gets open access to jitsu techniques, they only get Ninjutsu techniques at certain ranks on their curriculum.
Amelia Antrim 1:24:46
Right if I ever wanted like another MMA style or something like that, I like couldn't get it because it wouldn't be.
David Gordon Buresh 1:24:52
Funny story. True story. In fact, you can always learn Maho. It's in the rules.
Amelia Antrim 1:24:59
Yes. But I'd only get half I guess
David Gordon Buresh 1:25:02
you'd only get half XP for learning more Maha ah
Amelia Antrim 1:25:06
which is lame you should get full
Unknown Speaker 1:25:09
bloodseeker school right?
Amelia Antrim 1:25:12
Well it's it's frustrating though because like I said then you end up with characters that like a rank six Cooney purifier is gonna look similar always to any other rank six Cooney purifier. Because you have followed that same
Ryan Boelter 1:25:28
trajectory. Yeah, the same. Yeah, that would make sense. It kind of shoehorns you into these very small little containers.
David Gordon Buresh 1:25:37
Yeah, now, now, allow me to introduce you to the thing that will make this move from that headache into like a, an actual migraine
Unknown Speaker 1:25:49
titles.
David Gordon Buresh 1:25:52
So when your character has a title that gives you access to an additional curriculum. This curriculum has a certain, like all other curriculums, it has all of these. So you're familiar with sort of how a curriculum works and how it can change. Yeah. So this curriculum, once you spend enough XP on this curriculum, you get the title ability, such as like an emerald magistrate, when you get the title ability for doing it. This also can have like those those like special techniques that you can only that you now have access to, even though you normally wouldn't have access to. Well, the problem is you can't count your XP towards both your title and your school. So whenever you spend next B, you're choosing which curriculum to apply it towards. So when you get half XP, so say for example, you spend six XP, and it's not an either curriculum, you're only getting three XP, but you get to choose which of those two curriculums you get to apply that three XP towards hmm
Amelia Antrim 1:27:00
But you can't do it can't do it. So your three XP doesn't count for it like you don't move forward in either.
David Gordon Buresh 1:27:09
Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 1:27:11
Yeah, it's a bad system. It's a bad system, it really frustrates me because like I said, like, getting to that rank six ability feels really good. And like getting those like advanced techniques when you rank up is awesome. But like, it feels, it feels like you're just sort of robbed of any kind of choice. Because if you're going to play the game, the way that they want you to play, you know, I mean, like, you always have the choice to spend outside of your circle. Yeah, like, that's fine. But then, you know, like, even though you're starting school ability is like, treat it like you have ranks equal to your school, right? Yeah. And so it's like, even your starting ability doesn't get better unless you spend on your curriculum. Yeah. Like nothing gets better unless you spend on your curriculum. Wow.
Ryan Boelter 1:28:01
How do you get XP in the first place? In the game?
David Gordon Buresh 1:28:05
It was the first session. Okay?
Ryan Boelter 1:28:09
So it's just like okay, here's three XP for after the session.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:12
Yeah, or whatever.
Ryan Boelter 1:28:14
Yep. Is it is it kind of arbitrary? Like
Amelia Antrim 1:28:18
they have a guide that it's like I, I think they say roughly one XP per hour of play.
Ryan Boelter 1:28:23
Okay. So it feels kind of arbitrary.
David Gordon Buresh 1:28:27
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And like their modules usually have like extra XP at the end and things like that. As a note, so just for what the ranks are because you have to go to page 98 to the sidebar to be able to find that it is
Amelia Antrim 1:28:46
hot takes out the layout of FFG books.
David Gordon Buresh 1:28:49
rank one you completed 20 xp rank to a 24 rank three at 32 ranked 444 ranked five at 60 So, wow.
Amelia Antrim 1:29:02
Oh yeah, that is a little tiny sidebar. So
Ryan Boelter 1:29:04
is it? Is it 24? In addition to the 20? Yes,
Amelia Antrim 1:29:09
yes. 24 more?
