[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to the finale, the final episode of our season of Slug Blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: The game where angsty teens deal with nagging parents, quantum centipedes, circuit bent ray guns, hoverboard tricks, and trying to be cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's dangerous, it's stupid, it's got parent groups in a panic, and it is the coolest thing ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And joining me today to help round out this series is none of the designer of Slug Blast from Self, Mikey Ham.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mikey, welcome back to the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Slug Daddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been just long enough since we recorded that I kind of forgot that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll never forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one else will ever forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna stick with you forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one else will forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one else will let me forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a thing that in the middle of recording, when I've got a lot of things going on all of a sudden, my wife from the other room hits me with a slug daddy and my brain just short-circuited it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know what to do with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a very public forum.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to deal with a lot of complicated emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that that was your wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes it even better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, like I guess I'll just say right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just had a blast listen to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad you guys are all just.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just so funny and just such good players and you, my friend, are I don't know what you were worried about during that first interview because
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like embarrassing listening to the show because I was like trying to think like it was like I was given this guy advice this guy's like oh
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never GMed a game this well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was given a GMing advice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I used all the advice.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the advice was very helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a part of the reason why we do this show in the way before Matt, we do is because like going into anything new, even if you feel competent and good at it or whatever, going into something brand new, especially like I hadn't done any like forged in the dark games.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you can feel me, especially in the early episodes, like try to figure out what that
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like what that is, what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's got its own rhythm and yeah, kind of thing for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I'm so glad you liked it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We honestly, and this is also a thing I say to all the designers of, because really on this show, we only play games that we really love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason we can make such a good show is because the game is so dang dang good, my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm, yeah, I'm really glad you enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say I was really feeling the love just at, I mean, this is this is complete narcissism, but every time I listen to an actual play, I always get so excited when the GM like reads some of my text verbatim or something because I'm always like
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, oh, oh, they like this part and like, and like, because I'm really proud of the book, you know, I put a lot in, especially into the writing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the part that I'm, I still sometimes I'll go back and read stuff from it when I'm looking up something to answer some question or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll read them like dang I wrote that I love that like that's nice so like I love that how much you I mean it seems yeah, I'm just I'm really glad to to see that you were like inspired by the content and like in the book because
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say like you you really got it like it was so cool seeing you run this and all the players to like really had a good handle on like the sublaster in my imagination, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, just felt good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like it's the feeling of being seen, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know, it's in a much lesser way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure you or some of your listeners will still understand this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this feeling like when you're really proud of your kid doing something, but you know, like, okay, it's my kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course I'm going to think that they're funny or of course I'm going to think that they're thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when a stranger or someone is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: like also thinks that about your kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just like, if you were just proud as punch, because it's like, oh, it's like, yeah, it's not just, so this is the thing, because when you make work on something this long, it really does feel like you're like, I don't like nurturing a child and then sending it off, you know, with a bag lunch onto the school bus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you don't have a control over it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it does just feel good to see that like someone
[SPEAKER_00]: loves your thing as much as you did, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're making it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've had a great time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that metaphors like sending off your kid with a lunch feels really apt, especially for gay, like dealt up role playing games and designers because
[SPEAKER_00]: with like a book or a movie or you know, a poem or whatever, you hope that someone understands it, but it doesn't have to like, they don't have to interact with, with it necessarily, whereas a role playing game, it is one half of a conversation that other people have to like, that's right, and respond to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I'm a person who struggles with controlling tendencies with my projects and stuff like that, and the perfectionist, we're trying to recover from all that and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm always trying to learn to let go.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, I mean gaming is I mean it's it's all about that when you're GM you have to you know you have to let go and let your little your plans go sideways when the players do this but also when you're making a game it's the same thing because you know you make the thing
[SPEAKER_00]: And then people are going to do with it, whatever they want, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of them are going to have their own take on it that wasn't your take.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so over the years, I've gotten really used to that feeling of when I listened to someone play sub-blaster or when I even run a game of sub-blaster for people, I'm really prepared to see some new
[SPEAKER_00]: version of sublaster some new you know i'm very used to that because it's like okay let's see what these people think sublaster is but then everyone's in a while when someone does sort of like lock into something like very like early days like of like this is the sublaster i'd envisioned it's a really cool feeling also because it's just like oh wow yeah i remember
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I thought that up and like I remember when I got excited about that same thing that they're walking into and so it feels good to see like all these different versions but then yeah, there's something special when someone sort of locks into the to the version that you kind of were dreaming up like imagining people playing one day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say in my like role playing journey
