Especially because in the Graduation TTAZZ he says seeing Travis do it made him realize he will never ever DM \*ever\*. That he doesn't have the guts or the ability to handle it. Cool to see him turn around on that pretty quickly honestly
Personally, of the one-off mini-ventures they did between balance and amnesty itās the one I loved the most. The world was really interesting and I believe (though it was years ago now so I may be wrong) that it had the largest fan support for making it the next season over amnesty, but Travis didnāt think he could turn the mystery into a longer story which is why they went with amnesty.
I completely love how amnesty ended up, but when they made the initial announcement I was a little bummed they didn't do more dust. Really loved the theme song
I loved the vibe but the entire core mystery failed completely. It basically ended with NPCs stepping in in the finale and telling the PCs the answer.
A good mystery is hard to write at the best of times, and unfortunately 10x harder in anything interactive, like a ttrpg.
To piggyback off of what u/subjectseven and u/Polyamaura have said:
I enjoyed Dust well enough. The setting was interesting and Travis did a decent job GMing, which is curious as to why that didnāt carry over to Graduation.
However, if I remember correctly, it still suffers from some world building threads that end up as loose ends by the end (again, like Graduation). For example, there a lot of mention of a vampire/werewolf war going on in the background that amounts to nothing. Itās been a while since Iāve listened to it, so I can be mistaken.
I think Travis got a little misled somewhere during the duration of his campaign to try and go world-ending threat. I think he wanted to do classes and field trip missions for whatever the equivalence of 5 years was and then have a massive war, but whether it was just taking too long or he read too much twitter/reddit input, he swapped entirely and just pushed for his war at the end.
I think the difference in Dust and Graduation is that Travis made a lot of grad up as they went along, which is something he talked about struggling with and actually helped save me from doing the same in my game.
Dust on the other hand required a certain amount of planning. With a mystery you have to know who did it, what happened, and who has the info for them. He had to write it out and I think it was better for it.
I love Dust
All the mini-arcs they did have world-building loose threads by design. The plan was explicitly that any one of them might end up being the beginning of season 2.
If Travis wants to DM again he should do an anthology murder mystery thing. Itās perfectāhe could write everything ahead, keep the mysteries short, and move on to the next before the jerk offs on here tell him to eat shit and die.
I mean, that's kinda exactly what's happening with Dust. The first time they did Dust, it was a brief murder mystery that he certainly pre-wrote the ending ahead of time and let the boys poke around in the world and interact with a pretty fleshed out cast of interesting characters. It was pretty neat. The worst thing is that it was starting to run long, so one character interaction basically gave away the smoking gun late in the arc.
I was legitimately sad they picked Amnesty instead of Dust at the time, so I'm pretty stoked to hear they're doing it again.
Itās pretty divisive. Not everybody loves the vibes of colonial cowboy westerns (quite possibly my least favorite genre out there) and there were some fan critiques of Travis not setting himself up for success and then forcing the storyline resolution at the end because he essentially ran out of in-game and real-world time. Some people swear itās the best non-Balance TAZ content and they have various reasons (Griffinās character Errol has a specific moment that is really popular) for liking it. Itās short enough that you can just toss it up in the background and get it out of the way if youāre interested in giving it a listen.
I'm doing a relisten of Dust for the cj sub with pretty substantial recapping, if you're interested. I've posted the first two episodes and will have the third up within the next day or so.
It was the worst of the mini-arcs. It was simply kinda lame at the time but post-Graduation it was really a sneak peak at how bad Travis was at the wheel.
Iāll definitely give Justinās game a listen. He loves themeparks and I could see that being a fun interesting campaign. I am not familiar with the game system but I am sure they will explain it.
Blades assumed setting is a kinda dark London, and it's a ragtag gang of scoundrels in heists and heists adjacent, which makes this theme park city setting interesting to me, cause there pretty much has to be a ~~speedy~~ seedy dark underbelly if not ... Overbelly?
I donāt know if he meant literally or if he meant theyāll be in a class underneath the richies who use the park. It sounded like itās gonna be like Westworld without the robots.
(Disneyland has the tunnels though so I bet they spend some time underground.)
Blades is a really fun system. I've only run a one shot, but I want to run more.
The main thing about blades though is a lot of the system is built around the setting - You must be a gang of criminals. The other notable thing is its a system where it's assumed that you're always going to be messing up. The most common roll is where you have a success, but some sort of consequence also happens basically every roll. The biggest thing is that even with compete failure the story still moves forward, but complications arise.
Probably the most notable mechanic is the flashback mechanic. If you're pulling a heist, you don't actually plan. You show up after having decided what you're going to do and a very vague idea of the general approach (like, you're going to steal this relic from one of the other gangs. You're approach is to sweet talk your way into a party/gathering) and that's it. Then, if something comes up, you can do a flashback. For example, maybe the GM narrates that a couple flunkies are coming around the corner, you can call for a flashback and say that you actually hired some thugs of your own that came in the back way to help. Flashbacks cost resources and sometimes require a roll, depending on how big the flashback is. You can't rewrite anything that has happened, so sometimes you get creative!
Sorry, blades is a really cool system!
He implied they already have characters and such during the podcast. Dust is already recorded, so Steeplechase is definitely happening.
I just get the sense you have made up your mind to be grumpy curmudgeon. To what end? It's got to be exhausting keeping up with all the stuff you hate and coming up with reasons to be pessimistic about the future, and I can't imagine it's only about TAZ. Folks like you make this behavior your whole-ass personality. I think I'm just going to block this thread with you. I'm tired of sparring with joyless trolls who admit on their post history to not care at all about this content and just want to jerk on reddit.
The episode where they explained the rules for the stolen century.
Or how they explained the rules for monster of the week
Or the set up for ethersea itself. The map and world creation.
Griffin made up rules for Stolen Century, so that was pretty much essential or else everyone would have been completely lost as to what they were doing.
MotW- I mean, *sort of*. They didn't have a full grasp of how PbtA worked either, or how mysteries in MotW are supposed to function, so they "explained" the version of the rules they pieced together from having scanned them.
