All right, welcome back everybody to What the Fuck a Fool's Quest? Season
seven? So happy to be back. Yeah yeah, that doesn't come through.
Yeah it doesn't come But now now I've gotta add the sounds at everybody's
can be like, what the fuck is he talking about? He's gotta addit.
Five of us. Yeah all right. So uh we had season five
and then wait to a quick break. We had a one point five in
the middle there, and now we are back with Nico dm NG season seven
the Scholastic Wars. So let me first introduce Nico Rodriguez. Hello everybody,
as you were, faithful DMU and to his left, you guys can't see
on the podcast, but don't worry about it. Jesse Wicks playing I'm Elmer.
I'm not Elmer. I'm no. You had one job. That's not
true. I had two. That's how I got confused. He didn't study.
I didn't know there was a test. Jesse, who are you playing,
dude? I'm playing Bill quiver Lands. Bill quiver Lands. Good god,
that's what I said the first time. I don't know I would agree
with you. I don't know anyone who would argue. Tony Kinney is playing
Eddie fell Zone true true, true, Michael Cole's playing Rug Rug and then
Jess Jess Owen is not here today, but she's playing uh Adira Glow.
Yeah. We'll get to talking about that in a minute. For Scholastic Wars,
let's do a brief kind of rundown of the setting because it's kind of
done well, I shouldn't say kind of. It is quite different than most
any other campaigns of stories that I've heard, which I appreciate. Nico,
do you want to kind of give a very quick rundown of kind of like
the magic system and what the settings like. Yeah, So the SYS,
the game system we're using is the Dungeon World System, which is a more
simplified system. We took a look at us at a handful of different systems
when we were thinking about switching from D and D, and we chose this
one because it kind of thrives on the whole rule of cool idea, like
the way you do things abilities, spells, attacks, It's it's very very
vague in the book, and it allows you to tell the story as players
in the DM. So we've kind of gone with that system as far as
the setting goes. We took a different approach. We went with a party
that is already established. So everybody that's in this is that they're the highest
group of classmen at the Illusion Academy in a world where magicians can only cast
one class of spell. So Eddie is kind of like the head guy.
He casts illusion magic. Bill Quiveralance also cast some illusion magic. And then
we've got a Barbarian which is the Deer Glow, and Druid ape Shifter which
is Irag. And these guys are already the higher group classmen. They've been
together for years. They already know each other. There's established bonds and relationships,
so it doesn't have that weird awkward Let's get to know each other's characters
and hopefully we will all get along and find a reason to be together.
We're starting this campaign off with all of these people already know each other,
and they already have a very good foundation built and reasons for them to be
a party. So they are wrapping up their tenure at the Illusion Academy,
and that is where the campaign starts in a nation only for illusionists. Before
we get into this next thank you Nico. Before we jump into this next
question, I want to let everyone know who's listening. This is kind of
the first portion of the what the Fuck episode bonus episode. You will be
here as a general public for the rest of this episode and for much much
more. Consider joining the Patron joining subscribing to patron to get all the extra
content that we have, the extra shows, the RSS feeds, or stuff
that I'll kind of run down a little bit. But this is a question
from Meade, who is a part of our Discord community and which he and
many others can actually watch. This what the Fuck bonus episode happened live in
our Discord as a Patreon suburb. So Mead asks what inspired the limited magic
system decision? So the fact that they can only do one school of magic.
Yeah, So in the previous campaign, campaign one point five, which
is the one Tony wrote, we kind of taw about how the world of
Eufray was broken and threw them into this fourth age. And the big plot
point from the first campaign was the Book of Magic. So Tony and I
had this idea a long time ago when we started the show, to have
a Book of Magic which has all eight infinite pages for each one for each
school of magic. At the end when they saved the day. They did
so by breaking that book and keeping it so that the big bad guy Master
Duche from season one couldn't use it to become a god. When they broke
the book, they broke magic altogether, and each page got separated from the
book and cast out into the world of Eufray. And with that separation from
for each page, each school of magic was separated and castors could only cast
one school of magic, which has been really fun to try and play too.
I know that Jesse had a lot of fun in campaign one point five
trying to put some stuff together. There is a caveat to that. Because
warlocks use patrons from other universes that are attached to this universe with Euphra in
it, they get to access multiple schools of magic, and because of that
they are hunted by all of the schools who typically hate them. He's different,
get in Yeah, exactly, so, yeah, so that's kind of
what inspired it. They the characters from the very first campaign broke the Book
of Magic, which separated all the schools out, and then in campaign one
point five that was getting established and the world was being built around these schools
of magic, and in campaign two it is. I mean, each school
is its own nation now, and they're just very limited and very sectioned off.
I like to think of it as the unbinding with capital you because like
you know, folks have a binding in like it was bound together, so
like I don't know if that's written down anywhere, but we should who Who'll
say? It's kind of frustrating that the look torn us under right after we
put it back together, kind of switching switching gears for a quick second,
Bill Quiveralance, Uh, you haven't played as as a Bard, correct,
Yes, Uh, it's kind of a it's more like a speed Bard.
Yeah. So Meade wants to know, did you know beforehand, Jesse,
which instrument you were going to use? So I had an idea it was
supposed to be still for a while. I didn't decide on the symbols until
like just a couple of days before we actually recorded the first episode, because
there were just so many fun options. I gotta I gotta say. We
informed him that there's a tradition in AFQ of bards playing ridiculous instruments. He
wasn't allowed to choose something easy like a drummer, a lout, Yeah,
unless he wanted to be the lamest bar for bangpipes and kazoos, symbols,
accordion, oh man, awesome? Which parts? So LUKEA is from our
discouraged community wants to know which parts of the world would you like to dive
into more. This will go kind of we'll start with the players first.
So Mike, Mike, what do you what do you think? Well,
I mean, there's still quite a bit of map that we haven't touched on
yet, and it's still early in campaign two, so I'm not sure exactly
you know which direction we're going to be headed, But yeah, there's I
mean, if you look at the map, there's a lot of neat little
there's a lot of potential there. So, I mean, I don't have
any particular spot in general that i'd like to check out. It just I'm
looking forward to what's coming up. Yeah, sure, what about you,
Tony? For me, it's the islands and just right in the middle of
the sun touch of sea alright, Like, I don't know, I like
island stuff. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, I'd like to check
that out. See what's there? I feel like it's probably dinosaurs. Uh,
I get the island thing. Because in season five the villains stayed on
an island for I don't know most of that season. Then we blew them
the fucker Jesse, what about you, buddy? Mostly just looking forward to
like getting to navigate the different kingdoms and how all the different personalities work out
once we get into, you know, the other magical territories. I think
that's gonna be a lot of fun. I feel like it'd be spoilers to
ask you, Nikob, but I'm gonna do it anyways. Is there anything
in particular that you are excited about or can talk about? Yeah, I
mean I would say two quick things, and I won't put spoilers into it
if I can. But you know, for first, if you've never listened
to our show, in this your first season, I let the players kind
of do whatever the fuck they want, and then there's just kind of repercussions
that happened. So in the first campaign they traveled all over and went to
random places that I was not expecting, So that is totally possible here,
Or for them to just skip entire countries where they were supposed to go.
That also happens. So I'm curious where they're going to go. But The
two places that I would be super interested in them finding is one the Necromancy
nation where that school is. I think is a pretty cool idea and I'd
like to see how they navigate that nation if they make it there. And
two where the island or where Eterno is for our Ethereal Embrace campaign. So
they kind of teased at going to that place in campaign one, and I'm
really curious if they could get there and find it and what it would be
like. So so yeah, yeah, I think those would be my two.
Nico me'd wants to know what is something that you learned from the last
campaign that you have either applied or going to apply to this campaign or have
adapted from for this campaign. I think I learned a lot from the first
campaign. First, having two different parties in the same group or you know,
in the same campaign doing different things is virtually impossible. So while that
was really cool, I'm never doing that again. It was very ambitious,
but I mean, ultimately, I think last time I did a lot of
over preparing and and I really didn't need to because you guys will get stuck
on random concepts and you will just beat them until they're dead. And in
the ground. Players literally don't have to do Players don't do that, and
they never fixate on the smallest thing. It doesn't matter trying to open the
door. What was what was Session zero like for you guys this time around?
It wasn't really records like character creation, campaign creation. How did you
guys kind of figure out roles, especially especially with the limited magic system,
Like what did that look like for you guys? So we had a lot
of time to think about roles and stuff because Nico kind of told us the
idea behind the season. I think he gave us like two months to think
it over before we were going to start recording. We knew we had to
have a magic user, we had to choose which nation we wanted to be
from, all that stuff, and we just kind of discussed most of it
over the course of two months or so before we even got to Session zero
and then the actual Session zero scarred Rag. Yeah. Yeah, our Session
zero was basically just a gathering so that we could try out the combat system
and see how that worked out and get a feel for mechanics of it.
And it was just a quick little skirmish between our group and another group,
and my first time out with Urog. Krit failed the dice and Krit failed
three times in a row. Uh. And if if you followed the show
at all, anytime that we Krit get a critical hit or or a critical
miss, he wants us to roll again. And if we do it three
times in a row, then something over the top and you know, epic
or terribly horrendous happens. And I failed three in a row, and that's
why Urag has part of his left ear missing. It was sheared sheared off
from a whip from a little p on group that we were after his first
time out. So I mean, he already had to tell of having antlers
in all of his forms, but now he is the missing part of his
ear and then that wasn't explained in the show at all, but it bought
up. So yeah, it's time or two yea, it was behind the
scenes stuff, yeah yea. For a reason, I do have to note
with the with the three crits rule that we have, Uh, we're not
on a D twenty system anymore. We're on a D six system. It's
two D six, yeah, And a krit is a eleven or twelve,
or a Krit fail is a two or a three, So I don't know
how much more likely that is to happen, which we had like a crap
stealer or something in here to tell us the odds. I think it's more
likely it's three and thirty six. There we go. It's a critical like
like everybody is from one to twelve instead of one and twelve. But it's
just like you either do really really well or you do really really bad.
That kind of goes towards Uh. One of the things I was going to
bring up a little bit later was Mike, it seems like you're continuing your
terrible roll streak from mal Vader to Rug. Yeah. Well, if anything,
I am consistent. So as far as the new U RPG system,
what do you guys have as far as pros and cons notn't you've been able
to kind of play it versus H D and D fifth edition. It's so
much more flexible, It's yeah, And I think you can hear that in
the episodes too, like we're just we're just making stuff up, and that
the moves are really, I guess vague, deliberately so so that it leaves
you that, you know, narrative of freedom kind of to do things the
way you want to do them to do the things you want your character do
to do instead of how, instead of how rigid D and D is,
And don't get me wrong, I like D and D D twenty systems are
fun too, but this is a lot more flexible. MH. I would
I would say that considering that we're all fairly experienced gamers, that lends itself
to, you know, making the system work. So you know, it's
kind of like we've been there, done that, know what we can and
can't do in general with a system. So we're constantly pushing the envelopes and
it's just there as you know, like the little bumper pads on the on
the side to keep us, you know, within a certain range. It's
good for storytelling. Yeah, allows a lot of flexibility and free range.
I also think it's much more deadly. So in this game, absolutely you
have your health pool and it does not go up as you level up.
I mean, whatever it is is what it is, and that's just I
mean, so a couple of good roles from a bad guy will literally kill
anyone in this game, which makes it I mean just every single fight is
now risky. It's it's very risky. So it makes players being overly zealous
to get into combat kind of not a thing. It just doesn't happen.
Get a second, guess it and use your brain. Even the barbarian makes
sure that it's time before So I guess one last question before we wrap up
the this this portion of this episode. What about actual play do you guys
think is good for storytelling as far as medium goes? And where do you
think it falls short? Nichol, Let's start with you. I like,
so we've got both, right, We've got the Fat Archives, which is
our audio drama that we're that we put together here, which is just storytelling,
and then we've got actual play. So we definitely know both sides of
this question. And what I really like about actual play is that you're telling
the story together, and then there's also the element of the randomness of the
dice. I've found that as we've played more, especially with the podcast,
it's less and less about actually just playing the game, and it's more about
telling the story together. And when you have dice to help make these decisions,
things can get really really chaotic, and they're just because it's not scripted,
right, It's just fun. You know, it's funny when things are
funny, it's dramatic. When things are dramatic, it's scary. Things are
scary. So you know, there's that that feeling that kind of spreads across
the group. When you're sitting around a table doing an actual play together like
this, I think, yeah, anybody have anything else to edd to that?
Yeah? I think where actual play falls short sometimes can be the pacing
because, like, like we were just joking about a couple of minutes ago,
sometimes the players fix fixate on stuff that's just nothing. We absolutely do
that as players and it's not anything we just I don't know want it to
be or think it's gonna be or you know, but it's It can definitely
it can definitely mess with the pacing of the story. And if I may,
I think also where it kind of fall short is like if you if
you want to tell a good story to people who are listening consistently and have
something that can be engaging every time and in depth every time, you kind
of do have to break a cardinal rule and meta I think a little bit
to try and get to try and stay on the plot, try and try
and like stay where the DM wants you to go, so that there can
be that consistency. I don't know if you guys feel the same way,
but I feel like you kind of do have to work more in depth with
your with your DM to make sure that you know you're you're not taking too
long on an island. Yeah, and then finally blow it up. That
was kind of supposed to be a throw off side quest as far as all
that goes, and we are going to wrap this portion up. If you
liked what you guys here heard on here, please do consider joining our Patreon
subscribing. If you'd like to stay up to date with all of our shows,
future content, conventions and events that we are attending, be sure to
follow on our social media. If you'd like to talk to us directly,
hang out, play games, and maybe even do one shots with us,
be sure to join our ever growing Discord community. We have actual Plague podcasts
as we mentioned before, such as A Fool's Quest and Ethereal Embrace. We
do audio dramas such as its archives, and even a live stream Crown of
the Oath Breaker game on Twitch. We also have special content for our amazing
patrons who we absolutely love. Patreon subscribers get all the rss feeds for early
releases of podcasts, add free listening, and special roles and privileges in our
Discord community. We also have an amazing merged store for all of our shows,
and a monthly newsletters keep you all up to date on all that happenings
with Creative Typo, including deep dive explosse the cast and crew. All of
this and more can be found at www dot creative typo dot com. We
look forward to seeing you all there. Thank you,