David Gordon Buresh 1:29:11
Yes. Ah, so yeah. To be a rank six character provided, provided you never spent XP. Any way that wasn't counting towards your curriculum, which does mean you literally only have started ranks as a no, because nobody has any rings on any of their curriculums.
Amelia Antrim 1:29:35
Yeah, that's right. Increasing your rings is nowhere in a cricket. It's expensive.
David Gordon Buresh 1:29:39
So to do that, you will have had to have spent 180 xp.
Amelia Antrim 1:29:46
And again, you're earning like three or four for our session.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:49
you're earning one
Ryan Boelter 1:29:50
an hour, roughly 180 hours of gameplay?
David Gordon Buresh 1:29:53
Yeah. Yes.
Amelia Antrim 1:29:55
I mean, in granted like this is rank six and rank six is the maximum so it's Your level 50 or what? You know, like, it's a big deal. I mean,
David Gordon Buresh 1:30:05
roughly 45 sessions if you play a four hour session,
Amelia Antrim 1:30:09
right, but it's frustrating because you don't get any of it's not like you get an ability at the end of each, right? Yeah. Which is the part that frustrates me like, I would be okay with it. Like, I would tolerate it if you got something at the end of each rank, but other than like that starting ability of like treated as the, you know, like the number of your school rank, which I want to say that like, mine doesn't even have that. I think my school ability didn't say anything about treating it as your score. So like ranking up does,
David Gordon Buresh 1:30:43
literally not one of the fixes that I threw in for this, that I do at a home game, is you can't spend XP to raise rings. When you go up a rank you gain a ring.
Amelia Antrim 1:30:55
That's a good rule. Yeah, mine doesn't say mine is like once per round, oh no, it does cap dice up to your school, right? So I guess I get a little something like, oh, now you can keep two days instead of
David Gordon Buresh 1:31:11
that's which also keeps you from getting some of the most broken stuff in the game from being too broken. Yeah, yeah, cuz once you get a ring up, but once somebody gets a ring of four, it's a completely different game. Right? Because that allows them to basically go I critically strike, I critically strike. I critically strike because I'm keeping four dice, which allows me to get the two successes to hit and the two opportunities to critically strike. Oh, interest rates.
Amelia Antrim 1:31:38
Well, and most spells have a tn of two. And so when you're keeping four dice, your likelihood of being able to do any of those things like is much, much higher. Okay.
David Gordon Buresh 1:31:49
So, and again, like, I see what they were trying to do with the curriculum system and again, like I think on some level, their intentions were good They wanted to give that feel of incremental growth. And that idea of school secrets versus real world knowledge and how are you going to value these? What are you going to do? I just don't think they succeeded. Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 1:32:17
yeah. And, and I mean, and better minds than mine can think about, like, what would have been better to do that because like, I can't, you know, I try not to like, be hard on things if I don't have a better solution to just be like, This is bad. Because I don't personally know what would have achieved that. Like this. The same it
David Gordon Buresh 1:32:40
Yeah. Personally, I think a better way of doing it would have been a discount on buying stuff. Yeah, like a one XP discount because your minimum spend on something is two XP. So whenever you buy something off of your list, you get a one XP discount. Once you've spent 20 xp, you go to rank two I think a lot about the curriculum.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:04
Yeah, um,
Amelia Antrim 1:33:06
it's a huge frustration for me like it. And I haven't played a game long enough to really get that far because my games keep falling apart. Um, but every time I look at it, it like hurts my brain.
David Gordon Buresh 1:33:20
And I mean, again, like I still don't i don't even know the answer to so what if I'm at at 18? And I spent three? Do I go to rank two? Well, what happens to that one? expeed that's leftover that I spent. But
Amelia Antrim 1:33:34
oh, that you spent over a rank two. So does it go to rank three, but you didn't spend it on anything? So do you get a half an x?