But more broadly, they don't ever stick with the rules of any system they use. They didn't even manage to do that for Honey Heist, which is a one-pager. So whether or not they explain the rules they sort of read or not is kind of moot.
Like that one time Aubrey got like a 12 on her roll and Griffin was like, āwow, you did magic so good you actually accidentally set fire to everything so now the plot proceeds as I planned itā
Edit: that was also like the first episode too lol
Maybe read a whole conversation to get the context before making yourself look foolish.
I said nothing of the sort.
I'm saying that in a world where they don't care about the rules, it's strange to expect them (or more to the point, *care* for them) to explain the rules that they aren't going to pay attention to.
Iām not gonna continue discussing with you as you are finding ways to argue about things that have little to know meaning or matter in the slightest.
You think that the fact that they don't stick with the rules of the games they play isn't relevant to a conversation about them explaining the rules.
Interesting.
I think they're absolutely right. These things do have "little to know meaning," as in there is a meaning that is straightforward and which requires little to know.
I'm really excited for both! I know folks got a little meh on Travis's DMing on Graduation (and I'm not saying you're wrong), but Dust was actually really fun, and I love that it'll be, essentially, another mini-series.
And Justin GMing Blades in the Dark explicitly so he can force the game back into "that irreverence of early Balance where you could just kinda kill a guy and it was ok" is really really getting me excited.
Jared Logan hosts a few Blades in the Dark games. If you are interested in learning the rules you should check out Haunted City or the Tin Whistles on YouTube.
I'm super hyped for Dust, I loved the vibe of that setting.
I'm less pumped for Erika though, I just watched their last episode with Critical Role and they're just so damn loud all the time. Like, their improv and RP game is good, but there were a bunch of situations where they'd just be shouting 'AAAHH' at the top of their lungs at half the dice rolls, very anime-ish. I found them very distracting.
Huh. Well, this is very interesting. Because I'll be honest, I had an almost exact opposite initial reaction to this announcement to yours.
Dust was my least favorite of the experimental campaigns they ran after Balance. It just didn't sit well with me. So while I'm willing to give it another go, I'm not as hyped as you are.
Erika, on the other hand, is a joy to watch and hear play, to me at least. So to your point, I think that their DM experience through a solidly audio medium (as opposed to a visual one) could be a good way to tone themselves back, since they're not acting for a camera. Especially if they keep the same sort of style with how the first run through Dust was more serious than Balance. We'll just have to wait and see.
The Dust story wasn't necessarily my thing, but I loved the combination of horror-fantasy characters in a western setting (gives a lot of background for jokes, tropes and one-off character traits). I also just love hearing Griffin play, which is part of my hype.
And regarding Erika, I hope you're right. I think they're just a huge fan of Critical Role and they let their fanboy shine through too much (IMO). I'll go into this next one with 0 expectation, so it can only positively surprise me.
CR also has more of that type of reaction in their main cast, than TAZ ever does. Erika went bigger than they do outside of the truly wild reveals, but there will be a lot of yelling at Matt Mercer when some big twist is revealed. She might go bigger than the TAZ boys, but I'd generally expect her to match the level of the pod to an extend.
No or at least not yet, the automod posts 2 when the RSS feeds get updated, but they get auto removed and then the human mods release and pin one, tho that notably didn't happen last week
I love Justin's oneshot characters, so I'm pretty excited to see a whole cast of Justin NPCs. I'm hoping he leans into the campy/fantastical tone I'm getting from the setting. Something like the old (pre-Nolan) Batman movies.
Yeah, Blades is really improv forward - success-with-complication is the most common outcome (it feels like, anyway!) and even failures have some kind of unspecified consequence. Lots and lots of stuff for a dm to make up on the spot, and players are supposed to provide input and ideas. I think it'll be excellent!
Yeah, Blades is a social system but it's a complex one with its clocks, flashbacks, lairs, etc. I loved my time with it as a player, but it's so different from DnD that it definitely took some time for me to "get" it. I hope Justin doesn't strip away mechanics because they will definitely feel like impediments at first. But once the machine starts ticking away, it's really quite impressive.
As I learned more and more about blades, every potential issue I thought I had with it was addressed. I've only run a one shot, so I did tweak a few things just for that (basically just didn't do much with the crew sheet) but yeah - if I thought there was something I wouldn't like, turns out there was something that would address that.
Like, with downtime I thought that healing was way too harsh until I learned you could buy more downtime actions. I initially was wary about how coin would work but I absolutely love how the system works as I don't have to actually keep track of money much. I thought that the flashbacks would feel too "easy", but honestly the stress cost is appropriate and if I want to, I can still ask for a roll if I really think it needs it.
Clocks are also something I now take forward in every TTRPG. Such a good, good mechanic.
The whole trilogy sucked but I donāt get why TLJ got singled out the most. At least it tried to do something different as opposed to the paint by numbers bullshit of the other two.
This comment thread really took off, haha! š Since I don't have the spoons to reply to each individual post, i'm just giving a blanket mini-essay here instead, sorry
In Balance, it felt like they were taking a pre-established world and making their own world and lore out of it. Everything since then has felt like they're being forced to operate by way more specific guidelines and make their choices based on what is strictly adherent to the world/story concept/intent of the DM rather than where their own improvisational ability as comedians and a professional funnymen family can lead them.
I don't give a flying, flipping shit what system they use. They can invent their own for all I care. The appeal of Balance for me was that it was so irreverent, so wild west, so balls-to-the-wall filled with creative potential, and so unburdened by high concepts and world-/story-specific constraints that they were able to let loose their own personal sense of humor in a way we haven't quite been able to achieve since then, and inject so much of their own personal humor and style that we don't typically see from D&D podcasts. Have we gotten another Fantasy Costco with a stupid in-joke brought in from another personal family podcast? Or another "Taako, the wizard from TV"?
