The The Adventure Zone Zone: Royale Wrap-Up!

[MUSIC] Hello, everybody, and welcome to "The Adventure Zones Un". The world's only podcast about a podcast hosted by the members of that original podcast. We're appearing in the feed. And appearing in the feed of the original, yeah, that's true.

Somehow part of the podcast and not part of the podcast. The podcast they do about the podcast when they're not doing the current podcast. Anyway, this is the true metaverse here. We are going to be talking about Taz Royale answering your questions. You know what they call it in France?

Here you go.

“I'll be glad, honestly, to see the backside of this, Joe.”

[LAUGH] I want to get it in one last time, you know? And I'll tell you what's been, what was rough is a life found away to really fuck up our record schedule on this season. A few times throughout the run of it.

So we would have stretches where we did not record. And then I think we would just forget. Let's let the, what do they call it in France? Joe, like rip again. And so this is a sort of 21-gun salute, I feel like.

I never forgot. I thought I was funny every time.

Never by then. We got some questions sent in by you all to our email.

Thank you all so much for sending those in. And you guys ready to get started? Yeah. I would say so. That was the first question sent by Mike.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Are you ready to get started? Was that, was that serious? There's been questions that have a good time, Guy.

Was that serious, Griffin? Susan. Susan's question. Was that, was that one real? No, that one wasn't real.

That question for you was sent in by David Peterson. He wanted to ask Griffin, was that one real? Well, and David, you have your answer. Holy shit. How is this happening? Here's one, who is David Peterson?

That's from Claude. Claude Peterson is dad. That sucks, dude. That's an old day. Yes. Sorry, Claude, you have a son.

And he's beautiful. And he's a taz fan. And he's not going to change that for anybody. Oh, man. Sorry, pal, you just don't get it.

If you can't handle the volume of the podcast, you're too old.

I'm going to ask the first question in the list.

Okay, see the only way out of this bit.

“Was there any moment that made you decide you wanted to play your character differently?”

And that's from Valerie. Yes. What was it? Oh, okay. In the beginning, God created it.

Yeah, no, Rick, this was a very, I wouldn't say pacifist, but like I was really making an attempt. Because I wanted to play him as a kind of aspiring healer, who just happened to have been born in Necromancer. But wanted to like use his powers to show that like you could do good.

And then Griffin stole my key as the gentleman at the end of the first day. Oh, after I went through so much, like Rick just went through so much to like not hurt anybody. And it forced him to like steal a key. And they ended up costing Bobby Dazzler his life. Yeah.

And that guilt weighed real heavy on Rick this and turned into a vendetta against the gentleman.

And then it sent him down a pathway I had never expected.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the pathway that Rick this went down and then had to try and sort of record with. Because you were trying to be a nice guy. And then this one dude did this one pretty fucked up thing.

“And then it was like I was honestly surprised at how kind of,”

I don't know, single, single minded you were. It was because of that moment because the death of Bobby Dazzler weighed very heavily on Rick this. And he blamed the cowardice and the sneakory of the gentleman for it and decided that the gentleman did not deserve to win. And in many ways live. So I think we were probably going to bump up against this phenomenon a couple of times.

But I feel like it's interesting. This is. Endemic to Taz Royale in the way it's structured and part of what I found really interesting about it.

Due to the nature of the fact that we were working at cross purposes. So like you couldn't go in knowing that you know my whole thing is as.

The more of it is like I always try to do the right thing and I always want to help everybody.

And also there's this special sword that I'm supposed to get the let me kill the super dragon. Like that's not the story, right?

“And so I think what Travis is talking about was similar to what I encountered with Uber where it's like.”

We kind of needed to find our own reason to fight and our own reason to like. But maybe motivation as a character is a better sort of way of putting it. It's where I think everybody kind of went in with this general sort of like. I want to go in and win this thing. In order for us to have compelling stories that couldn't be everybody's main focus.

Yeah. So I think that like at least both I think Travis I think all three of the characters actually really had like. It's like, oh, so this is the kind of story that they are going to be sort of dealing with. And we were discovering that I think sort of as it as it happened. Yeah.

I really really enjoy that about this season.

We've we've done some debriefing ourselves. Which we didn't record if you can believe it or not. Sometimes you talk about our shit just just for us just for funsies. And it's it's content right down the toilet. It's content right down the toilet.

“But it's you know, it's that that's how the sausage gets made the toilet sausage.”

And like in prison. There was I think that the the structure of like the the the killing game, the survival game. Was at times something we had to kind of work against, but I do really really. I did enjoy how it kind of forced us to sort of like localize all of the. All of the stories and all of the events to like what was happening on this island.

During this, you know, conclave. And I I feel like it was a lot easier to sort of see what you guys were. Like jibbing with and trying to just really really hone in on that stuff. Whether it was like the beef with the gentleman or just an adopting an adult man or. You know, hell, Graham it's sort of will he won't he kind of pursuit of power.

And the the bridegroom thing. Yeah. It was a big like hook for hell, Graham would have like what's the deal with a carry. I think of it and and how Graham it. There was also a moment.

I don't know if you meant for it to be this big of a like lure for me and Rick this. But when, you know, we set his house on fire. Right. And you talked about like near the end as Rick this avoided like the time freeze. That there was like a look of pure hatred in the gentleman's eyes.

And I was like, Oh, this dude sucks. He's got to go down. Like this is gone from like we have a beef with each other to like, Oh, I hate him. This is what's interesting to me about about the gentleman about Rick this is like. All the stuff that gentlemen really did to you.

You guys were also kind of like, it is a game of betrayal and killing. And I feel like that's at certain points certainly you participated in that. You all kind of participated in that. So like you being set off by the gentleman's look of hatred after you burned his house out is like, Yeah, he's he's going to look he is going to look that way.

I tried my very best to play the gentleman not as like a mustache twirling like,

“Yeah, he stole your key because like that's what his power allows him to do.”

