Welcome to the first episode of series 48, everyone! This series, we welcome Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski, to learn about their game, Kids on Brooms, the latest in the Kids on series that started with Kids on Bikes where you play as students at a magic school! This episode we learn about the game, the history of the series, get into some world building and then begin making our people!
Welcome to the first episode of series 48, everyone! This series, we welcome Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski, to learn about their game, Kids on Brooms, the latest in the Kids on series that started with Kids on Bikes where you play as students at a magic school! This episode we learn about the game, the history of the series, get into some world building and then begin making our people!
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Kids on Brooms
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Welcome to the first episode of series 48, everyone! This series, we welcome Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski, to learn about their game, Kids on Brooms, the latest in the Kids on series that started with Kids on Bikes where you play as students at a magic school! This episode we learn about the game, the history of the series, get into some world building and then begin making our people!
Character Creation Cast on Apple Podcasts (The best place to leave reviews for us)
Character Creation Cast on Podchaser
Character Creation Cast on Stitcher
Character Creation Cast on Facebook
April Kit Walsh @GaySpaceshipGms
Thirsty Sword Lesbians
Advanced Lovers & Lesbians Preorder
Character Creation Cast:
Amelia Antrim:
Ryan Boelter:
Our Website:
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Network Patreon:
Ryan Boelter 0:01
Welcome to the first episode of Series 48. Everyone, this series is going to sweep you off your feet as we create characters for kids on brooms. Know, but before we get to that, first some announcements.
Amelia Antrim 0:17
No and first announcement No. I can't believe I didn't read that closer before we started. I'm so mad. Alright, announcements now that I'm done being mad at Ryan. Did you check out the spotlight episode last week? Well keep an eye out for the demos Academy Kickstarter that should be starting later this week. If you haven't heard the episode yet, absolutely. Check that one out. Because the game is pretty fantastic. And Ryan had a lot of fun creating characters and a spooky boarding school with our guests. I unfortunately was ill was not able to do anything. So I think you
Ryan Boelter 0:55
would have enjoyed it. Yes. Yeah, we had a lot of fun it is I can't wait for that game to come out. And if you haven't not checked out the episode yet. Definitely check that out.
Amelia Antrim 1:08
Yeah, it sounded like you had a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to seeing what that game Absolutely.
Ryan Boelter 1:14
Another thing you can check out is the TTRPG bundle for trans rights taxes on Itch. There are well over 400 games included in this bundle, including my very own game, our final gathering the dreaded reflections of the immortal soul. We covered that game on a patriotic flutes of episode, if you want to hear what it's all about. But this bundle is only $5. Minimum. So it's it's going to such a good cause. So definitely check it out. help some folks out and if you can give more than $5 because it is well worthwhile.
Amelia Antrim 1:52
Yeah, I mean, $5 for 400 games is obscene.
Ryan Boelter 1:56
Yeah. It's so much.
Amelia Antrim 1:59
That's so many games. Speaking of Patreon exclusives and helping people out, we also have a network Patreon that helps our show and all the other shows on the network@patreon.com slash one shot podcast. You can get bonus episodes for various shows on the network, or even rewards like a free RPG every month. But honestly, if you have a few dollars to spare right now and are debating on where you should go probably check out the TTRPG bundle mentioned right before this. And then consider backing the Patreon if you have a little more to spare.
Ryan Boelter 2:34
And one last announcement before we go. We know we have a tick tock page now. Where I'm a ticky talkies on a tick tock tick tock. So yeah, we were really only hosting our teasers for upcoming episodes there so they're gonna be all in one nice little spot. Will we use it for anything else? Hey, not really sure. But once we learn how it's once we learn how maybe we're old,
Amelia Antrim 3:03
I'm sorry. You know, like it may be the thing that finally makes me get tick tock part of me has been like, you have ADHD don't do that to yourself. But maybe maybe this will be the thing that if you stay on my hand you stay
Ryan Boelter 3:16
off the TIC tock and just make tic TOCs that you're good.
Amelia Antrim 3:20
I think you have to be on the TIC tock to make the TIC TOCs you're probably right. See this Hello, Ryan. No, exactly.
Ryan Boelter 3:27
But you can follow us at Character Creation Cast all one word on tic tock and like our stuff.
Amelia Antrim 3:36
That is it for announcements for today. Actually, you know what I thought of one more real quick, real quick one more. Yes. I was incorrect about my daughter's Girl Scout cookie sales. Her leaders did not give us an end date and so I assumed that the end date was the same as in person sales, but it's not. So if you want Girl Scout cookies, it goes through the end of March. So we will put a link in the show notes if you need some cookies and would like to support Eleanor it is bit dot L y slash Eleanor cookie because they gave us a really long URL and I made my own otherwise if you are interested in supporting local troops, you can probably find a girl near you that still has a website up or most of them are doing cookie booths at grocery stores right now through the month of March. So if you don't have a Girl Scout you are welcome to borrow mine but if you do please find them in order some
Ryan Boelter 4:30
already got two batches of boxes of cookies.
Amelia Antrim 4:36
Ordered like 20 boxes. Yeah. You know what, but as I eat them, I'm not sorry.
Ryan Boelter 4:43
And they last forever in the freezer. Do
Amelia Antrim 4:46
they do? Yeah. Okay, so that's all of that is it for announcements for today? Stick around after the show for our call to action, including a new review a new review. Oh, I didn't read that before. That's very exciting. Oh, I can't wait till after the episode. In the meantime, enjoy the show
Ryan Boelter 5:36
Welcome to Character Creation Cast a show where we discuss and create characters the best part of role playing games with guests using their favorite systems. I'm one of your hosts Ryan, and this episode, my co host, Amelia and I are excited to welcome Doug Levin dusky and Jonathan Gilmore designers of the game. We're covering this series. Kids. I'm brooms.
Amelia Antrim 5:57
Welcome to Character Creation Cast. I'm really excited that you're both are here. This can be a lot of fun. We're excited about this.
Doug Levandowski 6:04
Yeah, experiment. So
Jonathan Gilmour 6:05
thank you so much for having us.
Amelia Antrim 6:08
Doug, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Any projects that you have going on where people can find you online?
Doug Levandowski 6:16
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I am Doug Levandowski. I'm a high school English teacher. And then part time game designer. Also, full time father out of New Jersey. I'm on Twitter at Doug Levandowski. Cuz I'm, you know, trying to keep it simple. Oh, there you go.
Ryan Boelter 6:34
Yeah, you remember I remember.
Doug Levandowski 6:38
Currently, John, and a bunch of other folks and I are working on kids in capes, which is the fourth in the kids on line. We did some live streaming of that over the summer to start that design process. And we're continuing work on that. Gentleman are also working on a secret project that should be announced soon in the kids online. And let's see what else uh, well, let me look over at my active projects on my whiteboard here. The only way I remember. Oh, yeah. The other big project that I'm working on right now is home with Jung Soo Kim, which is a game using this using the quiet year as an engine about surviving the night in a haunted house.
Jonathan Gilmour 7:24
Oh,
Ryan Boelter 7:26
that sounds amazing.
Doug Levandowski 7:28
Yeah, I'm really happy with how it is coming out. And there's actually John's advice to look into using a hack of the quiet year to make it work. So yeah, sounds really cool.
Ryan Boelter 7:38
Yeah, absolutely. And then John, how about yourself?
Jonathan Gilmour 7:42
Yeah. So I'm Jonathan Jamar. I am a full time game designer in part time it goes teacher. Not really. I just wanted to.
Amelia Antrim 7:50
That would have been great, though. You should pick up a job just so that you can continue making that job. Yeah.
Jonathan Gilmour 7:57
All right. That's fair. Yeah. Go make all these podcasts better if I can actually tear it. Yeah, so you can find me on Twitter at John Gillmore J ONGIL. Mo you are, and I'm working on a bunch of stuff. So the secret project with another secret project with that we're just kind of starting some stuff about that we're really excited before. Um, I just had a game called colab on Kickstarter, which is about being down on your luck, mad scientists that have to share a co working space, hence, co lab. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's
Amelia Antrim 8:34
fun. This is like so much fun.
