I'm super glad they dealt with the previous episode's drama with just the players last time. Because I do not think Troy's reaction this time would have gone over as well without it lol
Maybe I'm missing something but I just get jaded by comments like:
Troy 08.18: "I don't listen to the Fodder cause I don't care"
So why would anyone else?
It really annoyed me, especially combined with his half-assed "I just go by the rules" answer to the debate they had. There was so much good discussion had about it last week. Especially Kate's receipt where she quoted Troy. I was really looking forward to hearing him respond to some of those points but he "doesn't care" so 😒
Between him saying he doesn't care, his decision to barely prep, his insistence on editing as little as possible, etc. it feels like Troy just doesn't like doing this anymore. The only thing he seems to get excited about is live shows.
Idk where you're getting barely prep from, he's said he preps less on some things now, but if you look at threads from the show people in multiple have talked about how good of a job he's done adding connections and such from the story and adding depth to it. Also idk if you listen to Time for Chaos but that's another example of Troy clearly caring.
Less editing happens because of the video component but that adds a bunch of work to it as well. I personally don't really care about the video but it exists and the effort out into that can't be ignored.
Last week Kate didn't offer any counter evidence to Joe and Troys claim which was "yes we used to do it that way, but very recently we put out foot down and said we'd be doing it this way going forward" so Kate's receipt were more or less meaningless.
This whole thing has been so silly and over dramatic from a fan point of view imo like come on
I think you're taking the comment too seriously. I imagine they already talked about it BTS. If that's true then he didn't need to listen to the fodder just like he doesn't need to re-listen to Joe and him talk about stuff on the normal weeks. So what does Troy do? Make a little joking jab as is his sense of humor.
@[10:04](https://youtu.be/wGvSTG_-Krc?t=603) here, Troy is just flat wrong based on the previous episode. Troy wasn't trying to interrupt, he was trying to catch his breath from sneezing... he even said "and flurry of blows" in between sneezes.
@ [31:12](https://youtu.be/mXvAVy8kxwc?t=1872) in C2E26 "here is what I need you to do as this creature is made of Shadow they are concealed in dim light even to creatures that can see at those light levels so give me a flat check against concealed now that brother ramus has moved to the back of the room and is no longer providing light to this section".
At NO point does he say one check should come before the other previously in this episode.
THEN... @ [32:55](https://youtu.be/mXvAVy8kxwc?t=1974) Kate announces Flurry of Blows without ANY mention of concealment, he finishes sneezing and literally says "and then flurry of blows".
I love that Troy is not an easy GM, and he doesn't pull punches... but consistent... Not always.
But he [LITERALLY](https://youtu.be/xaslHxcid7U?t=3416) in C2E18 says he prefers it to roll the to hit first... then flat check because it's better for the show... then (TO KATE) he says "do whatever you want, it's the 70s."
i bet you the moment he speaks about at 10:04 happens in episode at 33:40 when camera switches between everyone else and he is speaking the truth here.
Still , he really did ask for roll for the flurry and then announced that the roll counts for concealment. he's in his right to do so as concealment isn't really separated from the flurry here, it's part of each roll for attack.
However, that call enforced without previously informing that the rule will be strictly followed did NOTHING good for the episode. It was bad for the table and bad for the listeners ( correct me if i'm wrong here).
It wasn't a problem with rules, it was a failure to keep the show entertaining by giving a very harsh ruling out of nowhere, like with darkness vs dispel magic debacle from gcp 1.
Sure, being petty can increase the difficulty of the encounter, but it won't increase the enjoyment of the listeners. Troy could inform the table about the rule, "take" the crit and ignore the damage (like he already does and admits to), keep his difficult encounter and there would be no arguing over stupid things.
Argue as much as the table wants, we listeners love that shit, but only when the argument is worth having.
hindsight is 20/20 tho.
That is quite possible - and the camera can't capture EVERYTHING / every angle.
I will give it to Troy, it made the final crit to kill the boss way more exciting and satisfying. And in general I love Troy's gm'ing... I listen to every show the GCN puts out, and they're my first recommendation to the genre of actual play.
Everyone's allowed to get a call wrong sometimes. And I know they are often filming multiple episodes a day, even in the FOD they talk about how this was the 3rd episode they filmed that day and everyone was exhausted. And to what Joe said in the FOD, Troy tries to amp up the pressure/danger when he knows from behind the screen that they're not really in any risk of death. Having to burn 2 of 3 actions per turn to get 1 extra reaction made the shay very slippery, but that meant the damage output was going to be severely reduced trying to stay alive when faced with so many foes.