And so he did it. He used his power to survive. And it really wasn't anything personal. I didn't have any kind of like plans for him to be your nefarious kind of arch rival. But it kind of I had to go that route because you hated his fucking guts so bad.

It was just such a winner. He wasn't a winner. Don't get me wrong. Absolute. I felt like.

Hell gramma was pretty much. On task. Almost the whole season. I mean that was I think what varied was what he let people see. And for us that was kind of tough to play.

To try and keep hell gramma's motivations and his his real state of mind. Hidden from from you guys. Yeah. That we did it so well. We did that.

I loved hell gramma's whole fucking deal man.

I never knew what you were going to do.

Like I really truly didn't know what you were going to do.

Or whether it was like all for you know, for play pretend. I mean, I guess all for play. You were so consistent.

“And yet in decipherable at the same time it was so fun.”

I also say that like I'm not now with the bug man is one of the first angles that I found away in with more of this like that was like and it was very. I will say this that come that energy can get kind of like it to listen to. And especially if the other player is like taking it personally, but like you. Hell gramma rolled with it in such a like accepting way that it was fun every time.

Like it never felt bad. It's like because you it was like go ahead. Funny man. You got your own get dislike me all you want. I got kind of my own thing.

Yeah.

Which like worked because I never really like had insight to it.

Yeah. It's just always sort of like fuck this guy. It was one of the things that I really enjoyed about this is because it's fun to play with. Of like the three of them ended up working together a lot. But I don't think they ever got like close.

You know, and we were never having deep conversations about our back stories and our wants and news. Yeah. Yeah. I mean discouraged. And we talked about that on that train trip and we first started talking about Royale.

Was that the big challenge was going to be that, you know, we weren't going to be. We weren't going to start off as buddy buddies. And we weren't going to come together as a team because that is antithical to what. What the whole setup of the of the arc was that eventually. I mean, the three of us would be pitch against each other.

And and do of us. We're not going to survive. Speaking of how grandma Nicole asks. How grandma might be my favorite character. Clint has played.

I found his pathetic and self serving age or hilarious and unique. What was the inspiration behind hell. Um, Black Adder. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah.

And kind of a combination of the four main seasons of Black Adder in the fact that Rowan Hackinson played. These different Black Adders as sometimes obsequious. And, you know, sometimes, you know, acting like he was hungry for. He was hungry for friendship and, you know, camaraderie and all this other stuff.

Um, but I've always with a, a little bit of a sneak.

So Black Adder, one of my all-time favorite. TV shows of any kind. And so yeah, especially in the dark. And Zorak and Zorak. Well, Zorak physically.

Yeah. And the voice came from Zorak. Yeah. And I always had a little Zorak right there next to me, you know, for inspiration. So yeah, I loved playing him.

He was, he really was fun. And I kind of, I mean, I missed the team coming together kind of angle. I'm not going to lie. That's always one of my favorite things about, you know, task. But this had such a fun, cool energy to it that, you know, it was kind of a joy to see.

“Justin, did you ever get a little John Black Thorne from Shogan?”

A little Bobby. I mean, he slipped into that. I think a couple times talking about guys. Guys, look at the indie beyond this. Yeah.

That's my, that's been my character. I come the entire time. I lost it right away. Because it's like, I don't know, it's, it's a grateful. It's like, I'm just going to do it.

As much as I love Shogan, the show. The thing that really sticks with is for some reason doing impressions of Shogan. It's really funny. Yeah. There's like this one.

And I don't know. I don't know. I really love it. I remember you doing the impressions. I'm just describing the world as you know it to me in a couple of times.

I was like, sorry, I'm watching the show. Yeah. And that's like, yeah, I don't know. That is, that's absolutely my inspiration for his voice. There was a question from Kelly and Julia towards y'all and me about whether you,

pick to your spell that you wanted to do first and then base the character around that.

Or if you had the character and then you just kind of pick the spell for it. I'm curious what you guys answered. With the initial spell, there we have it. Yeah.

“I think that swarm was always hell-grammets go to.”

But did you pick swarm first or did you decide to play, investation or decide to play like a thrice keen and then find that spell? Yeah. This is a chicken and egg question. Did you pick your spell first or did you pick the character first?

Because I found whether I'm bloom in the list of spells.

Yeah. And that gave me the idea of the dichotomy for a necromancer that wanted to be a healer. And we, Griffin allowed me to like, because it was a level two spell. Right. And I was like, can we make a level one version of this?

Because I have this idea for a character.

I think the character came first. I think Hellgramma came first.

I think the Thry King angle of it was was a big part of it. But I did it informed of insect powers and insect magic. Because there's, you know, quite a few insect-based things. You know, wall crawler and, you know, all the stuff like that. So I kind, I think Hellgramma came first.

And then I was lucky enough to find the infestation. Because I had used something similar as zoos. Yeah. Yeah.

“You know, I think we, it was even infestation, wasn't it?”

But it was. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree.

I mean, he had other spells.

We didn't have that. He was also a ranger. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, if you get one spell. It's a good sort of all purpose.

You know, you can lash things. You can grab things. You can pretend it's a grappling hook. And see if the gym will let you get away with it. Yeah.

You can use lightning lure. I also read that it's the, it's, it's, it's, it's, it does more than it's fair share damage for, for a, for a can trap. Yeah. So I went, I just, yeah, man. Cool.

That I had to follow a question for you. Did you ever figure out what your bio commises, school, whatever it was that you took last? Yeah. Or what it did?

“You should add to me when you, when you buy a man. See that was that.”

I kind of goofed around with, there was one where you could detach your hand. And another one where you could grow in size or shrink in size. But there's already a power. I mean, like in large and, and all that stuff. You know, I think it got to the point where we had too many spells.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good, a good observation. I think that, and I mean, that when you just have a handful of spells. It forces you to try to think of creative ways to do it. And I'm kind of infamous for getting yelled at for that. But now I, I love the idea of the bio man.

