[SPEAKER_02]: Once upon a time, there was a princess.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, actually, a few princesses.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've probably heard of their stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: The princesses who were locked away in towers or who had evil-step parents, the ones who kissed frogs or tamed beast over secretly mermaids, you know, those princesses.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what happens to those princesses when they find themselves in a whole new world with new parals lurking around every corner?
[SPEAKER_02]: A world of dragons and monsters and wizards and the dark scary things that hide in the dark scary places.
[SPEAKER_02]: Luckily, they begin their adventure, especially equipped to deal with the challenges that await.
[SPEAKER_02]: They have their resolve, their grace, and their wits, the kind of inner strength that only princesses possess.
[SPEAKER_02]: Paired with a basket of goodies and a special gift from their fairy godmothers, they sharpen their swords, light their torches, polish their glass slippers, and set out together to delve into the darkest dungeons.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hello and welcome to another season of My First Dungeon, the tabletop role-playing podcast that helps GMs learn new games and make each one better than the last.
[SPEAKER_03]: This season we are getting gritty and pretty in our first-for-ray into the OSR or the old-school Renaissance with
[SPEAKER_03]: and princesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: I, Ellie Davis, will be your host for today.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, the producer for this season, and with me is your GM for the season.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know him, you love him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Brian, Flarety, how you doing?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing good.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am very excited to get started on this one.
[SPEAKER_03]: me to cannot wait.
[SPEAKER_03]: As you know, we always want to set our GMs up for success and you are our GM, so let's set you up for success and in fact, what better resource than the creator of Perils and Princesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ryan Lynch, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for being here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good to have you.
[SPEAKER_03]: So to get us started, Ryan, could you tell us what his Perils and Princesses and what kind of stories is this game trying to tell?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Perils and Princesses is a fairytale adventure role playing game where you play as a princess, a gender neutral, a princess who has a gift from a fairy godmother that they use to go on these adventures.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's based on a certain type of fantasy.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, stemming back from grim's fairy tales or into, you know, the common kind of Disney princess movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, heavily influenced by like a sort of fantasy that's different than the sword and sorcery, Dungeons and Dragons fantasy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a separate thread there of this more humble fantasy that relates to fairy tales.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, it's more, it's more the Hobbit and less Lord of the Rings.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit more humble.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit about using your, your cleverness and these little things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the influences are like George McDonald, Princess and the Goblin stories that inspired Lord of the Rings, like taking that through Grimm's fairy tales through those Disney Princess movies and even like
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, some of those YA adventure novels from like the 70s and 80s and 90s like the enchanted forest chronicles or or even chronicles of predane or narnia where you've got these more humble characters going on these fairy tale adventures.
[SPEAKER_03]: and Brian on your end, you know, what kind of drew you to wanting to play this game on the show?
[SPEAKER_03]: What was what stuck it with you?
[SPEAKER_02]: So Ryan reached out a few months ago and was like, hey, I'd love to send you a copy of Pearls and Princesses because I was doing a lot of like TikTok videos talking about games.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, yeah, sure, this looks cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited to check it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: The art really caught me first off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I opened this book and I've been, we've been wanting to do an OSR game on the show for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: like mork board, you know, mother ship is kind of in that realm into the odd stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I opened this up and I was just like, oh, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a like the art style and the layout of this book is just gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_02]: The rules are great, it may be really excited.
[SPEAKER_02]: The gift-dice system which we're going to get into was a really cool mechanic for spellcasting and abilities that I really loved.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then adding on to that the fairy tale element that is so great because as you were saying, fairy tales can go from grim dark, grim fairy tales all the way to Disney Princesses and anywhere in between.
[SPEAKER_02]: And because you have that big spectrum to play in, you can really play with
[SPEAKER_02]: Expectations and tone even within the same story because they can kind of go to either end the spectrum Which is really fun?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I also read I so I was already in I was already like yes, I want to play this game very soon And then I read the adventure module that we're going to run sweet revenge and I was like, oh, we're gonna play this now Hell yeah
[SPEAKER_03]: So before we get too much further, there's a, there's a, there's a term in here we're talking about, which is OSR, old school Renaissance, and for the listener who doesn't know, there's a million ways that people could define this, this school of game design.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the ways is these four principles, ruling over rules, player skill, over character ability, heroic, over super heroic, and game balance not being important.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ryan, I'm curious on your end because you mentioned this that this game is OSR, but it breaks away.
[SPEAKER_03]: How does Paris and Princesses fall within the school of OSR and how does it sort of break away from it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a big question because I think those four tenants you listed are very much a part of Perils and Princesses, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think at its core, not only that it's philosophy of that kind of rules light, but encouraging player creativity, Perils and Princesses very much is that it's very much a creative problem-solving game and a game about, a game that doesn't try to explain everything and sort of trust the GM and trust the players
[SPEAKER_00]: to take broad concepts and apply them to specific instances.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, foundationally, it very much is that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think a lot of OSR games use this nitty grittyness to arrive at a different destination, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got your,
[SPEAKER_00]: you've got your mother's ships and your mercborgs and your games where that kind of grittiness is there to evoke desperation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're a spitting face of the spit in the face of death, you know, it's a very different tone, whereas perils and princesses, that kind of heroic versus super heroic is there rather than desperation is more inspiration, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The power fantasy is that
[SPEAKER_00]: the little bit of magic you have inside and by working together, you can save the day, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it uses those OSR tools, but then brings them in a little bit different direction, which I think is fun and sets it apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been really interested in OSR games, but there is a thing with what you're saying of like a lot of them want to get to this like Grimdark desperation place, which is just a world
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a child of the 90s.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was raised on Disney princesses that you kid me and so like having this game still have all the danger and like who roics of OSR games, but not
[SPEAKER_02]: having to go only to that grim dark place.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to live in this like, you know, Mark Borg, you know, very desolate world.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like living in a much brighter world that you can put darkness into.