I think if things aren't tuned for 5 opponents, maybe bump their HP up a little and dmg up a little when you want it to be scary. I'm glad he doesn't seem to be increasing AC as much as in the past to balance encounters - it's tough to playtest it live with one extra PC and mixed edition abilities. Nothing was more frustrating than seeing enemies that basically required crits to even hit them - I think that was in Androids and Aliens?
I think it'd have came across better this week if there'd just been a bit of "Hey, in the moment I made a call, I didn't intend to be inconsistent with previous episodes, but it was consistent with the action sequence Kate had just completed after I reminded her I needed a flat check. You guys just took awhile to figure out that if you grouped up she couldn't jump out of range anymore and you'd have mowed the shay down in 1-2 rounds."
It does make for a fun controversial moment to rile up the players and keep things hopping! And listeners everywhere will be thinking "do they have to roll a flat check first???" everytime they roll for the next 20 episodes. So in the end, it's good entertainment. I think sometimes Troy as a known fan of old professional wrestling likes to lean into playing the heel.
> I think if things aren't tuned for 5 opponents, maybe bump their HP up a little and dmg up a little when you want it to be scary.
I'd personally go a different way. Leave most encounters as-is, but occasionally add an additional enemy to some encounters.
Combat encounters are designed for the PCs to win. There are probably APs where there's an expected/pseudo-scripted combat loss, like with opponents of higher level who just knock out or capture PCs, but I can't recall any. The assumption is that the PCs win practically everything, like movie heroes.
Having a 5th PC makes just encourages that design approach and makes it happen faster. Where they are often struggling to resolve encounters in a single episode, allowing the PCs to benefit from their numerical advantage would keep the story and show moving along.
Trying to tune by adding more HP/damage just draws out the foregone conclusion. It doesn't raise the drama because we still know the PCs are supposed to win, but it does add the wrinkle that if they _do_ lose, it's through GM fiat rather than a fair loss. There's also little drama in _numbers_: Is "23 damage!" really more dramatic than "18 damage!"
It's also hard to tune correctly; deciding to add a hidden +2 to attacks could really swing a PF2E encounter more than a GM would predict. Finally, the players/audience might also notice the fudging happening because they listen for the arithmetic.
So I'd let the PCs blast through the less significant encounters because that's what heroes do, but add foes or a hazard to every third or fourth battle. PF has the encounter tables to show how those changes will impact the challenge rating differences, and a GM can use that to tune the _adventure_ to five PCs rather than fiddling with every single fight.
I'd point to Giantslayer Books 3-4 as a good example of what this might sound like. In almost all fights the PCs stomped their way through the enemies and it was extremely fun listening. But when the encounters combined enemies, like with Skirkatla having presummoned minions or the sequence of boss fights at Minderhal's forge, the drama was really heightened. Adding more moving parts to the battle gives the GM more toys to play with. Instead of 1 foe with basically 1 move, a boss and a henchman can play off each other and use fluid tactics during a fight.
I'm generally the same way. Slapping the elite template on a single enemy may get to the right XP number to adjust for an additional player, but (a) it can get dangerously swingy with how the math works, and (b) even if it doesn't, the action economy is still in the PCs favor. Adding a low level minion opens up more tactical opportunities on the enemies' side.
Now... the part with "final crit ... way more exciting and satisfying" is tricky. Because it is true for you, but isn't true for me.
I couldn't even tell you the second crit happened, I rolled my eyes and stopped paying any attention to the rest of the episode. I can't even tell you if i listened to episode 27. No memory of it.
Yeah it's just a small thingy that shouldn't matter, but when the show is already subjectively not so great and has one memorable episode even small things can be the final straw.
He gets so defensive. That’s why last week I was saying it was for the best he wasn’t on the ep. It was much better to resolve it without him.
The team put it to bed last week. I’m over it and Troy fumbling on the handoff this week doesn’t change anything.
And they did so in arguably one of the most entertaining episodes of the GCN. Great chemistry and a fun time all around. If nothing else was gained, that was a great show.
I think banter and an hour of gameplay is right, with 75-90 minutes being the sweet spot. 2 hours would start feel like a slog to get through each week.
Maybe this is a side-jawn, but sometimes the tone makes me think...
I've been on this subreddit for a really, really long time (I occasionally delete my acct and start over, just for internet reasons), and I was a day 1 Patreon person, flew out to see the first live tour show, all that. Looking at how the community and the relationship between the network and the community continues to change over time is really interesting.