See, but why just don't think we ever, but to me, me and Griffin, why don't think we ever really got a handle on, Yeah, the bigger issue, and there was a question. You see what I'm trying to, about sort of the way that we handled magic, and not utilizing a lot of the wizards kind of defining class features. Ray asked a question about this.

Things like scribing additional spells on top of what they learned from level up, having a huge spell list, et cetera, whether or not, like why, why we did it that way. I actually really, really liked this idea of like everybody gets one spell, because it helped kind of like shape the laws of magic in the world, and really did help shape the characters.

I would say, it's a great short hand.

“If you have to introduce like a bunch of, you know, second, second,”

second, third tier, whatever.

Like, yeah, he's a guy shoots, eliminate out of the way. So like 95% of the other aspirants were, I started with the spell, and then kind of worked back from there. No way, burger man wasn't just bouncing around in your brain already, and you're like, I got to let burger man out.

I really liked detective magic. I think scorching Ray was used by scorching Ray, scorching Ray, who was like Ray Romano. That was like all that I had. It was all the joke.

I had a list of names from like a couple years ago of just like wizard names. The only one I ended up using off of it was Randolph, which it says in parentheses, Gandalf. There's one on here called cream supreme. And I didn't use cream supreme when I feel bad.

[laughter] It says here in the notes, cream supreme, a big hype beast boy who can conjure food and water. I don't, I just forgot to circle back to cream supreme. But I really liked it because I feel like,

when we have too many spells, especially during like live shows, it really slows shit down sometimes. Yeah, I feel like there's a choice paralysis that happens. And I felt like this would be a way kind of around that.

And also to sort of like encourage you guys to think of other solutions for things. Like I really, really enjoyed all the shit you guys did

When you only had one spell and you had to like figure it out. And also like it gave us some moments of when you got new spells, it was like an exciting thing. It felt like and not just like a, you know,

you leveled up and you got 50 fucking things. And you're not going to use half of them. I don't know if anybody asked this, but I'll say like favorite trial, the trial of an acromantic survive in the house

with the zombies attacking. I think was my favorite. That was just so fun. It felt like suddenly we're in like resident evil. But with magic, it was great.

My was illusion. I really thought that ending. I did not see that coming and it really got me hooked on and sinker. That was cool to be caught on a wares like that in a,

and get to like role play that really. Like it because that's not, you know, that was, that was a lot of fun. Dad, did you have a favorite trial? It wasn't a question.

Griffin would just like to hear a few more plotters. No. No, I liked illusion too. I liked the way it, yeah. The twist was, was very cool.

“And I think the, the final challenge was,”

was really the fight with Griffin. Yeah. Was really, really cool. I really didn't have an ending sort of like, an in mind.

It felt sort of disingenuous to have an ending in mind. I kind of knew that like, the octave wasn't necessarily real. And I feel like there were a few moments where you guys kind of glanced off of that realization.

Specifically, like, you guys were never able to touch them.

There were a couple of times where like, I think you took a swing at them, Rick this and your hand pat, like, went through them and he was like, oh, it's a good thing. This is an illusion form of myself.

But also like, you tried to use your telepathy to talk to, Yeah. The Thry King, and it didn't work because he's not, he wasn't real. Right.

And so there were like a few, a few times right kind of hinted at that. The idea of like, Chris being, I also had a sort of general thing of like these memories, stones were being kind of taken from people and being ingested into a hive mind situation.

Sort of as a, you know, I guess an AI kind of analogy. And having that sort of be the sort of big bad,

“I think was something that I knew that I kind of wanted to get to.”

But it was not something I had set and stone, like if you guys started to really take swing at each other to like kill and get to an ending where just one of you guys like pulled it out. I was fully expecting like hellgram at two, just go full mask off at some point and start offing,

just start offing people publicly, I guess. And a more public manner to try and like take on the victim. I want to leave room for that kind of stuff to happen. So, so all of the kind of like big finale stuff was a bit later on in, in development.

Well, we also have a kind of a follow up question from Amanda.

Was Chris always planned to be the big bad of the campaign with all the members of the

octave dead? Did the guys make any gameplay choices that changed that storyline? Okay, so yeah, I mean, a big one. I think I just kind of like laid out my ideas for like the octave not being, not actually being there not being real in what I just said.

One big choice is like that was not going to be the trial illusion. I had another trial of illusion kind of like in mind. I had like a whole whole thing that was going to happen. I just went into the crystalarium, which I was like surprised he did. And then it was like, okay, well, this is an opportunity to really kind of just move to just jump the thing forward.

Which is so funny to me by the way, because like,

“honestly, and I told Griffin this afterwards, I thought that's what he as death was saying like,”

hey, get in there and find out what's going on. And then I did it and Grom was like, I didn't expect you to do that. I was like, but you were telling me to do. I don't remember his exact, I mean, what he told you was like something bad is happening here and you know, we got to do something, but used your power wisely and be careful.

I was like, got it. You got it for your first part. You're awake. Yeah, I'm picking up exactly what you're putting down. Yeah, so like not.

I had a general backup idea of like the trial of illusion is, which is like, what if I called it something else? Like what if I said, oh, and this is the trial of enchantment. But actually, it was secretly the trial of illusion the whole time and that was like the big illusion.

It was never going to be, it was hard to figure out how to do a trial specifically about tricking you guys.

While you knew you were in a trial about tricking you guys. Yeah, I had this idea of like, what if there was a, what if you guys were like in a room and like everything, but a few things in the room were all mimics and you tried to like get to the butt.

you'd just start fucking throwing shit at every object.

“And there would just be you guys standing around throwing shit using big AOE spells on stuff like, I don't know.”

If you know that something's trying to trick you, you can't really, it really does limit your options as a, as a GM. But I'm happy things worked out the way they did. That was, that was the, the big one is the ending kind of came, came about. And a more expedited banner, I would say, then I was sort of expecting. Oh, these shorts, oh, these shorts, thank you so much for noticing these are from quince.