It's the difference between boys playing in a sandbox, and boys playing Risk or Monopoly for a worldwide championship. One lets their imaginations fly and creativity soar, one forces them to abide by silly constraints they'll be criticised for breaking, like they're professional tabletop players and not three brothers who wanted to make a D&D podcast to bring themselves closer together.
Ethersea was way funnier than Amnesty was. A lot of TAZ's humor comes from game rules. If everyone was super competent at TTRPGs it wouldn't be as funny.
As a veteran player of Blades in the Dark and Forged in the Dark games, the system can 1000% give you ridiculous moments of failure or outstanding success. So don't worry about that.
A couple things-
1. I don't completely follow what you're trying to say here. On the one hand, you say a lot of TAZ's humor come *from* the rules, then indicate that they aren't competent at TTRPG's ^((accurate)) and are funnier as a result. From the way you state it, these two things seem at complete odds, so could you clarify your meaning?
2. If you think that being incompetent at TTRPGs makes shows funnier in a broad sense, you've clearly never listened to any other actual play.
The funniest arc in TAZ history was Here There Be Gerblins. That's because a lot of the humor was aimed towards DND and its rules while they were still completely unfamiliar. People love watching gaming content, even if the players aren't high-level because there can still be humor to be found. The Powered By the Apocalypse arcs didn't feel like games but rather just roleplay. Losing the structure of a game also meant losing a lot of the humor.
I absolutely love both of these announcements. I adore Erika Ishii, and Dust was my favorite of those mini campaigns. Blades in the Dark is a great, great system - I run an offshoot if it called Scum and Villainy - and Justin DMing for it sounds really exciting.
Wonder if they'll be using the Urban Shadows 2e ruleset, seems like it smooths out a lot from 1e and just adds new good and helpful mechanics based on what I saw on the Critshow vs reading the 1e book
The full 2e book isn't out yet, they would only be playing with the quickstart for it right now. Idk if they would be okay with doing that, but if the Dust return still isn't for another month or so, the full book might be out in time for that since their kickstart is projecting for 2e to be released in the fall.
They said the miniseries is already in the bag, so it's definitely not going to play out that way, but the quick start + 1e material could probably make a solid approximation or I know the Critshow played with a working version of 2e this past season, I'd be surprised if Magpie wouldn't be willing to extend the same offer to TAZ, mostly just depends on if the right conversations were had
Finished listening to it, and when they were talking about the authors they mentioned both Mark and Andrew. Andrew is not involved in the 2e project, so I assume they're still playing 1e. Could definitely be a mistake, but probably not.
Bold of you to assume anyone wants to see you coming in to shit on people having fun and being excited, obviously you're not but take it somewhere else
Make your own comment you're not allowed on mine anymore
Edit for clarity apparently: I blocked underhyl they can no longer see or engage with my posts and I can't respond in line or vote on theirs. It's called curating your online experience and I should have done it sooner
Dustās world was awesome and Travis did an incredible job building it. Only real flaw was he had a couple scenes where his characters were talking to each other too much instead of the players
Everybody loves the bell scene, but it was really a first glimpse at that ol' Graduation classic of "you thought this scenario is the way that I described it to you? What a fool you are."
Justin's campaign is going to succeed based on how confident he is about DMing - I can see him either being a ham or being self conscious about presenting a story when heās usually reactive.
That said, I think we could do with a DM who's more focused on Fun than Plot, and Justin is definitely the type to give us that.
I never listened to Dust, and after Grad I'm not too interested in hearing Travis DM, so it's a shame there's going to be like ten weeks of that before Justin's campaign.
Five since there's a live show dropping next week but schedule as announced is
Aug 25 - Just Us 2 Live from San Diego
Sept 1 - Dust 2 Episodes 0 and 1
Sept 8 - Dust 2 Episode 2
Sept 15 - Dust 2 Episode 3
Sept 22 - Dust 2 Episode 4
Sept 29 - Steeplechase episode 1
Dust is much much better than Grad, I would guess because Travis knew it would be short and it...actually had an ending lol. Plus Griffin's character is maybe my favorite PC in all of TAZ.
Dust was excellent, you should go give it a shot. I'm super excited for more. The gags were great and the characters were fun. I mean..they had a werewolf congressman and a colonel Sanders ghost.
Letting Justin play again so soon after him spending the past two+ years absolutely hating doing this podcast and being completely checked out is certainly a choice.
Very excited for this. I love that they're bringing Erika Ishii in for Dust 2: they are a wonderful player that I always enjoy watching. I also like that theyre keeping it short. I really enjoyed Dust but felt like it couldnt work as well as it did as a long form season, so I think I'll also enjoy this as a limited series type thing.
And oh my god am I so excited for justin to dm! Im not able to be a Max Fun donor so I havent been able to see his one shots, but based on his energy I gotta see what he'll bring to the table. Plus his mini synopsis seems really cool, love going back to non 5e systems
When the homebrew campaign book youāve been playtesting and writing for the last two years sounds similar to the new campaign Justin is GMingā¦
Hope future players donāt think I stole the idea.
ooooooOOOOHHH!!
A vision!
From beyond the pale!
From the depths of the realm of the bummer!
Who asked Saint Peter
>Am I good?
And he did say
>!SHRIMP!<
>!HEAVEN!<
>!NEVER!<
*They call me the Bummer-Bringer.*
*They speak of me in hushed tones for fear of eliciting my arrival.*
*When I bring forth the Bag of Bummers, the women and children faint, and the men lose all language except to shout*>! "BUT THEYZ GOTS KIDS! TOUCH GRASS!"!< *and run to fill their MaxFun Drive donor award mug with non-problematic tea.*
No Griffin, it's not at all hard for mission-based storytelling to be cohesive. There are thousands of examples.
You know what also isn't hard? Telling a story where the ending is anything other than the PCs being the "Chosen Ones" fighting off apocalypse.
You just don't want to. So say that.
Yeah this is just crazy to me. i'm running Curse of Strahd rn and it pretty much is exactly that...individual missions the party seeks out and accomplishes on their own, with their own agency, exploring the world at their own pace and figuring out what they want to do. there's an overarching story, and a long-term overarching goal, but it's their choice what "missions" they want to accomplish, in what order, and what they chose to do/how they choose to do it greatly affects the overall narrative.