Jonathan Gilmour 8:37
In the hour is so good on it. Like I'm so excited. for it. It's, it's a great game. That sounds amazing. So yeah, stay busy with that stuff.
Ryan Boelter 8:45
Very cool. Well, let's go ahead and get into this. And we'll start by discussing what this game is all about. What's in a game. Alright, so what is the core concept of kids on brooms?
Doug Levandowski 8:57
The main idea is that you are folks at a wizarding school, you're either new students, more experienced students or faculty there. And you are trying to make sense of the world around you as you learn about magic and figure out how to use it, and then navigate whatever complications the GM is flinging in your direction. Very cool.
Ryan Boelter 9:19
And it is that I know this is like the third of the series of the kids on series. And we'll get into that in the bill a little bit in the history. But that seems the same sort of formula as the previous games in terms of world building character creation. Yeah,
Jonathan Gilmour 9:38
we tried to carry a fair amount of things over from game to game but we also wanted to try to innovate with this one in with teens in space, so each one we try to you know, make it different enough. So this one introduces the magic system, but character creation and world building. Has some tweaks for sure, but it was overall the same. Very cool,
Amelia Antrim 9:58
what kind of it Setting Are we playing in is this like, you know, like a magic school in the real world? This is like a place where the whole world is magical is this, you know, kind of whatever you want?
Doug Levandowski 10:10
Yep. 100% up to the players. So that's part of the part of the questions that you asked that story and that you think about in terms of what kind of game you want to play, right? Is it somewhere where magic is widely accepted? And people who are magical get to go to school? Or is it a place where magic is kept superduper secret? And you sort of sneak your way into school every day? Or stay there? Very cool.
Ryan Boelter 10:33
Yeah, I like that. So what sort of tools? Do we need to play this game? Then?
Doug Levandowski 10:37
Six sites? Oh, okay. Um, and the book on the character sheet probably doesn't hurt either. But, yeah, you need a full set of polyhedral dice. And you're good to go. Alright,
Jonathan Gilmour 10:51
yeah. And that that kind of came from the original kids on bites. When Doug and I were working on it, you know, Stranger Things had just come out. So we're discussing how to, you know, kind of incorporate the feel of classic d&d into it. So yeah, Doug suggested we put Sajo in the game.
Amelia Antrim 11:11
Like, Doug, I still want to be friends later, so maybe not.
Doug Levandowski 11:14
Yeah. And I wasn't 100% serious about that. It's important that I,
Jonathan Gilmour 11:20
after I came out of my stupor from hearing that, further and came up with this idea.
Amelia Antrim 11:27
I like that I feel like a lot of sort of modern games and indie games really kind of skew that like full set of polyhedrons. And I'm, I know that each games has its reasons for picking the kind of dice that it does, you know, so I don't want to say like, I don't know why that is. But it's interesting that it's sort of a trend overall, that all of these games have made that choice to not do that. So seeing that full set in a more modern game is kind of want to say surprising, but it's interesting, certainly, and certainly different from a lot of stuff that we see.
Doug Levandowski 12:00
Yeah. Go ahead. No, you go.
Jonathan Gilmour 12:03
We knew they were, we knew they're super fun to play with dice. And we, we just thought it'd be so cool. To use them in a different way.
Doug Levandowski 12:11
Yeah. And so the way we use them in here is that your six sets are represented by the dice. And the bigger the die is, the more powerful that status. So your D 20s. And grit, you know, you're you're extra tough. And if your D four is in flight, you're not that quick, right? And originally, we had it so that you know, the names are sort of juxtaposed against each other for some of them like fight and flight or charm and grit, brains, brawn. Initially, we were thinking that whatever your D 20 was, the other one would necessarily be the default. And then whatever we eat 12 was be the D six. But then we realized that was just way too limiting and that that sort of like opposing binary thing sort of fell by the wayside as we as we kept looking.
Amelia Antrim 13:03
Yeah, really kind of forces you to min max, which, you know, some people love, but some people really don't.
Jonathan Gilmour 13:07
Right. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And the other the other thing is that the dice explode. So the actual the smaller dice can actually have huge successes. As a 25% chance of exploding.
Amelia Antrim 13:18
Right, right. Yeah. Swinging our way to you. I like I like games that have a lot of kind of, like, swing in them. Yeah. Yeah, we
Jonathan Gilmour 13:27
wanted those like big moments where you did something that didn't seem like a good idea. And it was successful because we felt like That was super indicative of like the kids on bikes genre.
Amelia Antrim 13:37
Absolutely. Those moments where it's like, there's no way that this is gonna work, but like everything goes exactly right. And then you somehow pull it out.
Ryan Boelter 13:45
Yeah, cuz cuz your kid going up against insurmountable odds, and somehow, come away unscathed.
Amelia Antrim 13:52
Right, right. Yeah. Oh, that's
Ryan Boelter 13:54
awesome. I love exploding dice to it's just so satisfying.
Amelia Antrim 13:59
Really good. It's just feels really good.
Ryan Boelter 14:03
It's like, yeah, rolled max on the dice. Normal games. There's just like, a good good on you. Great. And with exploding games. It's just like, Okay, roll it again. And maybe you'll get the role even more, or do
Amelia Antrim 14:15
a screenshot somewhere of like an online game that I was playing where it just kept like, it was like four or five times and I like took a screencap of it and saved it for posterity. Look at my one amazing role, and I think it was to run away. Like, what are you doing? Obviously, I would run away. I don't have any weapons. I don't have it like we run away. And I ran so good.
Jonathan Gilmour 14:39
Like the dust cloud behind.
Amelia Antrim 14:41
Like the biggest waste of all of those exploding tires. So great. It was like that's an that is a true Amelia story.
Ryan Boelter 14:49
That's your Roadrunner moment,
Amelia Antrim 14:51
right. We really like to talk to people too, especially about what kind of stories and themes that These games are meant to explore, we know that when we sit down at a table, obviously, you are not coming to my game every time to tell me how to play or what kind of story to tell. But certainly when you design a game, there are things that you kind of put to the forefront. So what kind of stories and themes were you hoping people would kind of explore in these games?
Doug Levandowski 15:21
I think the two biggest ones for me are I want people to explore those relationships between characters. You know, a lot of the character creation is built around, forming those relationships and asking those questions and delving into that. And I think that the emotional core of all of those stories is what I think interests us the most, right, like, the big, the big moments where they take out the Demogorgon with a slingshot, or well, sort of, or, you know, the, there's a big lightsaber battle, or like, you know, they stand off against this unbeatable, evil wizard and somehow managed to come out like, those are cool and all, but like, what drives it? And what creates the stakes for all those is the way that, you know, a rocket looks at group when the ship is crashing and in groups decided to sacrifice himself, right that, Oh, those are cool moments, but they mean nothing if you're like, oh, okay, like character a is done now. Excellent. That's a big part, then the other part is thinking about ways to be more creative and problem solving. Then I smash it on the face with a sword, which like, is super fun sometimes. Like, and you want some resolutions like that, for sure. But, you know, doing more than just rolling for damage and rolling for all that stuff, which I mean, like I said, it's, it's great in its own place, right. But I'm really interested in those stories where it looks like there's about to be a fight, and they figure out a way to sweet talk their way out of it, or, you know, they explode five times that are on a run. And you know, the bully takes a swing at the cloud of dust that you've left behind.
Jonathan Gilmour 17:07
Yeah, and I think we wanted to really be able to allow people to play a wide berth of genres too, because that's, that's a big hallmark of kids on bytes, when we started having these discussions, because it can go from like action like Goonies to sci fi, like paper, girls, you know, to horror to really anything. So we didn't want to shoehorn people into like one genre, you could do monster the week was like a Scooby Doo type game. And we really wanted to open it up and make a system that really was generous in the world creation see, to do any of those things with the same rules. Very cool.
Ryan Boelter 17:44
So when you when you create your world, but your characters what, what do characters do in this game, specifically, and kids on broom?