I've been wearing them every day. This summer, I wore exclusively quince shorts. I am now two months in to quince summer and it has been one of those quince summer. Quince summer and these shorts that I get from quince, not just this pair. I have several, you know why I can afford several.

Because everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And they work directly with ethical factories to cut out the middleman. So you're paying for the quality, but you're not paying for brand markup. Yeah. That's a really good way of putting it dude.

I've really, I love quince.

I've never thought of that way.

I love shorts. They're comfortable and easy to wear. I'm always saying stuff like that.

“I like quince for, I really did stock up on summer time essentials because my, you know, my wardrobe was thinning out.”

Well, with all the moths. Yeah. And so I needed, just basically a little bit of raising moths for. I was a farm. It's, well, I call it a farm.

I call it moth ranch. And it's where I raise them. And eventually these little freaks are going to start making silk. But I haven't seen a hide nor hair of it. But you can do the same thing for fall spider thing.

You can do the same thing for autumn because it's coming up soon. And if you did do it up spider. No, the moths make silk. Moths can make silk if you need things to wear the cure. No, they do like a tiny loom.

So upgrade your everyday download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com/adventure.

“Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.”

Now available in Canada in the UK too that's qu.ince.com/adventure. Textile expert Griffin Maccoray agrees. qu.ince.com/adventure. I know things. He knows things.

Hey folks. Thanks for listening to the adventures down. I'm Griffin Maccoray, your dungeon master and your best friend. Your master of ceremonies. And I hope you're enjoying this episode.

Whichever one you're listening to, maybe it's the finale. It has royale. I don't know because I don't this could go in really virtually anywhere because that's the sort of reality we live in and the technology available to us as podcasters. Hey guess what?

If you listen to the besties, the gaming podcast with me and Russ and Chris and formerly Justin, then we're going to be doing a live show on Broadway that you might be interested in coming to see October 9 at Town Hall in New York City. You can come on out and see us and you can go get tickets right now. It's going to be an absolute blast and we're going to do besties stuff.

We're going to talk about games and stuff and it's going to be our very first live show.

So please come and join us if you live in the area. Hey, our final task balance graphic novel adaptation story and song is out right now. You can go buy it at pretty much any book store that sells graphic novels or you can just go to the adventurezonecomic.com and you can find links to all the storefronts where you can buy it. I'm so proud of this book.

So happy it's out there. It's been such an honor seeing people sort of reception of the book. And if you enjoy task balance, I guarantee you are going to enjoy story and song as well as all the graphic novel adaptations if you haven't dipped into any of them. Now's your opportunity.

We got some new merch in the merch store. We got a stick with it. Big boy card designed by Maddie Viand. There's some new soft bones logo merch, some new shmanters logo merch. McRoy family clubhouse pen, a bunch of stuff. And 10% of all merch proceeds this month will also be donated to native women lead,

which revolutionizes systems and inspires innovation by investing in native women and business. All that merch stuff is over at McRoymerch.com. Hey, if you've got questions about task royale, now that we're wrapping it up, we'll probably do the Adventure Zone Zone next. As we figure out what season is going to come after this one,

you can email us at [email protected]. Again, [email protected] and put TTA ZZ Royale in the subject line. So we know that your questions about that. That is it for the outbreak here. Please enjoy the rest of the episode.

Bye. Hey, it's John Moe.

“I know it's a show called Depression Mode with John Moe.”

And you might think, oh yeah, depression mode, that's the show for people struggling with mental health.

And it is, but it's more than that. It's a show for anyone and everyone living in the world today. A world that can be a pretty rough place sometimes. Our show is about how to keep your mind on your side, working for you and with you. Instead of making stuff worse,

we get stories from famous people. We talked to experts and researchers and there are jokes. So, I'm John Moe. The show is Depression Mode with John Moe. I hope you'll give us a listen on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's hard to explain what happens on Jordan Jesse Goe.

So, I had my kids do it. Thanks Royale Woods. Thanks Royale Woods. Yeah. Bad jokes.

Bad jokes. Bad jokes. Maybe it's like you tell people that you're going to interview them. And then you just stay there like, like really quiet and try and creep them out. It's just really boring.

Because of Jordan, right? Not me. Because of both of you. Oh. Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Goe. A comedy show for grownups.

[Music]

“Were you guys planning on doing or being such an important character?”

Or did that just happen by chance? I feel like his introduction really made this season special. From Kate. Damn. Okay, let's figure that out.

How the heck. Ellen got away. Ellen got away. There was in the trial of transportation. Everyone was split into, I think, three or four groups.

And he had been ran all four in y'all's group. That one wasn't necessarily random. Like, I was trying to think of who would be fun for you guys to have in your small group. So, I put some folks that you guys had had some, like, contact with some beef whiff in the past. I specifically didn't put the gentleman in there because I didn't want you to, like, do another trial

where you're just focused on killing the gentleman over and over again. I honestly wanted to give that beef a bit of a phrase. And I just fucking, I thought Randolph and Duber's sweet leave was just, like, I just thought it was funny. And I thought it would be a fun energy to put them in there and have the idea of, like, what if Duber just kind of is it, like, a... can't really do anything.

And so Randolph is sort of protecting him and he asks for help from, like, the biggest dude there. And I really did not think it was going to be much, much more than that, because there was every opportunity to get them out of the game to kill them. But you obviously went a different route that was, I think, much more exciting and interesting to sort of follow.

Yeah, it was weird, like, I didn't intend for that to be, I think it was a joke at first, that was, and I think the joke was that I missed Duber for a child.

“Even the Duber, and I, and part of my fixation, what you have to understand.”

Part of my fixation was I legitimately thought Duber's sweet leave was a child named Duber's sweet leave, so I could not get it out of my head. And then Duber named that little boy, Duber's sweet leave. I thought that was so funny, and then he talked like a little boy. So I just thought he was a little boy. And so I was being kind of paternal towards him thinking, like, man, it's so funny, this guy's name is Duber's sweet leave.