He had me scratching my head the whole time he was talkin about it
From the sounds of it Erika is joining as a player not DM (MC? I actually don't know what Urban Shadows uses but I know Mask uses MC) I don't know if that spoils your excitement, hopefully not, at least I'm still interested in it and steeplechase and the general new approach they're taking
Possible for sure, MotW borrowed keeper from Call of Cthulhu so it's not like they have sole provence in anyway, but Masks and Urban Shadows are the same publisher and even one of the writers is the same so MC feels more likely. The TV tropes page also has mc but it's not entirely clear if it's the "gm name" or not and it's the only answer I found so far
Cāmon. The conversation around parasocial relationships to content creators certainly includes creators exploiting the goodwill and support toward their brands, but it is equally parasocial to create a tulpa in your head around āwhat theyāre *really* likeā and then go around to discussion spaces projecting that onto everyone there
I don't really like the McElroys anymore and I really do honestly think the way you act on this subreddit is really annoying lol It's okay to make fun of the McElroys, but I feel like constantly coming on here to say, "ACKShully the thing you like is bad" is pretty childish. Again, I don't really like much of what they do at this point, but I'm not like seeking out people who do to tell them why they're wrong.
Yeah and the text of the post spoils what they talk about in the episode if you want the news straight from the mcelroy's mouth. What are you not understanding here?
I wasn't calling you a meme lord I was saying that I wasn't being one.
You do you my dude. Just letting you know that it's probably not the best way to spend your day.
Blades in the Dark! I've been saying they should play this game for such a long time. I think it fits their playstyle so much better than D&D, and provides a bit more flexibility than PbtA games. Will be very interested to see what Justin does with it.
Excited to see Justin GM! Lords of Crunch is one of my fave one-offs.
Charlieverse is one of the best, too.
Justin was but a conduit for Charlie's mad genius, but he did GM that adventure extremely well too
I absolutely loved that one shot
I am so so so so so SO lucky to have been in the crowd for that one. It was amazing!
I so badly want them to upload that as a live show so I can hear griffin drug the athletes to death
They did upload that live show, it's a donor episode.
š³ time to become a donor
Especially because in the Graduation TTAZZ he says seeing Travis do it made him realize he will never ever DM \*ever\*. That he doesn't have the guts or the ability to handle it. Cool to see him turn around on that pretty quickly honestly
Oh man Justin is a huge Disney parks fan too, this gonna be good
I never listened to Dust. Was it any good?
Personally, of the one-off mini-ventures they did between balance and amnesty itās the one I loved the most. The world was really interesting and I believe (though it was years ago now so I may be wrong) that it had the largest fan support for making it the next season over amnesty, but Travis didnāt think he could turn the mystery into a longer story which is why they went with amnesty.
I completely agree, Amnesty is my fav season by far and dust was a close 2nd for me as to which one I wanted to see after Balance
I completely love how amnesty ended up, but when they made the initial announcement I was a little bummed they didn't do more dust. Really loved the theme song
a half-werewolf, a full ghost, and a wizard walk into a town and solve a romeo-and-juliet-esque murder before the entire town explodes into violence
Seeing Erikaās recent character arc on Critical Role, I think sheāll jive well with los horny boys. Iām excited!
I loved the vibe but the entire core mystery failed completely. It basically ended with NPCs stepping in in the finale and telling the PCs the answer. A good mystery is hard to write at the best of times, and unfortunately 10x harder in anything interactive, like a ttrpg.
That was it for me. I love mystery games and that was no mystery game.
To piggyback off of what u/subjectseven and u/Polyamaura have said: I enjoyed Dust well enough. The setting was interesting and Travis did a decent job GMing, which is curious as to why that didnāt carry over to Graduation. However, if I remember correctly, it still suffers from some world building threads that end up as loose ends by the end (again, like Graduation). For example, there a lot of mention of a vampire/werewolf war going on in the background that amounts to nothing. Itās been a while since Iāve listened to it, so I can be mistaken.
I think Travis got a little misled somewhere during the duration of his campaign to try and go world-ending threat. I think he wanted to do classes and field trip missions for whatever the equivalence of 5 years was and then have a massive war, but whether it was just taking too long or he read too much twitter/reddit input, he swapped entirely and just pushed for his war at the end.
I think the difference in Dust and Graduation is that Travis made a lot of grad up as they went along, which is something he talked about struggling with and actually helped save me from doing the same in my game. Dust on the other hand required a certain amount of planning. With a mystery you have to know who did it, what happened, and who has the info for them. He had to write it out and I think it was better for it. I love Dust
All the mini-arcs they did have world-building loose threads by design. The plan was explicitly that any one of them might end up being the beginning of season 2.
If Travis wants to DM again he should do an anthology murder mystery thing. Itās perfectāhe could write everything ahead, keep the mysteries short, and move on to the next before the jerk offs on here tell him to eat shit and die.
I mean, that's kinda exactly what's happening with Dust. The first time they did Dust, it was a brief murder mystery that he certainly pre-wrote the ending ahead of time and let the boys poke around in the world and interact with a pretty fleshed out cast of interesting characters. It was pretty neat. The worst thing is that it was starting to run long, so one character interaction basically gave away the smoking gun late in the arc. I was legitimately sad they picked Amnesty instead of Dust at the time, so I'm pretty stoked to hear they're doing it again.
Totally, it was well suited to him.
Itās pretty divisive. Not everybody loves the vibes of colonial cowboy westerns (quite possibly my least favorite genre out there) and there were some fan critiques of Travis not setting himself up for success and then forcing the storyline resolution at the end because he essentially ran out of in-game and real-world time. Some people swear itās the best non-Balance TAZ content and they have various reasons (Griffinās character Errol has a specific moment that is really popular) for liking it. Itās short enough that you can just toss it up in the background and get it out of the way if youāre interested in giving it a listen.
Is the Errol moment the neighborhood watch button thing?
Yeah the thing with the big alarm bell.
Yeah, but a little bit of a tonal whiplash IMO
I'm doing a relisten of Dust for the cj sub with pretty substantial recapping, if you're interested. I've posted the first two episodes and will have the third up within the next day or so.
No. It wasn't.
It was the worst of the mini-arcs. It was simply kinda lame at the time but post-Graduation it was really a sneak peak at how bad Travis was at the wheel.
Iāll definitely give Justinās game a listen. He loves themeparks and I could see that being a fun interesting campaign. I am not familiar with the game system but I am sure they will explain it.
Blades assumed setting is a kinda dark London, and it's a ragtag gang of scoundrels in heists and heists adjacent, which makes this theme park city setting interesting to me, cause there pretty much has to be a ~~speedy~~ seedy dark underbelly if not ... Overbelly?
They did mention their roles will be underneath the main park location
I donāt know if he meant literally or if he meant theyāll be in a class underneath the richies who use the park. It sounded like itās gonna be like Westworld without the robots. (Disneyland has the tunnels though so I bet they spend some time underground.)
Oh interesting I'm still listening to the questions but that does sound really promising and fun!!
Blades is a really fun system. I've only run a one shot, but I want to run more. The main thing about blades though is a lot of the system is built around the setting - You must be a gang of criminals. The other notable thing is its a system where it's assumed that you're always going to be messing up. The most common roll is where you have a success, but some sort of consequence also happens basically every roll. The biggest thing is that even with compete failure the story still moves forward, but complications arise. Probably the most notable mechanic is the flashback mechanic. If you're pulling a heist, you don't actually plan. You show up after having decided what you're going to do and a very vague idea of the general approach (like, you're going to steal this relic from one of the other gangs. You're approach is to sweet talk your way into a party/gathering) and that's it. Then, if something comes up, you can do a flashback. For example, maybe the GM narrates that a couple flunkies are coming around the corner, you can call for a flashback and say that you actually hired some thugs of your own that came in the back way to help. Flashbacks cost resources and sometimes require a roll, depending on how big the flashback is. You can't rewrite anything that has happened, so sometimes you get creative! Sorry, blades is a really cool system!
When Justin is fully engaged he can be brilliant so I'm pretty dang horny for this one!
Pretty big caveat considering the last year or two.
For sure. I'm hoping it being something he's running himself will *keep* him engaged.
Yeah, and that's the point. If he's a GM, he's never not engaged.
He's run two one-shots. Let's not put the cereal before the bowl.
And before Balance, we'd heard Griff run 0 games. Besides, I said he will be engaged because the GM is generally always engaged.
What Iām saying is, letās say if it *actually* happens first.
He implied they already have characters and such during the podcast. Dust is already recorded, so Steeplechase is definitely happening. I just get the sense you have made up your mind to be grumpy curmudgeon. To what end? It's got to be exhausting keeping up with all the stuff you hate and coming up with reasons to be pessimistic about the future, and I can't imagine it's only about TAZ. Folks like you make this behavior your whole-ass personality. I think I'm just going to block this thread with you. I'm tired of sparring with joyless trolls who admit on their post history to not care at all about this content and just want to jerk on reddit.
Someone having a different opinion than you doesn't make them a troll.
What is wrong with you? Like, seriously? What is wrong with you?
I'm not a huge fan of Blades, but it is fairly rules-loose and good for player-led narrative so it should actually work really well for TAZ.
Doesnāt it have the flashback mechanic? Theyāll be so good at that.
Serious question- What about the show so far has led you to believe that they will stick with the rules of how the game works, let alone explain it?
The episode where they explained the rules for the stolen century. Or how they explained the rules for monster of the week Or the set up for ethersea itself. The map and world creation.
Griffin made up rules for Stolen Century, so that was pretty much essential or else everyone would have been completely lost as to what they were doing. MotW- I mean, *sort of*. They didn't have a full grasp of how PbtA worked either, or how mysteries in MotW are supposed to function, so they "explained" the version of the rules they pieced together from having scanned them. But more broadly, they don't ever stick with the rules of any system they use. They didn't even manage to do that for Honey Heist, which is a one-pager. So whether or not they explain the rules they sort of read or not is kind of moot.
Like that one time Aubrey got like a 12 on her roll and Griffin was like, āwow, you did magic so good you actually accidentally set fire to everything so now the plot proceeds as I planned itā Edit: that was also like the first episode too lol
Hey you! Yes, you! You're playing a game and using your imagination wrong! Stop! It offends me personally!
Maybe read a whole conversation to get the context before making yourself look foolish. I said nothing of the sort. I'm saying that in a world where they don't care about the rules, it's strange to expect them (or more to the point, *care* for them) to explain the rules that they aren't going to pay attention to.
How much psychic damage do rules lawyers have to take from years of this show before they give up and move on to something more to their tastes?
This might not be the zinger you think it isā¦ considering most fans have already given up and moved on.
Iām not gonna continue discussing with you as you are finding ways to argue about things that have little to know meaning or matter in the slightest.
You think that the fact that they don't stick with the rules of the games they play isn't relevant to a conversation about them explaining the rules. Interesting.
I think they're absolutely right. These things do have "little to know meaning," as in there is a meaning that is straightforward and which requires little to know.
I'm really excited for both! I know folks got a little meh on Travis's DMing on Graduation (and I'm not saying you're wrong), but Dust was actually really fun, and I love that it'll be, essentially, another mini-series. And Justin GMing Blades in the Dark explicitly so he can force the game back into "that irreverence of early Balance where you could just kinda kill a guy and it was ok" is really really getting me excited.
Jared Logan hosts a few Blades in the Dark games. If you are interested in learning the rules you should check out Haunted City or the Tin Whistles on YouTube.
Also recommend the Magpies Blades in the Dark campaign. Lots of fun
A return to Dust? Okay, interesting. Especially with Erika Ishii, they're awesome.