Doug Levandowski 17:52
Yeah, so one of the big differences is, there is a sort of built in unlike kids on bikes, there is sort of a built in not leveling up, but character improvement thing here with the class schedule, or as you're practicing these kinds of magic, you're getting progressively better and better at them. So we wanted that to be part of it, because this is so focused on the school setting, that there had to be that sort of learning educational progression thing going on. But on a more basic level, you're going on these adventures, you're getting acclimated to this school that, you know, probably for many of the characters is unlike anything they've ever seen before, you know, where the rules that most of the ways that people have chosen the plate is, you know, the rules that people think about reality are now malleable. And so what does that do to the world around you? How do you explore it? How do you find your place? In that sort of up ended world? Absolutely.
Ryan Boelter 18:52
As kids nonetheless.
Amelia Antrim 18:56
We always like to ask designers especially what do you think makes this game unique? And especially I kind of like to talk about it in? Sorry, in the view of what made you feel like this was a game that you needed to put into the world? Why? You know, like, why this kind of magical school game instead of you know, making a five fee hack or, you know, if you I mean, why couldn't you just use GURPS?
Jonathan Gilmour 19:32
I mean, for me, part of it was that I used to love be chunky rules heavy RPGs. But I just don't have time to play them anymore. So you know, that was one of the things that we really wanted to have a thing that you can play as a one shot or is the campaign in like two hour ish sessions that were nice and tight and had a really good art. And the other thing was that I was on a panel and it was called All branching into RPGs. And I thought, like, from the name that was gonna be like how to become an RPG designer. And this was before kids on bikes was out. And I was like, I'm under qualified for this because my, yeah. But ended up being like 300 people in a room and the panel was about how to learn how to play RPGs. That really resonated with, like,
Amelia Antrim 20:27
hurts me a little bit that like, Oh,
Jonathan Gilmour 20:31
really? Yeah, well, it resonated with me that like d&d As a rule book is the worst rule book ever.
Amelia Antrim 20:39
Thank you.
Jonathan Gilmour 20:40
I struggled with it, because I didn't have anybody that played d&d around me when I grew up. But I bought the books and tried to teach myself and had no idea how to actually play the game. I was like, here's the rules that tell me how to do checks. But like I didn't know how to do, um, I didn't know anything else. And I didn't know how to roleplay really. So we wanted to use the character creation to ease people into the role playing inherently without them having to like read a how to roleplay session. So doing things like asking them questions in character, and trying to judge them use to speaking as their character. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 21:17
Which honestly, is like, one of the things that we spend a lot of time exploring on this podcast, too, is you know how character creation is the first, like, step into any game. It's that first, like, toe in the pool. And so, you know, how does that process tell you? What playing the game is going to be like? How does it introduce you? And in a lot of games, it doesn't, you know, and it's like d&d is one of those games, like making characters tells you nothing about what playing the game is gonna be like.
Ryan Boelter 21:51
You're gonna have a lot of things to roll and combat heavily important,
Amelia Antrim 21:56
right? Yeah, you have weapons. Yeah. And it's interesting how many games don't do that, especially given the fact that when you talk to a lot of people, they're intro to role playing games is like, Oh, I found this book in my uncle's attic. And I just like, made a bunch of characters. And then I didn't know what to do with them. And then they go on to like, make games where character creation doesn't have anything to do with playing the game. And I just find that interesting that like, we don't connect those things very often.
Doug Levandowski 22:26
Another big thing for me is the flexibility right that a lot of games have a very specific, here's your setting. Here's what happens. Where people are sort of told, this is the kind of world you're in. And, you know, with kids on bikes, teeth and space kids on brooms, it's, I don't know, What world do you want to be? Right? Yeah, yeah. And leaving that flexibility for folks, I think is one thing that that sets this apart. Also the the magic system we have in here. But I'm really, really proud of, of what John Spencer and I did with that, for just the sort of streamlining of how do you cast a spell? I think that sets it apart from from a lot of stuff.
Ryan Boelter 23:12
Oh, very cool. I am excited to learn that
Jonathan Gilmour 23:14
we spent so much time having those discussions about like, do we have like spell books? Do we have all this other stuff, and we just kind of laid it on, like players really should be able to do anything with magic, because that's fun. And it should be really fast and fun to do. And you're trying to my design philosophies always like have the players doing the fun stuff as much as possible. So yeah, we just really leaned into that. Absolutely. Yeah, that's
Amelia Antrim 23:39
really because I think a lot of games. But magic is one of those things that for some reason is it's difficult to make it not feel clunky. And and a lot of times it is somebody who likes to play Magic characters in lots of games, it really slows things down sometimes to be like, Okay, this lasts for three rounds. And I need these components. And it takes four rounds to summon the thing. Like and I can only do this three times a day, like no,
Doug Levandowski 24:08
but instead of concentration, is that right? Yeah. Can
Amelia Antrim 24:12
I do another thing at the same time or no? Right? And opponent poach being fun after a little bit like it's, you know, like, I just want to do something cool. Can you please just let me do the cool thing. I can do math and count how many onions I have in my kitchen. I don't want to like do that in this game. You know?
Ryan Boelter 24:34
Yeah, absolutely. This is the part where we generally talk about the history of the game, or history of the series in this case. I was curious when you start working on kids on brooms. It was
Jonathan Gilmour 24:47
the year that the first season of Stranger Things came out.
Doug Levandowski 24:50
That's gonna say three days after Stranger Things came out. Yeah. Yep.
Jonathan Gilmour 24:54
Maybe even quicker. It might have been the day. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But Doug had posted on Facebook like, you know, who wants to work on a Stranger Things board game. And I sent him a message me. Hey, Doug. I'm already working on the Stranger Things board game. How about we do an RPG? And he was like, oh, that sounds great. Yeah. And then, you know, we just kind of went from there in the stranger thing board game ended up being a tips on bytes board game. Several years like oh, there you go. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 25:27
So that was what back in 2016 17. Give or take 15 or 16 Sometime around. Oh, wow. Time has no meaning.
Doug Levandowski 25:40
It was 2016. Cuz I remember writing while I was watching the Summer Olympics.
Ryan Boelter 25:46
Oh, there you go. Yeah. And then kids on bikes. kick started in November of 2017. Successfully, of course. And then teams in space that the first announcement I saw was in 2019. I'm assuming that work began on that at some point after kids on bike was fulfilled. Yep. And then kids on brooms is now now out and about as well.
Doug Levandowski 26:15
Yeah. So that one was the we were talking to Scott from Renegade and Ivan from hunters about, you know, next steps as we were wrapping, getting close to wrapping up teams in space. And they said, so what are you going to do next? We said, well, we have a couple ideas. We could do this. We could do that. Scott said, yeah. You know, the cool thing about this is like, it's so like, the names are so evocative that like, once you have it like this, the game sort of like, not writes itself, but like, the concept is just there. Yeah, just from the name. He said, You know, like, like, you know, kids on brooms or whatever. We're like, Yeah, that's our next one. Sounds great. He was like, no, no, you don't have to like, just because I'm like, President Reagan, you know, do what I say we're like, no, no, no, like, That's a great name. You said it. And then a couple of weeks later, we got contacted on Twitter, by Spencer, who had done a hack of kids on bikes at a convention called kids on brooms and was like, Yeah, I just thought this would be cool. Just wanted to share this with you guys. Really? Well. How about? Yeah, working with him was just fantastic. He's such a, he's so great. I'm sorry.
Amelia Antrim 27:31
Was there always an intention to make this like a whole series? Or was it like partway through making kids on bikes? You were like, there's, there's so much more I can do or?
Jonathan Gilmour 27:41
No, I think, I think Donnie and I were probably expecting, so it was a lot of weird happenstance.
Amelia Antrim 27:50
Like we were going things often are,
Jonathan Gilmour 27:53
yeah, every, every time we were gonna self publish it, we're just gonna do the Kickstarter. So if we expected to maybe sell like, a couple 100 copies to our friends and be happy with it. And at Gen Con, I randomly ran into Ivan Van Norman, who I knew online but never met in person. I was like, Hey, I just want to say hi. As we're both like walking hurriedly to meetings, and he's like, Oh, what are you working on? And you know, I showed him the cover, because, you know, we were already doing had Heather doing art for it. Hmm. And I showed him the cover. And he gave him like the quick rundown. And he was like, don't show this to anyone else this convention and let's have a meeting as soon as it's over. And, and I was like, great, because the last thing that I want to do is self publish it but we don't. We didn't want to like spend a lot of time pitching it to publishers and neither of us are really in the RPG world. So I don't know, RPG publishers, as well as I know, like board game publishers. So just happened to then we had that meeting with Ivan and Chris. And they were on board. And they tried to take over running the Kickstarter. And doing all that and getting some of the guests together for stretch goals. And then I think after the Kickstarter did really well, we heard that renegade was coming out as a partner. And then I think like the next year, we won the Emmy Award right doege
Doug Levandowski 29:25
Yeah. For this family game. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 29:29
Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. 2017 2020
Jonathan Gilmour 29:34
Yeah, yeah. So we're like well, you know, we should definitely talk about next steps and doing more stuff with this at that point, because and the trade started way outperformed over expecting I think we did like 125,000 or 140. Yeah, for the time pretty good for an RPG.
Ryan Boelter 29:51
Oh, yeah. It is nice that you set yourselves up to with like such a malleable system with with regards to us. and tone and all that sort of stuff with kids on bikes that you can easily molded into these other genres and add some more specific rules to the specific genres and stuff like that. That's, that was really cool.
Jonathan Gilmour 30:13
Yeah. And it's worked out really well with players too, because it made it nice that they tend like start a kids on bikes game and just transition into the different systems. Oh, and we have
Ryan Boelter 30:28
a chain campaign with kids on bikes go into exam rooms, teams in space. Yep. Yeah.
Jonathan Gilmour 30:35
One of my favorite experiences was at a smaller convention in Michigan. Banana Chan was running a dad's on brooms charity event. And I was running the teens and space charity event. And it was like a, like a four hour learn to play play a one shot charity event. And, you know, we broke everybody to lunch, and banana and I talked and we're like, Would it be cool if I crash landed the teams in space into the middle of your game. And we put them all together at a table. So like, Oh, when I got back from lunch, I was like, everybody was getting ready to sit down. I was like, Nope, we're going over that table. And then I narrated the crash landing on the planet. And I set it up, like right before lunch. And then we combine the two games and it was so fun.
Ryan Boelter 31:23
Awesome, amazing that that those experiences are so memorable. When when you've got multiple tables that you just combine together and it just works. Absolutely. Oh, I'm excited. Yes.
Amelia Antrim 31:37
And it sounds like you're still working on on more. So there's, you know, hopefully, more cool things to come. Yeah. Everyone keeps getting older because we've got kids and then we've got teams are we going to have like adults in grocery stores young adult. I'll be honest, paying taxes.
Doug Levandowski 31:55
We learned our lesson from teams and space. If that ever gets rereleased. It'll be kids in space for sure. Oh, there you go. That was a a tough transition. You know, like the sort of
Jonathan Gilmour 32:09
sounded better. Yeah, but we learned that people didn't recognize it as kids on bikes game. Okay.
Doug Levandowski 32:17
So the so the next one. Well, the next one is the secret one. That definitely starts with kids. But kids in capes is the one that is still in the earlier stages of work. And that's a superhero been where he
Jonathan Gilmour 32:33
told me we were not going to do his superhero game when I first approached him. He's like, No, man, I said this, and I'm not interested in doing a superhero game.
Doug Levandowski 32:43
And I said, we were gonna do Sacco etc, etc. Yeah.
Jonathan Gilmour 32:48
Oh, no, no, that's not my point. But I think it's fun that I I sold him on it because I was watching Star Girl with my kids. And I was like, Dad, you need to watch Star drills is it is a kids on bikes superhero show. Re watch. Like the first four episodes in the city is like, oh, yeah, we're doing tapes and tapes now.
Doug Levandowski 33:03
Right. And the, the thing that separates that is, you know, that a lot of the games focus on the characters when they are already heroes, right? When they, you know, we're already a team, we've already had these adventures, or the plan is we're going to start out together and then keep going. Kids in capes, at least as we're envisioning it now is about shorter arcs about the team just starting out. Oh, you know, of course, people can sort of bend things and keep going. But in the rules, as written is where envisioning now, there is an end point for your character. In the campaign, not every character dies at the end of it or anything that but at a certain point when you're when you fully embraced and fully understood your powers. Good game, right? Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 33:58
Which I like I like when games have an endpoint, because I think a lot of times we're kind of left hanging was like it's, you know, a beginning and a middle and a middle and a middle, middle. And like we there's no resolution. So like, knowing that a campaign has an endpoint is sometimes really good. Yeah. I'm still holding out for moms and target though.
Jonathan Gilmour 34:23
I mean, that's nice is the adventures that we did like banana did dad's on mowers. Yeah. Which is such a good.
Amelia Antrim 34:31
That's great. That's great. Yeah. All right. So what you're saying is I can write my hack of moms in target. Oh, please
Jonathan Gilmour 34:37
do? Absolutely.
Amelia Antrim 34:40
We'll see if I can find the time. But before we dive into the actual official real character creation part, are there any terms or concepts you feel like people need to know to really be able to follow along? It's okay, if the answer's no to
Doug Levandowski 34:58
Yeah, I don't think so.
Jonathan Gilmour 35:00
Yeah, I mean, we tried to stay away from specific language that people had to learn like we want to try to use. I mean, besides the different stats like charm, flight, grit, brains brawn and fight, I don't think there's much outs.
Amelia Antrim 35:13
Yeah, but those are kind of like call it what it is. It's like, yeah. Explain what grip is or fight. Yeah, right. So fight is fighting, or
Ryan Boelter 35:27
we can definitely get into that during character creation. And it should be pretty easy because it feels like the whole crux of the kids series is make it easier. And and so yeah, let's, uh, shall we? Shall we make some people?
Amelia Antrim 35:48
Let's make some people? Yeah, let's
Ryan Boelter 35:49
make some payable.
Amelia Antrim 35:51
Let's make some people. Oh, I'm so excited for this. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 35:55
All right. So kids, I'm brooms. I now have a character sheet and the book and what is the first thing that we need to do to make our characters
Doug Levandowski 36:05
first thing we do is we build the world. Oh, yes.
Amelia Antrim 36:09
Let's make like world building actually. I heard him say Outlander,
Doug Levandowski 36:21
I actually lied. Um, the first thing we do is we set any boundaries that we want to include here. Oh, yes, that is good. I'm a real real big fan of lines and veils. as just a as a way to sort of set stuff up. So I guess that is one term people would need to be familiar with. should explain for the listeners or do they know is that something you use a lot on here? It is
Amelia Antrim 36:43
something we use a lot. We also do have is it episode? Cares? episode that we did. Yeah. Episode Seven is all about safety tools and things like, Oh, yes. I mean, like, we can say real quick lines are things that our heart knows for us. veils are things that it's okay if we kind of disgust but we want to not, you know, usually it's that like, you know, Fade to black. Right? But for more information, see character evolution cast Episode Seven. Mm hmm.
Ryan Boelter 37:15
All right. Um, I don't have any, like big lines reveals that are outside of the norm. So like, pretty much everything is fair game, obviously. Or we're not going to get into actually playing the game. So don't have to worry too much about like, harm to kids or anything like that. I'm really just a lot of the basic like, decency knows, you know? It should be fine. Is there anything on your end, Doug, and John?
Jonathan Gilmour 37:52
I think that's a fair. That's a fine baseline for me for this as to what we do to them to play too much.
Ryan Boelter 37:56
Yeah, yeah. Let's just be decent people.
Amelia Antrim 38:00
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I think my one usual caveat of like, you can describe violence Do not tell me what sound it makes. Probably shouldn't come up in character creation. But you know, that's my one caveat. Don't tell me how it sounds.
Ryan Boelter 38:18
We keep it PG, cuz we're family friendly show. And we should be good if it can make it into a PG movie of today's time. I know PG movies of the 80s are a little different. Oh, yeah.
Amelia Antrim 38:33
They're Star Wars is PG 13. So that's very true. Just as true. All right. We're building right. And
Ryan Boelter 38:42
you keep saying that. Those words don't mean what you think they mean. Okay, yeah. So what do we do to build a world? Let's make a place.
Doug Levandowski 38:53
So we have a series of questions that will answer it around table. We can talk about our answers, but whoever is the sort of active player is the one who gets to make the decision about that.
Jonathan Gilmour 39:07
Okay. I'm gonna be on page five of the PDS.
Doug Levandowski 39:10
Yeah. And in that process will sort of naturally establish tone right you know, like, if you know, or school winds up being called Thurber MC Miller Amber's magical mess, you know, we have magical hoodlums, right? Versus like, grim dark Academy of horror. You know, we know we're, we're doing very, very different.
Amelia Antrim 39:35
What it does is Ryan school and one of those is my school.
Jonathan Gilmour 39:39
It's just a school for necromancers. Right, right. Yep. We're on Oh, kids.
Doug Levandowski 39:45
Just trying to keep you from it. See,
Ryan Boelter 39:48
now you've activated our trap cards of magical girls and necromancer
Amelia Antrim 39:52
characters around magical girls and necromancer.
Jonathan Gilmour 39:58
Yeah, yeah. So that's it. First thing in the collaborative creation is deciding on the town we want to take. So maybe we should stress that.
Amelia Antrim 40:06
That's true. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 40:08
I mean, we tend to get goofy regardless of how serious we get. Yeah, there's, there's always something that ends up being a little bit goofy,
Unknown Speaker 40:19
right? Like,
Jonathan Gilmour 40:20
I've already named my character goofy names. So
Amelia Antrim 40:23
there you go. Named started.
Jonathan Gilmour 40:27
I started on my character sheet. What is this?
Amelia Antrim 40:31
What is the name people first I left my name books out living room. Stop doing that.
Ryan Boelter 40:39
But I I don't know we did. We did what? A serious tone last series with a lot of goofiness kind of interspersed in to it. Like where everything was. Our characters took everything seriously, but but the world was not serious or wasn't as serious.
Amelia Antrim 40:57
Yeah, we were very serious about it.
Doug Levandowski 41:00
Yeah. Well, you went after this. Estamos right.
Ryan Boelter 41:03
Yeah, we could. Well, that's gonna be coming out this week. Okay. Yeah, I
Amelia Antrim 41:08
think that was just a spotlight. One right? Spotlight. Yeah. Cuz I was so
Ryan Boelter 41:12
so that's like our one of our bridge. Episode format.
Amelia Antrim 41:17
Thirsty sword lesbians was the one right before this. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm all for I think like, I'm sort of like, like, mid level silly.
Ryan Boelter 41:30
Yeah, somewhere in the middle. Right.
Amelia Antrim 41:32
Like, maybe like crazy.
Ryan Boelter 41:34
Oh, house is a good example of where our nonsense usually falls.
Jonathan Gilmour 41:41
It's one of my favorite shows ever if if I love you watched our house yet please go watch it. I have not.
Amelia Antrim 41:48
I haven't made yet keep telling me that I need to. Oh, yes. Yes. You both need to cuz my my sibling came over and watched it with them. And they were like, Mom, you have to watch it
Ryan Boelter 41:59
is delightful.
Jonathan Gilmour 42:00
I'm so sad that it's ending. It's one of those. I think there's two seasons and returned due to movies to finish it out. Yeah. But it's just such an incredible world. So good. See, I think I think like mid level goofy sounds good to me. Yeah, yeah, that works for me.
Amelia Antrim 42:18
Alright, milder certainty.
Jonathan Gilmour 42:22
There. Yeah, that's my middle name.
Doug Levandowski 42:26
Sure, I've seen the contracts. Yep. All right. Um, so I guess we'll go alphabetically here, then.
Jonathan Gilmour 42:38
Pretend GM that's asking us these questions. And we're all trading characters.
Amelia Antrim 42:42
Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, we're all kind of jamming for each other here.
Jonathan Gilmour 42:46
So don't need Yeah, you need a different GM voice
Doug Levandowski 42:48
that you use. I'll do a very serious GM voice.
Jonathan Gilmour 42:52
And what's your GM his name? Uh, Greg. Greg MASTERSON. Greg, this is initially GM GM. Yeah, like that. Perfect.
Doug Levandowski 43:05
Greg master said, I'll be your GM today we're going to play a very serious game. They expect that this will be serious. But of course, it's up to the players who expect won't disappoint me. Amelia, we're gonna start we're gonna start with you. Or school is called.
Amelia Antrim 43:21
It's going to be the Williamson Academy of Arts didn't have a really good acronym. I feel like we need to backronym this. Oh, we had a backronym that a backronym. It's like a short like magical word, though. You know, because I don't want to do like magic is like too many letters. Like try like,
Jonathan Gilmour 43:40
Yo, F
Ryan Boelter 43:45
prestigious,
Jonathan Gilmour 43:47
Mm hmm. Order?
Ryan Boelter 43:48
Yeah, order.
Amelia Antrim 43:50
is the order of a
Ryan Boelter 43:54
fantastical magic.
Jonathan Gilmour 43:56
spelled as one word. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 44:00
Finn. Fantastic ism. very prestigious. Order a fantastic.
Doug Levandowski 44:07
Okay, that sounds a little less serious than I was thinking. All right.
Jonathan Gilmour 44:13
Our GM today?
Ryan Boelter 44:17
Oh, that would be a dream.
Jonathan Gilmour 44:19
We need at least one good Woe to you before the end.
Doug Levandowski 44:22
Okay, Doug, our school is located. Location. Um, I feel like it's located on like, a secret island somewhere. Mm hmm. I'm just not sure like how big a body of water
Amelia Antrim 44:43
I think like a great lake maybe because I feel like the ocean is maybe too much like it's too secluded.
Ryan Boelter 44:48
secret island in the middle of a great lake. Yeah, I
Amelia Antrim 44:51
think it's like in the middle of like Lake Erie or something. URIs
Doug Levandowski 44:55
good word. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 45:00
also like Michigan is stinky.
Ryan Boelter 45:03
And Lake Superior is just way too cold.
Doug Levandowski 45:07
Alright, Jonathan? Yes, our head of school is named, and is best known for
Amelia Antrim 45:13
something serious. Jonathan,
Jonathan Gilmour 45:16
their name is Meredith's bleep glory. And they're best known because their soul has been transposed into an otamatone. And that's why the kids Troll. Troll them bleep bleep is that's the sound that the automaton meets.
Doug Levandowski 45:39
Now is Blackboard hyphenated, or one word or two separate words. hyphenated,
Amelia Antrim 45:45
that's her married name.
Jonathan Gilmour 45:50
maiden name was bleep
Ryan Boelter 45:51
yeah married into the board flame that makes sense Yep.
Jonathan Gilmour 45:55
Legendary board family okay they're very powerful they're known for their Porsche their potions and their potions. It's the large jumbo portions was their slogan
Doug Levandowski 46:10
The Golden Corral of potion makers
Jonathan Gilmour 46:14
all you can drink potion buffet you know, the the flame potion fire when
Amelia Antrim 46:22
everybody else comes in files and there's comes in like this Speedway like
Jonathan Gilmour 46:29
one of those Walmart. Like the giant mugs, the ones that are like a small cake. Yeah, yep.
Ryan Boelter 46:35
Yeah. Oh my gosh,
Jonathan Gilmour 46:38
they're the Monster energy drink a Porsche potions. You'll be
Doug Levandowski 46:48
great, Ryan. Yeah, one of our favorite pastimes is a magical combination of what in what?
Ryan Boelter 46:55
Okay, serious. Ryan? Serious? Yeah, I know. Um, has to be. It has to be something that is good for that, like, competitive anime type? Moment. So I want to say volleyball.
Amelia Antrim 47:20
I wanted to say was a cooking competition.
Ryan Boelter 47:23
Volleyball in a cooking competition, please. Yes.
Jonathan Gilmour 47:29
Despite these problems, like
Amelia Antrim 47:30
Iron Chef, like
Ryan Boelter 47:34
it's a magical combination of volleyball and a cooking competition, where you have to spike your ingredients literally. into various dishes
Doug Levandowski 47:43
in what's it called? Um,
Jonathan Gilmour 47:47
let's see. Ready? Set search.
Ryan Boelter 47:53
Yep, that's good. Yeah.
Doug Levandowski 47:57
Oh, my God. Read
Amelia Antrim 47:59
only like a little bit.
Doug Levandowski 48:03
Yeah, it's yeah, it's fine. All right, Amelia, and, Doug, I'd like each of you to give me a notable landmark in school.
Amelia Antrim 48:12
If there's a large closet, filled with something, what should go in the closet, I want to be a closet.
Ryan Boelter 48:21
Tiny statues. I feel
Amelia Antrim 48:22
like I want it to be something like super mundane. There is a large closet that is filled with singular socks. But if you ever tried to go through it, you will notice that it is an ever changing selection of singular socks. And this closet is the place where all of the lost socks in the world go at least for a short time. Just long enough for people to throw the other sock away.
Jonathan Gilmour 48:52
I have experienced with this closet.
Doug Levandowski 48:55
Alright, and Doug, what about you? Uh, alright. I feel like the IV is on a secret island. I think I want the docks to be important in some way. But I feel like I want there to be something. Like I feel like I want it to be connected to magical transportation in some way. But I haven't gotten my head around that.
Jonathan Gilmour 49:16
What if it's staffed by like, magical sea creatures of some sort?
Amelia Antrim 49:21
Yep. Yep. It is staffed largely by Octavius. He's an octopus.
Jonathan Gilmour 49:28
Oh, yeah. He's the master.
Amelia Antrim 49:30
Mm hmm. It's I mean, it's in a great leg. So I don't know why Spock was there but
Ryan Boelter 49:35
just a freshwater octopus.
Jonathan Gilmour 49:36
Humanoid one, right? Yeah,
Doug Levandowski 49:39
yeah. And, and I feel like it's where the local merfolk send their, like, teenaged myrrh, people to work. It's where teens Nimmer teens as bellies and so it's just it's real bad.
Jonathan Gilmour 49:57
Yeah, the Meursault are not great. grateful.
Doug Levandowski 50:00
I mean, they they never drive any sort of vessels, right? Like they swim. So they're just, like forever backing stuff into things. I mean, luckily we can like magically minister, but yeah,
Amelia Antrim 50:13
yeah, we let the teens be valets for like generations and nobody's quite sure how that started or why we've continued. But at this point, it's such a tradition that we can't really back out.
Ryan Boelter 50:23
It's a good learning experience, and they'll be better people.
Amelia Antrim 50:28
And it's important for them to get college credit.
Doug Levandowski 50:31
And I also feel like that's a way that like the local, like the older mer community gets the the teenagers to not want to go on land. Like the Little Mermaid. They're like, look at this dumb crap. They're driving like, right? You don't want to be part of that. You have a tail. You could swim, right? Yep.
Amelia Antrim 50:50
We're gonna get it. Right. The boats.
Jonathan Gilmour 50:56
We have the best sport ever. So that would be a draw.
Doug Levandowski 50:59
That's true. And I feel like the merfolk are also like, and look at all the problems with socks. Like why would you want feet? Hmm,
Amelia Antrim 51:07
it's true. It's true. Like if you're a more person, you only need the one. You like to keep the bottom of your tail warm, right? Yeah. Yeah. Science.
Doug Levandowski 51:19
John and Ryan? Yeah, the most unconventional one of the most unconventional classes we have at the school is
Jonathan Gilmour 51:26
how about Catster Omate. C, which is the art of bringing dead books back to life. Nobody really knows what that means yet. It's a class that you can take.
Ryan Boelter 51:39
So it's basically necromancy for books. Yeah. Well, we're
Amelia Antrim 51:42
just like slowly rebuilding the Library of Alexandria. Yeah. Oh,
Ryan Boelter 51:45
yeah. accent
Doug Levandowski 51:48
that sounds very serious.
Ryan Boelter 51:51
That's important work.
Jonathan Gilmour 51:52
But the buttstock when they're brought back to life,
Amelia Antrim 51:54
okay, we do it without like, messing something up. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 52:01
But you know, that knowledge is preserved now. And that's doing good work in this world. That's important thing. Yep. Oh, goodness. Um, another unconventional class.
Amelia Antrim 52:13
Brian, now's your chance for like, outfit transformation. One on one.
Ryan Boelter 52:18
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Gosh, how do I want to? How do I want to call it? How can we how can we?
Amelia Antrim 52:28
How can make it more official?
Ryan Boelter 52:29
Yeah. It's gotta be. It's gotta be like, magical transformation. One on one. Right.
Jonathan Gilmour 52:37
Something to do with the Emperor's clothing maybe
Amelia Antrim 52:40
illusionary like,
Ryan Boelter 52:42
I want I want our school to be like the premier jumping off point for all the magical girls of the world. Yeah. So like, you come to this school. Specifically, if you want to, you know, embrace your your inner Magical Girl tropes.
Amelia Antrim 53:00
Why can't I remember what it's called
Jonathan Gilmour 53:01
in? Oh, outfit? transmogrification. Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 53:07
I think it's like so bad at words.
Ryan Boelter 53:12
Oh, it's a fancy word for outfit. Right. That's
Amelia Antrim 53:14
what I'm trying to think of like,
Jonathan Gilmour 53:15
a tire. And sambal.
Amelia Antrim 53:19
Yeah, ensemble transfiguration.
Ryan Boelter 53:21
Oh, that. There you go. That sounds more official. Ensemble transfiguration.
Doug Levandowski 53:27
Cool. All right. Well, we have created our school and, you know, it's concerned about the seriousness, but on the very serious person when we get into play, it'll be serious. Yeah, for sure.
Ryan Boelter 53:38
I guarantee once we play, it'll be serious. Perfect. Don't hold me to that when we get to the fanfic portion. Awesome. So is that it for the initial world building? Then?
Doug Levandowski 53:55
There's there's one more step. Oh, excellent. So what are the systems of power that exists within the world? You should discuss whether your game will feature systematic, systemic oppression
Jonathan Gilmour 54:07
strip to the strip to step Did I skip a step? Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 54:13
You're right write rumors?
Doug Levandowski 54:15
Were the designers really should have put that as like a bullet point or a number at the end of that.
Jonathan Gilmour 54:20
Step seven, instead of do this after steps, it makes it
Doug Levandowski 54:23
easy to miss I can't believe I paid $25 for this book and they didn't do that.
Ryan Boelter 54:31
It's okay. Greg. is not
Doug Levandowski 54:33
okay. It's not okay. I could do a better job. I'm
Jonathan Gilmour 54:36
very long and angry email and made sure every time they post on social media to let them know how angry I am about this thing. That's a good idea.
Amelia Antrim 54:44
Super useful method and like always gets you the results that you why
Jonathan Gilmour 54:48
I'm so happy every time.
Doug Levandowski 54:51
Designers love feedback. So
Amelia Antrim 54:52
yeah. They were super looking for your opinion. Greg, thanks.
Doug Levandowski 54:58
Everyone wants to know what Greg, thanks.
Amelia Antrim 55:03
So cool. Thanks.
Doug Levandowski 55:06
Well, go ahead and give us your first cool rumor.
Amelia Antrim 55:09
First. Cool. I'm
Jonathan Gilmour 55:13
actually done. We have two things here that aren't bullet points, one piece of the school's history and then the rumors. Oh, oh, yes.
Amelia Antrim 55:20
Oh, yeah. Either known to be true or a famous rumor and then a rumor about the current goings on at the school. Hmm. Okay, so one piece of school history. True or not? Do I have to say whether it's true? All right. Side. Dragon.
Jonathan Gilmour 55:42
I wonder if you want me to go.
Amelia Antrim 55:44
Yeah, go for it.
Jonathan Gilmour 55:45
Um, the island was actually transported here from someplace out. And it raised the level of the lake by several feet when it was transported here.
Amelia Antrim 56:01
Very cool.
Jonathan Gilmour 56:03
Some people say there's a sunken town still.
Ryan Boelter 56:06
Like along the edge of the lake. Yeah. It's gotta be in Wisconsin somewhere.
Amelia Antrim 56:11
Wisconsin does unfortunately, hearing.
Ryan Boelter 56:13
Oh, no. I mean, they're all connected.
Amelia Antrim 56:20
From somewhere else. Maybe Island is actually a chunk of Wisconsin is now in the middle of like, Oh, yeah. There you go. Take that.
Ryan Boelter 56:28
For some reason. I keep thinking of like, like Michigan. I don't know why, probably because it's right next door. Okay, I gotta get into
Amelia Antrim 56:35
here. Can this island please just be the town of Sheboygan though. We already made fun of Sheboygan. So we probably shouldn't like, we already did that in different episode. But for Sheboygan,
Ryan Boelter 56:50
I have nothing against Sheboygan. It's just where all the weird
Amelia Antrim 56:53
stuff happens. It's like the Florida of Wisconsin. Okay. Okay. All right. So it was somewhere else
Ryan Boelter 57:02
transported here from somewhere else.
Doug Levandowski 57:04
Hmm. I am gonna say that the school a few decades ago had to shut down for one year after they brought back a very dangerous book from the dead. Ah, nice. That's dark. That's grim. I love it.
Ryan Boelter 57:26
Um, the, the school has never won the ReadySet serve championship, or they've come in second place multiple times.
Amelia Antrim 57:36
To a Russian school.
Amelia Antrim 57:43
Think of something I'm having such a hard time right now? Um,
Doug Levandowski 57:47
can we say it always comes in second?
Ryan Boelter 57:50
Yeah, not always. Sometimes. The best they've done was in second. Okay.
Amelia Antrim 57:55
Never made it all the way to the top. Yeah. Rough.
Ryan Boelter 57:59
So they they get close a lot, but then they always lose out to somebody else.
Amelia Antrim 58:03
The school is in constant threat of being shut down. Because of like, tax reasons and like eminent domain issues with the merpeople.
Ryan Boelter 58:19
Not to mention the land that this island originally came from. Hmm, yeah, I'm sure I'm sure there's some like property dispute.
Amelia Antrim 58:27
Yes.
Jonathan Gilmour 58:30
Wisconsin. Yeah. Like a batch please.
Doug Levandowski 58:36
Alright, and now some rumors. Okay.
Jonathan Gilmour 58:39
I think there's some tension from the merfolk right now too, and people think they're going to try to take over the stool. The
Ryan Boelter 58:51
okay. So, the, the, the results of the class projects from the necromancy class are not disposed of, as they say they are. They are actually stored in a hidden area under the school. Maybe a hidden undead army. Just under the school. What else are you gonna do with them?
Doug Levandowski 59:16
I think there's a rumor that merited bleep blurbs. Consciousness has been replaced again in the body, but now by someone or something who's impersonating Meredith that's the rumor. No idea. That's okay.
Jonathan Gilmour 59:33
They have been acting weird.
Amelia Antrim 59:37
There's a rumor that the entirety of last year's Senior Class actually cheated on the final exams, probably by drinking some blood, family potions. And there's a question obviously, whether Meredith knew about it and helped them
Jonathan Gilmour 59:56
large brain juice. Yeah, be smart.
Doug Levandowski 1:00:00
It'll Smarty up.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:03
It was that to get some more federal funding for for the school, because exam scores were not the greatest.
Amelia Antrim 1:00:15
Right? Well, and you know, the school can't really spare that funding right now because they're in the middle of litigation with more people.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:22
That's true. And allegedly,
Amelia Antrim 1:00:27
allegedly. I don't understand why Meredith can't just give us some of that board family money.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:33
But seriously, fine. Like she doesn't care. If it's even Meredith.
Amelia Antrim 1:00:39
Well, that's true. That's probably proof that it's not.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:44
You know, the old narrative would have given up some of their money for for the school.
Doug Levandowski 1:00:49
Mm hmm. Sorry. Now, we talked about systems of oppression. But I kind of think on a PGA show we just say like, there's a little bit of like simmering tension with the merch, people. But like, we're not going to lean into racism, sexism, classism, right?
Amelia Antrim 1:01:04
No, I think it's much more about like, you know, this island was not in the middle of their lake, and now it is. Yep.
Ryan Boelter 1:01:14
It's been that way for a while is
Amelia Antrim 1:01:15
your island data? My lake gets, you know, like I said, it's an issue of eminent domain. It's not about who it is, or is not more people, it is you put your island in my leg?
Ryan Boelter 1:01:28
Well, I mean, you know, the permits for a plot of under underwater land to build on that land, which most Marfil do. They didn't say what they're going to build, though. And then they just put an island there. Right. So it's on their great plot of land, not taking up more space than they said they're going to, it's just a bit higher than they thought.
Amelia Antrim 1:01:53
It's, well, it's, you know, it's blocking the views. And there are rules on, you know, how tall your islands can be. That's true. This is really a zoning issue. When it comes down, this is not about racism, this is a zoning issue.
Doug Levandowski 1:02:08
Exactly. Which you Well, anyway, that's that's a deep dive into American history.
Amelia Antrim 1:02:15
Get into like, gentrification, and you know, it's an island does not belong here. It's blocking the views,
Doug Levandowski 1:02:21
right? Yep. Alright, everybody know you're gonna select a troop from the playbook and take the appropriate sheet and then make some troops selections for your character, their greed, strengths and flaws familiar in first name.
Ryan Boelter 1:02:34
Alright. See, electing a trope? Yeah, they
Jonathan Gilmour 1:02:38
start towards the badge around age 80 to
Ryan Boelter 1:02:46
a PDF is loading it being the file.
Doug Levandowski 1:02:49
I think I'm going to go with a hottie descendent if that's okay with everybody. I'm going to create a character I would never actually want to play in real life since I'm not going to actually
Amelia Antrim 1:02:59
know my favorite part of the show. There are no consequences to your decisions. Uh huh. which obviously means that Ryan's gonna pick the bullheaded muscle. No. Kidding.
Ryan Boelter 1:03:12
So let's see here. They got aloof teacher, bullheaded and muscle charismatic slacker.
Jonathan Gilmour 1:03:18
I was thinking funny plots are mine.
Ryan Boelter 1:03:22
doting caretaker. Famous teacher. So you can you can be adults in this. It seems that's cool. Firstborn caster who? Golden Child. Okay,
Amelia Antrim 1:03:34
Ryan. Yeah, he's helped me pick.
Ryan Boelter 1:03:36
Okay, I'm haunted survivor.
Amelia Antrim 1:03:41
That's 100 survivor is reluctant Oracle. Yeah, I
Ryan Boelter 1:03:47
just saw that one too withdrawn bookworm? No, that was good. That was kind of up your alley, I think.
Amelia Antrim 1:03:53
Yeah. There's also offbeat eccentric if we want to, you know, go there. I mean, that's fair. It's also like not far off
Jonathan Gilmour 1:03:59
what grade said are we thinking under class after class or faculty?
Amelia Antrim 1:04:03
I kind of think upper class upper class like I think like we you know, we're like not brand new. We know what we're doing. But like we're not you know, in charge of anything. Ryan is going to go for perfect prefect or golden child's or Miko, reliable bestie
Ryan Boelter 1:04:23
I was looking at all of those and internally said no, I don't want to glean that far into my nonsense slides. I know. I gotta be. Let's see. Gosh, this. There's too many good ones. I know. Alright, I'm gonna go I'm getting content survivor.
Amelia Antrim 1:04:46
Yeah, Ryan. Yeah. How dare you. Okay, well, now I feel like I have to like, I'm gonna go with reliable bestie
Ryan Boelter 1:04:55
There you go. Take that. My plane works.
Amelia Antrim 1:05:00
Wait, well we changed it up officially this time for once. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:05:05
All right onto survivor and you're the reliable bestie in which which ones were you dug in on?
Jonathan Gilmour 1:05:12
The honey descended and I am a funny plots. Oh, I have to research what the clumsiest animals are real quick All right. I mean giraffe is an option. They do seem pretty clumsy.
Amelia Antrim 1:05:29
I like yeah, like just like the idea that they're so gangly, you know that like even if they're not clumsy, they're awkward.
Jonathan Gilmour 1:05:35
Who's soft is real good, too. It seems like a really useless Oh, yeah. Familiar.
Doug Levandowski 1:05:41
Miniature slot though.