David Gordon Buresh 1:33:42
Or does it just go away? Does the Emperor tax it just a reference to the which is a reference to the old card game which it was because there wasn't like, there wasn't basically manna pooling, you just spent money to buy things and if you had any extra Well, the Emperor taxes it it just goes Yes. Oh, goodness. Yeah. And again, and the mastery abilities are amazing.
Amelia Antrim 1:34:08
They're so cool. Like they're so evocative and interesting and like I just I want them but who plays for that long.
David Gordon Buresh 1:34:16
illusionist, what is so awesome of the eyes? You could just spend avoid. But it turns out this one thing was always your illusion the entire time and you have to dramatically reveal that you are casting the entire diamond that everyone fooled. Oh, wow.
Ryan Boelter 1:34:32
Yeah. Yeah, they're really cool. Amazing. Really cool. Yeah, that's it. It's 40. At least 45 for our sessions.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:41
Yep. Right. As a suggestion perfectly
Amelia Antrim 1:34:45
along the
David Gordon Buresh 1:34:46
years worth of work if you're playing every year, every day every week. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:34:53
So the problems don't land at Character Creation. Cast. What I'm hearing
Amelia Antrim 1:35:01
is a complicated game.
Ryan Boelter 1:35:02
Yeah, I mean, palladiums more simple than this in terms of level it
Amelia Antrim 1:35:07
is not.
Ryan Boelter 1:35:12
It's kind of true in advancement. Plenty of is more simple.
Amelia Antrim 1:35:17
No, no. It's not where you have to write down the percentage because each skill advances at a different percentage. Yeah, but it's all right there where you got, depending on where you got the skill from. Yeah, but that's why you do remember like, did you get it from the skill package over here? Or did
Ryan Boelter 1:35:34
you pick it up later? The character sheets Have you plus the percentage per level that you write on the character sheet. So you just know. It's mindless. Yeah, you can write down the curriculum. This makes you think too much right
Amelia Antrim 1:35:47
in the book.
Ryan Boelter 1:35:53
If I need a spreadsheet
Unknown Speaker 1:35:55
to level up,
Ryan Boelter 1:35:57
I'm sad.
David Gordon Buresh 1:35:58
You need a spreadsheet to track your Experience spends to know where you should be. I know and it's it's a bit of a nightmare.
Ryan Boelter 1:36:07
And yeah, that does seem so I'm It feels like it would be very difficult to reverse engineer if you lost that.
David Gordon Buresh 1:36:15
Oh it is I had to do it once. Yeah. Like literally I lost my XP chart I had a I had a character that was somewhere between rank three and rank four um i was i was again like we started at we started at this was your starting XP and I spent it it perfect like perfectly to like didn't waste a single point. And yes, there were have experience moments because I bought some rings but and then I had to and then I lost that sheet. And I had to figure out where I was between ranks three and ranks four. Oh no. And I had to retro, like I had to reverse engineer the growth of my character by spending XP, knowing that only the XP total Wow. And my curriculum and it was it was like, Oh did I do this? Yeah. And that this is where one of the traps of character creation comes out because it's actually better mechanically, to not take skills during character creation because every because most of them are ranked zero. Almost all of your skills that you get during character creation are going through,
Amelia Antrim 1:37:43
oh cuz it's more expensive to do it.
David Gordon Buresh 1:37:46
So you want to spend next be at the right time to get full to get it to count towards your rank fully. So it's something like you have to plan your Rick's he spends in advance and go, I'm not buying this skill at this rank. I'm gonna wait until I hit rank two before I spend my XP to buy this skill. So I don't want to actually start upping this skill quite yet because it's not the most XP I can get more towards my curriculum.
Ryan Boelter 1:38:16
Yeah, cuz I was looking at theology that's that's ranked two for me. And I was like, I kind of wait until I get to rank two before I can, like feel good about upgrading my theology.