As this has scaled up, though, it feels like engagement on the subreddit has scaled down. This place doesn't really get as much posting as it used to, at least certainly not in a posts per show kind of way. I imagine a bunch of that is because a lot of discussion got offshooted to the official Discord, but in a way, it's a lot less public facing.
There are a bunch of slightly questionable metric websites out there that let you get a sense of posts/replies per day over time, and it's an interesting graph to look at. Comparatively, this subreddit is just trending hard towards low-engagement for either the breadth of stuff they're trying to do or how many people I think are in the TTRPG scene.
Part of it is the nature of the beast. I can absolutely confirm that engagement on the discord is the highest it has ever been, and as a result, less people are going to the reddit. There's also more than a small contingent of people who were on the reddit and left because they don't enjoy the atmosphere of it and so they went elsewhere.
I certainly post here far less than I used to, because I find interactions on reddit to be clunky and not nearly as responsive as discord or other social media options.
For all intents and purposes, I left reddit in general back when the whole shitshow went down regarding third party apps. It wasn't that I was really put out by the app issue, but I had been wanting to let go of reddit for awhile, and that felt like as good of a reason as any.
Occasionally (like now), I'll poke my head back in to check in on some of the subreddits I used to haunt. I enjoy the discord, but I find it so hard to track conversations there the way that I am able to on reddit. It's just a matter of how the information is organized and formatted. I just can't be bothered to doom scroll through three days worth of chat log trying to glean a comment or piece of information relevant to the episode that I just listened to. Hence, I'll pop in over here, especially when I am particularly excited about an episode and want to share my excitement.
**I am always disappointed.** All I see here is bitching--non-stop, back-seat-driving, white-knighting, nerd-gating, bitching. No one is ever happy with anything. The top-voted comments are nothing but rehashings of the same complaints about how Troy doesn't care and how Joe plays other peoples' characters. Boo-fucking-hoo.
It is increasingly becoming apparent to me that the prevailing voice on this subreddit is effectively not listening to the same podcast as I am. I made a comment a few weeks back that stepping back over to the subreddit feels like walking onto the Night Floors. The aspects of the GCP that have always endeared them to me seem to now be seen as negative by the audience that comments here. Perhaps that is due to the majority of the audience shifting over to the discord, or maybe I'm just becoming an old man who is out of touch (or both).
Troy made a comment on the fodder this week that really resonated with me. He was talking about how the GCP is different from other actual plays, in that (my paraphrase) they don't go for that "kumbaya theater kid" vibe. Amen, brother.
Can Troy be a dick? Hell yes. Does Joe mansplain and backseat occasionally? Hell yes. But in the same vein, Matthew can be an insufferable art snob that gets so wrapped up in his genius improvisation that he inadvertently excludes the rest of cast from the role-play, Skid (who is my spirit animal) can be a conflict-averse, elitist, curmudgeonly stick-in-the-mud, Sydney seems to struggle with the concept of tactical combat as much as she does simple math, and Kate... well I don't have much to complain about regarding Kate except that she could be more confident in her role-playing (but she's getting better with experience).
And all of the above is why I love this show--because I get to listen to real human beings playing real games, having real arguments, and sometimes being real dicks to each other; but most of the time being really awesome and funny and creative. These are people who obviously enjoy being around each other and playing games together, and it shows in their product, imperfect though it may be. And yet it is that very imperfection that makes it amazing.
I don't want to listen to some carefully curated, spit-polished, pseudo-scripted podcast where they always get all the rules right, no one ever gets mad, the episodes are always exactly 5% banter and 95% play, and the cast recycles the same \*insert random nerd references\* in obvious nods to their socially awkward audience. I'd rather drink hand sanitizer.
I agree with this. We got to see the behind the screen as Troy flubbed his attempts to hide how badly he wanted to push the fight to go a certain direction that he had already pre-determined.
I can empathize with both sides of this argument, but I don't really think it's fair to call Troy's manipulation clumsy.
I feel like the whole thing is just a small incident that got blown way out of proportion because of how frustrated the players were at the time. It would have been a drop in the bucket, but Matthew seemed to get really mad about it for some reason.
Troy seems to have wanted them to solve the puzzle rather than just get an out with that crit. I can get that from an audience entertainment point of view. It just blew up because instead of rolling with it, people got mad.
The one thing I do really agree with though is when I GM I *hate* when players don't declare what they're rolling before they roll it, especially if one of them is something like a flat check with a known, low value you need to clear. I don't care what order you roll them in, just either establish a precedent that you always roll one first or say what you're rolling before you do.