[SPEAKER_02]: That dynamism is way more interesting, citing to me overall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know, even coming at it from the other angle right like you'll see you'll see princess games or fairy tale games rely on tropes are more narrative games right and OSR isn't really a narrative space as much as it is sort of like a
[SPEAKER_00]: a more literal kind of physics-based game engine, but you know what I've found is playing with kids and playing with families if you're not familiar with all those story beats or narrative beats or tropes, it becomes a little bit harder to access.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas by giving the tools, like the abilities and the different mechanics, which we can go into, that lets the players, like that lets those narrative beats happen organically is kind of a different thing and I think it helps get young players and in families and that might not be able to just draw on a trope and plop it in or draw on a narrative moment or a story structure moment
[SPEAKER_03]: So Brian, I wanted to again, you mentioned a little bit in there about like what you're concerned about when it comes to like first OSR, a little bit uneasy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are there other things you're nervous about approaching the season as a GM that we can lay out and have Ryan help you out with today?
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I've never run or really even played in any OSR style games, like I've played D&D, which is like where OSR stuff has its roots, but I played, you know, fifth edition, which is a very different from what a lot of it says.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of the tenants, but I also know that some of the things are like, this is a world that is not meant to be balanced, which my thing is like, how do I properly communicate that tone and experience to the players that they know, because I know some of the players are more familiar with something like D&D where you, it is a super heroic fantasy rather than just say heroic fantasy, who may not know that running away is probably the best option sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas, uh, I know one of my players, one of the players for this season plays a lot of Kathulu and we'll definitely note a runaway at certain times.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I think the, like, grittyness and deadliness of this, or like danger of the system, I really want to make sure I like communicate to my players and also like communicate into the story and make it feel gritty and tough.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is also some elements of like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is the kind of game that gets more exciting when you kind of get into some of the nitty gritty of like you can only carry five things.
[SPEAKER_02]: what are you going to do with those felt like it then there's there's interesting problems that happen because you're dealing with like things that in D&D or something you don't care about like in Comprehensive you don't play with as much because it's a super heroic fantasy but in this if you can only carry a spirit shield and one of the thing and there's two things you got to carry that is now a very interesting problem mm-hmm and I want to make sure that I explore that while still making that
[SPEAKER_02]: exciting and fun, because there's a world where counting the number of meals you have or counting the inventory in your pack is not fun, but I know that it can be fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know what I'm sure that it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's, I think that's a great question and gets all, I think it gets at the heart of why this is an OSR game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, okay, first of all, speaking about inventory and conference, because that's what you were on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the reasons why you would do that in this game is because it makes little things heroic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, all of a sudden, if you're running out of food, finding berries is a heroic, cool thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the GM can do a lot with those little things and make it, you know, highlight those little moments, make them feel magical, make them feel exciting, make those, you know, and those hard choices just make make the humble adventure that much more exciting and make those little tactile moments part of the story you're telling, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in terms of things like risk and danger, I always say don't
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get in the way of your players playing the game and making the choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think a lot of it, a lot of OSR and preels and princesses is going to be about making sure your players know what's at stake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Making sure that they know that this big thing is deadly and dangerous and not being coy about like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, well, maybe you're not sure if this thing is scarier or not, like right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, hey, this is scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: This big thing could crush you and you know it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do you deal with that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is going to be more interesting always than, then like, then playing this kind of game where you're, where you're not giving the information.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think
[SPEAKER_00]: with the information as the, as the GM relaying the world to the players, like giving them the world and letting them make decisions based on what you're being upfront with is going to go a long way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you Abby afraid of a bear?
[SPEAKER_01]: That same fear should exist right here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is how scary the bear is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, once you get into, once you get into combat and damage rules and things like that, this is a very swinging game.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know, you're not going to know how things are going to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a GM, you should be excited for them to go either way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for giving enough like getting injured and losing all your hit points doesn't mean you're dead and out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean something interesting happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means you're wounded and your players can still,
[SPEAKER_00]: get you out of that like there's no the stopping point isn't so harsh that if you you know if you get knocked out or or something bad happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're still playing the game.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of things I've read about OSR games is that it is, and I think this is true for any role playing game, that you kind of want to tell your players it is really exciting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually like you should be trying not to roll the dice, you should be trying to make such good plans that the GM just wants to say yes, and then you like any time you have to shoot anytime you choose to roll the dice, now it's out of my hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I can't help you anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've chosen to roll initiative.
[SPEAKER_02]: The dice will fall as they may.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that may or may not work out for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas if you go into it with a creative problem solving that the OSR really wants to highlight and amplify, then there's, you know, there's an interesting way to talk your way out of this is interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Roundabout, you know, look at your character sheet.
[SPEAKER_02]: What weird little items can you maybe use to,
[SPEAKER_02]: get around this encounter rather than having to face it head on because once you do, as you said, it is very swinging.
[SPEAKER_02]: It could even if you're prepared and you feel like you, you know, you're level three princesses and this is a small encounter.