Amelia Antrim 1:38:30
Right. But if you hadn't taken any at character creation, you'd only be applying it to once you'd only be spending like three x instead of like six or whatever it is. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:38:41
Goodness.
David Gordon Buresh 1:38:42
Yeah. curriculum. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:38:45
Yeah. Okay, so that's fun. Yep. All right. Well, is there anything else that we wanted to discuss about character advancement or character growth?
David Gordon Buresh 1:39:00
Don't buy bonds. So there was a mechanic that I was introduced in courts of stone, which is basically an advantage system that you can create that you can spend XP on to create relationships between you and other characters. And if it's another PC, you both have to spend the XP. But if it's an MPC, it's you have to spend the only one you have to spend the XP and for every rank ever do that. What?
Amelia Antrim 1:39:33
Why would you ever do that?
David Gordon Buresh 1:39:34
Because you want to love you can buy true love with XP in this game. Wow.
Amelia Antrim 1:39:40
Yeah, but like, why can't you just have a conversation with your GM and be like, hey, GM, I would really like this story
David Gordon Buresh 1:39:46
because I want the ability to share void points of my true love No matter where they are in the world. So long as they think of me, I can share me share them my XP Wow.
Ryan Boelter 1:39:59
So You never know it's true. Unless you spend that XP
David Gordon Buresh 1:40:03
Exactly. True bonded brotherhood.
Amelia Antrim 1:40:08
You know it's true love is if you're willing to spend XP on
Ryan Boelter 1:40:13
this game in fact by the diamond.
David Gordon Buresh 1:40:18
Wow.
Amelia Antrim 1:40:18
didn't spend enough XP on my marriage.
Ryan Boelter 1:40:26
Oh, things got real.
David Gordon Buresh 1:40:28
I love the bond mechanic. I hate that a caustic speed. Yeah, yeah. Oh,
Ryan Boelter 1:40:34
okay well okay, there's a lot of things
Amelia Antrim 1:40:36
that XP with your life yeah
David Gordon Buresh 1:40:39
yeah it's not on anyone's curriculum yet
Ryan Boelter 1:40:45
so I would say about halfway through this recording you had me really wanting to play this game uh but now I'm like yeah bye
David Gordon Buresh 1:41:01
It's really wonderful for if you have a prebuilt character. It's really wonderful if you're playing a one shot, um, I have I have literally torn down the beginner set to the to the to the core rules and rebuilt it complete with character creation and it works. Nice. The core engine of this game is really good. Mm hmm. That the approaches Yeah. is so good at it says a lot, that this game is this much fun, despite all of these really broken pieces that somebody has welded on to this, like it's a Mad Max machine rolling down the highway. That's very true. And
Amelia Antrim 1:41:44
yeah, this is one of those things where like, it's a piece of art and you're like you should have known when to stop, like here was good.
David Gordon Buresh 1:41:52
There are a lot of elements in this that as somebody again this is something that I Look at this game was rushed. It needed about another six months of Gen of of a play test where they had the where they had to answer some really hard, really bad, like really hard questions. The play tests they had was very directed on certain questions, a lot of balancing certain techniques and things like that.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:28
And
David Gordon Buresh 1:42:30
the core of the game is really good. It needed more play test. This is a game that I would say, I want to see another edition of this game by FFG with all of the lessons that they have learned. And we have that in many ways and path waves. Path of waves is a substantial improvement on the poor rules.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:54
Yeah, there's a lot in there.
Ryan Boelter 1:42:57
Interesting. Well One day I will eventually play this game. Yes someday at some point I am sure that Amelia will drag me into a game at some point and and say all right you're finally gonna play this game and then you'll understand why I like it so much.
Amelia Antrim 1:43:18
You can see what the fuss is.
Ryan Boelter 1:43:19
I'll see what the fuss is about
David Gordon Buresh 1:43:20
running towards the asset the ship on fire and then run our lives.