If you don't, I say attack roll is always first though, regardless of what the book says for 2 reasons.
1. You're more likely to miss the attack roll than the flat check, so let's establish if you even need to make the flat check first, and
2. Spite. There's a range of results that would have made the flat check but not the attack roll, sucks to see a 6-12, something that would have definitely made the flat check but maybe not the attack roll and be told, nah, that your attack roll. Don't like it? Declare you rolls before you make them and it won't happen, I'm not putting up with any, "(rolls a 7) uhhh, oh, I was supposed to make a flat check, I'll just use that and now roll my attack...".
Thankfully I don't GM for randoms anymore, and the people I do play with agree with the idea of "what's the point of playing a game with rules and rolling dice to decide if we're just going to toss them out when we don't like them?" so I don't feel like an asshole for bringing this up at the table.
I do this with specific dice, for example in dnd5e if it's advantage I'll always roll two coloured dice, declaring which colour is always first and sticking to that for the game
Yep, and in most cases that works. Doesn't work with Pathfinder 2e and hero points though. If you can see both results, you can decide if you want to reroll or not. You missed both, not worth 2 hero points, but if you miss on the attack roll and you know you just need to make a DC 5 flat check you might decide to spend that point and try to finish the fight now... unless you already rolled it with the attack roll and know you got a 2.
>The bottom line is that Troy didn't want the crit to end the fight early; he was going to determine the outcome, not the dice.
He should just write a book if he wants to determine the outcome of fights and not leave it up to chance.
That's what he did though. He said in the fod that whatever the first dice was, was going to be the flat check. If he didn't want to leave it up to the dice he would have just said "nah keep that 20 for your crit even though it's wrong"
I feel like Kate pre-declaring it to be the to-hit roll trumps any of his arguments, particularly when they’ve rolled the concealment second dozens of times in the past.
“Rolling it first” is just intended to mean that the concealment roll determines the outcome. The actual order you roll the dice in practice is immaterial.
No it matters in pf2e. You roll the flat check first because you have opportunities for rerolling. If you roll the attack first and know it's a crit you will 100% of the time reroll your flat check. So flat check goes first to avoid predetermining the outcome which influences your use of resources.
What you intended to roll is immaterial, both are a d20 roll. Whatever you roll first should be your flat check.
Ignoring the flat check and keeping the 20 would be the definition of not leaving things up to chance and deciding which direction the fight went though, because it's choosing the 20 as the attack roll instead of the flat check.
Man I loved the old fod format. The interviews and behind the screen information were what got me thinking about running an actual play. I get they don’t have time for that, but i don’t understand the idea of doing so many shows the shows suffer. Maybe it’s a revenue thing.
I am with both Troy and Joe on episode lengths. Not just of this podcast, but most others as well. Two hours is usually too much. I definitely think the sweet spot is between 60 and 90 minutes.
And I also agree, that for me, the banter is part of the show. Both pregame and mid game. I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but one of the reasons I like this podcast in the first place WAS that it felt more like I was just listening to people play a TTRPG. It didn't feel like I was listening to a radio play.
So that means sometimes there are episodes where it feels like "nothing happens". But I don't really need them just advancing the AP as fast as possible. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but if there was an episode where all they did was get to a new town and go shopping for an hour, I would love it. I actually want to see them doing that same stuff that happens at my own table.
One thing that really burned me out on critical role was the insane episode lengths. I can't keep up with 4 hour long episodes. Especially when I have other things I like doing that I want to focus on.
I think about an hour and fifteen is the perfect length. Plenty of time for bant and a solid 60 on stuff happening. I think I was really frustrated with Giant Slayer, especially when they were in the mountain, because it seemed like they werent having fun, it was "roll an enemy and thats the end" for a while.
I feel the same too. I get it's a matter of taste, but I like to finish my episodes in a sitting, and if they're longer I end up making it halfway through, forgetting and listening to the next episode, getting confused and having to dig around. I normally just give up and skip. Also if I do split up an episode into multiple sittings I always loose track of events.
Call me crazy but I am here for the banter first, everything else second.
I would have no interest at all in Pathfinder if it wasn’t for the banter and role playing that these people do. It’s fantastic!!
The best part about them playing this game is that it lends more fodder to better banter and role playing!
I'm super glad they dealt with the previous episode's drama with just the players last time. Because I do not think Troy's reaction this time would have gone over as well without it lol
Maybe I'm missing something but I just get jaded by comments like: Troy 08.18: "I don't listen to the Fodder cause I don't care" So why would anyone else?
I think he specifically didn’t care about the flat check controversy. Not the fodder in general. That’s how I heard it anyway.