[SPEAKER_01]: The dice are the dice.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sometimes they want to tell a story that you do not want to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's a big thing is to only roll when there is a risk, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're only rolling when it's up in the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not rolling just because like you're going to again, before with information, we're going to fail forward too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a mechanic called spend time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if you've looked at that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's basically,
[SPEAKER_00]: I built in random encounter check.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we call those wrinkles and pales and princesses, where you know, you might get to a situation where something isn't inherently risky, like you could succeed in this given enough time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now we're gonna spend time and see what other stuff is gonna happen depending on where you are, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You roll a die, either a D4, D6 or D8 and if it's a one, something unexpected happens, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, and this happens if you're,
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're resting somewhere, a lot of mechanics say, like, you know, you can spend time to do this and time is just this kind of like nebulous idea of something that that takes time right like in a in a dungeon it might be 10 minutes, but like it might be a day of foraging or whatever or might be a day of travel where if it's risky you roll a d four if you're like an enemy stronghold, but if it's just like a forest somewhere might be a d six or d eight and then if a one shows up.
[SPEAKER_00]: something happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is like a built-in way to get to let you keep moving the story forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this isn't there's not a risk of failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just a risk of something else happening while you're doing this, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been way more interested in random table.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it kind of as my tabletop role playing career or like journey has gone on.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I first started, I was like, I have to I can't use publish adventures.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to make all my own stuff random tables or
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've since found much more joy from like rolling on random tables to create characters or creating counters because it gives you a jumping off point and then you fill in the rest with your imagination.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm excited, especially with like the spending time and this wrinkle.
[SPEAKER_02]: ability it it feels like it's own like random counters like this feel like it's own mini game within the game of like you tell your players Okay, they want it, you know forage for stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, great.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're gonna be spending time You know that this is a dangerous place.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna be rolling one D for there might be a wrinkle Are you sure and now the players are kind of gambling within in a minor moment?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just, you know, for the for the listener who's interested in like what some of these wrinkles would be in the core book, these are like some examples of travel wrinkles.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're all a one, or a bear cub, where's its mother?
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're all a three, a rock slide is brought block the path.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're all a six, quick sand.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it couldn't be a minor moment that ends up being more storytelling.
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be an encounter of fight this thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or it could be something else entirely.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't always have to be just three newts attack you or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I really like seeing randomness and encounters and things like this act.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been trying to get this idea out of my mouth in a way that is eloquent and I haven't found it yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just going to stumble through it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've often thought of encounters as like this sentence, like the full idea, whereas I'm kind of trying to think about them, at least in this matter, as words within the sentence were like pieces of a larger thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So look at encounters rather as being, man, I wanna say this right, I have a clear like mental image of it, but I cannot get it out on my mouth.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like your sessions of poem, not a paragraph.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I like encounters, feeling like lines rather than complete poems, and then by seeing the encounters threaded together, that's where you find the story rather than just there's an encounter, the stories encapsulated within that encounter.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: step back, the combination of these smaller encounters, forms a larger narrative and story, and that sounds obvious as I'm saying it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think if you step back and think of those things as pieces rather than a whole that are jumbled together, I think it can do something interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, I don't have this figured out yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know it in my head.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel it in my bones, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know how to say it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I I feel you because because with even with those ones, you're that you list it off those travel encounters like it's one thing to like see just a bear cub right, but when you put it in the context of what the what the parties already doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like then that's when you're that's when you're like narrative and your game happens right and I like to I like to involve the players with that always so I also like to have role those spend time checks out in the open or have a player role it right for sure we're all going to we're going to roll on the table and we know I I also like to have like sometimes d6 is we'll have like a skull or a dragon on the one so like I love to roll those out in the open like so everyone knows immediately like something's up
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, like the specific situation, it might be very obvious to you what the wrinkles gonna be, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're gonna climb this tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna, or it's something huge, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna, you've decided that it's gonna, you're not gonna roll for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna do spend time, but like,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're going to spend time digging through, you know, digging a hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had like the wrinkles can be obvious that you're going to, you know, find some some creep critter underneath there, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you don't always have to roll the random wrinkle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might just happen with what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I like to invite the player to, you know, how did this happen to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you, you tell me you tell me how, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also amazing, especially thinking of random tables and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: The further you get into the game, like if you look at random tables before you start anything, you're gonna think, wow, those are really random.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you get to the time when you roll on that table more often than not that thing is going to be incredibly profound by its proximity to the story you're telling it will either fit in the thread that you're already telling or it will be such an antithesis that it also fits in the thread which is always really exciting and rewarding even if it's it's always just really exciting and rewarding.
[SPEAKER_00]: It lets you as the GM be part, have something unexpected happen to you too, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives you that, it gives you the improv moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's you play the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you let the, let the, let the, let the module or let whatever kind of table you've set up, let that happen to you a little bit and get excited about it so that you don't always have all the answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that can just be, that just energizes the table when the GM is also surprised and excited like, oh wait, I rolled this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, here we go, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I also, just a small thing, I totally agree with you about having the players roll for wrinkles or having them having them roll for the random encounter, because it's always way more fun to have the players get mad at each other or get excited with each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a great, like, faux antagonistic thing that ends up being really fun at the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, ah, Daman Elliott, you did this, not the guy who's not the GM.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, Pearls and Princesses has, has most, most of the rules are player rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a couple instances where you're rolling saves for monsters, but nearly every role is going to be a player role.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as a matter of design principle for this game.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, we've kind of naturally transitioned into getting into more of the specifics of the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I want to touch on a few of those in particular to help us get ready for the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that one of the things is that Brian talked about, you Brian, you talked about in what you were nervous about, it's like telegraphing to the players tone and stakes and things like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ryan, how can Brian set the players up the best for success?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like whether that's starting in character creation of just like what kind of characters should they make for this sort of story?