Ryan Boelter 1:43:27
Yes, I'm all for that. Awesome. Well, David, thank you so much for joining us to talk about legend the five rings and the somewhat of a dumpster fire that it can be but but also the the diamonds that are leftover. After that fire is done birdie. Can you remind everyone where they can find you online and what sort of things are working on?
David Gordon Buresh 1:43:55
So you can find me on the cardboard Republic under David the five rings Where I publish monthly blogs about the what has happened in the last month for legend of the five rings, you can also find me on Twitter at SMD w rk s sound works, where I tweet a lot about well ledger to the five rings and political activism so be aware.
Amelia Antrim 1:44:22
Oh, thank you again for joining us. This is a lot of fun. And thank you everyone for tuning in. Thank you very much for having me. Character Creation Cast is a production of the one shot Podcast Network and can be found online at www dot Character Creation cast.com. head to the website to get more information on our hosts this show and even our press kit. Character Creation Cast can also be found on Twitter at Creation Cast or on our Discord server at discord Character Creation Cast calm. I'm one of your hosts, Amelia Antrim and I can be found on twitter at ginger reckoning or on my other monitor Cast garbage of the five rings. Our other host Ryan bolter, can be found on twitter at Lord Neptune or online at Lord Neptune calm. Music for this episode is used with a Creative Commons license or with permission from the podcast that originated from. Further information can be found within the show notes. Our main theme music is hero remix by Steve combs, and is used with a Creative Commons license. This podcast is owned by us under Creative Commons. This episode was edited by Amelia Antrim. Further information for the game systems used in today's guests can be found in the show notes. If you'd like to leave us a rating or review. We have links to various review platforms out there, including Apple podcasts in our show notes. Also check the show notes for links to our other projects. Thanks for joining us. And remember, we find that the best part of any role playing game is character creation. So go out there and create some amazing people. We'll see you next time.
Now we got to read some show blurbs show blurbs.
Unknown Speaker 1:46:08
Show bad
Amelia Antrim 1:46:09
show blurbs. Character Creation Cast is hosted by the one shot Podcast Network. If you enjoyed our show, visit one shot podcast comm where you'll find other great shows like campaign campaign isn't actual play podcast exploring long form role playing
Ryan Boelter 1:46:25
the current campaign skyjack takes place in an original setting. Inspired by the music of the Decemberists, folk tales and classic adventure fiction. Join Liz Anderson, john Patrick Cohen, Tyler Davis, Johnny O'Meara and Game Master James d'amato, as they tell a tale of daring sky pirates. Also, it's basically an elaborate retelling of Weekend at Bernie's. Just search for campaign or James tomorrow on iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app.
Amelia Antrim 1:47:00
I am recording.
Ryan Boelter 1:47:02
I've got a lot of vocal fry right now. clicky clicky
you know, I didn't know what vocal fry was until late last year.
Amelia Antrim 1:47:18
Oh, really? Yeah, I had no idea. I suppose people don't accuse men of it.
Ryan Boelter 1:47:22
I know why it was because Addison peacock was talking about it on one of her podcasts. It was either a horror Borealis, and I was editing or it was something that she said on cryptkeeper. And I was like, What is this vocal fry? I don't get it. So I don't actually know Why are people so upset about it?
Unknown Speaker 1:47:48
Like what the heck? It's not feminine, apparently. Oh, I like it.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:55
I just do it like, I don't.
Ryan Boelter 1:47:58
It's fine.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:00
Right, but it's just a voice.
Amelia Antrim 1:48:03
Yeah, it's just a thing that voices do but apparently it's not feminine enough or Wow.
Anyway All right, I was gonna five count.
Ryan Boelter 1:48:19
All right, sounds good.
Amelia Antrim 1:48:21
Welcome back everyone. It's been a long but short but time What does that say Ryan?
Ryan Boelter 1:48:28
time doesn't mean anything anymore two weeks off.
Amelia Antrim 1:48:32
Long but short but time that doesn't okay hold on
Transcribed by https://otter.ai