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I start with like the first role playing I'm ever ran.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had it in my head that like I've got to build the whole world and I've you know, I'm not going to use I like to stand roll tables.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, that's dumb.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm going to pick this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finted whole cloth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the more I've gone the more I've been like, actually, like, this is not only freeing, it helps me be more creative because you're inspired by prompts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, when I look at Slugblaster, it has such a voice to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has such a voice, it has such a clear identity of like tone and vibe and feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you really know, like when we asked Colin Behold to do the theme song for this season.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all literally all of the cast described the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And but like I said it to Colin and he I sent to our description which was like nineties action figure cartoon commercial and he was like oh yeah, I already got it Yeah, but for all of us to be on that same page just from like reading the book and like doing character creation that means that the text itself was so strong to like get us to a certain headspace that of course I want to like pull from it and use the random tables and like do all the stuff that's in the world also because
[SPEAKER_00]: you know as much as I like prepped and played through this season and like edited all this stuff I haven't spent nearly as much time with this book with this text as you have and probably no one had very few people have so it's like oh if someone someone has I'm very worried for them so
[SPEAKER_00]: But my point is, take advantage of someone's passion and time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, you have put a lot of thought into every word and thing on these pages, use that experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably going to get you closer to a quote unquote good or satisfying, like Blaster Game, than if you just try to invent stuff whole-cloth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, people should do what they find fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like sure, I'm the same way like when I'm a GM, I mean, clearly I find what I find fun is coming up with stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so when I GM, I do like to come up with all my own stuff and I would expect other GMs to like that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also really love the feeling, I'm obsessed with the feeling of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you like using randomness it as like to spring off of so I love role tables because I'll you know even as a gym because I like to roll on and then interpret it like that's the that's the creative juice for me is to like isn't interpreting random tables like results and and then like yeah okay so what would that be right so I mean everyone should do what they find fun and I mean that's that's what you see you see lots of people
[SPEAKER_00]: who want to make their own slugbuster world within their own setting within the vibes of slugbuster, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is, I mean, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad they do do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but I mean, at the same time, it's like, yeah, I put a lot of love into these things and not just not just love, but also like quite a bit of thought into some of these
[SPEAKER_00]: setting things and I think what some people don't think about and again, I'm not saying they're doing it wrong, but I think I just think of this when I'm playing other games to is game play is not just mechanics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like game design is also like setting design is game design, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes just the way the setting is constructed will create a certain kind of gameplay that the mechanics aren't even as involved in, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, an example would be something like peelback, which isn't really a mechanic, it's a feature of the world, but it creates a kind of gameplay and in the same way,
[SPEAKER_00]: lot of the locations that I put in there and a lot of the NPCs and stuff are a lot of pretty carefully calibrated actually to create certain scenarios or like yeah certain you know there I like to make like playgrounds right so yeah a lot of them are pretty carefully constructed to be these like playgrounds with lots of different kinds of things for people to do right so yeah like game designers they think about this stuff and and they have
[SPEAKER_00]: fun doing it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think, I mean, it just, yeah, it feels good to see people playing on your playground.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and it also feels good to see people building their own, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's, uh, every time for me, someone plays in a new part of the world that I haven't seen at seeing people play in yet, I get so excited because I'm just like, oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, I find a lot of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not a lot of runs in Clorium.
[SPEAKER_00]: This will be great or whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I guess your last run, I think is a great example.
[SPEAKER_00]: Quahalia is you used it perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You knew exactly when to bring the crew
[SPEAKER_00]: to that place, because that place is one hundred percent designed to do exactly what you guys did with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, the way you guys did it and the things that came out could only come out with you guys doing it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: With those players, those characters, no one could create those moments except you, but Kohealia is definitely designed to be the stage for those kind of moments, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very cool to see how Quahelia is such, like what I was reading through it, I was like, oh, this is obviously final boss, but also it's not like, it isn't a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a setting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it just means that this is going to contain the final thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know whether it's not like it's, you know, teamot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, it's not the big dragon that everyone's going to face the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, no, no, it's just a setting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the, the both most described and also kind of least described.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just very broad in what is there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the, the teamot of Sudblaster is
[SPEAKER_00]: teenage emotions, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's like identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, that that's the thing is like, I one thing I love about slow blaster just the like that kind of genre and like the things you can do in it is that you can I can create monsters that very explicitly are designed to reveal
[SPEAKER_00]: like the inner lives of characters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can put in, you can design something like a sign.
[SPEAKER_00]: It crocodile that like eats memories.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a fight, but the fight is designed to
[SPEAKER_00]: show little moments from that character's life, which is some of the most fun you can have at a gaming table.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of a unique thing that role playing games do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like let people create these characters and describe their characters and learn new things about them together as a group.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're doing this kind of ganzo sci-fi type like stuff or anything any setting that has like magic or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can really design monsters and spells and all that stuff that is just very blatantly treated to analyze a character or expose some sort of.
