[INTRO MUSIC]
MIKE: Hello everybody and welcome to a session zero for Green Mountain Mysteries. Woo, spooky, woo. Yeah. This is an actual play podcast. We’re going to play a tabletop roleplaying game and we’re going to record it. That’s the format. You probably know that if you’re listening to this. So, we’re going to be using a thing called the Dresden Files roleplaying game system. It’s based on the novels by Jim Butcher. They’re great, go read them. A lot of us have. Thom, you’ve read all of them, right?
THOM: Yeah, I’ve read all of them except for the one I got for my birthday last year.
MIKE: Good job, Christine, for getting Thom that.
THOM: Or Christmas. Or was it Christmas or my birthday, I forget.
CHRISTINE: It was your birthday.
THOM: Yeah, it’s still sitting on the nightstand like “Read me!”
MIKE: Alright, so hi. For proper introduction, my name is Mike. I’m going to be the game master for this particular adventure. So, I’m going to make up a bunch of stuff and make these silly people make rolls. So, hey, let’s go down the line introducing ourselves.
THOM: Alrighty. My name is Thom, and I’ll be playing the role of Albion. So, I’ll expect to hear this accent for very long stretches of time. So, Albion is kind of a monster hunting type. His High Concept is Hard Traveling, Magic Dabbling, Gun Slinging Monster Hunter. Which is to say that he’s got his hands in a lot of pies and most of them have guns at the bottom. His Trouble Aspect is—
MIKE: A gun with pie?
THOM: A gun pie, yes. His Trouble Aspect, which is the thing that the DM can use against me whenever he so desires—GM, sorry. We’re not playing Dungeons & Dragons like a bunch of nerds.
MIKE: Yeah, no. We’re not nerds, this is urban fantasy.
THOM: Yeah, no. We’re the cool kids. You can’t sit with us. His Trouble Aspect is Monsters Have Long Memories. Because when you hunt monsters, occasionally they remember that and don’t take too kindly to it.
MIKE: Yeah, that happens.
THOM: His other Aspects are I Saw What Was Behind The Curtain And Now I Hunt It. Because he sort of looked behind the veil that hides the fantasy world just behind our own and now he shoots things that come out of it.
MIKE: I’ve got to say, that’s getting real dramatic there for a sec. And then you’re just like “Oh, no, I shoot my problems.”
THOM: Yeah, that’s why they call me a troubleshooter.
MIKE: Hey.
THOM: Yeah, he has Aspects of Magic And Ancient Weapons Are No Match For A SPAS-12 At Your Side, Kid. Because yeah, having magic powers and a gun bound to an ancient god is cool and all, but sometimes you just need a shotgun to deal with your issues. And in the same vein as things like Supernatural or things like that, he’s got an Aspect of I’ve Got a Trunk Full of Bullshit, Something In There Has Got To Stick. Which is to say, if there’s a monster that needs killing, he’s probably got something that can hurt it in his trunk. As long as I’m willing to spend a Fate Point for it to be there. His Phase Aspect is Lone Wolfing It Ain’t Always Feasible. Which came about from his first interaction with one of the characters we’ll be introducing next, Desdemona. It came from the fact that—sorry, let me try this in English.
MIKE: There’s a really cool element to this game system where there’s a collaborative storytelling element of actual character creation. So, all these things that Thom has been talking about, all these Aspects, they are kind of snap shots of the character and his personality. And they inform a lot of how people are going to perceive him, how he’s going to get played. But also, they are sort of collaboratively created with the other players based on past adventures that they’d had together. Because you guys are not all meeting in a bar.
THOM: Yeah, no. Again, this isn’t Dungeons & Dragons, that’s a game for nerds.
MIKE: Yeah. That’s just a really cool element of the Dresden Files roleplaying game system that says “You people know each other already. Make up stories about why.”
THOM: Yeah, pretty much. So, the last Aspect is Protective Streak A Mile Long from an adventure with our friend Gwen’s character, Ro, In which he shot a vampire that was threatening her. It didn’t take.
MIKE: Yeah, vampires are tough.
THOM: Albion’s main skills are Guns, Conviction, and things you use to fight. And also to know what a monster is, so he’s got a pretty good Lore score as well. Lower down the tier are his skills like Rapport, Investigation, Discipline, Fists, and Resources. He’s more used to shooting things than punching them, because you don’t want to get close enough to punch some of these things. But he’s got access to decent amounts of resources and decent amounts of kind of people skills, but that’s not his strongest suit, so that’s basically where his strengths lie.