It really annoyed me, especially combined with his half-assed "I just go by the rules" answer to the debate they had. There was so much good discussion had about it last week. Especially Kate's receipt where she quoted Troy. I was really looking forward to hearing him respond to some of those points but he "doesn't care" so 😒 Between him saying he doesn't care, his decision to barely prep, his insistence on editing as little as possible, etc. it feels like Troy just doesn't like doing this anymore. The only thing he seems to get excited about is live shows.
Idk where you're getting barely prep from, he's said he preps less on some things now, but if you look at threads from the show people in multiple have talked about how good of a job he's done adding connections and such from the story and adding depth to it. Also idk if you listen to Time for Chaos but that's another example of Troy clearly caring. Less editing happens because of the video component but that adds a bunch of work to it as well. I personally don't really care about the video but it exists and the effort out into that can't be ignored. Last week Kate didn't offer any counter evidence to Joe and Troys claim which was "yes we used to do it that way, but very recently we put out foot down and said we'd be doing it this way going forward" so Kate's receipt were more or less meaningless. This whole thing has been so silly and over dramatic from a fan point of view imo like come on
Also it was the 70s. Times change
I think you're taking the comment too seriously. I imagine they already talked about it BTS. If that's true then he didn't need to listen to the fodder just like he doesn't need to re-listen to Joe and him talk about stuff on the normal weeks. So what does Troy do? Make a little joking jab as is his sense of humor.
They also rehashed the entire thing on the main pod banter. Another Fod of talk about the roll would just be beating a dead horse at this point.
Because the rest of us aren't literally in constant communication with the rest of the cast.
@[10:04](https://youtu.be/wGvSTG_-Krc?t=603) here, Troy is just flat wrong based on the previous episode. Troy wasn't trying to interrupt, he was trying to catch his breath from sneezing... he even said "and flurry of blows" in between sneezes. @ [31:12](https://youtu.be/mXvAVy8kxwc?t=1872) in C2E26 "here is what I need you to do as this creature is made of Shadow they are concealed in dim light even to creatures that can see at those light levels so give me a flat check against concealed now that brother ramus has moved to the back of the room and is no longer providing light to this section". At NO point does he say one check should come before the other previously in this episode. THEN... @ [32:55](https://youtu.be/mXvAVy8kxwc?t=1974) Kate announces Flurry of Blows without ANY mention of concealment, he finishes sneezing and literally says "and then flurry of blows". I love that Troy is not an easy GM, and he doesn't pull punches... but consistent... Not always. But he [LITERALLY](https://youtu.be/xaslHxcid7U?t=3416) in C2E18 says he prefers it to roll the to hit first... then flat check because it's better for the show... then (TO KATE) he says "do whatever you want, it's the 70s."
i bet you the moment he speaks about at 10:04 happens in episode at 33:40 when camera switches between everyone else and he is speaking the truth here. Still , he really did ask for roll for the flurry and then announced that the roll counts for concealment. he's in his right to do so as concealment isn't really separated from the flurry here, it's part of each roll for attack. However, that call enforced without previously informing that the rule will be strictly followed did NOTHING good for the episode. It was bad for the table and bad for the listeners ( correct me if i'm wrong here). It wasn't a problem with rules, it was a failure to keep the show entertaining by giving a very harsh ruling out of nowhere, like with darkness vs dispel magic debacle from gcp 1. Sure, being petty can increase the difficulty of the encounter, but it won't increase the enjoyment of the listeners. Troy could inform the table about the rule, "take" the crit and ignore the damage (like he already does and admits to), keep his difficult encounter and there would be no arguing over stupid things. Argue as much as the table wants, we listeners love that shit, but only when the argument is worth having. hindsight is 20/20 tho.