[SPEAKER_00]: So by the book, the character generation is largely randomized, like you were saying, and it's going to help you piece together.
[SPEAKER_00]: the story of where your character came from and what, what hidden talents they have, and that sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the main, instead of a class like a OSR game would have or a trade game, you have a gift and your gift comes from your fairy godmother.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, the different gifts are enchanted voice or a wild heart or healing touch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think imagining who your fairy godmother is and like the circumstances around your gift gets you into the headspace of your character pretty quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think like your very godmother in your gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like everyone's a warlock kind of and has a patron if you wanted to go that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you could.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had people kind of just you could you could do it where you're very godmother isn't that present or I've had I played plenty of games where people have like hardcore
[SPEAKER_00]: very god mommy issues right or like baggage or whatever and that kind of it puts you in this fairy tale place it puts you in this fantasy place and also really grounds you with your magic and why you have it and how you know
[SPEAKER_00]: is your was your fairy godmother and overbearing theater mom or really an eldritch beast that like is completely incomprehensible was it a kind old woman that really helps you like that kind of built in a little bit of backstory can like push you off and then by you know rolling randomly what stuff you have and what's your hidden talent all the sudden you have like a built built out character idea just by rolling through that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that, you know, the word princess maybe has a certain image that's conjured to people's mind, but I think that this game, that that's a much more flexible term than it seems.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's surprising how many people pick up this game, they're like, no, I want to be
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a very specific princess in mine, but the idea is that princess is anyone who has a fairy godmother who's given them a gift, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is, I always say that, you know, Luke Skywalker is a princess because all we want is fairy godmother and like speaks to him and gives him like force powers, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stahor's fans come at us, and you don't have to be like a crown princess because so many these stories, you're not a princess till the end of your story literally, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not crowned the prince of whatever, and even in character creation, it gives you a list of titles of whatever you want it to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't, it's kind of a catch-all, and it's very
[SPEAKER_00]: any gender, any kind of backstory, you just, you just had this interaction with a fairy godmother and that made you a princess because you have this kind of humble magic, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's dive into some nitty-gritty mechanics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So to start us off, there's a bunch of terms that are like unique to this game that I think we should get into, you know, virtue test, gift dice, heart dice, we've talked about wrinkles and spending time, but to start us off, what is the core dice mechanic of this game?
[SPEAKER_02]: How are we rolling our dice?
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be the virtue test.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have three stats, resolve, grace, and wits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And any sort of main challenge or check is called a virtue test.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you have a score for each of those stats and you roll a D20 and you try to match it or get underneath.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the higher your score, you're better, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Your higher score is going to increase your odds, but you're going to want to roll low.
[SPEAKER_00]: take to get your scoring under or underneath it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're rolling low in this game.
[SPEAKER_00]: That one is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That one is a crit and that 20 is a fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that does is it makes it immediately clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: if it's a passer-fale you're not doing there's there is a minimal amount of algorithms you're going to have to do you're not going to have there's like not not there's no floating modifier is right so right you know by looking at the dice if it's a passer-fale immediately and that's and that's why you're rolling low and it really helps with once you wrap your head around that you're rolling low
[SPEAKER_00]: It's super smooth, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There is going to be a second moment to wrap my brain around it just a little bit, just because it's every other system I've tried, you know, sixes are good, net 20 is a good, roll high, but I do really love the simplicity of a roll under system with, like, as your, you know, your stack is higher.
[SPEAKER_02]: That means you're better at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That means that it's easier to roll under that number.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I also love that there's not that worry of like setting DCs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have to tell you, okay, this is easy, this is hard, this is extra hard, with like, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 as the DC.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you have to like do the math and add in this and can I use this spell to do this?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tell you what stat, you just have to roll the dice and try to get under your stat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so your, your DCs are going to be
[SPEAKER_00]: That's impossible, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the lowest, the hardest thing is you can't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it but you have divs advantage, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can, there's advantage and disadvantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing you're gonna be able, that's the little simple switch you're gonna be able to do as a GM.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it with disadvantage, straight roll, advantage, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have something that's gonna, you have a talent, you have the right tool for the job, the circumstances are such that this is a little, you're out as clear advantage, so you roll with advantage or it just works, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's you've they've set it up in a way where the risk is all mitigated and you don't, you know, you can't imagine how they would fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you just let them succeed, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's your DCs.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got like a little like five different buttons you can push.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's either nope, disadvantage, straight roll advantage or yes, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I really love that this again gets back into one of those court tenants of the OSR of heroic not super heroic of like when you think of you know D&D and someone's like D.C.30 you're like oh I've got a roll high and then also use all this additional stuff to get there because it's like a god-like task.
[SPEAKER_02]: in this, that's just like, no, you can't, that crazy thing that doesn't make sense in the real world, but the GM has to put a number to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just can't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can be creative and find the way to get to that point, but you're not going to get to do it in one swing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The circumstances as they are, it's impossible.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can change the circumstances and I'm excited to see how you change the circumstances.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the creativity and fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, again, the other like 10 of like player skill, not character ability.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not just like, oh, I have to get to level eight, so I can cast this spell so I can do this thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, no, you are the player.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have all the same brain power abilities as the character.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go in, try to change the circumstances of this encounter so that it is now possible or favorable.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm very excited for that, that tickle something good in my brain that I'm excited to try.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I love that towards the beginning, Ryan, you described it as a problem solving game at its core, which I think is a great perspective to kind of go into every session and situation with.
[SPEAKER_00]: This leads really well into another mechanic, another pretty essential mechanic, which is heart dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you get one per level, there's only four levels.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have one that you can spend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you can spend it as you would like a hit dice to heal yourself during a short rest, which we call a picnic.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a better way to spend it, a better way to spend it is you can always retroactively use it to subtract from a failed role of one of your other friends or party members.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So so if someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: fails a virtue test by less than four, you can at the very, you know, last minute spend a heart dice to a four, six success.
[SPEAKER_00]: As long as you can explain how you were able to help them succeed, like it within the narrative, you can spend that dice to help them succeed at the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: after every and this is a big piece of GM advice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always look at the role and see if they're within a little bit and and remind your players, hey, someone can help them, you know, they didn't get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a hard time to spend, you can help, you can help this, this role succeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that becomes a really, if everyone's in on it and knows and is aware of that role, it becomes a really important part of playing Prails and Princesses.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just such a small addition to a game that is so good because I feel like every time I played D&D hit dice or a thing that are on your character sheet that you basically never use.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of hand-away of thought.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're either taking a long rest or maybe a short rest of some of the spellcasters can regain them but they're spells and that's kind of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Having a reason to get excited about this mechanical thing in the game is so great and I'm really
[SPEAKER_02]: have this like very limited resource to spend and help their friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, it leads into that heroic, not super heroic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like those small moments can still be heroic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and it's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fun little role play prompt too always, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, okay, I'm going to spend this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to spend this dice to help you succeed whatever you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, how like you can, but you got to explain how you did that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what is what's the thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, and I agree with you, it seems like when I first was testing this, it seemed like a cool, small little add-on, but I will say it becomes a big part of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a big part of, oh, game game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a resource, everyone's constantly tapping into, it keeps the game moving, it keeps like everybody involved in any kind of skill check.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a very,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: As long as you remember, as long as everyone remembers this rule and like you, the GM is calling out when it might be a good opportunity, it becomes a big part of that kind of humble magic and teamwork, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great, too, that like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is true of a lot of us hard games, but especially parals and princesses that every mechanic of the game is useful and exciting, whereas like in D&D hit dice are borderline vestigial.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, they're kind of there.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are certain tables that would use them, but largely people aren't excited about hit dice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Heart dice in this game are exciting and cool and fun and you're like, you want to spend them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's gonna be a great moment of pretty much any encounter when you get to spend that and get your friend from a near failure to a success.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we've talked about tests of virtue and heart dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's one other kind of dice in this game that's really fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: Could you tell us about gift dice?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I'm so excited about gift.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love gift dice so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: So giving credit were credits do gift dice are inspired by the blog goblin punch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Arnold camp has a system called the blog, the goblin laws of gaming.
[SPEAKER_00]: and wizards use magic dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is very much inspired by how that mechanic works, even though all the bits and pieces have been rearranged and streamlined a bit for perils and princesses, but that's where the idea came from.
[SPEAKER_00]: How it works is gift dice are D6s.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you use them when you use your special gift abilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Use your using your magic gift that you got from your fairy of Godmother.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you get one D6 per level that you can spend in order to activate these abilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the coolest thing about them is rather than operating like a spell slot or like a meta-currency where you know exactly, I have two magic points, and I can spend two magic points to cast two spells.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gift dice return if you roll a 1, 2, or 3, or there's spent if you roll a 4, 5, or 6.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have, there's a good chance to get it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a good chance that it'll be, it'll be gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't really know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't really know the depths of your magic power at any given point.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a rough idea of how much magic you can cast in a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's like the fundamental thing of how they operate in terms of a resource.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's kind of a rich role because also what you roll is going to affect how how much damage your magic does or how big or small of an effect it is, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the number typically what happens is if it's a smaller amount of magic, you'll get it back again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's a bigger one, you've spent it all the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to further out another level to this, you get to choose how many you spend on any usage of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as you get up and level, you'll have up to four gift dice typically.
[SPEAKER_00]: If doubles show up, that's when your wrinkle.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when your miss happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you go from rolling one gift dice, there's no chance of misshaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time you're rolling, if you are at fourth level and you're rolling four dice, there is a significant chance that there will be a misshap, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: One role of dice, I'm going to use my magic and we're going to find out a lot of things about how this is going to go for everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the dice so much because like just I love having a resource that is so fundamental to the game that you do not know when you have depleted it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that there is a balance you are trying to strike because a lot of the ability is like the number of dice you spend determines how many creatures it can affect or something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the sum of the dice determines how big that effect will be.
[SPEAKER_02]: So say it's fireball, you spend two dice, you can affect two creatures, you roll a total of seven, they deal seven damage.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that there is such a cognitive dissonance in the mind of what a player must be going through when they're rolling those dice because a, there's a chance I can't do this big thing again and we might be in the middle of a battle or at the beginning of the battle and now I'm, you know, kind of cut off at the knees.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to roll, you know, samirling three dice, I want to roll all sixes because that's the most damage, but that also means I don't get those dicebacks.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like, you want, you're excited when you're old high, but that means you don't get the things anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're excited when you roll low because you get the dice back, but you don't do as much of an effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: And every point you are excited about what the
[SPEAKER_02]: that rules so much, it feels more like gambling positive, like gambling fun in a way that I think role playing games, having games within games often really benefit from.
[SPEAKER_02]: Having this kind of test your luck mechanic is something that we always really love.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our recent season of Slug Blaster, there was like a mini-test your luck game where players were rolling these sixes like trying to get
[SPEAKER_02]: and the amount of stress and joy and jubilation at every role that the player's experienced was so, so good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, A, it's like good audio for, you know, podcast producer.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a game master, it's really rewarding to do something where your players are just so into
[SPEAKER_02]: Rolling the dice like that becomes so exciting and so I'm really really really looking forward to the first time player Start rolling and playing with the gift dice and Realizing that they're always gonna be Routing both ways for at any at any dice roll
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a killer mechanic, and I think what really, really makes it tick is that it fits them medically with characters that are not experts in their abilities, where their ability is a little bit a little bit foreign to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I didn't want was these princesses to know exactly exactly how much of their power they can use at any one point in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, be how I wanted
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to channel deep within myself and use this power, but I might overdo it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very, I might do too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might, something could go wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I can save any.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might let it all out at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I, yeah, when I stumbled upon this system,
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where you just don't know if you're going to get it back?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know where there's so many variables, but that was also so easy to to see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just seemed like the perfect fit for these for these characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is the like the low key highlight of this system as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not so easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: That you immediately roll and you immediately understand the consequences, which as someone who sometimes doesn't like dice full systems, because you kind of have to sit back and like decipher the dice full.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really like this that I'm excited to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a key guide rail for designing parals and princesses that there would be you would know immediately what the disement when they were rolled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that it was going to be dicey and not mathy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna use all your, you're gonna buy your cool dice and you're gonna be able to use all of them or a lot of them, but we're not gonna be doing too much, like no algorithms, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have floating modifiers.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not trying to hit a DC
[SPEAKER_00]: and get boosts that way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Man, dicey, not Matthew is a great one.
[SPEAKER_03]: And how Rhine do these mechanics translate then into specifically combat?
[SPEAKER_00]: So should you get to combat, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing that happens is an initiative role.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have been on the record that I, well, I like any initiative that isn't just role and then go an order of the role.
[SPEAKER_00]: So initiative is everyone tests wits.
[SPEAKER_00]: It still fits in with a core mechanic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do a wits test.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you succeed, you go before the the baddies and if you fail, you go after the baddies.
[SPEAKER_00]: in any order you choose, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what ends up happening is you get these team work moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've split the party into 10, kind of two squads that can kind of work out what order they're gonna go in if they're like the first ones or after.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from there, you're gonna test resolve for a close attack, grace for a ranged attack, and then you're also gonna test grace to defend yourself when the baddies are attacking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're doing most of the rolling on your side.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are two hit rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of OSR systems that forego them, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're playing Karen or other into the auddish games, they're doing direct damage, which is more deadly and moves faster and is a great playstyle and I like it, but that's in a help hairls and princesses works.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more like the black hack with half the stats.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the three stats instead of a full D&D six stats.
[SPEAKER_00]: So so we're rolling to hit and then we're rolling damage and then armor is is a so where where your armor is just reducing the damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: The enemy stat blocks are pretty simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: enemies have hit points or heart points, I should say.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have heart points to have an armor value, they have a damage, and they usually have some some kind of either they can cast spells, or they've got something that happens if you get wounded by them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually it inflict some kind of curse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certain things might ignore their armor, but there's usually just a couple sentences to help you run any kind of adversary.
[SPEAKER_02]: I never got to play a game where you are rolling to defend rather than the GM is rolling to hit, and I imagine I'm excited to feel that in play, because I think it's going to feel really exciting for the players, because rather than it being taken out of my hands and my character gets hit by something that I can't.
[SPEAKER_02]: defend against, it is, oh, I dodged.
[SPEAKER_02]: I buried, or oh, I missed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it puts it back in the player's hands and in their control, and it feels more like they have the ability to narrate how that happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you always do, but that feels like the control is gifted to the player first rather than to the GM in a way that I really like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, it keeps the integrity of the core mechanic too, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not doing something different, you're still using the core mechanic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of times, you'll have the situation, just like you said, where, okay, the troll has his club, he's coming down at you, test grace to quickly avoid it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, shoot, I missed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I only missed by one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does anyone have a heart dice to help me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I've got a heart dice to help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spend it at the last second.
[SPEAKER_00]: I threw rock at the troll and he looked over and missed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so like the, the, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: it doesn't push yeah it just keeps pushing it and then it's like okay now it's you know now the troll went what is this per you know then it just keeps going and I will say like once you get into a combat situation there's also because the core mechanic carries over there is a uh by half a page on something called antics what it is is just empowers you
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're still, you're still in the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're still can do anything, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So your goal isn't always to reduce hit points.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if you try to roll to hit and aren't using heart dice, it could get, you could get into slaggy territory pretty quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the key to combat is always going to be using your heart dice and using your gift dice to do what you to accomplish your goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's always an important thing to encourage people to
[SPEAKER_00]: our encouraged players is thinking about your surroundings, you think about what you can work, you can always work together, your turn isn't siloed right because you've rolled initiative and you have two people acting now.
