Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
329 | 2025 TTRPGs, D&D Artificer, Pathfinder's Necromancer & Runesmith, Baby Goblins, Vegan Shoes
Fri, 20 Dec 2024
It's the last show of the year! It's Time To Vote For 2025's Most Anticipated TTRPGs! D&D Releases Playtest for Updated Artificer Pathfinder Launches Playtest for Necromancer and Runesmith Classes Vegan D&D Footwear and Accessories Modiphius Launches New Mediaeval TTRPG Doomsong ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’s Minthara Gets Scrooged in Larian Studios’ Advent Calendar Pathfinder Replica: Baby Goblin Life-Sized Figure Dreadful Blessings – A Mechanic to Protect 5e Boss Monsters Tales of the Valiant Starter Set Solasta 2 Revealed At The Game Awards, Early Access Coming Next Year Superman Official Teaser Trailer
All the Tabletop are outplaying us. We aim to amuse and we aim to enthuse. Morris is unofficial. Tabletop are peachy. Woo doggy!
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris's unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, aka Morris, or Morris, aka Russ, and with me this week is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Roleplayers.
Now with increased volume, you'll be delighted to hear. Joining us also, old, cold, possibly covered in mould, we don't know, but she's hoping to get a dragon in to sort it out. Bedstool month. It's the only hits.
It's me, Jessica from EM Publishing. And if my audio is not quite as on track as usual, it's because I am in deepest, darkest Wales in a very cold old house recording this podcast. Dreaming of days when warmth and comfort were a thing.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. How's that? Yeah. I spent most of the last 24 hours squeeing over crypto in the new Superman trailer. Yeah.
I haven't actually seen it, but you have already told me about it yesterday, so yes.
There's this bit that whenever we're out with our dogs and stuff and we call them, they are not elegant dogs. So they run towards you, but it's like a herd of elephants charging at you. But there's this bit in the trailer where Superman whispers for crypto in the middle of the Arctic. And then you hear... And then you see this cloud of just like... Snow just... Closer and closer.
That is so like my dogs.
Imagine he had a super cat, though. The cat would just ignore him when he called for it.
Yeah, a super ignore. Wouldn't ignore him like a normal cat. Like... Even more ignoring because it's super powered ignoring.
Able to resist the wrestling of the food tin.
Not even dreamies would pull them closer.
I'm not prepared for that level of super ignoring from a cat. Goodness, goodness. Although licky sticks, they're now the favourites now, don't they? A little bit of yoghurt in the meat.
Yeah, I love meat and yoghurt myself. It's my favourite.
Someone put this meme on Facebook and it was... So the scene in The Trader is Superman's injured. He's lying in the middle of the Arctic. He whistles and Krypton comes running and rescues him. And then they did the same scene, but if it was a cat. So Superman's lying there. Injured in the Arctic. He whistles...
And then you just see this cat just sitting there going, and then the next scene is just a skeleton.
Okay, I'm not the first person to make this joke then, I see. It's an obvious joke.
I feel that's a list one. The last scene should be the cat sitting on Skeleton's head purring loudly.
Yes. Being like, why aren't you feeding me?
Or possibly just sitting on his chest and looking at him like, yeah, what do you want me to do about it? Yeah.
All right, shall we do some RPG news? Yes. Shall we, shall we? Because it's time. It is time, folks. It is time. It is that time of the year. That time of the year that comes around. This year. Well, it's that time as well.
When is it not time to talk about Goblins? But sorry.
Well, I am disrupting Russ's attempt to try and do a big news item, but you know.
Oh, right. Okay.
I do feel that this is very important news, especially for Jessica to be able to see this, because I'm just going to whack this into the chat right now. This is how we do it now.
people halfway through a sentence and totally change the subject yes i know well both of us wanted to do it so this is about a baby goblin life-size figure for us so like i don't know what to tell you it is it's so repulsive it's so cute it's cute oh no i don't like that
I don't like it. Oh, but look at it.
It's so tiny and full of teeth.
It looks terrifying. It's trying too hard to be cute in a way that I think it's evil.
It looks like a gremlin, basically.
okay it's like a gremlin in the same way that like victorian china dolls are meant to be like cute toys but are terrifying it has that vibe for me okay okay yeah speaking of which i'm at my parents house my mother chose to tell me that there is she has some of my baby hair kept she's kind of weird but i know this thing parents yeah i find that weird and gross You know where she keeps it?
Inside a china doll. And I was like, Mother, that's how you make eldritch entities. That's the start of a horror film.
That's how you're going to die, Jess. I'm going to be bound into that doll when I die.
How awful is that? Anyway, sorry, that's what made me think of when I saw this goblin. But PJ, please tell us more.
No, that's about it. It is now available to order from Paizo for the low, low price of $130, excluding shipping. You too could have this. Oh, I mean, it's eight inches tall and made from soft foam. So I suppose you could keep it to players that aren't paying attention. And it's got a little rattle, which is a skull on a stick.
Oh, so it does. I misread that and thought it was eight foot tall for a second. And I was like, wow, that's a really good price for an eight foot tall goblin.
I'd actually consider that, yeah.
Yeah, you would consider an eight foot tall goblin in your house.
Yeah, a five foot tall goblin would be like a piece of furniture.
You put it just inside the front door, so it's the first thing that people see when they come in.
If it was eight foot tall, I would have got it for 130 quid, much to the upset of my partner who lives in the house with me.
I would presumably like to leave the house at some point using your front door.
Too late, you can't now. The goblin prevents you.
Okay, fair enough. Anyway, Russ, I am really sorry I interrupted, but I did have to bring this amazing news of this creature to you.
And I apologize because I fully encouraged PJ and jumped on board as well.
Am I allowed to finish my sentence now?
We will allow it.
I got halfway through and then was rudely interrupted.
Do you just want to start again? Do it again. You have the whole run up. You got this.
Well, it's just not the same the second time around, is it?
That's not true.
I mean, the drama's gone.
No, we can make it dramatic.
Act surprised like you've never heard this before. Okay, so.
Okay, all right.
Did you know it is time? It is that time of the year. The time of the year when it is time to vote for your most anticipated tabletop RPGs. Of the coming year, and for those who don't know, I assume it's fairly common news, but the coming year, they're calling it 2025. This one is 2025. It makes sense. Yeah, it's a good planet. It makes it sound sequential. Yeah, it's good.
So 2025's most anticipated RPGs. We took the nominations over a period of two weeks. I haven't actually counted them. I think there's more than there's ever been.
There's a lot of nominations.
There are many. Yeah. And voting started yesterday and goes for two weeks and ends on January the 2nd. And you can vote for up to three of those games. Nice, nice. I'll tell you what I voted for. What did you vote for? I voted for Alien Evolved Edition from Free League. I voted for the Ars Magica Definitive Edition from Atlas Games.
Oh, yeah?
And finally, I voted for one which I, well, since I backed it in the Kickstarter, I should really be anticipating it. Otherwise, that would be a really, really poor life decision. You do make those. Right, well, thank you.
Do you remember back in time when you hired me?
I say, well, thanks.
I've been regretting it every since.
Exactly, exactly. But sorry, yeah, as you were saying.
Yes, the third one I voted for was Terry Pratchett's Discworld Adventures in Ankh and Warp Op.
You've already done that, haven't you? So that's pretty good.
Yes, that was my three. I mean, looking at that list, if you guys had to pick three, what would they be? I mean, this is the first time that you've seen the list and it's very long.
No, I have had a look through. I haven't voted it because I'm thinking of what I want. I know one of them for sure because I backed it on Backerkit and I'm very excited for it. So you've met a thousand-year-old vampire, which is a solo RPG. It's the follow-on to Thousand-Year-Old Vampire. But this, you are the mortal vampire.
friend or relationship to an immortal being, and it's your perspective on it. So it's flipping that relationship and looking at it. And it's really interesting.
You are the Mina Harker to Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Yes. Or you could be, but in this version, it doesn't have to be a vampire. It can be any sort of immortal, powerful being.
You are the Buffy to the angel.
I think you're not even Buffy. You're not even that powerful because at least she's a slayer. You're the... What's the guy that everyone... Xander. Xander. You're the Xander.
The comedy relief.
Yeah. Yeah, but you can define what that is. But I just thought it was really interesting because it's looking at relationship dynamics that are powered through using that supernatural lens. That's a very obvious one.
You are the high school girl to the twilight.
Yes, that's a very good example. You're the Bella Swan to the Edward Cullen. Or it doesn't have to be romantic. It can be a friendship, or you could be like an indentured servant of a vampire.
So you are the Igor to... You could be Igor.
It has lots of flexibility. But anyway, I'm very looking forward to that. So that is what I am very looking forward to. I'm doing an actual playthrough of A Thousand-Year-Old Vampire, which in my free time, it's taking forever to do. But I'll probably do that for this as well, just because I think it's interesting and fun. So that's definitely my list. But I have two others, too.
And I've been going through. And I'm interested in the Gloomhaven RPG one, because I do like the board. And I'm interested in the fact that you can mix and match with it because it kind of tags on there. There's also Laundry 2nd Edition, which I love the world of Laundry. It's, yeah, great. It's just, you know, bureaucracy and with, you know, that Cthulhu horror.
Bureaucracy meets Computer Geeks meets Cthulhu. It's a holy trinity of chaos and fun.
And it feels incredibly British to me in my interpretation of it. Yeah.
so yeah you know there's that so that looks interesting to me trailer Cthulhu second edition I'm also interested in because that uses the gumshoe system so really simple to run and I had a very nice interview the other week on not D&D the creators on that so I'm as you can see I've got a list of things I could absolutely choose there's also Pico which we backed we mentioned that's the one that I would have picked for you tiny bugs big world that's also in the mix but I've not
I want to say dive.
But you, they're kind of more like medium-sized bugs, aren't they?
Dived. Relatively small. Because I'm small. Yes. I've not had a look at the system in more detail, so I haven't quite got excited, but I have backed it. It's on its way. It will find its way to me. But those are kind of the things that interest me on that list, so I'll have to whittle it down to three. So those are my immediate ones, but I'm sure I'm going to see other stuff on here that I like.
But PJ, anything that catches your eye on this list?
Quite a few. 13-page second edition is obviously my big ticket. I knew you'd say that.
As with many others, yeah.
What can I say? I was actually able to back that Kickstarter, so it's very exciting for me. And I'm probably going to try and run it at some point. Don't know when, don't know how, but... It also gets to be first in the list because it starts for the one. It's a powerful advantage. It's a powerful advantage.
I believe that may be Goodman Games' advanced advantage 5Es strategy because of why they're calling it that. But yeah. Yeah, I'm assuming that's just yet another 5e spinoff. Probably worth having to see exactly what they're up to. But yeah, when it comes through, I'll be delighted to see Ars Magica from Atlas Games, the defensive edition.
Not one I feel really comfortable running because I don't really understand it. I've never played it or seen it played or anything. But yeah, maybe someone will run it for me. I'll get lucky.
Yeah.
Ashes Without Number from Psi Nominae, which I guess is a route name. What is that one?
So Stars Without Numbers, the space one. Cities Without Numbers, the fantasy one.
What's Ashes Without Numbers? Worlds Without Numbers is the fantasy one. Cities Without Numbers is, I believe, the cyberpunk one. Ashes Without Numbers, I believe, should be a post-apocalyptic one. Right. Gotcha. Okay. I love an apocalypse. That makes sense. Yep. I do like an apocalypse as well. It's kind of interesting.
It's handy for the times we live in in real life.
Yeah. indeed born from ice does intrigue me uh that is a 5e conversion and is very much focused on i think inuit like the sort of the canadian north stone age one is it yeah yeah there's like it's a stone age ice age yeah lots of jazz going on which you know sounds pretty good
I will doubtless hear so much about Khan second edition that I will be able to tell you about it without ever actually reading it. I will know all about it. That's how much I, that's how I know that's going to be very anticipated. Dolman would being a sort of fairytale. Oh, it does attract me, but it catches my eye as well from Nicola.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I actually backed the DC20 by the Dungeon Coach. I am looking forward to seeing what actually comes out and so forth. There's also Drawsteel from Matt Colville DM. Not convinced of the name, but he does have a very good, reliable reputation for producing 5th edition compatible stuff. So perhaps I will be... That's not 5th edition, though, is it? It's a totally new system. No, no, no.
Is it its own game? It's its own game. Then I shall look forward to seeing what contributions to the role-playing space it makes. And let's see what else we have on here that I was looking forward to. I'm pleased to see that Metago is bringing out the French version, I presume, of Paranoia role-playing game. So that'll be a good one.
Bringing the world of Commie Mutant Scum and Friendly Computer to our Francophone pals. So that's always a good shout.
I'm surprised the French would have put up with that because they're pretty good on their worker rights. I imagine they would have revolted against the French computer. I don't think the French could be subjugated in that world. That's mine.
Well, we shall have to wait and see what people are saying about it.
Yeah, but the French aren't necessarily playing the French. They might be French players, but they could be playing those silly Americans.
That would make it more realistic, to be honest.
Oh, great, Russ. I've alienated 90% of the list. Good job. I'm not saying what the French think. I'm not saying what I think. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. What I'm unreasonably excited about is Starfinder 2nd Edition. Mm-hmm. I thought I'd just really want to play it. Yeah, because I feel that really intensely granular... It feels technological to me.
I'm expecting an experience from Starfinder 2nd Edition to really feel like, you know, a real, like maybe Cyberpunk, maybe like Far Flung Future, lots of moving parts. It's very fantasy though, isn't it, as well? Magic and...
That is fair, but I do, I am finding that I've got a real abiding love for weird fiction, which is the old name, which I will use for science fiction and fantasy with their combined.
And they, they're overlapping, which I guess goes back all the way, but I sort of had a, like a little boost of it when Hellboy came out and they're like, when the powers of science and black magic combined, I was like, yes, I am going to enjoy this movie. And then I did. Okay. So it takes a bit while to understand stuff sometimes.
I will look forward to seeing a copy of Tony Pratchett's Discworld when you get it. I'll be around your house, cruising it, looking at it, and deciding if I like all the art.
Well, I don't know if it's going to be new art, is it? I presume there's so much Discworld art out there, they'll just use the existing art, I would have thought.
Well, I want to see how it all looks together, because they've got some covers that I like, some that I don't. And yeah, I'm just interested. It'll be a bit of an experience. Yeah, Trail of Cthulhu looks good. Laundry, second edition. Pretty interested. But yeah, that's... And Trail of Cthulhu... Magpie Games is doing a second edition of Urban Shadows, which is the story game version of Vampire.
Did you realise you were supposed to pick three? And I think you've listed half of this list now.
You have to narrow it down to three. The things that they are in their narrowing down process.
Yeah. Oh, and how can I forget Five Evil from Handiwork Games, which I, again, will be hearing a lot about as it comes out. So my top three, probably 13th phase, second edition. I'll say Five Evil and Laundry second edition, because these ones I probably know the most about and I'm most excited about. The others are more nebulous for me.
I look forward to meeting them, but I don't know whether I'll be happy or disappointed. Yeah.
Are the big ones on there? Not necessarily ones that I voted for, but I'm curious about. We've got Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. Yeah.
I think a lot of people are excited for that because the Kickstarter was huge.
We've got the Daggerheart. Yes. They're probably the two biggest ones on there. I assume a lot of people will vote for those.
Well, we'll find out on January 2nd.
In fact, I can see the votes now. I can tell you already that nothing has zero votes. I'll tell you that much.
Can you tell us who's in the lead currently?
I will tell you off mic.
oh okay it's a secret on the podcast okay you can tell me later that's fine i didn't know if the podcast systems were going to get a sneaky insight that's fine that's fine but they'll they'll find out in a couple of weeks post it on am world and we'll and we'll we'll talk about it here as well yeah it's good to see lovecraft-esque second edition from blackamada games because like you know they're a small indie british press that's nice to see that they've made it into this competition
Absolutely. I think I'm going to have them on Not D&D to talk about it as well a bit more because the second edition is coming up. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. So anyway, yeah. So you can vote. You can go onto Ian World. You can vote. You've got to be logged into the site to vote. You can vote for up to three games and we'll announce the top 10 in January.
Can I have a go at doing a tenuous segue?
You can try. We get to score it.
Sure, if you like. So, PJ was mentioning that they're very excited for Starfinder 2nd Edition, which is coming out next year. And as we know, Starfinder 2nd Edition is designed to be cross-compatible with Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
Yeah. Right.
And I have some Pathfinder 2nd Edition news.
Oh, I see. How was that?
How was that? A six out of ten.
It was a six out of ten. I think a solid eight.
Thank you. It went a bit seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, really. It took two steps. A good Segway only takes one step.
Okay. Well, I'm quite short, so I need two steps for what most people take.
Fair enough.
Anyway, the news. So Paizo Launching has launched playtests for two new classes with Pathfinder 2nd Edition. So if you play Pathfinder, this will be of interest to you. So there's a Necromancer and a Rune Smith. So, yeah, so it's on the, right now it's on the Pathfinder Playtest website and also on Demiplane if you use that.
So the Necromancer is described as a prepared caster class so it can summon thralls and all the things you'd expect in Necromancer. And the Rune Smith is a martial class and they uses buffs and allies by etching runes on things or things like that. So it's like a support melee class, which sounds really interesting.
But yeah, so it coming out, this suggests, as has been written on E&World, as Christian has suggested, means that there'll be more classes released in 2025, so maybe another class.
I find it really does do lots of classes, doesn't it? I find it really likes its lots of classes mode.
Absolutely. Well, so do players. So, so far there's 25.
Just the second edition. Wow.
So there's two. The Commander and the Guardian is going to be released in the 25 book we know about called Battle Cry. So this suggests that these two will come in another book they're doing in 2025. And there might be a little Easter egg in the name of the playtest because it's named Impossible. And if you know Pathfinder, there's The Impossible Lands.
So they think that's a hint that there's going to be another book based on The Impossible Lands.
I don't know what that is. What is The Impossible Lands?
Well, it's not really possible for me to describe.
Does that mean you don't know? Okay. Shall I look it up? I don't know either.
It's pun-tastic and it means I don't know. But anyway, this playtest is available from now until January 31st. So if you're listening to this a bit late because you're catching up post-holidays, post-New Year, it's available throughout January for you to have a look at those two classes and give your feedback.
A land still scarred by a war between two undying archmages and their respective nations, reality defies the rules binding the rest of the world. Cities crafted by wishes, fields harvested by the walking dead, magic warps and twists with an undefinable will. There you go.
So that makes perfect sense that the Necromancer and the Runecaster are of those worlds. It makes sense. So maybe a setting or an adventure which introduces classes in that setting. We don't know that for sure, but that's a strong hint calling it the impossible playtest. I mean, it's not subtle. But anyway, so that was information about those new Pathfinder classes.
Yeah. I wonder how many classes Pathfinder 1 he had. So Pathfinder 2, he's got 25 and it's still a relatively new game. Pathfinder, I'm going to Google this as well. Pathfinder. Official.
Make sure it's official because there's going to be so many third-party content and homebrew things.
Classes. Pathfinder reference document. No, that's just the core classes. I don't know. I don't think I'm going to find this. Oh, Pathfinder, 123 plus classes. My goodness.
I think that makes sense, because I think a lot of people move to Pathfinder when they've played 5e, but they want a bit more from the game. And maybe that's from a player's perspective. They're like, you know, I want to do these specific things. And because the rules are a bit more crunchy.
Very granular and complete.
Yeah, it makes sense that you'd need definition between classes, because in 5e... Anti-paladin, the ninja, the samurai, the hunter, the investigator, the skull, the slayer, the swashbuckler, the war priest, the mesmerist, the occultist, the psychic. There's lots of them.
I feel like you're filibustering at this point if you keep going.
Yeah, I don't know if I would really say that if you are like, if you want more complicated, if you want a more granular version of the fifth edition, that you should play Pathfinder second edition because they make their own game. It's a very good game. It's really well designed. It does not feel the same. And there's a lot of people that have tried it are happy.
And then there's like threads by people saying, well, look, it's not designed for that. I'm like, right, this is not designed to be a 5e replacement. It is a separate, very well-designed game. It's not the same. And people say, oh, no, it's all basically D20. It's like, I understand what you're saying, but you're wrong. Yeah. I mean, it uses a D20, admittedly, but it doesn't make it the same game.
Yeah, I mean, if you've not played it, it definitely looks similar to 5e. I can definitely say that. It just feels different, which is a good thing because I don't want everything to feel like 5e because that would be terrible.
We want variety in our tabletop RPG diet.
I mean, there's a lot of similarities. Like the world, the tone, not the tone, the genre is pretty much the same. All the classes have the same names and all the monsters are monsters you pretty much know from, you know, so it is... I could see why people think it, but like for me, I'm very, you know, I have opinions.
I'm not playing games. I'm very discerning. I've played a lot of them, so I can have opinions that I think are good. I'm like, well, you know what? I understand. I understand it. I understand why people say it. But I don't agree because it's a different emotional experience.
Yes.
And for me, it's the emotional experience that evokes that really differentiates it. I think it's quite rude to say it's the same game because it's not.
I think it also comes from the fact that Pathfinder 1E was basically D&D 3.75 if it really was. Oh, 100%. So that's probably where that comes from. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Again, I don't think people are being thick, basically. I very much understand it. It's just like they're not really appreciating what they've got and can't find a second head. It is very good design. What can I say?
Absolutely.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
That's fine.
speaking of sequels that are really really cool and very exciting and probably my most the game that when i saw it i was like this is so exciting not eligible for your poll but still very exciting for me nonetheless okay
Listeners to this podcast will recall that a couple of years ago, Russ was completely unable to play a game because he used an Apple, and I was able to play a game because I used PC. I was very smug about it. Who knows if history will repeat itself, but Solasta 2 is a different game. So that's the two is coming out. I am excited for it.
It looks a lot prettier and they spent a lot more money on voice actors.
Oh, nice.
So it's still, it's still 5e based, is it? Is it still? Yeah, still, still very much 5e based, but they are definitely making their own. They brought out a trailer. Trailer looks good. I think that, I mean, I'm sort of midway through another playthrough of it because I quite enjoyed the first campaign. I haven't finished the third campaign, which is where it goes like levels 11 to 16.
I would definitely give that a go. So yeah, this is a relatively big deal for me. I'm looking forward to that.
I might pick it up when it hits early access because... Oh, for people who've finished Baldur's Gate 3 seven times in a row... Look, Russ, one does not simply finish Baldur's Gate.
Yeah, I mean, like Baldur's Gate 3... It's really interesting because they're both 5e, but in a sort of a different way. Like, Baldur's Gate 3 is sort of like 5e has popularly imagined, I'd say. Like, it's got a lot of the things with, like, a lot of the romance, the queerness, which a lot of people associated with 5e. Whereas if you actually like the rule system, it's a lot closer.
You know, I haven't played the first one, so I might download and play the first one and see what I think.
Oh, yeah, definitely worked well.
The first one was released in 2021, so it's not going to be like... Oh, yeah, all the bugs are thoroughly ironed out of it.
It's got some nice DLC and so forth.
Yeah. I'm still not done with Baldur's Gate 3. And do you know who hasn't even picked up Baldur's Gate 3? Russ, who on this very podcast said that he would do a live stream with me playing it.
I have picked it up. I've had Baldur's Gate 3 on my system since it came out.
Do you remember we got to the druids and couldn't get past them because they'd have conversations. Because they were boring.
Wow. But we need to do a live stream playing Baldur's Gate 3 because you said you would.
Yes, I know. Ah, you will, you will, you will. Yeah. Will, you will, you will. Go on now.
Ah, go on. Go on, go on. So we have to do that at some point.
Yes. We have to do that. Hooking of Bonesgiftly, by the way, made by their company, Larian. Yes, yes. Larian has made an advent calendar. Ooh. a Alarion Studios advent calendar. And each day you go into the little window door, whatever it is, and you get a little puzzle, which is like a scene from one of their games. And then you get a little prize.
What is the prize?
Well, that I don't actually know because I haven't done it.
How exciting.
Each puzzle, basically, there's only... I don't know which ones it's done so far yet, but I know that things like they make what? They make Baldur's Gate 3. They make what? Divinity, Original Sin.
A very Baldur's Gate 3 Christmas.
Yeah. So they make a whole load of stuff.
This is great. It's like a memory match game.
Yeah. Shadow Cursed Lands, Divinity 2's The Red Prince, something like that.
Sorry, that made me sit up because The Red Prince is like this awesome, like, Well, it's called the Red Prince, so I guess they're supposed to be male, but they are just like this blizzard.
Oh, I found out what the first day's prize was. It was a YouTube video with a holiday wish from Larian's offices. People at Larian saying happy holidays to you. That's very kind, yes.
This is now the Baldur's Gate 3 one unwraps a story. And this one, chapter one, is how the Gromeshka stole Christmas.
Wow.
How fun. I'm going to do that. There we go. It's my weekend sorted. Because I'm on holiday Christmas after recording this podcast.
I don't think it's going to take you a weekend.
Oh, I can. I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 for like 50 years, so I don't worry. I can stretch it out. The live stream I do every week of Baldur's Gate 3, we are still playing through our first run, and it's been over a year now. Wow. We're in act three finally. We play two hours a week and there's four of us and we do faff around a lot. We do like a faff.
Yeah.
Because we want to make sure our outfits match so we look like a cool glam rock group.
Nothing wrong with a faff.
I know. Love a little faff.
It's about a hundred hours if it was a good time.
Yeah. And we also, it's the cocktail hour so we drink cocktails while we're doing it which may increase the amount of time it takes to get things done.
That will definitely improve your decision-making abilities.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Well, I'm glad we've managed to segue in some Baldur's Gate 3 news in for the week.
I thought you'd be pleased.
I am so delighted. Thank you for my Christmas present of that. Do we have any other news we'd like to talk about?
We do. So for people who are, A, vegans. Yes. This is a Venn diagram. Okay. For vegans. Vegans. B, who like D&D. And C, are temporarily experiencing a footwear shortage.
It's getting more niche.
May be interested in this vegan D&D footwear.
You don't have to be weakened by the shoes, is that correct?
I mean, I don't know whether they test you.
They tempt you with a bacon sandwich before you go in.
If you could resist the bacon sandwich, then you could have the shoes, yeah. But it's coy footwear. which is a vegan British footwear brand.
Nice.
Okay. And there are eight D&D-themed footwear pieces, including the Glabagool Gelatinous Cube Wedge Mary James, the Draco Scale Chunky Stomper Boots, the Uncanny Dodge Rogue Military Boots.
Ooh.
Yeah.
Nice. So there we go. Vegan D&D themed footwear. What color are they? They vary. A variety. Depending on the item in question.
It sounds like there's a variety of styles as well.
The gelatinous cube things are just like enormous, great, big, green platforms, it looks like.
I'm really pleased by that. That feels correct.
Yeah. I mean, enormous, really enormous.
Yeah, some of us need the height boost for us.
Yeah. Anyway.
Okay.
Anyway, anyway, anyway. What price fashion? Indeed. I couldn't tell you the price. No. I probably could if I went back and looked again, but I'm not going to. While we're on the theme of vaguely D&D, I suppose we could...
I mean, I know this is going to sound very redundant and be a real man-bites-dog moment in terms of journalism, but Sly Flourish, Mike Shea, has had a banger of an idea, and I really like it, so I don't know if we can talk about that. Or I don't know if it would be permitted for me to talk about that. I literally don't know what you're talking about.
I will allow it.
Right. So basically, I love everything about this idea, except for the name. I don't like the name. It's Dreadful Blessings. And the idea is you've got a boss monster in that solo fight and you just want them to last up to three rounds as opposed to less.
Yeah.
In my experience, Advanced Race Edition, Elite Monsters, getting a lot of that, a lot of the way there. But what it is, is he's taking the concept of legendary resistances and legendary actions and combined them into this straightforward blessings concept or...
other hatred tidings whatever you want to call it but yeah but basically they're all they're all set together and this way they can do a lot of things that you do with a legendary resistance and a lot of things you do with legendary actions but also looking at other parts of the action economy and maybe things that would not normally fall within that remit like ripping through a force cage or shattering a wall of force i think
I remember him talking about that a while back. It was kind of in development, kind of an idea that he'd had a while back. So this is the outcome of that idea, I guess.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's good. It's good. It's like, I mean, nothing was stopping us before, but he's just like explicitly codified it. I just like to shout out to people because I'm like, yeah, this is good stuff.
Nice.
Yeah. Yeah. Recharging using a powerful limited action, piercing through character resistances or immunities. I'm like, that's a really good idea.
It lets, as he's saying, the idea is, is that your solo monster, which is by definition, probably going to be an important set piece creature, do its job of being a worthy fight, not your three to six to eight players, or however they're throwing at them. So they really feel like, yeah, they've earned the battle.
Yes. Without having that sort of, you meet the big boss and then it's dead one round later situation. Yeah. Or you're like, well, I'll cast Force Cage. No. Moving on. Yeah. But I've told my stride story enough times about how they kicked his ass at like sixth level or something. That'll happen. Yeah. Yeah. Players. Yeah.
Motivated. Motivated. And they get a lot to do stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a really cool article. I think it's really useful stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
Over on slidefirst.com, dreaded blessings. Dreadful blessings. Mechanic to protect 5E boss monsters. Yes, the actual... It's interesting. The actual name of the page is dreaded blessings. Yeah. Sorry, it's very cool. I do like it. So, yeah.
That's nice.
Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know what I meant to mention. Remember we spoke last week and we were talking about the new European legislation stuff? Oh, yes. The general product safety regulations. Yeah. So, I do have a bit of fairly good news. If you sell via drive-thru RPG, either by PGF or via print-on-demand, You're not the vendor. It's not your problem. Yeah. Drive-thru RPG is handling it.
Don't worry about it. So it's utterly, it's totally not a problem. And the same will presumably be true for the people who sell via itch and things like that. I haven't looked at that. But again, itch is selling it, not you. So I imagine itch will be in the same position. They will handle it.
Yes, that is very true. Although, interestingly, not as clear about Amazon, though.
Yes.
Amazon have not, it's not quite that black and white with Amazon.
Amazon not being helpful to small creators as well.
I think the difference there is Amazon have two ways of doing it. One is that you can drop ship. But if you're drop shipping, and drop shipping basically means they buy it on Amazon, but you still stock it and send it from yourself. You are still the person sending the thing. So you're responsible for it. Whereas like on DriveThruRPG,
a print-on-demand book, they are printing it and shipping it, so they're responsible for it. Yes. I think that's the difference.
Yes, kind of, yes. Yeah, it just makes small indie publishers making books a more interesting time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just more paperwork for me is pretty much what that means.
For all the people who just sell and drive through RPG, it's not a thing that they need.
Oh, no, no worries. And it doesn't apply to digital products.
Yeah, it turns out it doesn't. There was a big rumor going around that it did. It doesn't.
Well, I mean, I think there was, it's basically because in one of the frequently asked questions, it says that all of the supporting material should be available online. in the relevant languages for the EU country, which could mean up to 24 different languages.
Yeah, that's not how that works.
That's fine.
but yeah well what can I say it's like a good argument for James Wallace's big table so we could have to actually investigate this rather than you having to do it or random people well I didn't really Joythropathy just sent out an email just saying we'll handle it the situation for them yeah yeah this is the situation we're the defender it's our problem we'll handle it don't worry about it it's what they said hopefully the EU sees it that way and yeah if they don't then I guess we'll burn those bridges when we come to it we'll burn those bridges when we cross them
Make more excitement across your burning bridge, Jester. Don't burn the bridge while you're on the bridge, though.
That is a bad idea.
Well, I have some news that it's almost as exciting as a bridge on fire if we're ready to move on.
Okay, let's go.
Wizards of the Coast new Unearthed Arcana playtest.
Yeah.
So the Artificer, which I always feel like I'm saying wrong, so I'm saying it in a weird way to cover up for that. So it's a playtest for the Artificer class to bring it in alignment with the 2024 rules update, pretty much. It's on D&D Beyond right now. They're going to start taking feedback on the 24th of December. So Christmas Day, you can sit and give your feedback there.
like to do but yeah from what I understand of it I haven't played an artificer so I don't I'm not too okay but from what I understand people on the internet are saying and they don't lie I do need to interrupt the pronunciation it's artificer runi Yes. Or Archie for short.
Those silent letters. Invisible, some might say.
So the Tinkerer.
Anyway. The Artificer.
So the Artichoke class.
The Artichoke, yep.
The Artichoke class. There haven't been very big drastic changes to it from what I understand. However, I do not play this class.
It doesn't really...
Yeah, so it looks like there are some updates to 2024, but it doesn't feel like a major rework. If you play this class, you might want to have a look at it because maybe to you it will be more obvious. But for me, as somebody who hasn't played one and just looking through and comparing, it doesn't look like a major jump.
But I might ask one of the players in my Eberron campaign, cause they play an artichoke and I'll see, see what he thinks. Cause he's, but we're not going to update to the 2024 rules set anyway. We're staying.
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's the, yeah, it's the first on the Tharkana for 20 to 2024 rules. Yeah. Yeah. Presumably that means it's going to be in a book coming soon. I don't know which book, but in a book.
I imagine maybe they're updating Eberron.
Yeah.
That's where it... Maybe.
Yeah, maybe. But yeah, like you say, it's not a massive, massive change. They put out a video on it. So you can watch the video and they talk about it a bit. It's still a half caster. It's still just making magic items. What else to say, really?
The classes have been updated. They're like, what you try and make here? And people are like, oh, yeah, I really like it. I just don't connect. I don't know, it doesn't really fit in within my conceptions of fantasy. I have seen people...
say that like you know the people who are like me micro creators chipping away like uh our little tiny products and so forth uh they have strong views about this and um they're really unfavorable but i i haven't really looked for it myself uh there does seem to be like some It's just a bit of a... Yeah, it just feels like it's struggling for identity, which is a problem.
And there's a lot of mixes, which I don't expect to see. And that's always been past the class, but it's just a mix of arcane and divine spells, which I know aren't separate things within...
dnd they're not well defined but yeah it's uh not to that i i read i respond with this image which i i've just given you okay i need to download it yeah should i trust files from this sender absolutely not no you will be pleased you saw it
Okay, there's a robot dog.
An artificed dog. It's a very jowly dog. And you dog lovers, what sort of dog is that looking like to you? A bird, maybe? Yeah, I guess like a sort of a... He looks like a heavily armored St. Bernard, but it's actually a robo dog. A cybe dog.
It looks like the type of dog that dribbles a lot.
Yes. Yeah. Except engine oil instead of like sliver. Yeah. Wonderful. Woof, woof.
We love a jowly dog on this podcast. Two jowly dogs in this very house I sit.
But yeah, I guess this is... I mean, I do like the artwork. It's very cool. There's the cyber dog. There's the...
Artichoke next to them.
Yeah, the vaguely femme-presenting artichoke with a great haircut next to them. It's just going to be a fartichoke now, isn't it? Yeah. But the thing is, they're wearing a breastplate with what looks like some sort of magic or technological brooch on it. They're wearing welding goggles.
a la steampunk and they have a what looks very much to me like a like a thunder hammer from 40k which is essentially a large stick with an explosive technological device on it so it's like it's sort of a high tech and a dragon's head a dragon's head where's the dragon's head Are we looking at a different picture? I'm looking at the picture you sent me, so... Oh, right, I'm done.
We're looking at a different picture. Okay, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. I was looking at a picture I didn't send you. There we go. Okay.
All right, yeah. I was looking at a picture you sent me. That you're seeing because of theory of mind?
That's not how eyes work, yes, I understand.
Okay, good. Well, I guess it's like this is heavily leaning into a weird fiction take. Which, you know, as I said, I am a fan of weird fiction, but maybe not for games of, you know what, maybe I should run a mix of Leverlup's Antifist Edition and Throne of Oedron's Codex. And then I built Spidey's Antifist in there. It's kind of sexy. You're playing Eberron, that'll fit you perfectly.
Yeah, exactly. It feels perfectly right in the world I'm playing in.
10 out of 10. Love this for Eberron. No notes. Amazing. That form of technology, magic technology. My geotech, brilliant, love it. 99% of the games I'd like to run, just wildly inappropriate.
Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, it's very much a setting choice. It changes the world. Those things exist within them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it brings up a lot of questions which I'm not prepared to answer because I'm like, they can make this stuff. Why isn't this basically a bronze?
Yeah.
No, because only a few people know how to make it, I don't know.
I usually turn it on my players and make them answer those questions when I haven't thought about it. I'll be like, oh, yeah, why do you think that's the case? And they'll constantly be like, yeah, that works. I'll say that.
I can say it's quite a divisive class. As I love this artwork, amazing, beautiful, just not right for me. But if you like it, then you don't have to pay attention to my opinion and you shouldn't. What? I don't know. I kind of have opinions, and other people have different ones, and that's okay, Jessica.
I don't understand.
That's right.
Maybe we grow up.
Maybe.
You know, Keir, I got some news about that Modiphius bunch.
What are they doing over there?
They are making a new dark sort of fantasy horror medieval TTRPG. On the brink of a biblical apocalypse. Goodness. Biblical apocalypse. Yes. So it's called Doom Song. Mm-hmm. And there's only a limited number of copies available, or you can get it by PDF. And it's the world's teetering on the edge. So it's called Payne-y-me. Payne-y-me. A nation. The word Payne with Y-M-E on the end.
And they called it A Nation of Saints and Sinners of Foul Heresy and Undying Devotion.
Sounds a bit like 40K.
Thank you for saying that. The dead are being turned away at the gates of hell, giving them no choice but to return to the world above. The players must subdue them, inspired by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, medieval folk horror, European mythologies. Oh. kind of fun. It's got a sort of fantasy horror system with they say there's a unique character creation in there.
You use a D6 and a coin to generate a character's entire history. Hmm.
Okay. Nice. Interesting. I am going to look into that a little bit more because it piqued my interest. A unique system with weird mechanics. I'm interested.
Yeah. I am going to say it feels very Manichean to me. As in, there's going to be a strong opposition between good and evil. That's going to be really hard baked in, which is where I expect the coin flip comes in, depending on the various aspects.
And then the D6 to choose the traits associated with it. Of course, you're 50 quid. There's only 50 of them left. 300 book, leather-bound hardback, embossed.
Okay.
Is it just the deluxe edition? What's thermo leather? Thermo leather?
Oh, it's like, I think it's vegan fake. Like, it's not actually leather.
Right, okay. Oh, okay.
So it looks and feels like leather, but it's not.
But it isn't leather, yeah.
Oh, nice, nice. Because we don't use that for our deluxe edition, but it's something similar.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah. So it looks like leather, but if you don't want your books bound in the flesh of the dead, because you don't want to accidentally summon something, you can use this as an alternative.
Makes sense. Makes sense. What if I do want to accidentally summon something?
Then you want real leather.
But I don't want to deliberately summon something. It's got to be an accident.
Yeah, that's still... Just for plausible deniability. At the very minimum, you want real leather there.
Right, okay. Yeah.
From whatever animal you wish. A person, a dog, a cow.
And three cc's of mouse blood.
Yeah.
Or an egg.
Yeah.
Yeah. It looks interesting, doesn't it? It's got a black and white kind of interior layout as well.
Hmm.
Old school kind of thing. It is interesting. There's only 50 of them left, though, so if you want it, you've got to get on there first. It's only a limited number.
I'll take what there's not a limited number of. Actually, I've got a choice now. I can break it down to either telling you what there's not a limited number of or what there is a limited number of.
Which is quicker?
Probably the second. Okay.
That's my vote.
Yes, so again, going back to computer games, because I do enjoy a computer game now again. While I've had my eye on it for quite some time, it's going to go off my list. Dungeons & Dragons Dark Alliance, they're going to shut the servers. Yeah, yeah. It was supposed to be like an over-the-shoulder Mass Effect style hack and slash.
But as of February 24th next year, they're going to take it away from purchase, shut the servers, and then you'll only be able to play it in an offline single player.
yeah uh it's from two key games and it's like it's just never had great reviews uh and people were like quite critical at reception just not really that into it not really feeling it uh that makes sense and if not enough people are using it to make it worthwhile maintaining the servers
I mean, I guess, I guess, but the perils of digital media in this day and age when they can just decide, well, it's been out for like two, three years. That's it. That's your lot. That's the thing.
now it's a thing however what caught my eye and what i thought might make it worthwhile bring it to your attention or some turkey games are changing its name i'll change their name to invoke studios and they are now working on quote a triple a game derived from the dungeons and dragons universe using the unreal 5 engine oh do we think this is a boulders gate 4 switch
I mean, maybe, or maybe they're going to have another crack at the hack-em-up cherry. But yeah, it's interesting. I imagine, if they've got any sense, they're going to be pushing hard on having a story, because that is very much the zeitgeist, I believe.
I do love stories. Yeah, that's been what a lot of my professional life has been about.
Okay, can I tell you a story then? Is it good? Once upon a time, there was a website called Level Up Gateway.
Yes.
And it did an update so that fighters and wizards can now be up to 10th level. The end. Was that a good story?
I actually do like that, because then I can make... I do like a fighter. Sometimes I just want to hit things, you know?
Yeah, well, the current dev work is getting all the classes up to 20th level, because they were all up at 5th, and now Wizards and Fighters are up to 10th, and then they'll all go up to 10th. Available for alpha testers. Yeah, yeah. That's incredible. Great news. Another cool little update there is now you can now toggle your character to private or public.
So if you want to show people your character, you can. You can send people a link to your character and they can actually see it.
Even if they are not alpha testers?
Anyone can see it, yeah, publicly. Unless you set it to private, in which case they can't.
Yeah, well, that seems like a good touch. There's loads of features that are coming in that aren't on it yet. So it's nice that we're getting a few of those.
Yeah. I'm still working on my Middle Earth collection.
I've watched all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy this week. Every evening after work, I've sat down with my dad and we've watched a different one.
Extended or regular?
Extended.
Come on. They are so good. Which is your favorite of the three?
Oh, don't do that. They're all one thing in my mind. They're all very much one thing. So they're not.
It's a 12-hour film with, like, inconvenient later loop breaks.
Yes. Well, that's what I did on my birthday last year. We sat with my friends. We came around. I made a Hobbit buffet. So I just put food out, loads of stuff that could stay out all day and be safe. And then I was like, help yourself as you need. We're just running through. We're starting at 10 a.m. and we're going through the extended edition until we're finished.
You know how I know that Marvin wasn't at this buffet?
Cause he wasn't invited.
Yeah, no, yeah.
Django was there, but he, he, he did not steal any from the dining table. Cause he's a good boy.
Oh, I do have a final piece of news. Yes. Coble press have released a tells of the valiant starter set.
Oh, nice.
Yeah. And it comes in a nice little box, which I enjoy. It's got four pretty cute little minis and a bunch of maps. It's from Steamforged Games, who I will say that the quality of their game pieces is extremely good. So I'm pleased to see this.
As minis and everything.
Yeah, yeah. Two books filled with adventures, battle maps, dice, character sheets, tokens. I haven't seen any of the monster tokens because they're not showing those on the advertising page. There you go. They have released it. Oh, I put it in the chat. How much did you say?
It's £45. Oh, it's quite expensive. But it's because you are getting four actual miniatures. So I'm not surprised. You get the miniatures and you get a set of gaming dice as well as the maps. There's four booklets in there. So I'm not surprised it's £45.
You are getting a Bare Folk.
either a human or an elf i can't really tell from the picture almost definitely a dwarf and i'm gonna say you get a kobold because it's kobold press and why wouldn't you well yeah that's what you want isn't it yeah i mean yeah it's in the name it's in the name of the publisher they got to it it's on pre-order so you know that's something to be aware of that's 45 pounds excluding shipping but there you go it'll be out some at some point so there you go fantastic fantastic sometimes
Yeah, that looks good. I mean, for £45, that's kind of what I'd expect to have in there. We went under the scale with ours. We were like, well, how do we keep it down? And that was not having minis in, because as soon as you add miniatures in, it just makes it seem expensive.
£25.
£30?
Oh.
What's old is new, one is 25.
Yeah, that's what I meant. That's what I said.
Well, we do have two starter box sets that came out last year, so one's 25 and one's 30. Oh, that's good. No 3D printed miniature minis in them, though.
Yeah, I suspect they're probably cast rather than printed, but I don't know, actually.
We have punch board tokens for all the monsters and characters. We decided it that way because you can have tokens for everything. But it meant we could keep the price point. Because I think for me, the point of a starter box set is like, do you know what? I want to try it out, but I'm not sure if I want to commit to this. So I didn't want it to be really pricey. But anyway.
I do like the tokens. They prove very useful when I'm running games.
And they're generic enough that you can use them for other systems as well.
I should pick up a copy.
just for the tokens really because that's quite healthy and i do tend to do a lot of mobile gaming so you know people going around my house play games feels like a thing in the past which makes me a little bit sad yeah well same with me as well it's i think generally gaming since the pandemic it's a massive massive switch to online isn't it yeah well i mean i've got my club going and hopefully i can keep that rolling but yeah that's why tools like level up gateway will be so useful
Well, even in the club itself, like I've got one person who has used one of my pre-genned characters that I've got online. They take it and they just really liked it for a reason. And they've taken it, they put it onto like their iPad and then they just use that as their character sheet. I'm like, you can do that? That's amazing. Yeah. I had no idea. I'm like, okay, I guess.
I'm baffled by technology easily nowadays. I'm like, oh, the time to be alive.
Yeah. There's one thing we're going to do on Gateway is a copy button so that if someone's got a public character and you like it and you want to use it in your game, you can just duplicate it and use that character. Oh, that's nice. So basically the Gateway also turns into a massive repository of pregens. That is very cool. And then we'll put our official ones on there as well. Yeah.
So people can just grab those and use them. there we go exciting times little quality of life little things that you can add that don't require a massive amount of work to implement but just do make a difference
Is it going to be clear that they're supposed to be in folio when they come out? What do you mean, in the folio? Sorry. Well, because I didn't like the pregens for the level-up box set until I actually had the physical copy in my hand and saw that you're supposed to open them up and treat it like a folio. Right.
Like, for me, it's like you get a single-sided printout and then you work your way through that. Or maybe dual-sided, but I didn't really appreciate that. And that really changes the user experience. Right. Okay. So what was the question? How will the printout or the access to the thing, will it just be digital only printout?
Oh, for Gateway?
I don't know what the character sheet will look like on Gateway. I mean, the printout will. I know what the actual screen looks like, but... Yeah, yeah.
We're going to have a function where you can export your characters into a physical print one, but we haven't finalised that yet, so... We haven't started.
Yeah, so...
so when i say finalize is like even the idea so but that will be a thing but i don't have an answer on what that will look like i don't know it will be the same as the starter box sets ones because they were more specifically laid out yeah if you know what i mean each of those was custom laid out as well yeah so that was a so i don't think it'll look exactly like that
It's just like making sure that, I'm sorry, I don't mean to derail the conversation and so forth, but it's just like, it's really important because for me and people who want to relate cons, it's like being able to check, like, you know, this now sounds like an amazing resource. It's a huge amount of work making pregens, as I found out, in a sort of nice fashion.
100%.
But obviously you then have to have the character that you can then give to the player as a pre-generated character. And if they've got this device and are interacting through that amazing sorted set, But if you're doing it at a convention, often whether or not you have wireless signal, what people will have, a printout, it doesn't need any of that. It just exists.
Oh yeah, that's what we're saying. We 100% want to do that for that reason. There will be a way to export your character sheet.
Love to see that. That's going to be very exciting. Some way off in the future.
It's some way of doing it, but it will need to be done in a way that it's suitable for your home printer to do. So it's not. So I imagine there'll be a version so you can just have it in black and white so it's not stressing the heck out of your home printer. Because home printers are brats.
Yeah, mine certainly are.
Mine's such a brat.
No. Anyway. Do we have any more news to cover?
I do not. But this will be my last podcast of 2024.
It won't be all of our last podcasts of 2024 because we're not going to be here next week.
Well, that was the segue I was leading into. So this is our last podcast of 2024. So.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And where's it set? We all get a break.
We like to keep our listeners happy. Sorry, I'll take it back.
It might be the only thing that's keeping them from going on a killing spree. I don't know. Maybe it isn't. Maybe that's a bit.
We shall return.
We'll return in 2025. The first one in 2025 will probably be the top most anticipated RPGs for 2025. I can say.
That will be 6th of January. We'll be meeting up to do that. So, yeah. So I guess like the 7th or 8th of January, then that's when Morris' unofficial Tip-Top RPG talk will return!
Yeah, I don't even know what dates are anymore.
I think we'll be recording on the 3rd of January.
I thought Christmas was next Thursday, right up until yesterday.
I honestly thought it was Thursday. You celebrate it when you want. What harm would it do if you did it the day after?
Don't be bound by reality. Society.
Yeah, don't be bound by society's rules. You do. Yeah, thank you very much to all the listeners who have listened along in 2024. Thank you so much. And people that we met at podcasts, not podcasts.
Conventions.
Conventions.
Yes.
Hello. It was nice to meet you. Thanks for calling on.
It's often funny when someone recognizes you by your voice, though.
Yes, that is weird. Especially because when people do it, they tend to say it in a way that they're like, oh, hello, and they recognize me, and I don't realize it's from the podcast, and I think it's somebody I've met before and can't remember. I'm like, what? But yeah, that's why I'm awkward and weird if you meet me at a convention. But yeah, thank you very much for listening.
The Hollywood thing, they always say, nice to see you. Because that can mean either nice to see you again or nice to see you the first time. And it's vague enough. You just say that to everyone because they never know in Hollywood whether they've met someone or not before because they sort of see them on, you know, there's this acting community and they sort of see them on screen so much.
And they, did I meet that guy at the Oscars three years ago or not? And this sort of thing. Or have I just seen him on TV a lot? And you just go, nice to see you. And everyone just says that. And it kind of,
And someone else replies with, to see you nice.
Yes.
That is what should happen. Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly, listeners, if Refs does say nice to see you in response to you, then you can always say to see you nice in foresight fashion. Yeah.
Wonderful.
It can be our secret passphrase and counterphrase. I love it. We don't have to do the Brucey thingy position thing. I will not attempt to describe what position Russ attempted to consort himself into.
The one he does, or used to do.
Well, he's very dead now, but... I can only say that there were eldritch angles involved and that I heard the banes of the hounds of Tindalop as they came...
searching through reality for our blood so yeah perhaps at this point we should probably think about wrapping up yeah i was wondering if we should end this for the year um yeah when shall we three meet again the answer will be january january well it'll be the podcast should be out on the fourth of fourth of january but the podcast will be out on the friday whatever the day the friday is what's the third of january where the podcast will be out on the third of january then oh do the magic 25
You look confused, Peter. I am confused. I get two weeks off. Oh, wait. No, sorry. I'm looking at the right... Tell you what. Why don't I look at the right date? Oh, yeah. So, oh, yeah. We're not recording on the 3rd of January, are we? I want two weeks. 3rd? Yeah. Oh, so 6th of January is when... What day is the Friday? Friday's the 3rd. Friday's the 3rd.
So, are we coming back on the 3rd or are we coming back on the one after that?
I was hoping for the 10th, but, you know, so I can have two weeks off because otherwise we only get one week. 10th? Yeah, back to me.
All right, listeners.
It's so professional.
Are you going to edit this for us? Yeah, okay. When shall we three meet again? Okay, great.
I'm so glad everyone... All right, listeners.
We are off for two weeks now. So when shall we three meet again? We will record on the 10th of January 2025. So you will likely hear this on the 11th, depending on the time zone that you were in.
You'll hear it on the same day. And your keenness, if they're very keen, or if they're not very keen, might pick you up on a later date. We can't control how listeners experience our podcast, and we don't want to either.
But I think for now, shall we all just go and say happy holidays and happy new year? Let's go do a Christmas.
Yeah.
Let's go do a Christmas.
All right, then. Bye-bye, everybody.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.