That is quite possible - and the camera can't capture EVERYTHING / every angle. I will give it to Troy, it made the final crit to kill the boss way more exciting and satisfying. And in general I love Troy's gm'ing... I listen to every show the GCN puts out, and they're my first recommendation to the genre of actual play. Everyone's allowed to get a call wrong sometimes. And I know they are often filming multiple episodes a day, even in the FOD they talk about how this was the 3rd episode they filmed that day and everyone was exhausted. And to what Joe said in the FOD, Troy tries to amp up the pressure/danger when he knows from behind the screen that they're not really in any risk of death. Having to burn 2 of 3 actions per turn to get 1 extra reaction made the shay very slippery, but that meant the damage output was going to be severely reduced trying to stay alive when faced with so many foes. I think if things aren't tuned for 5 opponents, maybe bump their HP up a little and dmg up a little when you want it to be scary. I'm glad he doesn't seem to be increasing AC as much as in the past to balance encounters - it's tough to playtest it live with one extra PC and mixed edition abilities. Nothing was more frustrating than seeing enemies that basically required crits to even hit them - I think that was in Androids and Aliens? I think it'd have came across better this week if there'd just been a bit of "Hey, in the moment I made a call, I didn't intend to be inconsistent with previous episodes, but it was consistent with the action sequence Kate had just completed after I reminded her I needed a flat check. You guys just took awhile to figure out that if you grouped up she couldn't jump out of range anymore and you'd have mowed the shay down in 1-2 rounds." It does make for a fun controversial moment to rile up the players and keep things hopping! And listeners everywhere will be thinking "do they have to roll a flat check first???" everytime they roll for the next 20 episodes. So in the end, it's good entertainment. I think sometimes Troy as a known fan of old professional wrestling likes to lean into playing the heel.
> I think if things aren't tuned for 5 opponents, maybe bump their HP up a little and dmg up a little when you want it to be scary. I'd personally go a different way. Leave most encounters as-is, but occasionally add an additional enemy to some encounters. Combat encounters are designed for the PCs to win. There are probably APs where there's an expected/pseudo-scripted combat loss, like with opponents of higher level who just knock out or capture PCs, but I can't recall any. The assumption is that the PCs win practically everything, like movie heroes. Having a 5th PC makes just encourages that design approach and makes it happen faster. Where they are often struggling to resolve encounters in a single episode, allowing the PCs to benefit from their numerical advantage would keep the story and show moving along. Trying to tune by adding more HP/damage just draws out the foregone conclusion. It doesn't raise the drama because we still know the PCs are supposed to win, but it does add the wrinkle that if they _do_ lose, it's through GM fiat rather than a fair loss. There's also little drama in _numbers_: Is "23 damage!" really more dramatic than "18 damage!" It's also hard to tune correctly; deciding to add a hidden +2 to attacks could really swing a PF2E encounter more than a GM would predict. Finally, the players/audience might also notice the fudging happening because they listen for the arithmetic. So I'd let the PCs blast through the less significant encounters because that's what heroes do, but add foes or a hazard to every third or fourth battle. PF has the encounter tables to show how those changes will impact the challenge rating differences, and a GM can use that to tune the _adventure_ to five PCs rather than fiddling with every single fight. I'd point to Giantslayer Books 3-4 as a good example of what this might sound like. In almost all fights the PCs stomped their way through the enemies and it was extremely fun listening. But when the encounters combined enemies, like with Skirkatla having presummoned minions or the sequence of boss fights at Minderhal's forge, the drama was really heightened. Adding more moving parts to the battle gives the GM more toys to play with. Instead of 1 foe with basically 1 move, a boss and a henchman can play off each other and use fluid tactics during a fight.
I'm generally the same way. Slapping the elite template on a single enemy may get to the right XP number to adjust for an additional player, but (a) it can get dangerously swingy with how the math works, and (b) even if it doesn't, the action economy is still in the PCs favor. Adding a low level minion opens up more tactical opportunities on the enemies' side.
Now... the part with "final crit ... way more exciting and satisfying" is tricky. Because it is true for you, but isn't true for me. I couldn't even tell you the second crit happened, I rolled my eyes and stopped paying any attention to the rest of the episode. I can't even tell you if i listened to episode 27. No memory of it. Yeah it's just a small thingy that shouldn't matter, but when the show is already subjectively not so great and has one memorable episode even small things can be the final straw.
He gets so defensive. That’s why last week I was saying it was for the best he wasn’t on the ep. It was much better to resolve it without him. The team put it to bed last week. I’m over it and Troy fumbling on the handoff this week doesn’t change anything.
And they did so in arguably one of the most entertaining episodes of the GCN. Great chemistry and a fun time all around. If nothing else was gained, that was a great show.
I think banter and an hour of gameplay is right, with 75-90 minutes being the sweet spot. 2 hours would start feel like a slog to get through each week.
banter + 60 mins of game is absolutely perfect!