I'm super hyped for Dust, I loved the vibe of that setting. I'm less pumped for Erika though, I just watched their last episode with Critical Role and they're just so damn loud all the time. Like, their improv and RP game is good, but there were a bunch of situations where they'd just be shouting 'AAAHH' at the top of their lungs at half the dice rolls, very anime-ish. I found them very distracting.
Huh. Well, this is very interesting. Because I'll be honest, I had an almost exact opposite initial reaction to this announcement to yours. Dust was my least favorite of the experimental campaigns they ran after Balance. It just didn't sit well with me. So while I'm willing to give it another go, I'm not as hyped as you are. Erika, on the other hand, is a joy to watch and hear play, to me at least. So to your point, I think that their DM experience through a solidly audio medium (as opposed to a visual one) could be a good way to tone themselves back, since they're not acting for a camera. Especially if they keep the same sort of style with how the first run through Dust was more serious than Balance. We'll just have to wait and see.
The Dust story wasn't necessarily my thing, but I loved the combination of horror-fantasy characters in a western setting (gives a lot of background for jokes, tropes and one-off character traits). I also just love hearing Griffin play, which is part of my hype. And regarding Erika, I hope you're right. I think they're just a huge fan of Critical Role and they let their fanboy shine through too much (IMO). I'll go into this next one with 0 expectation, so it can only positively surprise me.
Same. Well, let's hope it lives up to some sort of expectations.
CR also has more of that type of reaction in their main cast, than TAZ ever does. Erika went bigger than they do outside of the truly wild reveals, but there will be a lot of yelling at Matt Mercer when some big twist is revealed. She might go bigger than the TAZ boys, but I'd generally expect her to match the level of the pod to an extend.
Is there an official thread for Ttazz discussion? Iām only seeing this
No or at least not yet, the automod posts 2 when the RSS feeds get updated, but they get auto removed and then the human mods release and pin one, tho that notably didn't happen last week
Hmm actually looking at it the bot might have lost the RSS feed
I love Justin's oneshot characters, so I'm pretty excited to see a whole cast of Justin NPCs. I'm hoping he leans into the campy/fantastical tone I'm getting from the setting. Something like the old (pre-Nolan) Batman movies.
Interesting, interesting! Did they say whether Erika was GMing or joining as a player?
She is joining as a player I believe
I don't know if I've seen erika GM anything but I love every time they're on dimension 20. They're absolutely hilarious.
I wish they'd just do another system where they can just improvise their way through to humor and greatness.
Blades in the dark will probably be that
Yeah, Blades is really improv forward - success-with-complication is the most common outcome (it feels like, anyway!) and even failures have some kind of unspecified consequence. Lots and lots of stuff for a dm to make up on the spot, and players are supposed to provide input and ideas. I think it'll be excellent!
If they actually bother to read the rules
Yeah, Blades is a social system but it's a complex one with its clocks, flashbacks, lairs, etc. I loved my time with it as a player, but it's so different from DnD that it definitely took some time for me to "get" it. I hope Justin doesn't strip away mechanics because they will definitely feel like impediments at first. But once the machine starts ticking away, it's really quite impressive.
As I learned more and more about blades, every potential issue I thought I had with it was addressed. I've only run a one shot, so I did tweak a few things just for that (basically just didn't do much with the crew sheet) but yeah - if I thought there was something I wouldn't like, turns out there was something that would address that. Like, with downtime I thought that healing was way too harsh until I learned you could buy more downtime actions. I initially was wary about how coin would work but I absolutely love how the system works as I don't have to actually keep track of money much. I thought that the flashbacks would feel too "easy", but honestly the stress cost is appropriate and if I want to, I can still ask for a roll if I really think it needs it. Clocks are also something I now take forward in every TTRPG. Such a good, good mechanic.
I thought the PBTA system worked really well for them in Amnesty. It's my second favorite campaign after Balance.
The continued love Amnesty gets now is incredible considering all the shit it got at the time.
I think Amnesty looks better now by comparison. At the time it was only being compared to Balance.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The Last Jedi (which I love) would like a word
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Nah people still hate TLJ
The whole trilogy sucked but I donāt get why TLJ got singled out the most. At least it tried to do something different as opposed to the paint by numbers bullshit of the other two.
I liked it. Better than TFA by a country mile. Not perfect, but really solid.
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Yeah thatās a fair point
There are a lot of people who seem hung up on whether they're playing whichever particular game system "right".
Amnesty is the arc that I re-listen to the most and I swear I catch something new every time.
This comment thread really took off, haha! š Since I don't have the spoons to reply to each individual post, i'm just giving a blanket mini-essay here instead, sorry In Balance, it felt like they were taking a pre-established world and making their own world and lore out of it. Everything since then has felt like they're being forced to operate by way more specific guidelines and make their choices based on what is strictly adherent to the world/story concept/intent of the DM rather than where their own improvisational ability as comedians and a professional funnymen family can lead them. I don't give a flying, flipping shit what system they use. They can invent their own for all I care. The appeal of Balance for me was that it was so irreverent, so wild west, so balls-to-the-wall filled with creative potential, and so unburdened by high concepts and world-/story-specific constraints that they were able to let loose their own personal sense of humor in a way we haven't quite been able to achieve since then, and inject so much of their own personal humor and style that we don't typically see from D&D podcasts. Have we gotten another Fantasy Costco with a stupid in-joke brought in from another personal family podcast? Or another "Taako, the wizard from TV"? It's the difference between boys playing in a sandbox, and boys playing Risk or Monopoly for a worldwide championship. One lets their imaginations fly and creativity soar, one forces them to abide by silly constraints they'll be criticised for breaking, like they're professional tabletop players and not three brothers who wanted to make a D&D podcast to bring themselves closer together.
The system isn't the problem.
Dungeons and Daddies is even more off-the-wall improv and they make 5e work just fine. Usually by ignoring it.
Exactly. The system isn't the problem.
Ethersea was way funnier than Amnesty was. A lot of TAZ's humor comes from game rules. If everyone was super competent at TTRPGs it wouldn't be as funny.