[SPEAKER_00]: memory or personality trait or fear or whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and in the expansion I'm working on, there's, in fact, I have three tables that are all based on like peel back accidents and things that are all again, just very explicitly designed to like to dig into something about someone's like some characters like inner psyche or
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever, because that's where I think the fun, that's like the fun is stuff and sublasters, just learning about these kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until that was also one of those mechanics in the game that I found really interesting because it was so evocative when we were talking about it, when I read about it, I was like, oh, this is the thing that happens if everything goes wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, it's getting really bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's described in very kind of like broad terms in the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really up to interpretation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also there's not like
[SPEAKER_00]: a mechanical penalty to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, the further we got along in the in the series, the players kind of kept asking a little bit more about peel pack and I kept just kept making it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you listen to like my description of it in like episode one or two and description of it episode seven, it's like it just keeps getting more and more of a boogey man in a five way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it worked great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I think, yeah, different tables can interpret it differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of the reason it's left like that is simply, I just sort of ran out of scope to like I didn't have this space to flesh it out in the ways I wanted, which I'm now get to do in the expansion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to kind of in the original book sort of this more condensed.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a disaster table in the GM section that has like sort of two explanations of like different appeal back accident and appeal back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And peel back damage throughout two different ways, but yeah, I mean, it is meant to be sort of a do anything button for the GM, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the the big bad like
[SPEAKER_00]: interaction with the magic of the universe, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the GM can kind of, if you want to do something wacky, he can do it and just sort of be like, it's peel back, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, weird, wonky, dimensional stuff can happen, but then you can also play it, sort of the more meat in potatoes, peel back would just be like someone, you know, rip back home and feels awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like I'm sort of a medical emergency more than
[SPEAKER_00]: more than like anything to wacky, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's the equivalent of just like, yeah, a bad injury, you know, when everyone's, when kids are goofing off and then shit gets too real, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, uh, and also in the funds over.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that moment, you know, it's like when you're at the party and someone all of a sudden has like drank too much and it's like not good and, you know, and everyone's like the party dies and it's like, oh, this kid's not good or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's that moment where like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, the fun and games are over.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Peelback's supposed to sort of represent or imitate, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's dimensional weirdness, you can do other weird things with it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can dive into the characters psyche or you can, you know, fling them out and or you can have them, you know, turn it to a slime boy, which is one of the things I can happen in the expansion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's red.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned earlier that it's really exciting as a designer to have people like find the same flow that you did and like really fit into the world that you were trying to create like be on the same wavelength.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious what elements of our game did you like see that happen and also what elements of the story that we told in the way that we played were surprising to you or like different or maybe even identical to the way that you thought about slug blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, you locked into the vibe so strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know who does the sound editing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that sound design man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're gonna win the Oscar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, somehow, for sound design.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no is so good and obviously yeah, like you really locked into all the sounds I was obsessed with that thing you do Where you have the tape deck stop when you need to like do it or something that is so genius.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I love that stuff So I think like the sound design and the music as you said you guys obviously locked really into the vibe and everyone was everyone showed up like
[SPEAKER_00]: ready to play a teenager and did it so well and the thing I really respond to is how well you guys leaned into and like the skate culture of it all even though I think I don't I don't sound like a lot of you were like skateboarders or anything or were there any?
[SPEAKER_00]: of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like toyed with it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, at various times I know Jen skateboards now a bit like I got into it later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm not an expert either.
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked at a skate park for a few years, but I wasn't like a huge skateboarder.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can do three tricks in my pocket, but I'm way more than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, but you, I think you really got the like leaned into the idea really well of like this is about building like a like a famous crew and like getting sponsored and like
[SPEAKER_00]: just the yeah that whole aspect of it which a lot of people and I totally get this I think a lot of people and especially I guess gamers like don't connect with skateboarding that much like because I mean maybe they I'm sure there's a convert of then diagram of skateboarders and gamers but I bet
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also quite a bit of space on either side of that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they're just too very different hobbies that don't necessarily synergize, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think some people don't connect with the skateboarding aspect as much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they go more into sort of more of the sci-fi and dimension hopping part of it and or more into the part going to parties or
[SPEAKER_00]: Exploring you know like they go into different aspects of it so it's always fun for me when I see someone like yeah, like they really lock into the skate culture skate truth thing and then things you did differently I mean it's always it's always there's always stuff that I'm like not obviously not expecting but the one that at first I was like oh, I don't know how this is gonna go because I was like this seems like where yeah, you always have one player who's like I'm gonna do something weird
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is a game about like cool skate board borders.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be I'm going to play the guts who's like possibly the most like Arch typical like cool skateboarder character and no, I'm going to be a kid who wants to become Comptroller right and so when you know that first and and you always have someone wants to do that and of course it's always hilarious, but then you do start to be like, no wonder if this is going to
[SPEAKER_00]: work or is this going to start clashing with the spirit of the game or or or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was so when that character came up, I first I just laughed my head off and then I was like, I'm gonna, I got a earmark this and like pay attention how this goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, it went amazingly because the whole thing of like just inverting with the family, the his parents were slug blasters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, just the line of like of like, um, I don't want to be a slow blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still, I'm still a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just, like, want to do kid stuff, like, be comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just want to do kid stuff, like, be comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just want
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but of course it worked so well, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it added this totally new element.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the coolest thing about these kind of games or just like this kind of media that has sort of wacky parts and kind of rides this
[SPEAKER_00]: this tone of of Gonzo and emotional is is when the joke somehow all of a sudden becomes like real like when the joke all of a sudden becomes like yeah it's it's not a throw it now it's like there's something there right like there's like a some emotional grounding around this thing so um yeah so with with from Rochan having his um yeah like his dream and
[SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, how that interact with, like, through fractures and just that whole thing was so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing I always love about role playing games in particular is especially when you have comedians on a show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like every episode, everyone will do one thing that is like, oh, here's a little goof.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a little goof that's just for fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then what's great about that is if you just double down and like, okay, that goofs part of the world down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let me let me ask you one extra question about it and how if some they care about their dumb little goof and their goof was like poop is money and you're like, okay, but what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, yeah, no, no, now I've got to decide a society where poop is money and I've got to get really invested in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Twenty minutes later, and like four questions, people are like, no, okay, this is really serious, economical.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a really big problem with inflation right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's, man, the sewer workers are committing arbitrage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you get so deep in that stuff and it just gets so much fun because taking the fun little moment, it's always excited about it in a moment and just being like great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to validate the hell out of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not just a bit that's part of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get excited about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now it's like great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we can have fun with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like really now you're playing slow blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we're all playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we're finding a brand new thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then eight episodes later you have a durable God who
[SPEAKER_00]: like it is like this reoccurring joke and obviously like is sort of the funny goofy ribbon throughout the game but then it doesn't break the game because I forget if I talked about this in the first episode but this idea that like you know when you're trying to ride that tone of the balance of
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, this things that can get pretty goofy and like the voidware backpack is just obviously like a magnet for goofy jokes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then, but then also the sort of the more serious moments, people sometimes ask, so like how do you ground the game so that to provide space for those emotional moments?
[SPEAKER_00]: But really, I find just go for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The emotional moments will actually ground the game, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually works the other way around.
[SPEAKER_00]: One hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, and you can see examples of this in movies and I always talk about the spider-verse movies because I just think they're such a great recent example of this because you have, you have spider-pig in this movie, but you also have just extremely real emotions and real characters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you even have a moment where spider-pig at the very end says something like truly sincere and touching and has a little tear on his eye,
[SPEAKER_00]: and you believe it in that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're not like, oh, that's a cartoon pig who can pull hammers out, you're like, that's a person, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a person who is saying goodbye to miles, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's real.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in this, so you can have this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this,
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them was, oh my goodness, you're talking with the line that she was skating down, but the rail, and the line represented her friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you said, you know, it's not one long line.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, but it's actually a series of small lines of small rails, just like how a friendship isn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: one long thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a series of individual choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm butchering it, but man, that just hits so hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then to have those moments where I think it was Sammy, you know, telling Siren like, like, you've always been the best slug blaster and you just have these beautiful moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't matter, like, if there was a durable God, five minutes ago, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, it doesn't change anything because we know that durable gods aren't real, but we, but we also know, don't, don't say that too loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm a, I'm a durable God agnostic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess I can't say definitively, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, but we also know that making up with a friend is real, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that friendships being hard is real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we all, we have those experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know those things are real even, and so it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it's just, you guys just killed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely loved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm so glad.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked a lot about the things that we did well and the things we did right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to talk about the things we fucked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I know that we blew a number of rules and I do want to address them and see like what you caught and what we what we did wrong based on the text of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I always say there's no.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't fun, you're doing it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Use what rules you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: We blew through some of these rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I feel that way that you just said so strongly that I might not have noticed as many things as I could have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, you stop the tape deck at one point to point out the thing of getting a style when you roll a six, which is kind of your house rule, which I think works great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, so I don't just more style.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot more style, but I think like where you guys
[SPEAKER_00]: by the end where people like out of things to buy I don't think so you know people still stuff they could have bought yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're struggling to make legendary, you know, which after how many runs did you do, I guess, four runs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four runs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's a compressed campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it made sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, we power game.
[SPEAKER_00]: You did a compressed campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: So earning more style actually helped that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because otherwise you probably wouldn't have made it even close to legendary.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're able to kind of show the whole arc of the
[SPEAKER_00]: of the game which normally I think generally I my estimates and stuff or that it takes about ten sessions to get sort of where you got like ten runs.
[SPEAKER_00]: to get where you guys go.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that kind of worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was another one, but I feel like you may be figured this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget, there's something with kick and checking it that were kind of getting muddled or combined.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think we ended up doing a thing where we used, we used check it very liberally in the, because the idea behind check it is like, you're supposed to say check it and then like, describe a trick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it was just players being like, check it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine though.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually from blades in the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's wearing a costume, but it's actually down in
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually the same thing as in blades of the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you succeed in a desperate action, you get to mark experience or in your in your in that action or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the same way, in slug blaster, a trick is essentially you're opting in to what in blades of the dark would be called a desperate position.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're opting in because you're telling the GM that if you fail, you get extra problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're opting into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you succeed, you get experience, which in slowbusters called style, which is, you know, it's just XP for in slowbusters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that like people can check it anytime they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I encourage people to describe how they're doing something a little unnecessary with their action, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is that like you're adding some sort of amount of unnecessary flair to the action that would make it, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: seem extra cool to get that style.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, really, the people usually have the opposite problem of not saying check it enough, which a couple of your players had at the, in the first run and used brilliantly as like,
[SPEAKER_00]: a launching point for their characters in their downtime to like that scene of siren in this gate park just practicing until her you know knees were bloody just thinking about how she didn't bring it enough in that last run i mean that's just genius gaming so cool
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think you did, if I think in the first run there was some amount, there was something where you were like, people were getting extra kick or extra style for something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember what it was, but it's, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of resources in the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very easy to, that's sort of, you know, that's been critiqued before and I fully agree with it is that, you know, there's a lot to keep track of with all these different resources and it can definitely take a runner to to get the hang of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I know that was the thing that when we first talked to you during the first interview and we were talking about like things I was worried about.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them was like just the amount of bolded terms basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the things that you need to learn from the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And really, I don't think that ever became a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think by the end of the first run, I was like, oh, great.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's really like four things and they're all kind of doing the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You pick them up really quick in a great way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are kind of spaced out throughout the phases of play where you don't have to hold them all in your head at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have these few things that matter while you're doing the action stuff and then these things matter later.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not as bad as it maybe looks when you're first looking at that sheet like in play, but it still definitely takes a runner too.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I often encourage people to play the
[SPEAKER_00]: The sub-western turbo X if they're introducing the game to new people or especially players who haven't played a lot of role playing games because that really boils down to just sort of that one one or two resources and then you can build on it from there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does pretty much work as just like a tutorial version and
[SPEAKER_00]: the rules only just get more advanced when you move up to full sublaster so it's a good way to introduce it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and it's cool seeing I mean I'm sure someone in the same way I took blades in the dark and streamlined aspects of it and added aspects to make my own thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited to see someone take sublaster and
[SPEAKER_00]: streamline it down into and find the the the fat they can chop off and they build their own thing because um yeah it'll be interesting to see what people do with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: the two things that I noticed that we didn't do or didn't use in the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of these kind of just random that I noticed episode eight was that this is a game about, you know, Ray guns and quantum centipedes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We never talked about Ray guns one time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a single time that we haven't mentioned it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think any of the players even thought about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't surprise me at all because that's that's almost everyone's experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, that Regans are they're like a vestigial part of the of my original vision for this world that I just couldn't really let go of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been working on this, I've worked on this for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the skateboarding part didn't even come in until halfway through the process of this, like the whole angle that like, oh, these are skateboarder kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my original vision of it was more explore kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was more, you know, it was a little more like, trad in that, you know, you'd be going and like, you know, fighting monsters or fighting
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, like, dimensional pirates or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, weapons were a much bigger part of that sort of pre-skating version, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just kind of was like this vestigial thing that I couldn't let go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, now it's in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people don't use it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like essential slug blaster probably doesn't need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You like, yeah, I can see a slug blaster to E, like, fifteen years from now.
[SPEAKER_00]: when I have, like, recovered enough from making the first one to do one, I can see sub-aster two, you're not having that at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just, you know, there's enough options for people who want to shoot things, there's enough options in the signature devices that, you know, right, people who want to have a gun can have a gun, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, no, that's totally a thing that, yeah, most people don't use that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not surprised at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a funny thing to realize like episode eight that like, oh, you know, all of our like introductory things we talk about Ray guns.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, never used it in most actual plays or just even games that played there's usually a moment in like run like two or three or even later where someone's like, um, I actually have a zero beam.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says here on my sheet or like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually have this and can I just do that and it's like yeah so it's very typical because I think part of it is like by the time I was done writing all the signature devices I worked really hard to make them pretty versatile and then players
[SPEAKER_00]: generally push them even farther than I designed them to be pushed in terms of versatility and like coming up with creative uses for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So really, there's hardly anything left.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost everyone's signature device is a Swiss army knife by the end, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they can do pretty much anything they want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single device with few exceptions has some attack mode, for example, which basically makes Reagan even more useless.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a a bunch of questions here from the many side of me to discord and also from some of the cast and actually this is a good jumping off point right in here One of the things that we did in episode one it even come back came back in episode seven was combine the Voidware backpack and the reality canon to like create a one-way portal madness a question from our discord from Adrian What is for their cool combos between gadgets and characters that you've seen done before?
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen any like other pieces of equipment being used in weird ways like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Huh, I don't know if I can think of anything often.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm now I'm just trying to think of my own fun combinations that I would do, but things have actually seen in game.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think what made your moment so special is that those two characters were working together with their items, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, that's always a cool thing to see when people do that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe it doesn't happen as much as it should, because I have to eat that school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to think.
[SPEAKER_00]: People do lots of stuff with the gravity cannon, which you guys, I think you had a moment there with someone had to, to be, hey, you did use a ray gun because someone has someone used a, a gravity gun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone did use a gravity gun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, someone used a gravity gun to launch someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think Elliot did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so we did is a ray gun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, look at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: When they still remembered it was on their character sheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was fresh in their mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, certain things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, anything with hard light.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard light ended up becoming so overpowered in a way of just like it's this extremely versatile thing so anything that has like a hard light sculpting aspect to it people get super creative with and of course the void where back back and the reality can and those three types of
[SPEAKER_00]: things get the most creative uses, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I'm going to pay attention to this because that's I now want to know like yeah, what other combos and now of course, I just want to write like a big a big like a chart of like cool like combat combinations.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the kind of thing that just it's just itches and nerds brain, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: is like oh what what's Wolverine and Cyclops is like like team up move in the arcade game right like and stuff so now I want to just yeah come up with a bunch of fatalities what what what five devices can you put together to some in Captain Planet how do you do yeah yeah yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got another question from Jendalevega who played Ruby Ginto with the chill.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of Ruby's big things, since I'm sure you noticed throughout the series, was a vast and varied and beautiful array of chip flavors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jendalevega wanted to know what, I've got Jendalevega's whole list here of chip flavors.
[SPEAKER_00]: What would be your favorite chip flavor of these?
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's Ruby's chip flavor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Read about, remind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got breakfast with it, which is bacon, egg and cheese mixed together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got radiators and ceiling fans.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no additional information about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hasselback, which is just one big single potato and a bag of carnivore, all meats, including puffin.
[SPEAKER_00]: A chili war, a meditation of spice, each chip features a different hot sauce, folklore, seventy, ninety style history, chips, man, eggplant, soup, which just tastes like soup.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then here were a few that were not used in the series, fried yokey puffs and picking a duck, where each chip has a different component of flavor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man, that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, what would I actually like the most?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, soup could be so many things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soup.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, I pick soup and then I, but I have to specify it to made of soup so that I can just construct my actual favorite chip, which is the ketchup chip, which is obviously Canadian thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Canadian boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ketchup chip is, is my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll pick a tomato soup chip for actually eating, but I want to eat that giant chip so badly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it flavorful back?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or is it just like a solid?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's probably just salt and butter and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the, I just think the texture and crunch of that would be just incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I can picture it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can just picture eating a giant chip.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's really making me think of, um, I was in England not too long ago and I saw someone on the shelf had, uh, what does it called?
[SPEAKER_00]: Weedabix?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the box, you like shake it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like a big chunk of,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a serial type thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm imagining that, but for a chip of like you have this big bag and you hurry it up into a bowl and just one big cookbook.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, I'm a huge fan of the chip varieties.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's extremely me coated.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, Ruby's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of my favorite parts of every episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just getting to hear what Jen's next chip flavor would be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad that the chip eating came in because that's just so quintessential chill for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just always picture like
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's based off like Brad Pitt in Ocean's Eleven or I forget is I forget the actors name, but in Galaxy Quest there's the guy who is absolutely the typical chill.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's the actor who plays monk?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Tony Shlub.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Tony Shlub and Galaxy Quest, he's like pretty much who I based the chill on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a scene where it's when they're flying down in the shuttle to the planet and everyone's like freaking out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's just looking out the window eating like little chips or snacks and he's got this big smile on his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, that's the chill.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the chill right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say forgot that this is just another shout out to like role tables is that the whole chip then came from that's in the chill pipe of vibes the vibes table and love a random table.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a couple more questions from the cast we already talked to this a little bit but Elliott wants to know what your final thoughts on zordon the the durable god.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well I mean of course I
[SPEAKER_00]: The fear of the durable God is in me now, and I wouldn't be able to have a lot more careful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, it's what I needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was feeling too full of self.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's one thing a durable God is good at doing, it's making you feel that you're insignificant and you're proper place in the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I am thankful and terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: of to be made aware of the existence of the durable God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will live my life accordingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are about to spec in the Garden of his turbulence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we should act accordingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got two one question here from the many side media discord from the nail smith and then also a question from Carolyn who played a siren stanfield that kind of go together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nailsmith was asking where's the good pieces of reference media for GM's who are like looking to get into slug blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, you know, what's good cartoon or movie or show or book to read to get you in the vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then kind of on the same note, Carolyn was asking like for you personally, Saturday morning cartoon, what's the best A was best Saturday morning cartoon and what's the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: Slug Blaster Saturday morning cartoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, I will keep saying the Spiderman movie is nailed the tone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then from the same studio, the new K-pop demon hunters is a hell of a vibe and just so good at conveying the kind of kinetics
[SPEAKER_00]: overly stylized action that I think works really well in slug blaster where you don't have to focus too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all based on cool things.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a moment in K-pop demon hunters in the beginning that I just got so obsessed with.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would just watch it over and over with my daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of like they're doing their first song and the planes coming down and then there's just this shot of like of Rumi the lead singer their song is playing and then it cuts and she is standing at that like open doorway of the airplane about right to like jump out but she like turns and like looks at the camera as if it's a music video and she just goes like yeah and then like starts rapping and then does a little like salute and jumps up and it's like the swagiest
[SPEAKER_00]: thing I've ever seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both me and my daughter fall madly in love with that character in like two seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so cool and it's like she might as well be saying check it in that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, like that whole studio is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You heard it here for a K-pop demon hunters is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, I'd suggest that for the style and vibes.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to like get in the spirit of like the dimensional weirdness, I know Rick and Morty does a lot of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually of only watched the first season Rick and Morty because I have a thing where I don't when I'm working on something, I don't want to see a lot of stuff in the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: veins, because I don't want it to like spoil my fun of coming up with it myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so I just sort of like, I would think I'd watch the first season and I was like, okay, I can't watch anymore of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, and I want to do all this myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to like, stealing ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but I know that that would have a lot of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I have a list in the book of stuff and I think a lot of that, a lot of that media still holds really true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, everything everywhere all at once is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: probably, that was basically my quahalia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I probably said everything I wanted to say about the multiverse in one movie and one after I watched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just was like, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone said it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to say it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and so that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my favorite scenario morning cartoons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me think what I actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, earthworm gym.
[SPEAKER_00]: is probably the Proto Slugblast because I loved her from Jim so much that I created my own character, my own or from Jim character whose name was Regunboy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That and I would write my own comics and I just would rip off tons of earth from Jim stuff and that comic Ray Gunboy I would write those for a few years and then later when I was in university I needed an idea for a story and I just thought like oh what if I wrote like a story
[SPEAKER_00]: about that old comic character I used to write as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wrote this short story about this kid who built a ray gun in his bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the beginning of what would eventually become sublaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: So really earthworm gym is pretty much responsible for this game.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to say earthworm gym.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also of course love any show about a group of animals who fight like
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I love street sharks, samurai tiger pizza cats.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the pizza cats, the bike or mice from Mars, of course, the Ninja Turtles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a few more, but yeah, there's lots.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a whole thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and I loved Transformers Beast Wars.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was like my favorite show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was a big rat trap guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I think those are probably my mains.
[SPEAKER_00]: all Korean answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one of the questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then actually, I was pretty excited to get this question too, because I know in the first interview, one of the questions I asked was like, hey, is there anything in the book that you haven't really seen that I should make sure to try to do?
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did I say?
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a question from SKS, SKS gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did we do justice to your beloved Omni mouth?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: You absolutely did, in fact, as I did not write the Omnimo, that is one of the monsters that one of my guest writers wrote, Michael Elliott, who's just a fantastic designer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was listening to the episode of about the Omnimo, I was like, I gotta tell, I gotta send this to Michael and make sure that he's heard it.
[SPEAKER_00]: because, yeah, you took that and just you made it the final villain, which is just like, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think Michael was inspired by some Stephen King story with the omnimence, but I don't know the story, but I think that's the, I think that was the inspiration that he was drawing from.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think you absolutely did it just as their terrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: You kept saying, like, you know, in an individual omnimence by itself isn't
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's the other kind of harmless after describing it eating someone's finger off and I kept being like, okay, I don't, I mean, I wouldn't say harmless.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just trying to set up to like a world destroying entity, but like that was a funny moment listening back during the end it because I think just when you're dreaming you're you're kind of in a few state and I listen to the edit and like Ruby rolls like really rolls well or like uses hey guys, and I
[SPEAKER_00]: response to that the way I like to reward that the use the use is creative use of your power is to have our lose like a third of her finger for and not to be regained I was like oh that maybe wasn't the best you have moved but it was fun oh it was okay I'm gonna say one other thing about your jamming style that is so good that you really brought it that I think people should learn from
[SPEAKER_00]: and especially people who really use to story games like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people in the story gaming scene tend to be very lenient and kind of say yes a lot and nice and stuff which is which is great and all very good like improv practice but I think sometimes it can mean that people who GM these games are don't go hard enough and aren't running enough and you brought the pain and you also said no
[SPEAKER_00]: But you said no in ways that we're powering the story, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's something people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very hard to do because no one wants to say no.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to feel like they're blocking or limiting people's creativity.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you would say no, first of all, you could tell your players respect you and love you and know that you're like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, they chied you about it, but they know, yeah, I'm going to take some shit for it every time, but yeah, but like you can tell that there's no, like no hard feeling, it's just part of a fun of the bad, like the banter and back and forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you also, you said no in the right moments, I think, like, where, where it was like, you're like, I'm going to say, because I don't want to set a precedent here, because I, or I know like, I know that
[SPEAKER_00]: I want this to be a hard moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm not going to let them get away with this easy because they need to they need to suffer through this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think I think people who GM this game could learn a lot from the way you ran it in terms of how, I mean, I say it in the book, you know, you got a, your job is to serve them and your job is to serve them played after plate of trouble and snakes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you, you got to bring the pain and you did, you really did.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the thing that I noticed and this was really a product of me trying to still figure out like forged in the dark like dice pool games because I haven't done that many like kind of dice pool based systems and especially like forged in the dark type thing and
[SPEAKER_00]: After like the first episode or two, I was kind of like, oh, these guys like have a lot of resources available.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they can get that dice full up pretty high.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a lot of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those, yeah, a dice full could still be pretty unforgiving.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're rolling six or seven dice, like it's probably gonna be pretty forgiving.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm like, oh, great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can stop these, oh, this is high as I want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they miss it, then it just feels all the crazier because they just put everything into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels even more epic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it feels, yeah, deserve the pain should come so hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's the, the characters are extremely powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you, you can go hard, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, because they would, I mean, John Harper talks about this in Blades in the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: He, he, he says, you know, he, he says, like, you know, just have them wake up with their hideout, like, being firebombed by a rival game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you can just do stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: pull punches because they will, the characters have the resources to like call for a flashback or like bring out something like they can do stuff to like stop it or mitigate it or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you can be pretty harsh on them and the same thing in sub-wester they have.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything, sub-wester characters are more powerful than blades in the dark characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can, they can do, yeah, you can do that stuff and it will make the game better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Mikey, the last thing I want to make sure we talk about while I have you is while we were playing this game and while we were airing this season, you were running a backer kit for slime warp and solder, a new triptych of expansion zines for a slug blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell people what those are and what they can expect in there that they can add to their slug blaster game?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sure, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's these three zines.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all organized basically thematically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so slime is all about like sort of more biological stuff aspect of the slugmaster world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to have like, there's going to be monsters really, you know, goofy buggy monsters in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what I mean, I guess the main thing about these that I'm adding is a lot of signatures, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you know, people want new character options and I want to make them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that I ended up cutting from Slugbaster just due to this sort of scope creep, but I always imagined for the game where signatures that weren't devices, signatures that were more like powers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always wanted to tell a path, like a character option, for example.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always wanted the ability to turn into a monster or something, like as that's your signature thing, is that it should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had these different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So slime has a lot of signatures that are very organic in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got the one called slime form where you get to be Alex Mac.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can turn yourself into slime.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess that's sort of a gooey G.
[SPEAKER_00]: from Luigi's Mansion, three type of situation, you know, you can be the slime kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's, you can have a sort of larval kind of weapon, which is like a little creature that acts as a gun that you, you know, you can hold and you can give it little pets, but you can also, you know, I guess squeeze it and it shoots out like a sticky tongue or shoots out like a bunch of like acidic slime, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pulling from some half-life the buttons there and then there's you can have a creature pet so you can have, you know, your pet slug or your pet, I don't know, talk to land octopus or whatever whatever you come up with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is kind of like just I guess the organic version of the robot companion, but it has a little bit extra little, it's a little different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have one signature monster DNA, which you can turn into a monster, a lot of like turning red or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so slimes got all these new signatures and then it has a bunch of new monsters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, sort of focusing on kind of goofy things, including the waking pits of empire that I've alluded to in sublaster, but don't define.
[SPEAKER_00]: I now have, you know, we'll get to see what that terrifying creature looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hell yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a sample scenario sort of like a sample run that's a little more fleshed out because something that all jams but especially new jams.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of want like starting off point right and some investors very you know player driven so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of the way the roles work and just sort of how things can spin out of control of prewritten adventures don't often work super well with that kind of game, but you can do these sort of scenario kits that I'm sort of doing, which are just sort of an expanded premise with some two extra tools to kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: run that scenario.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that will have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then warp and solder are just the exact same thing sort of almost almost page for page mirrors of slime.
[SPEAKER_00]: But warp is all about dimensional weirdness, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the signatures go into more arcane and strange things like the telepath as we discussed, like
[SPEAKER_00]: old channeling which is kind of your everything everywhere where all at once a verse jumping type power and then solder has just a bunch more signature devices.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we got a bike in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Find that we got laser blades in the front and we have a robotic self which is the ability to be a rubber a little robot kid trying to you know become a real boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's gonna be a bunch of other little things and there's gonna be some some alternate personality arcs.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's gonna be the ability to play
[SPEAKER_00]: Like an ultra terrestrial, like I'm going to go more into ultra terrestrials.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can of like how to play a kid from a different dimension.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and there's going to be a scenario in each of the zones to each one's a sort of little little prize pack of fun stuff sort of wrapped up in in a certain theme.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really looking forward to that, because I've tore through this like blaster book, prepping for the season, so I know, I don't know it all, but I know a lot of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm excited to pick up some new stuff and flip through it and see how the next campaign's gonna go, just like pull in little bits here, pull a little bits there, let's make a brand new thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can pretty much with like you could play at least two very different campaigns using using because if you had just had your whole party use like slime signatures or your whole party use warp signatures.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, someone on my discord even figured out like how you could there's there's an exact amount of signatures needed to like build a completely like sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: sordin sorcery style like like true um who just like all like magic and swords and stuff so so that yeah, I think there's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people are gonna get some juice out of it um for sure and they're gonna look amazing too because um J's aka sex on a pizza who did the cover are and a lot of the interior
[SPEAKER_00]: is doing the entire visual design of all three books.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're all going to look super cohesive and stylized and really, really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the art's just looking incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cannot wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Mikey, we've reached the end of this conversation, also this season of my first dungeon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for joining me on the show, both in the first interview and in this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a great time playing your game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I had a great time listening to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like daddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thanks for the whole cast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I mean, they seem like awesome people that I want to be friends with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we can never make that happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to, you know, love to try to be a part of your, your cool friend group.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, cooler than me, but that's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, it's just, it's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys just did so, so great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just made me so happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: hours of hours of happiness, so thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, anyone who makes a game this good is more than welcome in my friend group.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to make a game to be friends with me, but it helps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you before we get out here, do you want to let people know where they can find you online if they're looking for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on blue sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think pretty much only.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I might have some dead accounts on other things, but we can find my on blue sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Wilkie's candylab.com on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course, please join the Wilkie's candy lab discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's sort of the main place I hang out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really cool discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have lots of fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone there's like super chill and just sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: We just goof around a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a good place to ask advice.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of experienced slug blaster GMs and in there, including a lot of, yeah, a lot of people have designed lots of extra like community content stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a great place to go if you have questions or want to find some extra slug blaster stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, I'll put all those links in the show notes below.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is all for this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And indeed, this season of my first dungeon, Slug Blaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mikey, thank you so much for joining me on this episode for making this game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to myth works for sponsoring this season.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this season has gotten you excited about Slug Blaster and I certainly hope that it has, you can go to myth.works right now and use our promo code MFD, twenty twenty five to get twenty percent off the game because it's dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's stupid, it's got parent groups in a panic, and it is the coolest thing ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as always remember, if you're having fun, you're already doing it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye-bye everybody.