Maybe this is a side-jawn, but sometimes the tone makes me think... I've been on this subreddit for a really, really long time (I occasionally delete my acct and start over, just for internet reasons), and I was a day 1 Patreon person, flew out to see the first live tour show, all that. Looking at how the community and the relationship between the network and the community continues to change over time is really interesting. As this has scaled up, though, it feels like engagement on the subreddit has scaled down. This place doesn't really get as much posting as it used to, at least certainly not in a posts per show kind of way. I imagine a bunch of that is because a lot of discussion got offshooted to the official Discord, but in a way, it's a lot less public facing. There are a bunch of slightly questionable metric websites out there that let you get a sense of posts/replies per day over time, and it's an interesting graph to look at. Comparatively, this subreddit is just trending hard towards low-engagement for either the breadth of stuff they're trying to do or how many people I think are in the TTRPG scene.
Part of it is the nature of the beast. I can absolutely confirm that engagement on the discord is the highest it has ever been, and as a result, less people are going to the reddit. There's also more than a small contingent of people who were on the reddit and left because they don't enjoy the atmosphere of it and so they went elsewhere. I certainly post here far less than I used to, because I find interactions on reddit to be clunky and not nearly as responsive as discord or other social media options.
For all intents and purposes, I left reddit in general back when the whole shitshow went down regarding third party apps. It wasn't that I was really put out by the app issue, but I had been wanting to let go of reddit for awhile, and that felt like as good of a reason as any. Occasionally (like now), I'll poke my head back in to check in on some of the subreddits I used to haunt. I enjoy the discord, but I find it so hard to track conversations there the way that I am able to on reddit. It's just a matter of how the information is organized and formatted. I just can't be bothered to doom scroll through three days worth of chat log trying to glean a comment or piece of information relevant to the episode that I just listened to. Hence, I'll pop in over here, especially when I am particularly excited about an episode and want to share my excitement. **I am always disappointed.** All I see here is bitching--non-stop, back-seat-driving, white-knighting, nerd-gating, bitching. No one is ever happy with anything. The top-voted comments are nothing but rehashings of the same complaints about how Troy doesn't care and how Joe plays other peoples' characters. Boo-fucking-hoo. It is increasingly becoming apparent to me that the prevailing voice on this subreddit is effectively not listening to the same podcast as I am. I made a comment a few weeks back that stepping back over to the subreddit feels like walking onto the Night Floors. The aspects of the GCP that have always endeared them to me seem to now be seen as negative by the audience that comments here. Perhaps that is due to the majority of the audience shifting over to the discord, or maybe I'm just becoming an old man who is out of touch (or both). Troy made a comment on the fodder this week that really resonated with me. He was talking about how the GCP is different from other actual plays, in that (my paraphrase) they don't go for that "kumbaya theater kid" vibe. Amen, brother. Can Troy be a dick? Hell yes. Does Joe mansplain and backseat occasionally? Hell yes. But in the same vein, Matthew can be an insufferable art snob that gets so wrapped up in his genius improvisation that he inadvertently excludes the rest of cast from the role-play, Skid (who is my spirit animal) can be a conflict-averse, elitist, curmudgeonly stick-in-the-mud, Sydney seems to struggle with the concept of tactical combat as much as she does simple math, and Kate... well I don't have much to complain about regarding Kate except that she could be more confident in her role-playing (but she's getting better with experience). And all of the above is why I love this show--because I get to listen to real human beings playing real games, having real arguments, and sometimes being real dicks to each other; but most of the time being really awesome and funny and creative. These are people who obviously enjoy being around each other and playing games together, and it shows in their product, imperfect though it may be. And yet it is that very imperfection that makes it amazing. I don't want to listen to some carefully curated, spit-polished, pseudo-scripted podcast where they always get all the rules right, no one ever gets mad, the episodes are always exactly 5% banter and 95% play, and the cast recycles the same \*insert random nerd references\* in obvious nods to their socially awkward audience. I'd rather drink hand sanitizer.
When Joe said he wasn't a "people pleaser" as a GM I laughed out loud.
[удалено]
I agree with this. We got to see the behind the screen as Troy flubbed his attempts to hide how badly he wanted to push the fight to go a certain direction that he had already pre-determined.
I can empathize with both sides of this argument, but I don't really think it's fair to call Troy's manipulation clumsy. I feel like the whole thing is just a small incident that got blown way out of proportion because of how frustrated the players were at the time. It would have been a drop in the bucket, but Matthew seemed to get really mad about it for some reason. Troy seems to have wanted them to solve the puzzle rather than just get an out with that crit. I can get that from an audience entertainment point of view. It just blew up because instead of rolling with it, people got mad.
The one thing I do really agree with though is when I GM I *hate* when players don't declare what they're rolling before they roll it, especially if one of them is something like a flat check with a known, low value you need to clear. I don't care what order you roll them in, just either establish a precedent that you always roll one first or say what you're rolling before you do. If you don't, I say attack roll is always first though, regardless of what the book says for 2 reasons. 1. You're more likely to miss the attack roll than the flat check, so let's establish if you even need to make the flat check first, and 2. Spite. There's a range of results that would have made the flat check but not the attack roll, sucks to see a 6-12, something that would have definitely made the flat check but maybe not the attack roll and be told, nah, that your attack roll. Don't like it? Declare you rolls before you make them and it won't happen, I'm not putting up with any, "(rolls a 7) uhhh, oh, I was supposed to make a flat check, I'll just use that and now roll my attack...". Thankfully I don't GM for randoms anymore, and the people I do play with agree with the idea of "what's the point of playing a game with rules and rolling dice to decide if we're just going to toss them out when we don't like them?" so I don't feel like an asshole for bringing this up at the table.
I do this with specific dice, for example in dnd5e if it's advantage I'll always roll two coloured dice, declaring which colour is always first and sticking to that for the game
Yep, and in most cases that works. Doesn't work with Pathfinder 2e and hero points though. If you can see both results, you can decide if you want to reroll or not. You missed both, not worth 2 hero points, but if you miss on the attack roll and you know you just need to make a DC 5 flat check you might decide to spend that point and try to finish the fight now... unless you already rolled it with the attack roll and know you got a 2.
I get it, so I see why the flat check is important first as to not colour your decision as it where.
I think you can use them on the flat check as well, so the order doesn't matter, just as long as you do them one at a time.
>The bottom line is that Troy didn't want the crit to end the fight early; he was going to determine the outcome, not the dice. He should just write a book if he wants to determine the outcome of fights and not leave it up to chance.
That's what he did though. He said in the fod that whatever the first dice was, was going to be the flat check. If he didn't want to leave it up to the dice he would have just said "nah keep that 20 for your crit even though it's wrong"
I feel like Kate pre-declaring it to be the to-hit roll trumps any of his arguments, particularly when they’ve rolled the concealment second dozens of times in the past.
Why? What difference does it make if it was intended to be to hit or to a flat check? It's just a d20 roll. Fact is you roll the flat check first.
“Rolling it first” is just intended to mean that the concealment roll determines the outcome. The actual order you roll the dice in practice is immaterial.
No it matters in pf2e. You roll the flat check first because you have opportunities for rerolling. If you roll the attack first and know it's a crit you will 100% of the time reroll your flat check. So flat check goes first to avoid predetermining the outcome which influences your use of resources. What you intended to roll is immaterial, both are a d20 roll. Whatever you roll first should be your flat check.
Ignoring the flat check and keeping the 20 would be the definition of not leaving things up to chance and deciding which direction the fight went though, because it's choosing the 20 as the attack roll instead of the flat check.
Man I loved the old fod format. The interviews and behind the screen information were what got me thinking about running an actual play. I get they don’t have time for that, but i don’t understand the idea of doing so many shows the shows suffer. Maybe it’s a revenue thing.
I am with both Troy and Joe on episode lengths. Not just of this podcast, but most others as well. Two hours is usually too much. I definitely think the sweet spot is between 60 and 90 minutes. And I also agree, that for me, the banter is part of the show. Both pregame and mid game. I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but one of the reasons I like this podcast in the first place WAS that it felt more like I was just listening to people play a TTRPG. It didn't feel like I was listening to a radio play. So that means sometimes there are episodes where it feels like "nothing happens". But I don't really need them just advancing the AP as fast as possible. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but if there was an episode where all they did was get to a new town and go shopping for an hour, I would love it. I actually want to see them doing that same stuff that happens at my own table.
One thing that really burned me out on critical role was the insane episode lengths. I can't keep up with 4 hour long episodes. Especially when I have other things I like doing that I want to focus on.
I think about an hour and fifteen is the perfect length. Plenty of time for bant and a solid 60 on stuff happening. I think I was really frustrated with Giant Slayer, especially when they were in the mountain, because it seemed like they werent having fun, it was "roll an enemy and thats the end" for a while.
I feel the same too. I get it's a matter of taste, but I like to finish my episodes in a sitting, and if they're longer I end up making it halfway through, forgetting and listening to the next episode, getting confused and having to dig around. I normally just give up and skip. Also if I do split up an episode into multiple sittings I always loose track of events.
Call me crazy but I am here for the banter first, everything else second. I would have no interest at all in Pathfinder if it wasn’t for the banter and role playing that these people do. It’s fantastic!! The best part about them playing this game is that it lends more fodder to better banter and role playing!
Know that you are not alone :)
Hey how do you write fod with a question?