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of wacky antics and crazy schemes can you come up with is going to be way more interesting, you know, then then we're going to we're going to roll to hit and see what happens to these goblins or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's also not like mechanics that are granting advantages or advantage or disadvantage, or at least not a lot of mechanics that are doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like it's pure creativity of what if I add this little bit of antics to this?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, okay, now I'll give you advantage.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it really rewarding that creativity rather than just let me daisy chain these abilities in the right order.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I think the the mechanical side is going to come from from the game world, and that's why it's so important to be very, you know, very free with information about what's around them and what's that stake.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am also a fan of the hard know every now and then for comedic purposes of like, hey, what if can I add honey to my sword for advantage.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, like the hard no sometimes is very fun, like re-establish the one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unless they're fighting bees.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless they're fighting bees.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or if they're fighting a thing, that's an hard yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, yeah, I mean, the cleverness should get everyone excited, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It shouldn't feel like you're getting pull the fast one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be like, oh, that's actually an amazing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, I'll shoot.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's cool and smart and makes for a good moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, then let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It shouldn't just be like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I guess, and then you kind of undermine your game world a little bit, I feel like despite the fact that this game is so swinging like in classical OSR fashion, it's not deadly like it's not easy to die in this game.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems that you've laid out a system where that is a very narrative choice and it's not the you're not going to accidentally lose your character.
[SPEAKER_03]: Could you talk about wounds and trauma and how what like character death would look like even if you just if you decided to go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you lose all your heart points in battle, you're incapacitated and you roll on the wound table.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a D.A.
[SPEAKER_00]: table and there's eight different outcomes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And typically they're different injuries, kind of categories of mechanical things that you're going to have that might linger.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to be out for the battle, and if everyone gets wounded in battle, then it's up to the GM to see what happens, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or where you captured, or you found, you know, what narratively happened to your incapacitated wounded party, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Rolling an eight on a D8 gives you a trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also get trauma if you take enough HP hard points worth of damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like double.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you take like an enormous amount at once,
[SPEAKER_00]: then you also get a trauma and a trauma gives you, it's kind of like three strikes and you're out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can give you like sort of fear of whatever cause your trauma as you get one or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as at the third one, it's time for this character's adventure to end and what that means is up to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's up to you and your table and your GM.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it mean that they died?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it mean that they retired?
[SPEAKER_00]: That they called it quits because this was too many close calls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it mean that they were lost forever, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: are now an NPC that the next party is going to need to find, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's it's more about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's your story is ended, but it's it's up to the world you've created what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like if you want your character to die when they end that could be cool, but it's up to you how this story ends, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that as a as a as a choice, like it's like it it everybody knows that who's played like classic D&D or even like five
[SPEAKER_03]: because of bad luck rolls in a combat sucks.
[SPEAKER_03]: So making it like, there is a lot of mechanical crunch to getting to the end of your character story, but even then it's not just another dead.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It rounds the corners of that sharp air, but still doesn't fully blunt the sword, which I really like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, I mean, I always think consequences are like interesting consequences are more interested than just a death.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, a lot of wounds come with like ways to mechanically deal with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got, you've got ailments where which are woozy and weary and be fuddled, which are just just getting disadvantage on a stat.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a number of curses.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if if you get wounded by it in a certain way, you'll get a curse inflicted and curses usually
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, alleviating it and some kind of either either mechanical or in game disadvantage and that kind of stuff is just it's just so much more exciting than okay you're done right like you've got a new toy to play with now right you got a new weird thing going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it goes back to that before, like no matter what the dice show, it's going to be exciting, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So as we start to round out this conversation before we get out of here and get to the the season proper.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to talk a little bit about sweet revenge, which is the thing that kind of was the was the final list on the selling items for Brian.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Ryan, could you tell us a bit about sweet revenge and if you have any specific advice for kind of running in this system?
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're keeping this one very spoiler free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very spoiler free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, a little backstory here on Sweet Revenge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shortly after, Perils and Princesses came out, I got an email from Destiny Howell, who was like, I had never talked to her before.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, hey, I noticed that in the Perils and Princesses licensed, there's provision for making unofficial content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever thought about official content?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, I've thought about official content.
[SPEAKER_00]: what do you got and she showed me some stuff she was planning on and then she pitched me on sweet revenge and I was like no we like full steam ahead but this is the next one because I I felt that pairals and princesses as something that's
[SPEAKER_00]: designed to be inviting for for new players.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needed a full campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needed the tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needed another tool to complete its potential and what she laid out for sweet revenge was fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the basics of it is it is a cursive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a cursive forest adventure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a witch that was defeated, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're coming in after another quest.
[SPEAKER_00]: This witch was defeated, but with her dying words has cursed this land and now everyone is turning into candy.
[SPEAKER_00]: now you can see why I was so excited about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the animals are turning into candy, the people in the village are becoming different confactions and this group of princesses whose who's coming in to check this out is now tasked as best the folks who are not cursed yet yet to be an operative word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, with getting to the bottom of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: you've got the sort of infectious candy curse about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where you get to those, hey, if you get wounded by this, the certain candy thing now, now you're becoming candy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I don't want to go I don't want to go too spoilery, but there's like a number it's kind of a a smaller hex crawl with a couple of adventure locations tons of fantastic NPCs with all these interconnected relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's there's loads of side quests that it's it's a it's a very complete little world and yeah, you can get through a full arc of of perils and princesses right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so goddamn excited about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love a tonal conflict in anything like candy curse.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just like I just like I love when you take something cute and nice and mash it up with something evil.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's always a delight.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is very fun to have that.