Jonathan Gilmour 1:05:43
Yeah, not like a mega slot. Right? There. Maybe it is. And that's part of the problem. This is just translate right things. Call to Action.
Amelia Antrim 1:05:56
Yeah, like that. This was probably our most serious character creation ever. And I seriously enjoyed it. It was so serious. Yeah. This is good fun. I had a I had a great time making these characters. I wasn't sure how I would feel going into it. Just because I think magical school can kind of be like, you know, like, like, there's the one quintessential magical school that we want to talk about. And you know, everything else kind of feels like a knockoff of that sometimes if you don't get it just right. But I had such a great time with this. And like what I was gonna say lovable group, but maybe not.
Ryan Boelter 1:06:37
Most of us. Yeah. GBD you'll see next next episode, how lovable most of us are. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 1:06:48
But before we let you go for this week, we have a couple of calls to action.
Ryan Boelter 1:06:52
Yeah. First up if you want to help out this show and others on the network, consider the One Shot network patreon@patreon.com slash one shot podcast. Also, check out our brand new Tik Tok page at Character Creation Cast on tick tock a like and subscribe, I guess. Is that what they
Amelia Antrim 1:07:15
like and subscribe as the youth say?
Ryan Boelter 1:07:18
We're not we're not really sure how how it all works. Did
Amelia Antrim 1:07:21
we hit that age? Like when did we hit that age? Or is like I don't know. Internet's anymore.
Ryan Boelter 1:07:26
Yeah. I mean, I seen a slow decline over the last like, decade or so. So
Amelia Antrim 1:07:32
yeah, I mean, I feel like it's been in the last like few years that all of a sudden I'm like, oh, it's moving along without me. Where's the tick tock? Tick tock. What? Yeah. I said before, like, I may have to finally get one now because I'm like, tired of being left out.
Ryan Boelter 1:07:48
We're gonna have to make some cool. Trendy tic TOCs.
Amelia Antrim 1:07:53
Yeah, maybe if I just stay on our show, tick tock that we're like, there you go. force me to
Ryan Boelter 1:07:58
make make it nice and official. And, yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll see.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:04
Theoretically, it
Amelia Antrim 1:08:05
can subscribe or whatever,
Ryan Boelter 1:08:06
radically should be worthwhile. Yes.
Amelia Antrim 1:08:09
Find us on the TIC tock. Next, absolutely. Please check out the trans rights bundle on Itch. Ryan has a game in it included along with hundreds of other designers and even more games, it's like over 400 At this point, it is such a good deal at a suggested price of $5 or more. And it really helps kids that are suffering in Texas right now, after some damaging anti trans legislation that was recently passed. It's a great cause and an absurd amount of games for that cost. So please check that out. Consider giving more than the minimum amount if you can in order to help some people out and just get a boatload of games that you have to sift through.
Ryan Boelter 1:08:56
Yeah, absolutely. There's so many good ones in there. 30 sort of lesbians as in their wander home. I Gosh, that woman yeah,
Amelia Antrim 1:09:05
there's some big games and I was surprised that like the number of like, bigger, recognizable games to that it's not just people's like one page, homebrew kind of stuff that there's a lot of bigger games in there too.
Ryan Boelter 1:09:15
Yes, it's really great. Absolutely. Check it out in there goes towards a really wonderful cause. And if you have some time after all of that, consider leaving a rating and review for our podcast. The pandemic has been pretty hard for listener numbers for quite a lot of podcasts out there. This one included.
Amelia Antrim 1:09:36
A sad I'm gonna be honest with everybody listening like when we looked at the numbers and compare them it was like Oh, but I like what we're putting out. Please listen to it. We but I know that I have because I'm not on a commute anymore. I have mostly stopped listening to podcasts. I just don't have the time to do it that I did before. Yeah, so totally get it but but also help Don't stop listening to mine.
Ryan Boelter 1:10:03
I'm finding them listening to about half of what I used to. Yeah. And it is hard to squeak in a couple of minutes here and there to actually listen, I sent I literally do not commute anymore, either. But yeah, it's, it's been rough for our numbers. We were doing, we were doing pretty well, we were upward trending, and then the pandemic hit, and then everything just kind of went downhill from there. But we understand that good reviews is one of the best ways to spread the word and get new listeners to our feed. So if you can head over to Apple podcast, pod chaser, podcast addict, or wherever you can leave reviews for podcasts. If we can find it, we will read out every five star review right here. And not only will it help us out, but it'll make us feel pretty amazing as well. And then we get to thank you personally, like we're about to do for this review we got from Archlord to 112. They said, so I've been on ICCC kick for a while Ryan and Amelia have such an engaging chemistry and work so well with the game creators, slash enthusiasts they have on the show. They look at the mechanisms built into the various games without deep diving of crunch, give a wonderful insight into whatever system they're discussing. They genuinely enjoy the work they do and their approach of we can make what is fun to make and what sounds like fun to play because there are no consequences of that decision. Has to be snorting with laughter on the bus on many occasions, to if you're after a snapshot of game acts that you've been seeing on Twitter, bot on edge and haven't gotten around to reading yet, and want to be entertained and get some insight from the games creators and fans. Take a listen. Find whichever series has a system you know, or interested in and stick it in your ears. You won't regret it.
Amelia Antrim 1:12:05
Oh, thank you. So nice. Thank you. We also enjoy not suffering the consequences of our decisions. I I honestly love how much it has freed me up to do things that like, weren't I honestly, I think you especially because you are very prone to like making the ideal mechanical decision. Oh, yeah. I'm much more than I was. And I think you've really branched out and been like, Oh, this looks cool. Now. You know, there's something to be said for feeling. And I I honestly think it has changed how I make regular characters too, because I've started to do a little bit of like, you know what, that sounds fun. Yeah, it may not be ideal later on. But let's let's go with it and see what happens.
Ryan Boelter 1:12:49
Honestly, sometimes I've actually done the unideal thing on purpose just because it was, you know, a garbage decision.
Amelia Antrim 1:12:59
Right. Yeah. There's something really freeing about being able to say, I do what I want.
Ryan Boelter 1:13:05
Yep. Well, thank you so much for that review. That was so good.
Amelia Antrim 1:13:11
That was awesome. Well, that is it for today's episode. You can come back next week as we dive fully into our character creation and make some truly amazing but very serious characters. Very serious, lovable, very serious characters. Until then, take care of yourselves everyone, drink some water, get some rest, get vaccinated, stay safe out there and keep making those amazing people. We'll see you next time.
Amelia Antrim 1:13:56
Thank you for joining us for part one of this character creation series. We'll be back in part two picking up right where we left off.
Ryan Boelter 1:14:03
Character Creation Cast is a production of the One Shot Podcast Network and can be found online at www dot character creation cast.com. Add 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.com I one of your hosts Ryan boelter and I can be found on twitter at Lord Neptune or online at Lord neptune.com or other hosts Amelia Antrim can be found on twitter at ginger reckoning. Music for this episode is used with a Creative Commons license, or with permission from the podcast they originated from. Further information can be found within the show notes. Our main theme music is hero remix by Steve combs and it's used with a Creative Commons license. This podcast is owned by us under Creative This episode was edited by Ryan boelter. Further information for the game systems used and 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. I 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 will see you next time.
Amelia Antrim 1:15:49
Now we got a ransom show blurbs show blurbs show my show by show of nerves.
Ryan Boelter 1:15:57
Character Creation Cast is hosted by the One Shot Podcast Network. If you enjoyed our show, visit one shot podcast.com where you'll find other great shows like a horror Borealis
Amelia Antrim 1:16:09
a horror borealis is an actual play Monster of the Week podcast set in the 1990s in the fictional town of Revenant, Alaska, just south of the nation's least visited national park and way north of everything else, a reclusive small game hunter with a magical secret. A young anarchist librarian with a passion for conspiracy theory, and a sensible park ranger with a strong local book club following find themselves pulled together by common threads woven mysteriously into their past when monsters begin plaguing their tiny community, but they soon discover the things they're fighting run much deeper and much closer to home. Tune in for a story about identity, empathy, community mental illness and healing and stay for the beloved local diner.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai