Season 5 Episode 13
Magic Items
0:00 – Intro Music
0:36 – Intro (News at the End of the Episode)
Joe: Hi and welcome to 2 GMs 1 Mic, I’m Joe
Kevin: And I’m Kevin
J: And this is Season 5 Episode 13: Magic Items
K: Woooo Magic
J: Right, we actually do have to talk a little bit about the horror of magic, being that this episode should
come out right around Halloween.
K: Halloweenus Schweenus
J: I’m actually a big fan of Halloween, it’s actually one of my favorite holidays
K: It’s pretty much the best… as you get older, Christmas gets shittier
J: Yeah and because America has exported its culture all over the world, everybody knows what
Halloween is, right international listeners? Do they do Halloween elsewhere? I know they do it in
England
K: Obviously. If you don’t live in America, Halloween is when you go door to door beating the inhabitants
of a house and then stealing things from them.
J: Right, and then we light it on fire. That’s the trick. The treat is the lamentations of their women.
K: You’ve seen The Purge. It’s a lot like that. Except it’s called Halloween and you’re not allowed to use
guns, you can only use gasoline-soaked boxing gloves and you can only use them as long as your hands
can hold out.
1:40—Music transition
2:20 – Main Discussion
K: Welcome back
J: Yep, time to talk about magic items. I’ll be honest, we came up with this idea and it’s been ruminating
for me for quite a while and the number one conclusion that I can make before we even begin
discussion… I don’t like them.
K: That’s because Joe doesn’t know how to handle them
J: No, I do not. So I’m still going to give out some wisdom and some personal anecdotes about them, but
I’m going to leave the heavy lifting to Kevin.
K: I think the general rule of thumb, which is usually heavily warned against in almost any magic items
section in any kind of dungeon guide or castle keeper’s guide or Hitchhiker’s guide… any kind of guide
that talks about magic items generally warns not to give too powerful or too many because starting off
with like a vorpal sword that’s +36 and you’re just a peasant farmer who’s like “I’m a hero now, I
married my sister but she died of cholera.” That can really hinder the whole flavor and nuance of the
game. Joe doesn’t know how to handle magic items outside of “there’s a random chart for that, you get
something on it.”
J: Yeah, and that only came about because people are like “How come we never get magic items?” and
I’d be like ‘because magic is rare and scary.’ And everybody’s like “We have never played a game where
magic is rare and scary Joe,” and I’m like “but all the books I like, magic is rare and scary.”
K: Not to be confused with Richard Scarry and his busy world.
J: Exactly. I am of the opinion when it comes to magic items, I do enjoy making them rare and scary. I
like low fantasy, even though that’s not what we play at all, but I also don’t run very many fantasy
games. The most fantasy games I run are like 7th Sea and Shard.
K: Dresden Files is pretty fantasy,
J: Yeah, that’s true. Dresden Files is. For some reason I think I have a better grasp on magic in a modern
world than I do for magic in a fantasy world. It seems to kind of clash in my mind, which is odd because
fantasy is milieu of the roleplaying gamer. It’s kind of interesting because it’s probably the one that I find
most challenging to GM
K: I think that probably just comes from the fact of how many books you’ve read in your entire life. You
have all of these conflicting ideas of what magic is, what a magic item is, what kind of magic is powered
by what.
J: Yeah I’m a pretty big fan of settings where magic is always for bad guys and it’s always mind bending
and destructive and that magic items are scary
K: Yeah, I don’t think that’s exactly great
J: no, I agree with you, however I do have a good magic item story about my Ravenloft campaign way
back in the day when I ran it in college. So, I ran Ravenloft using D&D 3rd edition, using the White Wolf
Ravenloft. I did it because I knew that I knew no gamers and I needed to find some, so I built a little
group after finding some gamers, and we started playing, and after the second session I asked them
“Hey guys, how is the game going?” and they’re like “we have not gotten a single magic item and we’re
level 3” and I was like “Yes, that’s a problem, how do I do that?” and they’re like “well, every time we
defeat a monster we should get magic items and we should find treasure,” and I said “Okay, good idea.”
So I went to the game store and I bought Book of Vile Darkness and I only gave them magic items from
that. So, one guy… at first he thought it was just a cool +2 dagger and instead found out it was drinking
blood every time he stabbed something and it slowly turned him into a werewolf. For those of you who
don’t know what The Book of Vile Darkness is, it was WotC’s evil book that they brought out in the early
2000’s.
K: Isn’t there a cock ring in that?
J: Uh, I don’t remember if… I know it had nipple clamps
K: That’s what it was
J: It’s kind of a sophomoric book. It doesn’t really do evil, in my opinion, but it does some pretty little
horrific things. So yes, there are nipple rings of pain I think. The cock ring of strength you’re thinking of, I
believe, is in the Book of Erotic Fantasy, which was another 3rd edition book put out by a publisher, I
think it was the one that was put out that used photoshopped women as all of its illustrations, and that
one had magical cock rings.
K: nice.
J: Yeah. Also kind of an immature book that dealt with sexuality, as opposed to evil. Book of Vile
Darkness isn’t really handling evil. But anyway, the magic items in it are pretty fucked up so I gave them
those. They actually—their characters built a box in which to put anything that was magical in the box.
They didn’t use any magic items.
K: That’s funny
J: Yeah it was pretty funny
K: But incredibly dickish.
J: Well, yeah I know, but to be fair to them, I don’t—it’s not like I use magic against people in my games
either. Most players use magic as a force leveler in my opinion, and I’m only going to throw monsters at
you and mostly non-magical ones at that. Internally consistent, like fiction consistent, but not like… You
know, you played in my Shard game where I had all of those demons everywhere and they really didn’t
like throw fire or anything, they just were big monsters.
K: Yeah, but then again it’s hard to do magic items in shard
J: Well not really, I think there’s a whole section in the book on them
K: Eh… in that game the weapons are kind of just flavor.
J: In 7th Sea, when I ran that like 20 years ago, I had a somewhat magical item because they have those
ancient aliens that lived all over the world, the Syrneth, and I invented an item where if they put fresh
water in it – it’s a flask with six gems on it and you’d fill it with fresh water, press the button, and the
water inside would turn that color, sort of pearlescent yellow or a deep metallic black or pearly white.
Each one would do something different. Yellow meant that you could understand all types of languages.
Black was a seeking spell, so if you said someone’s name or thought of an item and you would pour the
thing onto the ground and it would turn into a little tar ball and go that way and just race off faster than
you could catch it, so they ended up pouring it into a glass and they would end up holding it and it would
pull the glass and they could use it like a compass. Red ate metal, so you’d click the red button, pour the
flask out on anything and it would just corrode any metal it touched but leave anything else unharmed.
There were 6 or 8 buttons, I don’t remember what they all did.
K: Could you combine them, hold them both down—
J: No, nope. Just one.
K: That’s just lazy magic items, Joe.
J: No, just one. And it wasn’t a magic item, it was obviously sufficiently advanced technology.
K: Which, according to Jean-Luc Picard, it looks like magic to anyone.
J: Jean Luc Picard?
K: Yeah, there was a whole episode of Star Trek: Next Gen.
J: Arthur C. Clarke said that originally.
K: No. It was Jean-Luc Picard
J: Oh I’ll—I’m not going to piss you off.
K: Don’t you dare.
J: I won’t!
K: Don’t you take the Jean-Luc Picard’s name in vain!
Laughing
J: For all I know it was Isaac Asimov who said it. Someone will just be like “Isaac Asimov Said that Joe!
You sound all pretentious, Arthur C. Clarke my ass!”
K: Obviously it was Chewbacca who said it
J: I know but we couldn’t understand it at the time.
K: I mean, he just has nothing but philosophical waxings. Half the time he’s just speaking in sonnet,
that’s why Han loves him so much.
J: I can’t wait for the new Star Wars
K: Who can. No one!
J: I know, it’s only like, what, 57 days away.
K: 50 something days.
J: Yeah,
K: It was 67 like a week ago
J: It’s 50 something days right now and it’s going to be 40 something days when this comes out, so…
K: Go see Star Wars!
J: Oh my god, Star wars.
K: Force Awakens again
J: I think we should play Star Bastards after watching it.
K: I mean, we could recur those characters…
J: No, I mean, New Janitors
K: New Janitors. I don’t even know how we—we need to play something new, we can’t just go back to
things we liked
J: Yeah, I know, I agree. Speaking of which, and to bring it to the magic items, I kind of want to play
something like 13th Age, D&D, or Castles & Crusades again as a campaign. I’d like to play something like
that.
K: Nothing against Castles & Crusades, but I mean, we’ve played that game into the ground.
J: True, true.
K: I would like to try one of the other D20 systems that D20s.
J: Yeah, like 13th Age or 5th ed.
K: I mean we tried Pathfinder, that was not our bag.
J: no.
K: But, you know, there was magic items. But, you had to do arithmetic and calculus to make them work
J: Right. That’s kind of why I like the clean simplicity of 5th Edition. But yeah, 13th Age, if I recall correctly,
is pretty cool.
K: Yeah, it is pretty cool! I mean it does some interesting things that I would like to explore on the table.
J: Yeah, me too, I’ve heard a lot of folks talk about Dungeon World is as well. I remember reading it for
the show, and I kind of want to take a second look at it because of the way the game is played. One of
the things about actual play in Dungeon World is that you have a series of moves that you can make—
and this is everything from talking to walking to everything—so you actually have a little chart in front of
you of what you can do at any time, and the whole game is played that way.
K: Hmm. Reminds me of RoboRally.
J: Yeah, it’s not quite as formulaic, but I’m interested to see it in actual play. I haven’t played it, I’ve only
read the book a while ago.
K: Anyways! Magic items.
J: Right!
K: Joe says he doesn’t like them, he thinks they’re dumb. I think they’re a great way to tell a story and I’ll
tell you the funniest thing I ever did with magic items ever. I was running a group for my current
girlfriend and a bunch of people that we used to know and it was before we were dating. So I had
started a group—none of them had roleplayed before, so I decided that I was going to flirt with the
sentient magic weapons. I gave one person one. It was pretty much an evil sword that wanted to
destroy goblins or something, and so as soon as you give one person something like that, everyone
wants one. So, there’s four of these magic items on the table. I concoct the most dickish thing ever as
I’m going to take them away from them and they’re going to have to go on an adventure to get them
back. Well, they kill the plot device that was going to take them, so then I was like… I’m a bitter person
in real life and in gaming. I decide that they were going to come too close to some sort of catalyst that
turned all of the magic items into a golem, and then when they killed the golem it destroyed all of their
magic items.
J: Nice. Kind of like the treasure golem in Legendary Adventures
K: I guess
J: In Legendary Adventures, I remember Josh edited it, and he told me “Dude, this is the most dickish
monster I’ve ever seen,” and I was like “What is it,” he says, “It’s a treasure golem.” So you walk into a
room full of treasure and it turns into a golem and as you fight it, it deactivates magical items and loses
value so that by the end of the fight you’ve destroyed half of the treasure and it’s useless.
K: That’s funny. So I did that. I took away like 4 or 5 sentient magic items. They didn’t have a cleric in the
party so they had like a loot that would heal people for 3 D6 and they had all kinds of craziness.
J: Didn’t you have the Crimson Jester from the Black Librum
K: Yes!
J: Was he the one that was supposed to take them?
K: Yeah, he was supposed to take them and then they killed him
J: Nice.
K: Because I played him wrong
J: Well, that was like when I ran Queen of the Demonweb Pits and she had lesser wish, so I used wish to
do a true illusion that all of the players were first level and it would have been perfect if the cleric hadn’t
just run up to her and laid on hands and killed her with burning hands. She was down to like 4 hit points,
so I threw the wish and everybody was pissed, and he just ran up and sacrificed himself and killed her. I
guess it was more climactic triumphant from their side. From my side it was fucking stupid.
Laughing
J: It was interesting, I should say. It was kind of a disappointment. I thought Lolth was at least going to
kill one of them.
K: Honestly, I feel like whenever we make characters, the one thing that always makes its way from the
random magic item generator is the rod of snake… or the anaconda rod
J: mhmm. Rod of snake I think, snake rod? I don’t know.
K: When you throw it, it turns into a snake and fights with you and hangs out and then can turn back
into a rod
J: In fact, the product that I’m reviewing for favorite game tonight, they actually add that exact spell to
the game where it gives you snake rod.
K: That’s hilarious. That thing always shows up, and it’s on the random table. It’s not a big number
spread. It’s like 31 to 32
J: For some reason it always shows up in our games
K: Every single time
J: and it’s always used once and then forgotten about.
K: Eh, how many snake sticks do you really need?
J: How often do you really need to use it. Ever since I started implementing that, whatever issue of the
Crusader that is, it’ll be in the Show Notes, but the Crusader where they have the random magic item
giver is fantastic.
K: They have that in just Monsters and Treasure,
J: Well the one that actually determines which ones you roll on, and at what time. It’s not building a
horde…
K: It’s not building a horde in Monsters and Treasure, Monsters and Treasure just has that now
J: Oh do they? I don’t know if I’ve read the newer versions of Monsters and Treasure.
K: Probably not… it’s in there.
J: I’m still running 3rd printing stuff, and they’re on, what, 6th?
K: I have no idea, every month it’s a new edition.
J: well not every month it’s a new edition, just a new printing where they clean it up. They’re all
compatible. If I recall correctly it was just the Barbarian and the Cleric—or the Illusionist that got
changed a little.
K: Yeah, but that was a few years ago now. So, I mean, I think I have the newest one and my edition’s
three years old now out of all of us, so I mean… lots of changes probably.
J: Hey, Shout out to the fella who won our contest. He actually did buy a flip book.
K: Yes he did! Shout out to Eric.
J: Thank you. Good Job! Enjoy your flip book.
K: General advice for magic items is try to keep it on the manageable side. Don’t make the character just
glow with magic items. Don’t make them wipe their ass with the +2 cloak of ass wiping. Just make
everything that they find—just make it interesting.
J: One of the ways that I’ve tried to introduce them in the past, if I’m not using a module where they’re
already build in, I tend to make them, not quite McGuffins, but to the point where they’re something
special. This isn’t just a +1 sword; this is like the sword of some dead dude you found who was
important. This is the sword of Saint Whatever. I try to build them into the game where you want to
keep it because a bad guy was using it or you found it somewhere cool. As opposed to how I feel D&D
generally does it, which is “Check it… you found a pile of magic…” You know. I try to make them more
unique, I think. In doing that I run into my own laziness where I’m like “I forgot to plant magic items…
well that sucks.”
K: I feel like itemization, in most games people don’t give it as much care as they should.
J: Well magic items should be special. When it comes to regular equipment, I don’t keep track of any of
that. I don’t expect any of my players to keep track of any of that. Yes, you have arrows. Yes you have
bolts. Yes you have the shit you need to cast your spells. I don’t want people keeping track of stuff.
There are a few games where that becomes part of the game and that is kind of cool to me, but that’s
not how we usually play games. Generally, if you say you have it, your character has it. If it makes sense,
within reason. However, magic items kind of break that rule for me because not everyone’s going to
have a +1 sword or a +1 dagger, so you need to come up with something that is a way to balance it. As I
said earlier, I really like low magic settings. One of the games that I’m going to reviewing later is Dark
Albion. Not today, but later. In it, they actually have special rules for +0 weapons. An heirloom sword
that’s passed down for a couple of generations is probably +0, which means that it gives no bonuses
whatsoever but it can be used against monsters that are immune to anything but magical weapons.
K: That’s pretty cool
J: Right, so I kind of liked—it’s not so much the +0 that I liked, what I liked was his explanation of why it’s
magic. I like that more, I think that’s my problem with your standard D&D or Pathfinder game with
magic weapons. For me, I feel like you need to justify that +2. It can’t just be a +2 sword like “Oh look, I
bought it in a magic items shop.” I don’t like magic being so prevalent like that.
K: You don’t like magic being commonplace
J: Right, you know, Nicky once brought up that when I play a game, she played a wizard in one of my
C&C campaigns that lasted for a while, this was in Carbondale, she was like “How come I feel like I’m the
only wizard in this setting.” And I was like “well, yeah. Good point.” I have a very hard time imagining
magic heavy worlds, I guess. It’s all in the skinning for me. I have nothing wrong with special powers. For
magic items, for some reason, there’s something in the milieu that doesn’t really click very well with me.
That’s probably why I suck with them.
K: I think the magic items I like most are the ones that aren’t like +1 or +2 swords or shit like that.
Anything cut from that cloth where “You find this sword, it glows of magic.” “What is it” “Uh, it’s a +1
longsword.” “Cool, I call fourth mighty +1 longsword.” I feel like people are better than that.
J: Yeah, I don’t want a +2 short sword, I want fucking Sting.
K: When I tried to give everyone sentient items, it didn’t initially start off in this mind like “I’m going to
give them this item, and then I’m going to take it away from them and then kick their puppy,” it started
off like, I want to give them something cool and unique. Something to fall back on and have magic
powers and I started working on them and it got to the point like, they don’t use them as sentient at all,
they just use them as tools so that upsets me, now they’re gone. I feel, when it comes down to it, if
you’re going to make magic items in a setting, don’t give people like “this is a thief with a +1 magic
sword and you steal this guy’s +2 magic dagger.” Give them a dagger of this—hell if it’s a thief or an
assassin, you kill the assassin and you get the assassin’s blade which is a magic item specifically created
for the assassin’s guild and it has these properties, that’s how you know it’s one of those daggers,
because it has this look and it does this.
J: Yeah, and if you’re really on your game you give him that and now the assassins are going to be after
him when someone sees him wielding it.
K: I feel like magic items should have relevance in the world, except for one. There’s one magic item that
every campaign needs and you don’t know it until it’s there.
J: Hm?
K: Rod of Wonder.
J: Oh yeah, Rod of Wonder’s the best.
K: Rod of Wonder. You give that to the most destructive person at your table.
J: That’s even better than the Deck of Many Things.
K: Deck of many things can be catastrophic, that can ruin your campaign. Rod of Wonder just ruins
everyone’s good time.
Laughing
K: it’s one of those things like, alright guys we’re at the final battle. We’re fighting the dragon. It’s a 49
billion hit die monster. What are you doing? Rod of Wonder! 4 million butterflies fly up at the dragon
and tickle it. Rod of Wonder! Now it’s purple.
J: Rod of Wonder! Now I have a boat.
K: Yeah. For those who don’t know what the Rod of Wonder is, who have been living under a rock for
some century now… Rod of Wonder is a rod that rolls on a 50 option chart and every two numbers is a
different thing that happens when you wield the rod of wonder. It can be devastating like a 9 D6 fireball
to a gentle gust of wind at 5 miles per hour blows.
J: Now I know that Rod of Wonder shows up in a couple of different D&D clones. In Castles and
Crusades, it’s actually in the Castle Zayg book.
K: No it’s in the M—
J: Oh did they move it into the Monsters and Treasure at some point?
K: Yeah it’s in Monsters and Treasure
J: I originally saw it in the Castle Zayg book. It’s definitely a weird one. I know it’s in pretty much all of
the versions of D&D if I recall correctly.
K: I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.
J: My favorite magical item from Castles & Crusades are the googly eyes of doom. I think that they’re
just called the eyes of doom, but the description is that they’re metallic eyes on springs and they google.
What you do is to use them, you put them on and look at somebody and wiggle your fingers and say
“dooom.” I don’t even remember what it does, I just know it says that.
K: Isn’t it also like Walrus and Bag of Dust.
J: Those are in the chart for items, yeah. Stuff you buy. Dust, Bag of: Free and Walrus. My brother rode a
walrus
K: It’s important.
J:Mhmm. Well he was an illusionist. I think he made everybody think it was a white stallion, but yeah he
always tried to ride a walrus.
K: Yeah, but don’t be that person. Don’t be like “You find six +2 longswords.” “Well, gonna take these
back to town and sell them.”
J: You know, one of the things I like about Scion, is if you recall, in Scion Matt gave us all a signature
item. Like, your character had the mandate of heaven, and my character got some kind of stick or
something that did something special. I think it’s important for magic items to be personal and to be tied
directly to the person and the story. They should be given as a gift, they shouldn’t be given as a way of
keeping the game balanced. As I said in the thread I bring up on occasion, Fuck Game Balance, I think
game balance is generally dumb. Not that playing using it is dumb or I’m impugning someone else’s play
style. In my experience, game balance is a crutch for people’s GMing. You can keep any game well
balanced through good GMing and decent players. I think that’s why I don’t hand them out—magic
items, I mean— the way that games expect me to. I’m not trying to make sure that the wizard has a +3
staff at level 2 because he needs to keep up with the fighter. There’s a couple of phrases that I see
floating around online that always involve magic items and that’s niche protection and class balance and
class build. When I see any of those being rationally discussed amongst people, not to offend either of
you listeners, when I see those words I immediately think those people don’t play, they’re just reading
the book. That’s kind of how I feel. Like when everyone panned Of Gods and Monsters for Castles &
Crusades and were like “This is totally unbalanced and stupid. Some gods give you penalties and some
gods make you awesome.” Like Jupiter who just gives you +1 to all of your stats, right. I remember
people bitching about how unbalanced it is and I kept thinking like, you’re not using this in play. I’m one
of those people that thinks a well-designed game can only do so much. A good GM is worth a hell of a
lot more than a well-designed or well-balanced game
K: You could balance any game so that you could have it perfectly sit on the tip of a needle, but you’re
going to have players that are going to do something stupid to unhinge it. Game balance is all in the eye
of the beholder.
J: Hell, people play Rifts and that is the most, crazy unbalanced games ever. Soon to be getting a Savage
Worlds edition, which I am really super stoked about actually. That setting is amazing.
K: So look for that
J: Yeah, I will definitely keep an eye out for that. I’ll let y’all know when it comes. So like I said, magic
items are generally a way of maintaining niche protection or game balance or something of that nature
and, you know, that just doesn’t seem to be a priority when it comes to my gaming. I’m not interested in
the game being balanced. Not amongst the players, anyway, or even amongst the NPCs.
K: I like magic items to help tell the story. I like them to be important, I like them to pick up some slack
here and there if there’s a deficit or something.
J: I actually agree with you 100%. I think if and when I run my next fantasy game, I will be attempting to
put magic items in there as a way to add to the story. And like I said, the product I’m reviewing tonight is
based on a magic item, so…
K: Nice, there’s some magic items in mine too.
J: Excellent. I don’t know where the Dragon went, so, alright. I’ve pretty much run out of steam, what
about you? Got anything more to talk about magic items?
K: Rod of Wonder.
J: Rod of might.
K: singing “Rooood of wonder, rod of might,”
Laughing
29:48—Music Transition
30:32 – Kevin and Joe’s Favorite Games of the Week
J: Alright everybody, it’s time for favorite game of the week.
K: Joe said it right!
J: I did! It only took like, 8 takes.
K: 9 if you count the Blippi incident
J: Stop it with Blippi, my son may like Blippi
K: No one likes Blippi. Not even Blippi likes Blippi
J: Well you just guaranteed he’s got a shout out in the Show Notes
K: It’s gonna get cut out.
J: Oh… But yeah, I said it right this time.
K: Hooray!
J: So what’s your favorite game this week?
K: My favorite game this week is from Pelgrane Press. It is a 13th Age adventure called The Strangling
Sea. It is a first level adventure with typical advancements to be like 2 or 3 until the end. It is
recommended for maximum funage to go about six adventures as opposed to like two or three.
J: Sessions, you mean?
K: Yeah. Six or seven sessions instead of being like “well, you go there and you do this.” This story is
based around which icon you are friends with or most known of and blah blah blah. They give you a
reason to go look for a man named Inigo Sharpe. Now, Inigo is apparently the most interesting man in
the world. Like, he once said the alphabet song with three letters kind of interesting. He does all sorts of
fantastical crazy nonsense bullshit that you can’t even imagine, so there’s just 700 billion different kinds
of rumors as to why you need to find him or why someone’s looking for him. So, in the game it uses
something that they call the Patron and the Antagonist. The Patron is your icon that’s sending you out to
go find him and the Antagonist is the other icon who’s sending forces to stop you from getting him, or to
kill him, or to get to him first. Which vary depending on which icon you’re following. The reason I chose
this adventure is because when you’re picking the icon that you go with, at the beginning of your
adventure, whatever icon you’re with gives you a magic item or gives one magic item to one person in
the party whoever best embodies what they’re looking for. There’s one icon that’s hilarious. He doesn’t
give you a magic item, what happens is someone steals one of your items and replaces it with a magic
version of it.
J: Nice.
K: And the interesting thing about this entire adventure is it takes place on what they call the Strangling
Sea, which is essentially a patch of seaweed and detritus that has shipwrecked ships and people are
living on it. It sustains life, it has animals that are exclusive to the area. It also has sharks and killer
whales that patrol the perimeter and will try to eat you and grab you from underneath. The whole
premise is that Inigo Sharp is supposedly there and you have to find him. There’s all sorts of forces
against you. There’s encampments of goblins, there’s a former dwarf ship that was sent to break up the
Strangling Sea that got caught, and there’s other countless ships with other pirates and whatnot. I feel
it’s one of the better beginning adventures. I still feel the one that I originally did like last season, which
is a level 1 adventure, that is my personal favorite, but I would actually play this as like a next adventure
after that one. This one’s really well done and there’s a twist as to what you’re looking for Inigo and I
don’t want to spoil it. Well, I do, but I won’t.
J: So out of the 13th Age adventures you’ve done, they’re pretty consistent in quality then.
K: Oh yeah, they’re very thorough if anything else. They make pretty much a solid case for any kind of
action or any kind of scenario. It’s not so much that they railroad you into doing things, it’s just that they
cover all of their bases very well in a very loose yet tight way. It’s kind of succinct. I feel it’s worth your
dollar or 10. It’s worth 10 bucks.
J: Yeah the PDF may be cheaper. I don’t know. You have the print one, right?
K: Yeah I have the print one.
J: Sounds cool dude.
K: It’s cool, I enjoy it. I thought it was good
J: Neato.
K: If you’re just starting for 13th Age, it’s a good place to start.
J: Excellent. So, mine is also an adventure. It’s a kind of fantasy adventure by Lamentations of the Flame
Princess and it’s called Qelong. It’s written by Kennith Hite, one of my favorite RPG authors just because
he has quite the breadth of esoteric knowledge. I can tell you right now that this adventure is not a joke,
but there is an homage to an old OSR saying. They sometimes call old D&D fantasy fucking Vietnam and
this game is actually set in fantasy fucking Vietnam. The land of Savajedra is definitely a very Vietnam
feeling place. It’s very southeast kind of ties. Siam type place, there’s rice patties and whatnot. The point
of the adventure is that over the mountains, there are two unknowably powerful eldritch beings that
are in the middle of a war and they have sucked out a ton of the peasants and armies and political stuff
of Savajedra and are just fighting an incomprehensible battle. Anybody that gets too near it gets sucked
into it and destroyed. Just ripped apart by eldritch forces that are unknowable. A chunk of this war
known as the cylinder flew over the mountains and fell down. The book likens this cylinder to an unfired
shell from a gun that someone just racked and chucked out the side. However, it’s so powerful it’s
bleeding something powerful called icham into the soil and the air and the very nature of everyone in
the area. The poisoning actually starts affecting PCs immediately. If you stay in the place for more than 2
days, you get a point of the poisoning. If you get any kind of disease then you get poisoning. If you eat
any of the food, especially fish or rice, you get the poison. If you drink any water, you get the poisoning.
So it slowly builds up in you and starts mutating you and messing with your head. The cylinder has not
only done that, it has corrupted all sorts of animals in the area. One of the monstrous peoples is called
the mermidians, and what they are is a small, maybe inch long, pinkish ant that takes over human men
and crawls inside them and slowly becomes carapace and they become monsters. There’s the Naga, the
snake people, and their ancient dead queen, Naga Qelong, who has just awoken from her slumber
because of the Cylinder landing in her lands. There’s also the hungry dead and the Naga that are trying
to escape from Naga Qelong, and a band of crazy mercenaries that are straight from Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, or Apocalypse Now, if you will. That’s the sandbox you’re playing in. It’s called a big
wet poison sandbox is the name of the game. There’s a couple different ways to run the game. You can
be searching specifically for the cylinder. It’s specifically for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, so
you’re neutral, lawful or chaotic. Neutral people was kind of the worst advice as to why they’re there,
because the best piece of advice as to why neutral characters would even go there is because they can.
Lawful people would have been sent there to diffuse the cylinder, and chaotics would have been sent
there to bring it back or to bring back a chunk of it to somebody. It’s the closest somebody can get to
this crazy war without getting sucked into it and destroyed. It is an incredibly deadly adventure. If I were
to run it, and I were to run it as written, especially using Castles and Crusades or Lamentations of the
Flame Princess, I don’t know if any of the PCs will survive it. Unless you find the cylinder real fast and
then find the spell you need to diffuse it real fast, you’re toast. It’s a nasty adventure. It’s 53 pages.
When I first got it I thought ‘53 Pages, this must just be a sandbox,’ right, just hex after hex after hex.
No. Unlike a lot of these oldschool games where you have numbered hexes and you find out what goes
on that hex, in this one you find out what kind of hex you’re in and then roll on a random table. So
there’s a mixture of random events and set geographical events that change the narrative to have you
do the adventure. It’s neither railroad nor sandbox, it’s kind of in the middle, which is the kind of
adventure I actually like to do. Here’s a plot point, move the characters to a location, now they figure
out where to go from there. That’s kind of how I like to do it anyway, so the adventure really went well
with me. This thing is full of, like I said earlier, southeast Asian kind of flavor. It’s done very well. It’s also
obviously inspired by things like Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse now. You can feel that oozing through
the whole thing. It is hot, it is sticky, it is full of disease and monsters are going to eat you. It’s a nasty
adventure. Awesome, but nasty nonetheless.
K: just like my ex-girlfriend
J: it’s definitely well written, Kennith Hite knows the culture very well and knows the legends of the
southeast Asian cultures, it’s not an ethnographic text obviously, but it’s close enough. It feels like
you’re in an alien environment. It’s really, really fuckin cool. I would love to run it but our group would
hate it.
K: Well, you know, maybe as a 1-shot
J: I think it’s a little bit bigger than a 1-shot. I don’t think you could run it in one evening. It’s almost like
its own campaign. Even at 53 pages, it would probably take us 3 or 4 sessions to get through it.
K: Well if you say it’s as deadly as it is…
J: Well, as deadly as it is, 3 or 4 sessions would get us to the end but I don’t know if, the way our group
plays, I don’t know if you guys would make it through the first game. There are specific encounters in
there where it says “if they fight, they die.” There’s really nothing you can do about it. Then the
poisoning and the other stuff gives you a nice little time clock with the cylinder being the kind of thing in
the middle, so it’s really fucking cool. So Qelong. Q E L O N G.
K: Dragon have anything for us?
J: Yeah actually the Dragon did something that I’ve wanted to check out for a long time. By Daniel Chan,
it’s called the Ledgerdemain Betrayers. It’s actually by the same author who did Godking, which was
one of the earlier reviews that I did in I think the second season. It’s been a while. This game is in largely
the same style. It’s diceless, it uses cards instead of dice. It’s actually less of a full game than it is a kind
of guided adventure. You start off tied up to a chair in a warehouse.
K: Kinky.
J: Yep, the only characters available to the game are the four or five that are presented in the book. You
have to pick one of them. What happens is magic is real. This is our world, but magic is real. All of the
characters found that out independently and all became traveling magicians to try to rival David
Copperfield, Penn and Teller, that kind of stuff. Problem is that the magical world is ruled by 13 witches
called The Coven who for eons have declared that public magic use is forbidden, so all of you have been
sentenced to death for violating the rules of this world that you didn’t even know existed. The
adventure is you guys escaping that. So you use your tricks and traps and guile and wits to get the hell
out of that warehouse.
K: I mean if you get Guile, as long as you don’t fight Sagat, you’re fine.
Laughing
J: Yeah. That’s a streetfighter reference. See how good I am at getting these geek references now? 5
years of the show and I actually catch a Streetfighter reference. Nice. But yeah, you have to use your
various magical abilities as well as your mundane abilities to escape from the warehouse. After words,
unlike in Godking, there is actually advice in the back of the book that devotes itself to saying where you
could go from here. It’s a little bit more open-ended, you could continue to play, but generally it’s
assumed that you’re just playing the one adventure and you’re done.
K: Sounds kind of cool
J: it’s gorgeous too. The PDF itself is fucking beautiful. It’s very moody, it’s very well laid out, the art is
fantastic, I mean it’s a beautiful book. It’s really cool. It’s kind of hard to talk about without spoiling it
too much. The way the cards work, in case you’re interested, is your abilities are based on color, suit and
number. You can use certain abilities based on the hand you have. If you can match the color, suit or
number of an ability that has different effects. The more you match, the better the affect. It’s pretty
slick and pretty elegant but mostly just dead simple. It’s very easy, you do it or not. It’s really just
designed to do that one adventure and it’s a single evening of play in my opinion. Godking is a little bit
bigger, but it’s a really cool game. It’s up there for me with like, The Devil, John Moulton, where you
have a game that just does the one adventure but it’s always different every time you play. Legerdemain
probably takes that one step different because you only have so many characters to play with. Godking
has slightly more generic characters. Those are three of the game I want to do one shots for with our
group. Check out Legerdemain Betrayers by Daniel Chan, link in the shownotes.
K: Okay, currently playing?
J: I think so
45:33 – Music Transition
46:05—Currently Playing.
K: Round 3, Fight! And we’re back!
J: Yes we are. I—
K: Sonic Boom!
J: I always thought—
K: Sonic Boom!!
J: Hayuken! I am just now remembering Gomez Addams with cancer as M. Bison.
K: That was really sad.
J: That movie was really sad. I remember seeing that movie and even as like a 7 or 8 year old I was like
“wow this movie sucks.”
K: Just remember, Jean Claude Van Damme was coked out the entire time.
J: There was a recent Cracked article that talked about that movie, but I remember seeing it in theatres
thinking oh my god. You know, my street fighter creature was always Blanca. That was the one I always
played.
K: Well yeah, that was the coolest one to play.
J: Mhmm because you could just do the electrical thing and then no one could touch you. Although, he
was no good at beating up the car. Really anybody who played Ken or Ryu, they just won.
K: Because they’re the same character. Nuanced differences, but we’re not going to get into that.
J: Yeah, believe it or not, we haven’t been playing street fighter. 7th Sea ended with us basically stopping
World War II, or I guess it would be World War 0 in this case. Ussura, the Vendel league and Montaigne
had teamed up to invade Eisen. Josh’s character ended up being the emperor of Eisen. My character
ended up being the head of the new merchant class of the Vestenmanavenjar and bringing fourth the
king, your character ended up being Tsar… Gaius?
K: No… I was—I killed Gaius and I became the advisor to the new Gaius.
J: That’s right, you became an important advisor to the new Gaius. And then Nicky and Amanda’s
characters became good Vesten wives… I don’t know what happened to them and I don’t know what
happened to Doug’s character really.
K: There was no closure with Doug’s character. Doug’s character became a fully actualized fate witch
who paid off the Fae. Nicky became the lost rune
J: That’s right, the embodiment of the lost rune.
K: Which was Null, which meant that no matter what happened, time kept disappearing and she’s
started being nothing, but the only person who never forgot her and never could lose her was her best
friend Amanda.
J: Thank you, I knew there was closure with them, but I couldn’t remember what it was. So 7th Sea ended
satisfactorily, and then after several fits and starts due to car accidents and personal issues, we have
now begun to play Shard.
K: I don’t know if you guys know that we actually have played Shard before, we kind of like it. We don’t
like it that much, we don’t talk about it that often—
J: Actually, I’ll be honest, I know we haven’t mentioned it every episode this season. This is the first
season that we haven’t mentioned it every episode.
K: It feels like we’ve mentioned it every episode…
J: I know, but I know we don’t. But anyway, so far I’m pretty excited. I built a mini-campaign, it’s only
going to be 4-6 sessions long, wherein I took some of the overarching themes from the Mahabharata
and mixed them with some revenge films that I like, and the US civil war. The PCs are the last survivors
of a destroyed line and they are getting their revenge on the one who wronged them.
K: it’s great
J: Yeah. It should be pretty great. My goal is for you guys to just wreak havoc and drop the country into
chaos but gain your revenge and decide where to go from there
K: Murder rampage it is
J: Yep, so that’s the beginning of Shard. We haven’t played a whole lot. We just made characters and did
a kind of tiny, rough intro and after recording, we will be playing the first full session this week. And
then, monthly gaming is back.
K: Yes it is
J: and you’re in it.
K: I am
J: We’re playing Low Life, because I fucking love that game.
K: Shout out to Andy Hopp
J: yes, shout out to Andy Hopp. I love that game and I said, hey I’ll run monthly gaming and then you and
Amanda were like “we wanna play Low Life,:” and I said “that’s good because that’s the only option
you’re getting.” And so, Jay’s playing and… it’s actually a pretty big group.
K: It is really big. You have to understand, Joe’s idea of “That’s the only option you’re getting” is Joe
coming up and being like (whining voice) “Would you in my monthly gaming group, would you please
play”
J: Yes it was, it was exactly like that. But that’s okay, my tears are part of my super power of persuasion.
K: it’s true, they’re delicious.
J: They are, extra salty. With just a little bit of Sriracha. So, I am a big fan of Low Life and the way I’ve set
up the game so far is the characters were all invited for being great heroes and to come to the island of
BlahBlahBlah wherein they are to participate Three Amigos style in a fake invasion. Well they get there
and surprise, surprise, the invasion… not fake. Now, they have to fight their way off the island and be
real heroes.
K: I’m a weirdo named Goldencake the Zazzler
J: You’re a Cremefillian, right?
K: I’m a Cremefillian with a giant codpiece that heals people as I tea bag them.
J: Jay is playing a Croach arm-wrestling champion.
K: Where he’s got two real big arms and then two little arms.
J: Amanda is playing a Bodul hipster smellcaster
K: Yes
J: Which is hilarious
K: All the American Spirit smell and the ballsack—or the ball smell of tight skinny jeans
J: She told me she wanted one reek to be the smell of guyliner. Then let’s see, Becky, this is only the
second time she’s ever role played, maybe third?
K: Second..
J: Definitely second, she’s playing a Snell Bootyhunter who’s very, very bad at her job. Josh is playing a
Werm tough guy, and Doug is playing a pile contaminator. And we may actually add somebody to the
group next time.
K: Maybe
J: Which we’re playing in 2 weeks and I’m really super excited
K: Shout out to Stef, peer pressure. PEER PRESSURE
J: And there’s going to be lots and lots of poo jokes and inappropriate sexual jokes and I love Low Life,
it’s just the best thing ever.
K: It’ll be a good time.
J: I think the campaign overall, once again, I’m shooting for six sessions. This adventure, should you
survive it, will make you real heroes and then someone’s going to come to you with a real problem. It’s
probably going to be Dorcs and you’re probably going to have to go into the Underwhere.
K: (groans) (barenaked ladies impression) “Just made you say Underwear”
J: So yeah, I’m really, really emjoying playing Low Life. It’s definitely one of the highlights of my months.
K: Well,
J: So that’s it for currently playing.
53:25—Music Transition.
54:07—News and Shout outs
K: Shout out to Josef, who wrote in
J: yeah, and he actually had a question and I’d like to address it. His question was how to make sure the
PCs work together. Retroactively, I don’t have a really good idea for that, because generally what we do
is set that up before the game starts. The PCs usually all have a reason to work together.
K: What you can start doing is, if they don’t split the party other than “I’ll watch the wagon” and
whatnot, try to invest them all into spending time together. Make them friends. Although you might
enjoy fun little in-fighting amongst them, try to make it fun little play fighting instead of “I’m gonna slash
his throat while he sleeps and steal all of his money.”
J: Yeah well another good way to do it is if they’re traveling with a bunch of NPCs, make the NPCs make
them all go together. You can have the NPCs be like “Well, I don’t know what I’m doing and you’re the
warrior, so you guys need to go.”
K: Just keep finding stupid, nitpicky reasons that they all have to stick together, and if that just be like
“You all have to go” and if they go “why” you say “Because I’m the goddamn GM.”
J: yeah, sometimes that needs to happen. Generally, I would say in character creation, try to take care of
that next time, but for now, Kevin’s advice stands.
K: At the end of the day, it’s your game and they’re your players. You own them, you bought them, you
paid for them, you get to tell them what to do. You move them across the board with elegance and
grace and if they don’t—
J: Don’t follow any of that advice.
(laughing)
K: (yelling) Follow all my advice!
J: No, don’t follow—
K: (still yelling) IRON FIST! No- honestly. Just try to lure them into a false sense of security and then just
make them unite against you if you have to.
J: Yeah, that’s also a good way to do it. So, once again, shout out to Josef. You got it. We also have to
Shout out to Dylan who wrote in just to tell us nice things.
K: And it was awesome. We love you Dylan.
J: We love you very much Dylan. And even Jay loves you because you shouted out to his taste in music
and that is the one surest way to get to Jay’s heart.
K: So expect a blow job in the mail buddy!
(laughing)
J: Yeah he didn’t have any questions, he just wanted to say how cool we were. Although he did say that
we should do a show specifically about FATE and/or Dungeon World.
K: Which we can do in the fuuutureeee
J: Maybe we should all go on favorite game quests to see if there’s any non-dresden fate that we should
look up and then just do a show about how cool FATE is.
K: I enjoy Tian Xia
J: yeah that’s true, we should come up with new ones. A bunch of new shit came out for FATE. Like, I’d
actually like to check out some of the toolkits for world building and whatnot and see what’s in there.
K: That’d be pretty badass.
J: A lot of the FATE stuff’s free, too.
K: A lot of the FATE stuff’s awesome.
J: I would like to see some of the worlds, like Tian Xia, 3rd party non- evil hat worlds and see how they’ve
done fate. I do have the Part Time Gods for FATE book.
K: That’s probably awesome
J: Mhmm. So yeah, maybe the next show or another show down the road will be about FATE because I
think it’s a great idea Dylan.
K: Guess what Dylan, you asked and you get what you want.
J: that’s right, both listeners wrote in. High five Kevin
(high five noise)
K: Next time, if someone wants something, just ask. We’ll give it to you. Blow jobs from Jay, you name it.
J: Yeah really, you name it. Bow jobs from Jay, we’ll give you whatever you need. Alright cool, if you
need any of those things, just e-mail us, tweet us, facebook us, call us on the phone number that no one
uses, or um… send up smoke signals. We always say smoke signals and carrier pigeons but we never get
those either. You can send inter-dimensional messages, Porte messages, magic mouth,
K: Ghost voice, dancing lights
J: dancing lights is good, um, perhaps, you have an item in your bag for farspeaking.
K: Subliminal messages,
J: Telekinetic Torcs,
K: Dreamwalking…?
J:Any of those are valid ways of getting a hold of us. Alright and with that we bid you Adieu.
K: Bonne nuit!
58:32—Outtro music.
2 GMs 1 Mic is a 3 Die Stunt production, brought to you by nothing… because we’re free. Hosted by me,
Joe, who can’t think of anything funny right now. And Kevin, who was never very funny to begin with.
And is produced by Jay…………………………………… (laughing) . The intro song is Roll the Dice, Make My Day
by the Mustard Men (Stick Jones Remix).