MIKE: Yeah, there are like 20 different skills in this game and they don’t map exactly to a lot of the classical D&D style skills. It’s a lot of verisimilitude of like, real people and stuff that people could in real life be good at. Or wizards I guess, because there’s magic stuff too. So, you’re kind of okay at magic stuff. Actually, you’re pretty good at some magic stuff I guess. But not a lot of it.
THOM: Yeah. So, and then he has his special abilities. Like I said, he’s got his hands in a couple pies. He’s got two actual character concepts stacked on top of one another. One of them is True Believer because he is a follower of several faiths, but primarily Odin. And the other one is—it’s not Focused Practitioner, it’s minor talent. He’s got a little bit of magic in him, so he can access a third eye to see the world for what it really is. And he can use the power of faith to guide his hand to where he needs to be or to make a protection of a space stronger. So, like the ward between the threshold of a house, he can strengthen just by being there.
MIKE: That’s actually a really important part of the whole system. Sorry for interrupting, but for people that don’t know the source material, all magic is faith driven. Which is not to say that everybody that uses magic is a cleric. It's that you have faith in your own power and a faith that you’re using it correctly. So, it allows for a world where wizards exist, but also so do Christians that have holy relics, and also so do Buddhists that can do cool special stuff, and so do monster hunters that worship Odin. Because in this universe, all of the gods are real. All of them. Conviction is usually the skill that drives magic use, so it’s belief in whatever the power you’re drawing from that makes you better at drawing from it. And that informs a lot of the different Templates that exist. Because instead of traditional classes, since this is a thing that takes place in the real world sort of, there aren’t classes so much as Templates, and you can have multiple because sometimes you’re multiple things. Like Thom was talking about Albion how he’s got that true believer Template, but he’s also got that minor talent, so he’s got a little bit of different flavors of magic. For this universe, there are all sorts of different things you can be. You can be just a straight up mortal, regular old person that has no magic whatsoever. Darius’s character is a pure mortal, he has no magic power whatsoever, but he knows that magic is real, much to his chagrin, yes? But we’ll get to the fun character aspects you have about that. But as a mortal or a not-mortal, or a wizard or a werewolf or whatever, there’s a pool of points called Fate Points. It’s the primary resource of the game. You can spend Fate Points to improve your rolls or really get yourself out of a jam, and I can bribe players with Fate Points to make their stories worse and more difficult just because that’d be fun for the narrative. Mortals get more Fate Points, because they have to get by on their wits and their luck because they have no special powers. You have your character sheet there?
DARIUS: Yeah.
MIKE: Alright. So, walk us through the guy whose name I did not understand the pun of until it was way too late.
DARIUS: Okay. So, his name is Sylvester Coopersmith.
MIKE: I’m still mad at you.
DARIUS: I know, that's what makes it great.
THOM: It was a very sly move on his part.
MIKE: God, I’m so angry.
DARIUS: Surprisingly, I’m surprised he’s never seen a raccoon even though he’s been in Maine.
THOM: Not Maine, Vermont.
DARIUS: Vermont.
THOM: Yeah.
DARIUS: I’m from New York, it’s all the same to me.
THOM: [laughter] it’s all places with woods that are north of here, whatever.
DARIUS: Yeah, it’s just not the city, so that’s all I recognize it as.
CHRISTINE: Those things called trees.
DARIUS: We have those.
MIKE: They have them in some parts of New York.
DARIUS: Yeah, they’re just sporadic. Which is the way they should be, damn it. It’s when they all gang up on you, that’s the problem.
MIKE: [laughter] the best part is, you’ve basically hit on one of the themes of the game.
DARIUS: The dwarves were right, the trees be attacking. That’s why Thor strikes them with lightning.
THOM: Yeah, exactly.
DARIUS: He knows what’s up.
THOM: I know what’s up, because I follow Odin, so I know Thor. We go drinking. That’s not canon.
CHRISTINE: You play racquetball together.
DARIUS: No, you didn’t go drinking with Thor, you went drinking with a guy named Thor.
MIKE: [laughter]. Alright, so let’s talk about this character of yours. This butt doctor.
DARIUS: Okay.
MIKE: Walk us through this guy.
DARIUS: So, he’s a former soccer player, but then he got injured and then he went into proctology. Because that’s a common career choice for those who receive injuries in athletics.
THOM: Yeah, that’s how it always happens. That’s why we have doctors.
DARIUS: I mean, that’s what happened to Einstein. He was a pro basketball player, but then he went on the whole nuclear physics route.
THOM: Yeah, I’ll take it.
DARIUS: So, yeah. So, anyway, he’s good at that and he’s good at brawling and he probably has a short temper probably because of the whole injury that means that he can’t do World Cup shit anymore.
MIKE: Yeah. To be clear, it was in college that he got injured, right?
DARIUS: Yeah.
MIKE: Okay. If you want, you can go through the Aspects that you have on the sheet, because that gives a good general picture of Sylvester.
DARIUS: Okay, so, the High Concept is Butt-Kicking Butt Doctor.
MIKE: Which I love.
DARIUS: And the Trouble is Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown.
MIKE: Yeah. So you’re basically like the smartest and coolest guy in the room and you know it, right?
DARIUS: Pretty much. And the other Aspects are Aim Low, Then Go High; Three Legged Horse; Life Is Just A Ride; and Nobody Likes Wizards.
MIKE: Oh, you do get a fifth one, because we do have that adventure with everybody else involving the hags and stuff.
DARIUS: Oh yeah.
MIKE: So, if you want to figure out a fifth character aspect from that series of events... What kind of character choices or what informed Sylvester’s character and outlook from that sequence of events, do you think?
THOM: If I may, you killed a fae by kicking it hard enough.
DARIUS: Yeah, with steel toed boots. Well, not with steel toed boots. Boots with iron kind of cobbled onto them.
THOM: Yeah.
DARIUS: Yeah.
MIKE: You took those steel toed boots and did some chicanery and made them iron kicking boots somehow. They do not look that great. They’re not exactly fashion, but they work.
DARIUS: I guess Function Is Better Than Fashion.
MIKE: Yeah. I mean, if you want that’s definitely an Aspect that you can have.
DARIUS: Okay.
MIKE: Does that sound like the kind of thing that you would lean on as a personality element that you can call up for roleplay purposes?
DARIUS: Yeah, I can do that.
MIKE: Alright. Function Is Better Than Fashion. Or Function Over Fashion or something of that nature.
DARIUS: Yeah, same shit.
MIKE: Yeah. Alright, so, are we going to start building up a Craftsmanship score into this character over time?
DARIUS: Probably. I mean, it’s not like you can always have a med kit right on you at all times. Sometimes you’ve got to—
MIKE: You’ve got to improvise.
DARIUS: -- MacGyver some shit together.
MIKE: Actually, I really like that. Because that gives you a nice sort of narrative excuse for “I have all this medical training, but I don’t have just a bunch of stuff on me at all times.” So, you make it work.
DARIUS: There you go.
MIKE: Alright, I like that. And let’s talk about Christine.
CHRISTINE: Okay.
MIKE: Introduce yourself.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine, and I am playing the character Desdemona Brown. She is a medium psychic and an ectomancer. Her High Concept is—
MIKE: I understood some of those words.
CHRISTINE: Do you need me to resay it or--?
MIKE: Oh no, no. I feel like ectomancer might not be the most obvious thing.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, she can basically use ghosts and spirits and use that as part of her magic. She can control them sometimes.
MIKE: Okay, because that’s way more rad of a description.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Let’s see, her High Concept Aspect is The Haunted Hunted Mouthpiece of the Supernatural with the Trouble Aspect of Never Truly Alone. Some of her Aspects I’ve got are Grammy Came For The Tea Party. So, she had a grandmother who died when she was really young who was also a medium psychic who started showing up and it’s a Phase Aspect that basically points to her being a medium psychic and it’s been a skill that she’s been honing all of her life. I’ve got here for her next Aspect Sometimes Jack Helps Me, No That’s Bad. We don’t know exactly what Jack is, but he is a being who sometimes gives Desdemona sponsored magic whether she likes it or not. You’ll meet him eventually. I have another Phase—Yeah?
MIKE: Oh, can I just talk about sponsored magic for a second, because I think this is a neat thing?
CHRISTINE: Definitely.
MIKE: Sponsored magic. Sometimes people can’t really do magic the regular way, but some powerful thing—oops sorry. Some powerful thing might be like “Hey, I’ll give you power, but you have this bargain, you have this debt you owe.” Very Daniel Webster and the Devil kind of thing. So, you do have magic, but you also have a sponsored magic debt that you are building up.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, that’s because Jack showed up at the right place at the right time, taught Desdemona on the fly how to control ghosts and spirits, and she did not know what she was getting in for when that happened.
MIKE: Yeah. Mr. Jack is a terrifying thing and Thom, since we did play out a short adventure before this particular campaign starts, what was your experience with Mr. Jack again?
THOM: Oh right. So, Albion in a moment suspected something was wrong with Des, so he opened his magical third eye and what he saw, the game master refused to describe to me. All he said was that I took an immense amount of mental strain and had a consequence simply titled NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
MIKE: So, that actually brings up a cool feature of the system. It’s the stress tracks. So, in a lot of tabletop games you have hit points, and I love when you have like 100 hit points or you have four hit points and it’s like “Oh I got stabbed, I have four hit points, I’m laying on the ground dying.” But when you have 100 hit points and somebody stabs you for 4 damage you’re like “Why? What was this? That was nothing.” And that abstraction is kind of weird sometimes. A lot of people abstract it as “Oh this is how good you are at rolling with the punches now.” But this system has stress tracks that I think do that abstraction really nicely. So, when somebody hits you in combat, it isn’t necessarily them actually hitting you or wounding you. It really is ticking down how long you can go without taking some sort of penalty or injury for being in the fight. And then they have what’s called consequences, where you can choose to take consequences so that you don’t take as much stress. Because you have a limited amount of stress of hits that you can take before you are taken out. And being taken out is bad because whoever takes you out gets to control how you’re taken out, and in a fight that could mean that they decide you’re dead. Which is not good, so nobody wants that. So, you can choose to take a consequence which is like an actual injury or, well, consequence of taking-- of being in this fight longer. So, werewolf does a big old slashy-roo to you and does like seven stress to you, but you only have like 4 stress on your track. That goes over your four, so you have to take some sort of consequence like Gut Slash or something that would reduce it by four. That’ll get a little more explained in gameplay when that comes up. But I just think that’s a very good system. Especially because there are three tracks, not just HP for physical. They have a physical track, a mental track, and a social track. Because sometimes you can get into a social conflict with somebody, and I think that that is just wonderful that you can take somebody out of a scene by overloading their mind or calling them names. Or whatever it is. I just love that there are multiple different stress tracks for different things. So, if you want to get back into Desdemona there, I just thought that that was a good time to bring up that particular aspect of the game.
CHRISTINE: No problem. The other Phase Aspects had to do with the previously done adventures, so I’ve got Welcome to the Paranet which is something that I had with our previous player, Marcus. So, that has to do more with how Desdemona becoming a bit more of a focused practitioner of magic. I’ve got Hey, I Can Actually Do This, which is her adventure with Albion, getting a little more confident with her abilities. And I’ve got my more recent one with her adventure with Ro, which is What’s The Difference? Because it turns out, Desdemona is pretty good at being a distraction and diverting attention and even a bit of lying. White lies.
MIKE: And to be clear, we’re not talking about the kind of lies that most practitioners of being a psychic medium—we’re not talking about that kind of lie.
GWEN: Roasted.
CHRISTINE: No, because she actually has that gift, she doesn’t have to lie.
DARIUS: Miss Cleo style shenanigans.
MIKE: Yeah. And we’ve mentioned Ro a couple of times, and that’s actually our last character if you want to introduce yourself.
GWEN: Yeah. I’m the baby. I’m Gwen. I’m playing the character Ro.
MIKE: And you can do no wrong. You can do no wrong because you’re baby.
GWEN: Yeah, so I’ve decided—
MIKE: I’m using that term right, right?
THOM: Yes, yes you are.
MIKE: Okay, good. Because I’m old.
CHRISTINE: I’m older.
MIKE: Damn it.
GWEN: Oh.
DARIUS: Hey, I’m not the oldest.
MIKE: Sorry, Gwen.
GWEN: You can ground Michael, oh my god. Okay, so for Ro, I have decided to completely erase what I have, and she is a monk who has taken a vow of silence for this audio podcast [laughter]. Way to go, baby, I win.
MIKE: Beautiful.
GWEN: Okay, anyway, Ro or Rosetta—
THOM: Awesome.
GWEN: Rosetta Kamen is a young woman from Rhode Island. She grew up in a not so great situation. Her dad was involved with some shady stuff.
MIKE: As you are, from Rhode Island.
GWEN: Yeah, as one does when you’re from Rhode Island. Her High Concept is Half Manic, Half Pixie Thief Girl. With a Trouble of—
MIKE: I love that.
GWEN: I’m very proud of that one. My Trouble is You Have No Power Over Me, because she—
MIKE: I kind of want to touch on—I’m sorry, I kind of want to touch on what that High Concept actually means.
GWEN: Okay, yeah yeah.
MIKE: Because that introduces a whole other avenue of this game and this universe.
GWEN: Yes. So, we have decided on making Ro a changeling. So, she knows her father, who is human. She does not know her other parent, her mother. So, she doesn’t know that she has some magical abilities. We touched on it a little bit with Ro’s journey with Albion and kind of Desdemona, that she has some veils and some small magic stuff that she can do, she just doesn’t know what that is yet.
MIKE: Yeah. So, to be clear, your other parent is a fey. It’s some sort of fey creature from a place called the Nevernever which is just the best name. But the Nevernever is basically a parallel world that is sort of covered over our own just on the other side of an invisible veil at all times, that sort of thing. But it’s not a one to one overlap with our reality. But it’s also where all fey creatures come from. All fairies, goblins, etc. But it’s not where all monsters come from. Like werewolves and vampires are definitely real, but they’re from the real world. And then there’s definitely other worse, more terrible things, like Lovecraftian things that also do not come from the Nevernever, they come from somewhere else that is sort of outside reality. But you have a parent that is from that Nevernever heritage that is some sort of fey and you don’t even know what that looks like.
GWEN: Correct. So it’s a lot of "she’s going to figure out that shit later."
MIKE: Yeah. I mean, at this point, you definitely know that magic is real.
GWEN: Yes.
MIKE: I think in your adventure with Des, you literally went into the Nevernever briefly.
CHRISTINE: That portal through a stained glass window may be a slight indication.
GWEN: Maybe Ro had been drinking and had a nice nap and had a really cool dream.
CHRISTINE: A very expensive dream.
THOM: I mean, you also watched me shoot a guy repeatedly, and he just kind of walked it off.
MIKE: Yeah, and then there were those two mobsters that were breaking through the door and then just disappeared and you have no idea why.
GWEN: Yeah, like I said, maybe it’s a dream. I don’t know.
MIKE: I mean, your bank account says otherwise, because you were in the middle of something with Des.
CHRISTINE: I have a business to run here.
GWEN: Yeah, true. I have some debts to pay.
MIKE: A little bit. Yeah, so, let’s get back into your Aspects. Sorry for the—
GWEN: No, no problem. So, like I said, my trouble is you have no power over me, with the other aspects—
MIKE: Basically, they’re not your—
GWEN: Yeah, you’re not my dad, you can’t tell me what to do.
MIKE: Sorry, I just want—Yeah, it’s funny because people can’t tell you what to do because they’re not a cop or your dad. But you also won’t let your dad tell you what to do, because shut up.
GWEN: Exactly.
THOM: And also, fuck the cops. You’re a criminal.
GWEN: Yeah.
CHRISTINE: Also, goblin king, go away.
GWEN: [laughter] that is 100% what inspired that.
MIKE: So, basically Ro listens to a lot of Rage Against the Machine.
GWEN: Yeah, she’s very I would say punk rock, or at least tries to be. Like “You’re not the boss of me, I’m the boss of me, unless I want to do my own thing, then I’m not even the boss of me.”
MIKE: Oh man. So, I guess you would say you have a problem with authority.
GWEN: I do.
MIKE: Okay. Seth believes that you probably listen to more metal covers of Evanescence.
GWEN: Oh yeah, 100%. That’s all I have in my iPod Shuffle.
MIKE: Oh my god, iPod Shuffle. It’s 2019!
DARIUS: It was on sale.
GWEN: Yeah, it was 10 bucks.
CHRISTINE: Don’t tell her what to do.
GWEN: Exactly. I got my own thing going on.
DARIUS: iPod Shuffle is the new vinyl.
CHRISTINE: It’s ironic, okay?
MIKE: It’s just, “You’re so tired of being here,” piano riff plays.
GWEN: Do do do do do.
MIKE: Yeah, that one.
THOM: Yeah, that’s the one by everyone’s favorite singer, Amy Evanescence.
MIKE: Perfect. We’re going to get everyone so mad at us.
DARIUS: Yes.
MIKE: So, you talked about veils that Ro can do. I guess sort of what veils do. Wow, that was the best. I made words so good right there.
CHRISTINE: Yay.
GWEN: What do words veil?
CHRISTINE: Create a word okay.
MIKE: This is an audio medium and I’m smart and good at words, people love it. So, yeah. Veils are kind of like if you took— Gwen, help.
GWEN: So, my understanding, and I am very new to this, Veils are—Ro’s understanding of it is she just kind of wants to hide or wants to not be seen and she doesn’t get seen. It’s part of the magic that she has.
CHRISTINE: A Monty Python sketch.
GWEN: Yeah, you just cover your eyes and no one can see you. But actually no one can see you.
DARIUS: Is that like the invisible kid from Mystery Men?
GWEN: Yes! I love that movie.
DARIUS: If nobody looked at him and they couldn’t see him become invisible.
MIKE: You know what, I think that sounds right.
CHRISTINE: Ro has figured out how not to be seen.
MIKE: Seth says it isn’t not like that. Oh yeah, I keep mentioning Seth. Seth is listening to this because he is the guy who has written our campaign. I may be good at running a game- with all evidence to the contrary - because I can talk good. But Seth is very very good at writing stories and I think Seth has a fantastic adventure set up in this universe that ties in a lot of cool story ideas and just a lot of neat plot threads. For one thing, we should mention that this game is going to be set in and around Burlington, Vermont.
THOM: A fictionalized version, so if we get the layout wrong, don’t tweet at us.
MIKE: Yeah, don’t at me. This is slight fantasy Burlington, Vermont. But it’s the real world Burlington, Vermont that we fictionalized. Because in the Dresden Files, it’s just the real world except magic is real. For people that don’t know the Dresden Files, it’s kind of like Harry Potter in that way, but way way way more. For instance, there’s more books, and there’s more mythos I think.
DARIUS: More gooder.
MIKE: I mean, I would possibly argue that also. I like this series quite a bit. I don’t dislike Harry Potter though.
GWEN: I don’t want to say anything just so the Potterheads don’t attack us, because I know some pretty intense fans.
MIKE: Look, I like Harry Potter, I just enjoy the Dresden Files better.
THOM: We’re going to have to edit all of this out.
GWEN: No, Seth, leave this in.
CHRISTINE: Call off your Hufflepuffs.
THOM: You madman, you absolute madman.
GWEN: Leave this in, it’s very important.
MIKE: Look, it was an important cultural touchstone to sort of get the—oh, whatever. So, the genre is urban fantasy.
THOM: This is the Dresden Files, it’s way better than Harry Potter.
MIKE: Okay, see, now we can take that clip of you saying that out of context and it’s not me.
THOM: Oh god, what have I done?
DARIUS: There you go, take the heat off.
CHRISTINE: They’re coming for you, Thom.
MIKE: Yes.
THOM: Oh no, they’re going to swing their sticks at me and say “umos” or whatever.
DARIUS: "They’re coming to get you, Barbara."
GWEN: We’re drawing some lines in the sand, oh my god.
MIKE: Oh my god. Actually, yes, I’m going to draw some lines in the sand and do a bit of a serious pivot on that. Because this is a game that’s set in, ostensibly, the real world. Though obviously there’s wizards and warlocks and vampires and werewolves oh my. And fairies and all sorts of Lovecraftian whatever, so yeah. But it is still set in what is functionally the real world, so, there’s going to be some real world issues that come up. I mean, Sylvester, you’re playing a proctologist.
DARIUS: Yes.
MIKE: He’s a doctor who is teaching at a college in Vermont, University of Vermont. And he’s also, he’s black. In Vermont. Which is kind of not that common, it turns out.
DARIUS: Apparently I’m a unicorn, go figure.
MIKE: And Ro is the daughter of a father of an organized crime head. And Albion is somebody who solves a lot of his problems with violence and guns because a lot of his problems are just monsters. And Desdemona talks to dead people. So, some of this stuff—
THOM: You know, real world issues. And dead people.
DARIUS: Yeah.
MIKE: Yeah. So, I don’t want this to be something that gets bogged down in a lot of the mire of actual real world problems, because ultimately this is escapism. This is fantasy, this is fun, but we still need to be sensitive about actual real world issues, and I don’t want to ever gloss over and pretend like those things aren’t real, because in this world, they are. It’s just that we’re not necessarily going to be addressing them head on.
DARIUS: Right.
MIKE: Like yeah, no matter if you believe there’s a problem with gun violence in this country or whatnot, Albion’s got weapons. He shoots monsters. It’s just that’s what he does. We’re not probably going to be wading into that conversation, just like I don’t think we’re probably going to be doing too much wading into the conversation about racism or anything of that sort, but it’s not—we’re going to deal with some sensitive things, probably. But I’m going to try to keep things generally light. Seth has constructed the campaign in such a way that the issues we have to deal with are kind of fantastical, but also definitely—very fantastical in many cases. But still grounded in some real world issues. So, I just wanted to get—
DARIUS: I ate a pie that was probably people.
MIKE: [laughter] yeah. In our precursor campaign, they did have to deal with some hags, and hags are notorious anthrophages—wow anthrophages. I need to do better vocal warmups. Which means “eats people.” So, they ran a diner, ate some food there, the food was delicious.
CHRISTINE: Sweeny Todd.
MIKE: Yeah, there was some concern about Sweeny Todding, but I’m actually going to spoil that for the players, none of you were served human meat.
DARIUS: Okay.
THOM: Oh, well good because Albion did not want to have that revelation.
CHRISTINE: No.
GWEN: Ro just eats humans on her off days.
THOM: Because that burger was delicious.
MIKE: She’s so into her fairy side that she’s like, “mm delicious.”
GWEN: Yeah, that is not canon.
MIKE: Yeah, I think that this is something that we want to make that is fun to listen to and is generally going to be light hearted despite action, adventure, mayhem, and murder. But yeah, I think that this is the sort of thing where I’m definitely open to hearing from people if we’re not handling something in a sensitive way, I’m happy to hear that. So, yeah. I think that that covers a lot of what we’re going to do with this.
THOM: I just realized, we actually never touched on Albion’s magic gun.
MIKE: We didn’t.
GWEN: We’ve got a magic gun, the end.
THOM: Because you jumped right into Sylvester.
MIKE: That’s true.
THOM: Yeah, no. Albion is part of a monster hunting organization sort of loosely—a loose group of people who are occasionally hired out by the powers that be to deal with monster threats that they either politically can’t or just don’t have time for. And part of the organization is that one of its direct patrons is Odin.
MIKE: Yeah, that Odin.
THOM: And because of this, somehow—yes, that Odin. Albion has ended up with a gun that is essentially an aspect of Odin’s spear, Gungnir, to the point that it bears that name and has a direct tie of power to Odin. So, occasionally Albion can tap into the connection of that gun and use it to holy—how do I say this? To smite with religious fury. You know what, let me rephrase that. To smite with divine fury things that are offensive to Odin.
MIKE: Go medieval on they ass.
THOM: Go medieval on they ass. And, yeah, Albion has a real cool magic gun that he occasionally uses and is not quite sure he deserves.
DARIUS: Does Odin’s business card actually say “Yes, that Odin.”
THOM: If it doesn’t, it should. His business card says—
MIKE: Monoc Securities, right?
THOM: Donar Vadderung is what it says. Because that’s his name in the real world.
MIKE: Yes. In the real world of the Dresden Files. Seth says “I mean, I’ve read American Gods.” Yeah, American Gods was very good.
THOM: He’s not Mr. Wednesday, that’s a different guy.
MIKE: Oh man. Yeah, I’m trying to think if there are any other things that need to be touched on. Oh, one of them is—you mentioned the powers that be. One of those powers that be is the White Council of Wizards, which is a big old political force in the magical world. They are wizards and magically inclined folks that are powerful enough to be called wizards. They have a big old council, they have a guy called the Merlin—he’s not that Merlin, but he’s another one, a title more than anything.
DARIUS: Does his card say “Not that Merlin.”
MIKE: Yeah, his business cards say, “you shouldn’t know I exist.”
THOM: “I don’t give out business cards.”
MIKE: Again, drawing that similarity to Harry Potter, the magical powers that be usually don’t want the mundane folks to know that they exist. The White Council of Wizards has a policy that’s basically like “You do not tell other people about magic at all.” Because magic is real real dangerous. Magic is very powerful. If the common folk knew about it, they would probably start using it, and that would not necessarily be great. Because there are rules. The White Council is very self-important. They’ve set up, like, actual laws about magic. And if you break those laws, they will just kill you. Because rehabilitating somebody who uses magic power is apparently way too difficult. So, there are some rules. There are seven laws, and they may or may not come up during play, and if they do, they’ll be clarified. Especially because some people in the group have read the Dresden Files, some people haven’t, but we’ve all gotten familiar enough with the setting and system from doing some play. Is there anything that anyone would like to add about their characters or the game world, or the system before we head in?
DARIUS: Nah.
THOM: No, I think we’re good.
MIKE: Okay. Alright. Excellent. Well, I hope that answered any questions that people had. Hopefully this is a helpful and useful resource and introduction to the game world, the game system—oh, it’s a Fate dice system, that’s what I didn’t mention. It is a Fate system. So it’s not rolling with d20s, but with these cool little dice called Fate dice. They’re six sided dice and they’ve got two plus faces, two minus faces, and two blank faces. So, you take four of those dice, roll them, add the pluses and minus together, and that’s the modifier to your skill. So, the skill ladder is way way way slimmer. People usually only have scores between zero and five, instead of rolling a 20 sided die and getting a huge variance in possible results. So, the challenges are much tighter and it’s much more mapped to real world sort of skill levels. Because yeah, it’s meant to be more “realistic” than Dungeons & Dragons. Even though people are using magic to literally summon ghosts or fireballs.
DARIUS: Just like in the real world.
MIKE: Yeah, exactly. So, somebody who has a zero in a skill has no training in it, no special talent in it. Somebody has a one or a two maybe has some training or a very high degree of natural talent. Three and four are people that do it for a living. Three is good enough at the job to actually be a professional, a four is like “you’re real good in your field.” And a five is just pushing the boundaries of human potential. So, Olympic athletes would be fours and fives on the athletics skill. People who are just absurdly skilled. Like John Wick would have a five in guns because good god. That dude, he is supernaturally good at shooting, almost.
DARIUS: It’s a six in dogs.
MIKE: Yes. He has a high empathy score, but only situationally because dogs. Yeah, but a counselor, somebody that sees people on a regular basis might have an empathy score between three or four. And if you’re just the world’s best counselor, you might have a five. But yeah, that’s the idea. A lot of supernatural things will go above and beyond into like the six to eight range, and if you have something with a plus eight in a skill—run. Because they’re probably way too powerful for you. So, great. Let’s move into actual roleplaying and actual game. We’re going to get started. Thank you all for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the adventure.
GWEN: I for one hope they do not enjoy the adventure.
THOM: Maximum fun dot org.
GWEN: I hope they more than enjoy it.
MIKE: Comedy and culture.
GWEN: I don’t have a word for that, but that’s what I hope they do.
MIKE: Love?
GWEN: Yeah, but that’s a strong word though.
MIKE: Is that good?
GWEN: That’s too much.
MIKE: How about adore?
DARIUS: No, not that much.
GWEN: I want them to want to move in with our podcast, but not have a marriage.
MIKE: [laughter] You what?!
GWEN: Like, be roommates with our podcast.
CHRISTINE: We hope you platonically love our podcast. You can hug it with its consent.
DARIUS: Yeah, you can be fans of us, but you can’t be in fans of us.
GWEN: Exactly.
THOM: Get to know our podcast real well, maybe hang out with us at a couple public events and then maybe, maybe you can take our podcast out to dinner.
CHRISTINE: Or karaoke, you know?
GWEN: Like, maybe we’ll go out together to—[inaudible]
[CROSSTALK; OUTRO MUSIC]
MIKE: I don’t know how much of this is staying in [laughter].
DARIUS: The irony.
GWEN: All of it! It’s so good.
DARIUS: Most of it.
MIKE: But I should mention that we will actually—yes, we do have a social media presence. You can find us on pretty much all of the primary socials that I, a 32 year old, understand how to use. [laughter] We will have hashtags.
GWEN: I’m a hip teen, I can help. Except for I’m an adult.
MIKE: Yeah. That’s accurate. I believe probably like hashtag GMMCast, I think would make sense. That’s snappy.
Transcribed by Nicholas Johnson (https://draconick.com/)
Twitter: @DraconickGaming