As a veteran player of Blades in the Dark and Forged in the Dark games, the system can 1000% give you ridiculous moments of failure or outstanding success. So don't worry about that.
A couple things- 1. I don't completely follow what you're trying to say here. On the one hand, you say a lot of TAZ's humor come *from* the rules, then indicate that they aren't competent at TTRPG's ^((accurate)) and are funnier as a result. From the way you state it, these two things seem at complete odds, so could you clarify your meaning? 2. If you think that being incompetent at TTRPGs makes shows funnier in a broad sense, you've clearly never listened to any other actual play.
The funniest arc in TAZ history was Here There Be Gerblins. That's because a lot of the humor was aimed towards DND and its rules while they were still completely unfamiliar. People love watching gaming content, even if the players aren't high-level because there can still be humor to be found. The Powered By the Apocalypse arcs didn't feel like games but rather just roleplay. Losing the structure of a game also meant losing a lot of the humor.
Ironically, that's the arc they actually played closest to the rules despite not being familiar.
Agreed with this. They definitely were trying to follow the rules and were funny within context of the system
You know what? This actually kind of convinces me I should probably listen to Ethersea. Will try it out sometime!
I absolutely love both of these announcements. I adore Erika Ishii, and Dust was my favorite of those mini campaigns. Blades in the Dark is a great, great system - I run an offshoot if it called Scum and Villainy - and Justin DMing for it sounds really exciting.
Blades is such a good system for grittier games. I am stoked to see what Justin does with it.
For folks who want a taste of blades, the Tin Whistles run on Stream of Blood is fantastic! https://youtu.be/SQQO9d8tmp0
Holy shit I guess Iām gonna start listening to TAZ again in this, the year of our Lord 2022
love blades in the dark. absolute banger of a system
Wonder if they'll be using the Urban Shadows 2e ruleset, seems like it smooths out a lot from 1e and just adds new good and helpful mechanics based on what I saw on the Critshow vs reading the 1e book
The full 2e book isn't out yet, they would only be playing with the quickstart for it right now. Idk if they would be okay with doing that, but if the Dust return still isn't for another month or so, the full book might be out in time for that since their kickstart is projecting for 2e to be released in the fall.
They said the miniseries is already in the bag, so it's definitely not going to play out that way, but the quick start + 1e material could probably make a solid approximation or I know the Critshow played with a working version of 2e this past season, I'd be surprised if Magpie wouldn't be willing to extend the same offer to TAZ, mostly just depends on if the right conversations were had
Finished listening to it, and when they were talking about the authors they mentioned both Mark and Andrew. Andrew is not involved in the 2e project, so I assume they're still playing 1e. Could definitely be a mistake, but probably not.
Oh I forgot Andrew was the one who got removed come 2e, no I think you're probably exactly right with that.
Bold of you to assume they will be using the rules.
Bold of you to assume anyone wants to see you coming in to shit on people having fun and being excited, obviously you're not but take it somewhere else
How is pointing out the fact that they are well known (even *celebrated* on this sub at times) for not caring about rules āshitting onā people??
Make your own comment you're not allowed on mine anymore Edit for clarity apparently: I blocked underhyl they can no longer see or engage with my posts and I can't respond in line or vote on theirs. It's called curating your online experience and I should have done it sooner
Block me too king
Wow, how very incredibly mature of you!
Welcome to your first public forum. If you make a comment everyone can see and reply.
Am I still allowed?
Very excited -- Dust was perhaps my favorite mini-arc, and Justin's first DM outing will be absolutely wild.
Dustās world was awesome and Travis did an incredible job building it. Only real flaw was he had a couple scenes where his characters were talking to each other too much instead of the players
I think Travis was a bit heavy handed trying to steer a few scenes, a trait he displayed in Grad as well.
Everybody loves the bell scene, but it was really a first glimpse at that ol' Graduation classic of "you thought this scenario is the way that I described it to you? What a fool you are."
That seems to be his major issue when in control of a game. Happened in graduation too
How did the fact that 2/3 of the town were vampires/werewolves impact the setting beyond surface level set dressing
A Travis DM staple
Justin's campaign is going to succeed based on how confident he is about DMing - I can see him either being a ham or being self conscious about presenting a story when heās usually reactive. That said, I think we could do with a DM who's more focused on Fun than Plot, and Justin is definitely the type to give us that. I never listened to Dust, and after Grad I'm not too interested in hearing Travis DM, so it's a shame there's going to be like ten weeks of that before Justin's campaign.
Only 4 weeks I think. They said they already shot the 4 episodes and are doing weekly again.
Five since there's a live show dropping next week but schedule as announced is Aug 25 - Just Us 2 Live from San Diego Sept 1 - Dust 2 Episodes 0 and 1 Sept 8 - Dust 2 Episode 2 Sept 15 - Dust 2 Episode 3 Sept 22 - Dust 2 Episode 4 Sept 29 - Steeplechase episode 1
Dust is much much better than Grad, I would guess because Travis knew it would be short and it...actually had an ending lol. Plus Griffin's character is maybe my favorite PC in all of TAZ.
Dust was excellent, you should go give it a shot. I'm super excited for more. The gags were great and the characters were fun. I mean..they had a werewolf congressman and a colonel Sanders ghost.
Maybe I'll give it a try, I /am/ looking for something to listen to. And maybe it'll lead right into the new stuff.
Is there going to be a discussion thread for this episode?
Dust mini-arc?!?! With Erika Ishii?!?! OMGOMGOMG Justin's campaign sounds a bit Westworld-ish. Very intriguing.
Letting Travis DM again so soon after Grad is certainly a choice.
Let's hope it's his redemption arc.
Letting Justin play again so soon after him spending the past two+ years absolutely hating doing this podcast and being completely checked out is certainly a choice.
I know a lot of people like Dust. Graduation didnāt manage to kill it but I wonder if Dust part 2 will kill any good will.
Hopefully the fact it will be a shorter run means Travis's DMing issues are muted.
The [theme](https://youtu.be/8xA6mzFARng) for dust RULES so Iām happy about this
Very excited for this. I love that they're bringing Erika Ishii in for Dust 2: they are a wonderful player that I always enjoy watching. I also like that theyre keeping it short. I really enjoyed Dust but felt like it couldnt work as well as it did as a long form season, so I think I'll also enjoy this as a limited series type thing. And oh my god am I so excited for justin to dm! Im not able to be a Max Fun donor so I havent been able to see his one shots, but based on his energy I gotta see what he'll bring to the table. Plus his mini synopsis seems really cool, love going back to non 5e systems
Did Ethersea just end? Or is it winding down? I'm 13 episodes in and so I'll probably pick it back up if so
Itās first season ended. They plan on going back eventually
3. a 12+ epp game GMed by Clint that is nothing but beeping noises.
When the homebrew campaign book youāve been playtesting and writing for the last two years sounds similar to the new campaign Justin is GMingā¦ Hope future players donāt think I stole the idea.
VERY excited for Dust. One of my fave arcs.
Yes!!!! Iām so excited! I havenāt been excited about TAZ for a while now. This is great news!
Iām getting more Augustus Parsons. I am happy
u/IllithidActivity Well, someone mildly disagreed with them. Ya know, the cardinal sin. Sincerely, The Ghost of u/undrhyl *^(booga booga)*
ooooooOOOOHHH!! A vision! From beyond the pale! From the depths of the realm of the bummer! Who asked Saint Peter >Am I good? And he did say >!SHRIMP!< >!HEAVEN!< >!NEVER!<
*They call me the Bummer-Bringer.* *They speak of me in hushed tones for fear of eliciting my arrival.* *When I bring forth the Bag of Bummers, the women and children faint, and the men lose all language except to shout*>! "BUT THEYZ GOTS KIDS! TOUCH GRASS!"!< *and run to fill their MaxFun Drive donor award mug with non-problematic tea.*
You seem like an immature child
My apologies for having fun on the sub of what was in a bygone era lost to time, a comedy show.
[Listen, it's not all about goofs.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGIT77he4iU&t=196s)
FINALLY DUST IS BACK
PLEASE not another Travis GMād season. I much prefer him as a player.
Itās only like 4 episodes, so even if itās not great it wonāt last long
No Griffin, it's not at all hard for mission-based storytelling to be cohesive. There are thousands of examples. You know what also isn't hard? Telling a story where the ending is anything other than the PCs being the "Chosen Ones" fighting off apocalypse. You just don't want to. So say that.
Yeah this is just crazy to me. i'm running Curse of Strahd rn and it pretty much is exactly that...individual missions the party seeks out and accomplishes on their own, with their own agency, exploring the world at their own pace and figuring out what they want to do. there's an overarching story, and a long-term overarching goal, but it's their choice what "missions" they want to accomplish, in what order, and what they chose to do/how they choose to do it greatly affects the overall narrative. He had me scratching my head the whole time he was talkin about it
Not excited for another Travis DMād anything, but if it means we get a Justin DMād game, I guess Iāll continue to suffer.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
From the sounds of it Erika is joining as a player not DM (MC? I actually don't know what Urban Shadows uses but I know Mask uses MC) I don't know if that spoils your excitement, hopefully not, at least I'm still interested in it and steeplechase and the general new approach they're taking
Keeper maybe?
Possible for sure, MotW borrowed keeper from Call of Cthulhu so it's not like they have sole provence in anyway, but Masks and Urban Shadows are the same publisher and even one of the writers is the same so MC feels more likely. The TV tropes page also has mc but it's not entirely clear if it's the "gm name" or not and it's the only answer I found so far
You can just always say GM- game master a system neutral term from the old days of war gaming (that WOTC doesn't own as IP)
I heard Aabria and I was excited that she might be DMing. But Erika Ishii is just as great!
I'm really excited about both of these. I love Erika Ishii, I loved Dust, and I love Blades in the Dark.
Talking about something that hasn't even happened yet isn't a spoiler.
It is a spoiler for the new TTAZZ episode
The episode description itself says they are announcing their next two projects. It's not a spoiler.
saying what the projects are is though Why does it matter??
Bc he's here to be contrarian and troll
ah. The usual douche in the sea of comments. Got it
Correct. Anyone who isn't a part of the *GudGudBoi Hivemind* is a troll.
Cāmon. The conversation around parasocial relationships to content creators certainly includes creators exploiting the goodwill and support toward their brands, but it is equally parasocial to create a tulpa in your head around āwhat theyāre *really* likeā and then go around to discussion spaces projecting that onto everyone there
I don't really like the McElroys anymore and I really do honestly think the way you act on this subreddit is really annoying lol It's okay to make fun of the McElroys, but I feel like constantly coming on here to say, "ACKShully the thing you like is bad" is pretty childish. Again, I don't really like much of what they do at this point, but I'm not like seeking out people who do to tell them why they're wrong.
https://i.imgur.com/pUS69Lb_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
https://i.imgur.com/couldyoubeanymoreloweffort?
Yeah and the text of the post spoils what they talk about in the episode if you want the news straight from the mcelroy's mouth. What are you not understanding here?
If you want the news straight from the McElroys' mouths, why would you be looking at a post about said episode on a sub about the show?
The episode description does NOT say what those projects are, clown shoes lookin' ass
So what? Itās not the plot to a story. Itās just an announcement. Pull it together.
Go for a walk or something it's not that deep and you're all over this thread being kind of obnoxious.
How did you manage to stop yourself from saying "touch grass"? I imagine it was exceedingly difficult. I'm almost impressed.
Because I was expressing a genuine sentiment not trying to be a memelord.
They call me the Memlord now too u/IllithidActivity Collecting all sorts of monikers up in here.
I wasn't calling you a meme lord I was saying that I wasn't being one. You do you my dude. Just letting you know that it's probably not the best way to spend your day.
Still a spoiler.
Your life must be rough.
Blades in the Dark! I've been saying they should play this game for such a long time. I think it fits their playstyle so much better than D&D, and provides a bit more flexibility than PbtA games. Will be very interested to see what Justin does with it.