And by the time I had sort of got into my head that he was, in fact, an adult man, that I had been cast. That I had found a vibe for, for a love that made sense, because I like this guy was not going to, okay, so initially, if you think about where he was living, he like won the, the best hut, and he gave it up, so he could go live on the cliff side. And that had been my intent to sort of be about like this guy that couldn't quite get comfortable where he was. And right around the time that the Duber thing started happening, it started to feel in my head a bit too close to the fear bulb.

Okay, who was very much that like fish out of water, like not really, not just fish out of water, but like outside of the rules of the thing and just kind of like, you know, what is it all, you know, I'm sort of an outsider here, even amongst all the other outsiders.

It occurred to me that like having someone who was by his own nature in outcast, like we just weren't going to have time for them to shrug that off. So it was kind of like, I've realized he needed some sort of relationship beyond the antagonistic one that he had developed with like. Grecon with with with with Grecon and with with hellgrainment. The truth about Travis's character and I don't know, we've, I don't think I've ever had this. The entire season he was creeped out by that stuff.

“And that's why he gave Travis his character a white bird.”

And I we never talked about it, and but we never really talked about anything because I did not the whole thing kind of creep me out.

But I realized like with so many characters, you're not going to just have a conversation about why these two guys don't talk that well, just doesn't matter. It doesn't come up. It doesn't matter. But just you know, Laura was like deeply unsettled by all the networks. Yeah, it worked for me. Honestly, Rick does feel very separated from everybody. And that was great because he had been like raised locked in. Right, his like castle and everything was his family and he didn't have like friends and stuff.

And so like he was very separate from everybody. And it's why it take me pink that I liked Franklin and Franklin, Rick this became buds because Franklin didn't talk. And it was like all just Rick does be like, I like this dude. And it just developed over time and it cracked me the hell up.

“Okay, I think the other thing that this some of the relationships that we developed with NPCs, I don't think that have clicked as quickly as they have since balance.”

And what I thought was if when I was thinking about this beforehand, I think a lot of that is disposability. It's a little more safe to develop a quick, well, safe and required to have a quick decision about a relationship. You have the character right and just start playing it because they could like be wiped out with the next round. Yeah, and it wasn't something you were necessarily going to get like stuck with. So you just had to start like, you know, whoever you ran into first, you didn't trust that you were going to bump into him later because that's not guaranteed in the story.

You had to kind of play everything as it as it lay in. And the element of substance to you too. Yeah, you bump up against somebody and, you know, you're, you're kind of using them, which I think we all learned from survivor. I'm also just now realizing like, as we were playing this game, I was getting way deep into the dungeon crawler car books and like how much that probably indirectly influenced my view on this, where that's like a bunch of them competing in a game to survive through floors and challenges.

And how for Carl, it very quickly becomes like us against them. The people running the games versus the people actually participating in the game. And I'm just now occurring to me how quickly Rick, this is like actually fuck all this. Yeah, this thing where just like everybody I meet is dying and him instantly being like, so I'm going to help this person and I'm going to help this person and I'm going to help this person.

I think it made sense for Rick to be the first one to kind of lead that conversation of like, I'm not going to, I don't want to keep killing y'all,

which is very convenient that that conversation happened after the gentleman was dead. Yeah, it should have been more framed like now that he's now that I killed him, like kill him. No, no, no, no. But he didn't kill him. He didn't kill him. Well, he didn't because it burned off his gauntlet. That was what set it off.

“Yeah, that's what just was so pissed to have that vengeance taken from him. Yeah, that's when he like charged in and he was like, this whole system's like, that's when you took that moment.”

I think that's when you took a swing at, yeah, the octave. Yeah. Um, okay, I, I almost, I've been hesitant to talk about this. John asked a question was John our buckle and illusion created by Chris or just a hapless human who took a job running the ally who is suddenly without a job.

I had a, when I put him in there was just like a joke because we had done, we always do the joke cats and it's a joke.

It is ultimately at its core joke show. Thank you so much, it's a joke. Um, but I also, I started to think about what if this was set in like the far future of earth that got magic on the day of story and song. And there's some stuff that like kind of glances at that. There's some stuff that kind of talks about that. If you guys, the whole like eggs and the history lesson thing, I realize like after the first one like, well, they're not going to do that again.

beyond the stars like that was sort of alluding to the, the events of story and song where people got sort of magic powers all that day.

“Um, that was not really a thing that organically came up and it was also a thing that like any time I talked about like this is earth or you remember hearing about the Titanic or something along those lines like it didn't seem to catch your interest.”

And I felt like I didn't want to. I didn't want to go down any kind of like alley that would take us away from the more localized stories that we had found like doing this season.

So ultimately like I dropped it, but like I had the thought of like maybe John Arbol.

It's Garfield in the skies and he's invested in something for myself. Yeah, I have to clear for us over myself. You're part of the rationale that you have for us not digging into connections between this and balance. Yeah, are that we didn't blink at references to earth and the Titanic. That that was those were the watchers, because we were on earth. So this wasn't the planet or the universe. Now, like some of the locations in the world of balance that might have been easier for us to detect might have been.

Sure. No, well, I didn't want it to be said in that world, right? Because like I don't know we have been vet. We've talked about this a lot like very hesitant to really do a lot of shit in the world of of of of balance. So like expand that story like and I think we feel just strongly now having you know just wrapped up the graphic novel adaptations of that. So I don't know. I wouldn't want to do like there's like threads.

“You know, if you look at if you look here's the thing you guys didn't seem interested in the threads like you guys didn't you guys didn't follow up anymore on like the earth stuff and I also like I don't know.”

Now I have this boring griffin. We have to do it at earth stuff every day. Yeah. Um, so it's been called the Titanic.

It's been high now. Oh, hello. Hello. Oh, cooking. This is when I was curious about was there any connection between the necromancy octave member being called four and Rick this being the fourth. How did that octave member get his name? Is there any other fun more like that didn't make it into the season? That's from Percy. Um, there was not a connection there. And when you just just said there was I kind of panicked because I was like, oh shit. Because I had already kind of like figured out at that point that they were all kind of these these illusions.

And so I didn't think it would make much sense there was a long period driven where I thought four was Rick this from the future. Yeah, see, that's what I was very, very nervous about. I was like, shit. He's going to think it's Rick this from the, not a joke. I was like, oh, damn. And so I had, I had him kind of stop showing up. All of the names of all the octaves were numbers numbers in different languages. Oh, I'll get that fuck out really. Yeah. So there was Coxie, which is finish. Um, then there's, gosh, I mean, trace, ocean. I believe is, is Ukrainian. I want to say.

Uh, they were all just sort of different different languages for like a different numbers and deep as hell. So yeah, four was just like the number four being held up on four fingers was just like, I don't know, another another version of that. It's just the number that was kind of left over after the other ones were given number names that sounded like names.

“Uh, and so yeah, that's how that happened. And it just don't take more than that sometimes.”

No, I don't really don't. I want to read this one from Jessica because I think people would like to know this. How far in advance do you share what characters you are going to play with each other? When you came up with the season was there any bug stuff pre-planned or did it all get added when Clint showed off his character? Was it hard incorporating the bug stuff? Let me see if we, is this enslapped, did we do this enslapped?

So we might be able to see who actually like came in first if we go back. Well, if I remember it's having a conversation about it like on a tour bus or something. We're on a train, we had a train from, I want to say like Minneapolis to Milwaukee or something like that too. And two characters, uh, Bavage and, uh, and Hellgramet and Bavage was basically a sound oriented based on the old Muppet character from the first season of Saturday night live.

The great and powerful Bavage, who just screamed and sent out waves of sound.

I'm glad you picked the other dude. Well, you guys kind of talked to me out of the other dude and talked to me into Hellgramet. We like this feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Bug stuff was not part of the thing, but like it was an easy fix.

Like if it's pretty, I felt like it was pretty easy to like really toss anything in there.

“And the, you know, existence of the, of the Thry Kean and their kind of like back story as”

uh, weapons that sort of threw off those, those shackles and then, you know, uh, fell back into the traditional kind of like hive, uh, monarchical sort of arrangement and then sort of Hellgramet trying to fight against that, uh, like I don't know. That was, that ship felt pretty easy to, to integrate. Uh, I had, because I had to as well. And my home was Rick this and the other one was trying to remember his name, but it was like butt gumpings or something like that, where he was like a dwarf who his family had the magic to like make fertilizer, so that like things would grow underground,

or like make enough light, the thing that they could farm underground. Damn, he's just like cool. Yeah, he was from like a, he was from a long line of like poop magic. Yeah, dude, that sounds cool. Why don't you do that one, dude? I don't know, man. But why don't you, I pinched it sliding doors, but we usually don't know, we usually don't know.

Would you say that's fair that we don't know. We talk about team makeup a lot, right? So that outside of this season, right, that it's not like, oh, we all made wizards to play or like brought three rangers to the party. Like we talk about like that a lot and stuff, but we don't usually share, you know, two deep into it, until we get into it,

especially if it's the kind of thing where there's meeting for the first time.

Yeah. I remember going into Amnesty because a lot of that is about like the connections of things and the characters.

“Like we had obsessed sessions here is talking about like, how are the, how do these characters know each other?”

How do they know each other that kind of thing? So it varies, but this one we talked about it a lot to make sure like that it felt equally that it they made sense in the world. Yeah. I'll tell you how, why, how I picked my guy. I'll be honest with you.

I'll tell you the truth about it. I really wanted to win and a new one. So you got a big, strong guy. Now listen, a new we're all going to be wizards, right?

So like, if my wizard is also, I mean, you're seven feet tall, you can only be so weak.

So like, my wizard is also going to be a big strong guy. I thought I could bully all the other wizards. You know, because it's like, he's a wizard and also he's a big tough strong guy. Yeah. It's like, it seemed, I mean, it just seemed like a very good strategy to be like,

Also a big tough strong guy, you know? But there was something so pure and clean about you kind of like metagaming that way because then Laura Vith was. And maybe this was sort of like your, your intent from the start. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying?

All of that. All of that. Yeah. That is like specific to them. It's a big part of their culture.

There's like competitive nature. Because I was kind of like cruising through like races and classes and stuff that hadn't done before. Yeah. And it was one. I was like, when I was looking into it, I was like, oh, that like somebody who is competitive would probably

make it a little easier to to roleplay that and not feel like awkward about trying to get a leg up on other people. Because like even though he joke about it, it really doesn't. I mean, if somebody's trying to do something, it can, it feels bad to mess them up. Everybody does want everybody's cool stuff to happen. So it does like, if it felt a little unusual sometimes to be playing that like direct conflict.

Or apathy. Maybe more specifically to not get wrapped up in people's stuff. I had an, like, there was a weird sensation that I kind of liked, but it wouldn't make sense every time. But like, I kind of felt like rose and crazy and gill and started through a lot of this season. Where it's like me and my boy are having kind of a different story over here.

And the broader story is definitely like happening. I'm not necessarily, it not everybody's going to be part of the like big, overarching thing. Right. And it just like, I kind of felt like a side story. Yeah.

In a way that like, I don't know. I don't know. I enjoyed playing it in that way. It took some of the pressure off having to be like the chosen ones. The ones from from which, which speaking of which.

Let's talk about what would happen if we had beefed it. And we didn't. Yeah. A lot of people asked this Emma sent this one in. With the prince of the campaign being restricted to a finite number of characters in an isolated situation.

“Did you think about what would you do if a player character permit died?”

Especially once it was narrowed down so that all remaining NPCs were known/named characters. Did you have backups in mind where their contingencies or plot armor? Uh, et cetera.

There were a few times where y'all got like pretty close.

Like I was honestly honest to God tempted to add the very first thing that happens.

It's in the very first or maybe second episode is Hellgramic. It's absolutely butchered by these big nasty vine sort plan that I tried to lay out. Like this ship will fuck you up and you went at it anyway. And as happened so many times this season during an incredibly perilous thing. Like you rolled like dog shit and got absolutely brutalized.

And I thought like is this an opportunity to like day one prison style. Like you know make sure they know but ultimately like I don't know. I thought that there was so much promise with Hellgramic.

“And so that's why I sort of introduced these other characters.”

Like I didn't try to just make it not important. Like that event left you a bit indebted to the spider and the spider and the spider.

And sort of like then gave that to be like a vector of how you were introduced to those characters.

But we talked about like you guys taking over the reins and then there was a certain point after a few trials. I think we had said every wizard's name that was currently surviving. And then I'm going to take over Franklin if I died. Yeah, did you guys have your sights on anyone? I was going to and like you said I was going to invoke the Arlo Thacker rule.

Yeah. Yeah, I was going to I know it's not real interesting or challenging but I thought about taking over Scorpos. Scorpo. You would have had to learn his name. I did not think Scorpo was going to be as important of a kid.

Scorpo was the result of a die role. I rolled a dice to see who would be your guys fourth in the trial of transition. And we're not so well evocation. A die role you say in a game. I did that with him and there was another moment with hasty Jane just happened to be like the result of rolling dice to see what was the character.

And then they became sort of important to the plot for that one I spit and hasty Jane's eye. I mean it was before that it was like to determine who you like ran into while you were going over there to do that trial. And it just happened to be hasty Jane. That was it. That he broke his own foot to get the key.

That's why he was so mad. And I mean I went through you and through a lot. I was prepared for for he'll grab it to die in that first encounter. I really did think it was going to happen. And then so I thought well okay but I've done all this work on in my own head of a backstory and you know what what could it be.

Then I thought well okay shift and over to Scorpo would be.

“And then I honestly this is just making an agent of chaos.”

I just because Hel Graham had always had a secret game to play.

And I thought that jumping over to Scorpo where he did not have a secret game to play. He just wanted to win much. Yeah, much, much like Lorvith. I thought that would have brought that kind of a fun dynamic. That's one of the things we talked about on the train.

If you remember was it was going to kind of be freeing to just go for it. And do whatever we could without forming alliances and all that other kind of stuff. Oh yeah. I was just thinking of taking over Franklin because Griffin hadn't done a voice for him. So I wouldn't have to copy a voice.

So I'd be very easy to just pick that up. Yeah. Choose what about you. I mean, not that you ever considered Lorvith was going to die. No, I did it.

But it did give the whole. You were talking dad about like you would say this backstory and that that you know,

“that's why you like thought to stay alive.”

It reminded me of like I think another part of this season is the threat of that happening. It sort of took the backstory thing like it lessened it for me because like in a sense. The backstory that you have is only meaningful if you relay it in the podcast right now. It's not like with other media where like a backstory is going to inform every single part of your character. There's definitely like there's things you come up with but if you don't talk about it on the podcast,

it doesn't matter. And I think that like having that looming threat. Did kind of force you to just play to like just go ahead and start making choices really quickly. And I think that that served it even though it didn't like happen that we actually. Yeah, to to return to the question, there was I think after the.

Necromancy trial. Uh, we had reached a point. I think we had started to have a conversation and realize we didn't necessarily have an answer for it. Of like, well, what happens now? Someone dies.

If Lor, okay, here's all I will say.

If Lorvith had died.

“And I had taken over Dooper. We would have ended up with a very much more traditional ending because I would have played him as.”

The hero Luke Skywalker link all of them in one man. He would have been. We got the destiny reveal. That's why Lorvith had to die. That's why his old dad has.

Hi, it's like all led to this. I also once we got down to eight people. I was like, Oh, Rick does gun be a ghost, right? Because his family is from back to go. That was absolutely not all that.

Yeah, he was going to be a ghost. He was going to have far less influence. But way more like be able to observe everything and move quickly. Yeah, I mean, we had ways to sort of. I also had a.

I don't necessarily want to like expand on it because it's like one of the things that just kind of never came together.

But like what happened? Where do you go when you die, right? Like death talked about something's wrong. Some things wrong. People aren't like crossing over to the other side in this world.

But it was like not really a thing that kind of came up because your guys characters didn't die. I had it sort of in my back pocket, but never never really came to. Never really came to fruition.

“I kind of thought that's what you were doing with zombie magic.”

I thought well, maybe he's got that in his back pocket. So that was very much. And this, I mean, you guys clocked this, especially Rick does like that was bullshit. Like all of that was bullshit. Rick this is like constant sort of like discussed with what was happening.

Was was I like very, very insightful because like that is not what. He had sort of discussed being what what necromancy magic like looks like at the crossroads like where he is from. So like that was also sort of like a clue of like this is not actually like the highest level practitioner in the land doing the like this is a. Bullshit movie magic version of what necromancy is. Yeah, that you know is is incredibly suspect and I think I think Rick just picked up on that that very well that was not like a hint at when you die you become zombies.

Uh, boss, boss asks what were your favorite spells you used him right out. And I just want to say unseen servant is okay. Yeah, but it like. I realize looking in the spell description that there's like four things listed that you can't do with it. Which means you can do anything else with it. Right. Right. And this idea of like when I realized that I could have him hunched down behind someone and let me push them over him like a school yard bully. I was like, oh my god, unseen servant is the best. This is the best smell ever.

Did you pull that maneuver off in the in the transportation trial on like the constantly descending stairwell? I remember trying it at one point. I can't remember if it worked or not. You tried to kill a you tried to get kill hipocrates at one point and you guys kind of got past that, which I felt because I saved him later maybe that's eight times. Yeah, I found in it and I had just gotten it to right before that trial. Misty step saved ill-gram it in that.

Yeah, that's cool. That is a cool. I especially in something that's, you know, a race or something, you know, against time. That's that's quite a nifty spell. Yeah, I use that one and balder. Yeah, I was just thinking I used that. Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. Bonus action. Forget about it. That's crazy.

I, I kind of split my, my spells up into three categories in my head. There was like big choice, which is fireball. There's little choice, which is color spray and there's go away, which is spider climb.

“So like for a narrative podcast, that's great because it's like if you need to do something, but not a huge thing.”

You can walk back from color sprays and hysterical spell. Yeah. Yeah, it is so disconcerting to think that you would be like in a conflict with somebody. And it would just be like dazzle. It's like, I didn't expect this in any way, shape reform. I, I really like clunder step to because thunder step is the teleportation spell.

Like missy step except the exact opposite on the scale of self. Right. It's like, yeah, you can teleport and you're going to let everyone know you did it. Right. Let's wrap up here talking about sort of next next sort of steps.

Because usually at the end of these, we talk about like, here's what we're doing next season.

But we don't have a, we have a few things that we're kind of kicking around, but we don't have a next sort of big campaign thing that we are really all all kind of like dialed in on at the moment. We're going to put up some live shows for the next few episodes.

And then, you know, after we take a sort of short break, we'll probably come back with a sort of a shorter, more lightweight kind of campaign. Maybe not a D&D thing, but something more akin to our, you know, live show format, almost sort of one shot style stories before we. Just so we have time to kind of really percolate on what we want the next big thing to be. Now, but apparently a lot of people asked, so I did want to get to this for either either C season two.

“Is there a plan for it? Are you working on it? What are your thoughts?”

I've got an idea for what an E3C season two could be that I think, I mean, a man to message us the other day, like, she was the one who put this list of questions together. I think you so much Amanda, she said, like, hey, a lot of people are writing in about doing more E3C.

And I feel like this is not the first TTAs where that has been true.

I think I feel differently about E3C than I do balance where like, I don't want to go back to balance with E3C. Like, I think I do think there's like a lot of interesting stuff that we could do in that world. And so, yeah, I hear you. I would love to go back to E3C, and I think that there is an opportunity to do it. I just don't have the, I don't got the nugget. I don't got the nugget for it quite yet quite figured out. So you're saying we will get wet again.

If you guys see the gesture that dad did. Oh, but it was very, like, what up to let me know. Yeah, it was like that. And it was trying to pass himself off as one of the VJs. It would be underwater. You know, you know exactly what you did and what you were doing.

“You know what it was, you know what you did, and you should feel bad about it.”

Thank you, juice for not jumping in on this attack on me. I lost the thread. I'm sorry. Okay. So we will let y'all know when we are going to be putting up. When we're going to start doing this next sort of shorter season as we get ready for the big thing.

Take it, take it out, you know, a few episodes, putting up, putting up live shows as we get all that stuff going. We would really, what we've really kind of talked about, and this is more inside baseball is like trying to do, trying to like sit down and block out like a week where we can just like knock out a whole season of recordings. Because it really, it really, the number of times this season that like one of us had a major life thing happen that completely kind of destroyed any semblance of normalcy.

In our broader lives, but also in our kind of like work schedule that just really, really made it, made it tricky to stay in the moment with, with with with with Royale like I don't I don't think any of us really want that to keep being true.

“And ultimately I think it is more the norm to do it in a sort of like batch style.”

So we've got we have lots of ideas and we have ideas that we are pretty excited about, but we just kind of figure out like how what that looks like and what season would be sort of the best fit for it. And we'll let y'all know will let y'all know once we know. Yeah. And hey, great news. If you're the sort of weirdo that would like this sort of thing.

We have a pupating is always a bonus action t-shirt available for a very limited time at macroemerge.com.

If you were inspired by the finale of the show and you'd like to support it and you're a nasty dog pick up the pupating is always a bonus action t-shirt. Now it's available through the end of September and then it'll be retired for good. I think that's it. I had a really great time doing this season. I truly truly did. I loved coming up with all of these wizards and I loved the stories that came out of it and the just the whole vibe. I loved the ending of you guys kind of turning on each other and turning on how it was great.

The last moment like I really it was it was a tough season just sort of systematically but I I really liked how it turned out. I feel like this would make a good board game. Especially because it can make a good board game like 64 wizards and everybody like chooses which wizard and then they you throw nerf balls or something. I don't know. I don't have a little lot. That's more of a lot but I do like it. Yeah, I just would like to larp I think.

Got it wouldn't that be a great direction for this show to go larp.

I don't know how you listen to a larp. It is an audio podcast like first and foremost.

So like you would hear a lot of dancing just panting. Oh yeah, a train like a lot of foley work to flump flump flump. Well, no dad if we did it, larping you wouldn't need to do the foley. It would the real it would just be your body.

Then the whole show would just be like yeah.

“Yeah, I'm not now. I'm too old for that.”

Yeah. Hey, thank you so much for listening and that's going to do it for us for this week's episode. Hey, thanks for all the questions. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. And guys, thank you for all your great work. You're welcome.

Do you want to give him the song?

Hit him with the song. Hit him with the song. Hit him with the song. Yeah, I mean, hey, I'll try song. A huge, huge, huge, huge.

Thanks to Louis on for letting us use wizard discos, the theme for this season.

“Honestly, was inspirational for what the vibe of the season was going to be.”

Almost as much as anything else. Almost as much as like, you know, watching battle royale movies and TV shows and stuff.

Like that song beats ass and I'm very grateful to Louis.

Louis songs in inspiration. I want to be as funny as Louis's song makes me seem in his cartoon. Yeah. That's my dream. That's what we all aspire to be.

And we all want to be as funny as we are in Louis's cartoons. That's all. That's all it is. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks, y'all.

Bye, y'all. Thanks, guys. Bye, guys. Bye. [Music]

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