[SPEAKER_02]: you can again, this is like a reason why I love fairytales, you can go anywhere on the spectrum and it can be interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there can be moments where that candy curse is like a little bit goofy like, oh, there's a squirrel with skill eyes or whatever, and then you can get all the way to horrifying of that NPC that you care deeply about is now just a gummy bear.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right and like that and they're being eaten and like yeah, they're bird on top of them taking pieces of them and you've got to get the bird off
[SPEAKER_02]: There's just so much room to play in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so evocative.
[SPEAKER_02]: It immediately feels very like exciting, fairytale without me having to do, like I haven't done anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: All I have to tell players is there's a candy curse and like, no, we're in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all kind of know what the vibe is gonna be and then we can play with that tone and that vibe throughout the campaign.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ryan, before we get out of here, something that we always like to ask the designers that the game's we play is, is there something from barrels and princesses that you haven't maybe seen used in the game at all, or often, that you would really love to see Brian and the players like play around with and take advantage in the season?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, I mean, we talked about gift dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would love to see more people use multiple gift dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to see what happens when misapps happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a rare occurrence because I think people are very careful of a misapp, but they're always like, I think they're cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the tables are interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I like when people overclock their gift abilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever I'm playing in real life, I'm always like, yeah, let's see if that's so remembering that double doubles means miss happens always hard to because there's so many other things that happen with a with a gift roll.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one not to forget as to always look out for doubles.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, so we're going to be doing a lot more mishaps.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to encourage the players to throw out their gift dice liberally and for you to be doing a lot of magic and using the talents.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love the, actually, I have one more cute question for you, Ryan.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have a favorite little bit of like?
[SPEAKER_03]: Magic or something in a talent that like you wrote in this game, that's just like your favorite little bit of like you you you you particularly love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, that is that's a good question because I've got I've got lots of a lot of little references are hidden, you know, there's there's Easter eggs and references to different fairy tales.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the first abilities I knew was going to be in this game as a princess ability is the give a little whistle ability, which is the the name of it as a reference to Pinocchio.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the the ability is a reference to, you know, just Disney in general, specifically like the movie enchanted with Amy Adams where she she does a she sings a song and then all
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's an ability you is, it's a, you just summon wood and, you know, summon any nearby creatures that will help you with one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever you roll is going to be determined, you know, if you roll two dice, you could get two big creatures or the some of the dice can be little creatures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll leave it open whether the, whether the, the GM decides what they are or if someone's trying to call something specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: I usually let them, you know, I want to call a bunch of moles to help me dig under this door is usually pretty fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just one of the best pearls and princess abilities that gets used a lot because it's a level one ability and it's a really evocative and Inspire so much creativity right it feels like the tone of the game in an ability of just like doing the classic cute princess moment, but for the sake of adventuring.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: So Brian, coming back to you, how are you feeling after this conversation?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you feeling ready to run perils and princesses?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm feeling ready.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm feeling good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited for this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I think a lot of the tone of this, like kind of falls right in my wheelhouse, which I think is why I was really excited about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited about the mechanics because of the like speed at which you can do them and like the amount that they get out of your way.
[SPEAKER_02]: That, you know, dicey not Matthew is a line I'm going to use forever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that actually perfectly describes what I like about role playing games.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to role dice.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is very fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to be delayed in my fun by doing the math.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know, like, in recent seasons, there may have been times when I'm like, I kind of just want people to like, No, the dice goes, let me crazy stuff's happening, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes you're impeded by this, I know that's not going to happen in this game, but I'm really excited about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think my biggest worry is still just like communicating the tone to the players.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, and like deciding the tone together and making sure that everyone properly adjust their headspace from the games that they are used to playing to this game, so that we can all really get on board and really have the most fun possible in the type of
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't anticipate that's going to be a problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like it's the first hurdle on the, that is in front of me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's the one I'm most worried about.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once you clear that, then you know the hurdles just get easier and easier.
[SPEAKER_02]: So overall, I'm very excited.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you can't tell from the tone of my voice, I'm very excited about this game.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going to be rad.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on and helping us get set up for the season.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to let people know where they can find you online and where they might grab
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, uh, I am outwriter creative on itch and Instagram and blue sky and TikTok.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to grab perils and princesses and sweet revenge, uh, the best place online is through tabletop bookshelf.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hell yeah, we love tabletop bookshelf.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love what we do in insect moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: So funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is all for this episode of My First Dungeon, Parallels, and Princesses.
[SPEAKER_02]: Join us next week for our session zero where we are going to meet a group of princesses ready to face a whole new world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to our sponsor for this season tabletop bookshelf.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tabletop Bookshops is one of the best places to buy indie games online and we are thrilled to be part of it for this season.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to grab your own copy of Parals and Princesses or the adventure module we're going to be playing Sweet Revenge just head on over to tabletopbookshelf.com and use the promo code Paral15.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's P-E-R-I-L-15 to get 15% off your order but do not delay because this offer is only extended
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you want to get that discount, head on over to tabletopbookshelf.com right this instant.
[SPEAKER_02]: And remember, if you're having fun, you're already doing it right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye!