PAX Unplugged 2017

[Music] thanks for joining us on this pxs unplugged episode of multiple nerdgasm I am Jenna and I am joined by Matt and James hey guys hello hey how's it going so let's talk about packs unplugged all right it was in Philadelphia this year and this was this year this was the first packs unplugged the inaugural event did you have a good time yes yeah it was it was freaking awesome wait am I allowed to can I swear on the podcast is that cool you can say whatever you want yeah it wasu say whatever the [ __ ] you want I can put an explicit tag on this I was you know I I wasn't sure how like PC this [ __ ] was um yeah no so we've done we've done paxis for well I've done paxis for longer than you guys have been

in America but Pax unplugged was so much better yeah in a tabletop sense but uh there were no video games packs on plug yeah I know it was awesome yeah it's very different tone to uh the normal packs like it just kind of slowed down a bit more chilled did you find oh definitely so much more relaxed um the you know talking with the designers the developers which we got to talk to a lot of them they really wanted to engage you in conversation whereas at PAX East they seem to just want to pump you into the booth play the game and kick you out type of deal yeah totally well PAX East there isn't really much opportunity I guess if you don't get there first uh to play any board games because there are so many people there and the area it's huge but it's not big

enough for the demand yeah so we did find especially last year that we weren't even able to find an empty seat or just to wait in line to uh rent a board game because the line was so long yeah and at PAX East if you're looking to try any of the video games you know you're standing in line for an hour and a half two hours long for a 10-minute preview of something yeah um and that just at PX unplug that wasn't the case uh quite a few of the booths were actually running signups where you get to play with designers developers of the game games uh which is amazing you know you got to sit down on a table with four people and the person who created the game you're playing I believe they do that at uh most of the paxes but um there are limited spots so when the

attendance is double what it was at packs unplugged odds are you're not going to be one of the first five people to to make it there I didn't even think of this but yeah like if I if this was PAX East and I was wanting to play you know some new game I'd be waiting in line for you know could be hours whereas at this we went oh that game looks interesting oh someone's playing it we'll come back in 10 minutes and then we'd come back in 10 minutes and play it right we never waited in line yeah so much so much more accessible yeah not only did we not wait in line but there were times where we'd show up to play one game and the D designer would be like hey let's play these two other games while you're here and we just pump out a couple of games really quick yeah

that's right well we uh we did get the chance to speak to one of the founders of Penny Arcade uh and I guess the original champion of this kind of convention he wanted to make it board games only I think a while ago mhm uh I'm talking about Jerry hulkin from penny arcade and I have a little interview with him that I would like to play listeners do you want to hear that yeah right there we go is that that was that yeah or is no no no they I think they want to hear yeah so it's there we we are here with Jerry Hawkins The Mastermind behind PX unplug this is kind of your thing right welle now I can tell already you've kind of now that this this uh podcast has begun you sort of turn up your Australian accent a little

bit you're putting shrimp on Barbies yeah we we got to play to the audience so if I if my if I lose my accent I lose my audience yeah exactly exactly they're synonymous but anyway I'm sorry you are asking me a question I was uh what is what makes this packs unique compared to say the other packes or other conventions well the main I I think that the main focus is more or less in the name um there is some digital stuff here but it's it's pretty rare and it's always in the service of tabletop games yeah I I was going to ask them to leave as you don't belong here sir but no no exactly sir sir but there I mean for example there's a very interesting uh there's a very interesting concept called weave did you guys see weave I heard about weave yeah so weave is we is

an example of technology in the service of um in the service of traditional narrative role playing gameplay you should definitely take a look at it I mean but that's an example of the sort of stuff that's okay in my mind yeah Co um you know I mean like they it should be video game or like like where technology encroaches on this space right it should be a novelty we were talking about to the to the siren skape guys uh have you seen that before no no interactive music for like while you're playing oh no I there's a couple different places that are endeavoring to explore that space yeah it's pretty cool yeah yeah yeah um but no no the main thing is that is that you know we just recognized from the other shows that we've done you know particularly East

have you guys been over for East yeah so that was what that's the last pack that we went to this year perect we couldn't even get to the tabletop area because it was so packed oh yeah exactly that I think is the fun of packs to see the like looking for group and then just be able to jump in and meet people like we wented to learn how to play secret Hitler cuz we we bought it and then haven't had a large enough group no you need honestly so we learned last nightly found a bunch of people playing it it's amazing no and see and that's one of the new initiatives that we actually have at the show if you head out that main Corridor yeah um out to sort of where that big sort of marble Cathedral thing is out there um if you look on your left you'll see the learn and playroom where

basically all day you basically can get in you sign up and then so it's it's it's limited necessarily because it's basically a class we teach you how to play a couple games in the space of that panel Y and then now you know those games you can grab a copy grab a copy from the library um and now that can be something that you're experiencing or even teaching other people here I think that's the main thing about this show the pace here is different too like at at at like PA East I always feel like I got to I got to see all of this stuff there's so much stuff and and and if I want to commit to like a two-hour role playing game then it's like I don't know I do that where it's here well that's a purpose right I mean functionally speaking what it grants is license to do

what it sounds like you want to do anyway but you get into that Pax scenario it might be a little bit different this year because PAX East is 4 days yeah right so but basically what it does it's like that's what this show is for it's okay if I spend my time doing that here because that's what it's for yeah right cool thanks for talking to us oh it's my pleasure yeah thanks for putting on such a great show oh no no I'm glad you're enjoying yourselves all right awesome thanks guys he's so well spoken our fans love it he knows so many words well that's how he uh started writing I guess yeah he he used his words Y no he was he was awesome um and getting to see him up on stage a couple times talking about everything you could just tell the excitement that those guys

have about having a con that really is all about board games um yeah and I think you know he said it in the interview right it's the goal isn't as much to get out there and sell the games it's to to play with each other to teach other people and just kind of share the the love of really a whole industry that's burgeoning right now like this the board game industry is blowing up right now and it's amazing to see their panel was actually great one of the questions he got during the panel was our video games taking over for board games um and his answer was was kind of Epic where you know in the past you know going back only 10 years ago you were either a board game designer or you were a video game designer and you chose one of those two routes and today you're

seeing that cross back and forth as people are moving back and forth not only in designing but in the games themselves um so one of the games that I just picked up at packs unplugged is this war of mine which is originally video game I've now got the board game version which I've been slowly learning so we're not going to talk about that cuz I don't know enough to talk about it but it exists right XCOM board game XCOM is an amazing video game Fantasy Flight had a full ad ex and so you're you're seeing this crossover that's never existed before and that I think is part of what is drawing more people into that boorn game realm as they realize the games that they play on their computer they can now play at a table with friends and we're also getting games uh

crossover in the other way where there are establish board games that now have a digital version so if you can't physically be with all your friends to play it you can meet up with them online and play something like settlers of Katan or Ticket to Ride yeah one of my favorite ways to learn a game is to get the iPad version and just play it for a bit uh like that's how I learned to play Ticket to Ride that's how I learned uh what's the uh the the the Elder Sign uh some of those Fantasy Flight ones that are quite complicated get the iPad version play it on there a couple times it it walks you through it and then you know how to play it cuz the physical thing can be quite daunting sometimes especially those you know those Epic Fantasy Flight games yeah even knowing

the rules those are tough every group needs one friend who just reads rules and teaches you the game and that's why we have Jam need you James yep that's yeah that's my job that was something that was nice about pxs unplugged um Matt and I have owned the game secret Hitler for a while as we just said in the um the interview there yes and we have not read the rule book we're just we're just bad at that and honestly the rules to that are fairly simple MH they're pretty I honestly I have to play it to to learn I can't reading the rules just I don't know it just goes right over my head and I'm like ah I didn't pause half that no I feel the same way but it was very nice because at packs unplugged we were able

to find a group that had a looking for players sign up on their table when they were playing secret Hitler so we just joined up with them and we learned the rules and played a couple of rounds and now we've played it 20 times since yeah we've taught a whole new group of people how to play did we forget to learn their names uh we did we did we did I know one of them one of them was Adolf Hitler yeah one of them was definitely Hitler um if you guys are listening to this right now you were awesome um thank you for teaching Us Secret Hitler I'm sorry I don't know your name let us know yeah podcast at multiple nasm.com right in and say you [ __ ] yeah well another another uh another product

product that sounds too uh too douchy yeah that was thing we yeah another thing we talked about in the interview with Jerry uh that you have also experienced thus far this episode listeners was siren scape that's where James is getting those wonderful sounds that you're hearing siren scape is a uh it's an interactive music and sound effects app is that an accurate description yeah yeah I think that's perfect um I'm playing with just like the super basic setup right now um and it is mad fun it's got some really cool stuff that it's super simple to use really cool things to add just that that little bit of extra to the game you're playing yeah we got to speak with Steve from siren scape about the app and here's uh here's

what he had to say I'm here with Steve from siren scape and uh he's you guys a rundown of uh how it all works and and what our listeners can can enjoy out of it I so yes this is siren scape which is an app designed for bringing imersive C Sound straight into your role playing games really easy to use and best of all the app is free of charge so what you do is um on the the left hand side you have a whole list of encounters or moods different type of creatures you'd hit one button to activate one of those that then brings up a list of moods so you can go on this one for inst a really quiet town we won't hear it here in the convention hall but it's gone very quiet Birds troping kind of s to Market Haw cu turn the volume up a little bit more I can confirm that is indeed happening at

the touch of one button you should hope to be able to now [Music] hear now attacking the town but it's not a loop or repeat every sound you can hear is actually a separately playing element and you can control those elements so you can actually turn off the music with a touch of one button MH you could increase the sound of the people screaming by sliding up their individual element you can even then go into other sounds and add in some rain so now your dragon's attacking in the middle of a rainstorm but you don't want to have to do that whil you're playing the game so you can save that as a preset so when you then start playing actually gaming of your group you enter the town One

Touch of a button and it's now going to play all the sounds that you wanted exactly as you wanted it set up as R how many sound packs are there available we've got two players so on the fonty player we have about 190 sound sets on the Sci-Fi player we're currently topping about 100 sound sets we've got several licenses uh including like piso so we're doing the Pathfinder and starfinder so obviously with the starfinder just being released the Sci-Fi player is getting a lot of new content coming out at the moment but um the Sci-Fi play also covers everything from Cowboys and Indians right up to your high sci-fi and your fancy player does all of your high fantasy and just you kind of even if you want to do historic games you've got Mass battles

and all those type of sounds in there and what platforms is the player available on it works on pretty much everything so it's on iOS Android PC and mac and even runs our Linux if you operating through on emulator all right awesome thank you so much no problem at all thanks for your time obviously you couldn't see what he was showing as at the time on the app but it's got sliders for each element so you can turn up like as he said the sound of the villagers screaming which I guess was kind of a hilarious uh thing that you might want to do um uh or even just like you know there's background music or there's rain or there's whatever there's a slider for it you can adjust it and it's all like kind of it's a little bit random well random is not the right word like it's

it's not like as he said it's not a loop it's very ambient and uh and and it's kind of just it just keeps going there in the background until you until you change it it's very cool now you guys both DM various games for us is this something that you think you would use this is something I will use I've already we're about to start using this are you so okay here we go right every time somebody crit fails mhm it doesn't get better than that and you think it's something that you're not going to get caught up looking for sounds that will interrupt the game the interface is pretty good from what I from what I've seen of it I I obviously if if we're playing and we find that that I am distracted by the uh by the pretty interface and I'm just playing

sounds and we're not getting anywhere feel free to tell me uh and then yeah and then we'll write Steve an email and say thanks for ruining the game no I'm I'm with Matt um the interface is so smooth that you know you can preset something for a game so if you know where you're going to be you know you can kind of have the atmospheric aspect set in you can have that core set of what weapons your people are using if you want to use it for weapon noises anything like that and then it's you know it's half a second just to hit the right button and it plays and you're good to go go so I don't see it I don't see it as a drawback from a DM it's not going to be another one other thing you need to take care of um it's super easy to use you can preset

beforehand and then you're ready to roll so I just see it as adding that extra little bit of ambiance to to what you're doing that's great I look forward to playing games with that because I think it improves the like you said it improves the Ambiance and we've been doing that sort of um when we play straw you know we kind of dim the lights and light candles and um that sounds and put the witches soundtrack on yeah sounds a lot sexier than the game actually is yeah my wife loves coming home to us playing DND D in the basement with candles lid and yeah I just she does not stop making fun of [Laughter] me yeah she should us jealous yeah exactly what you want to talk about next well let's just go straight down the list we got super Kitty bug slap oh yeah

that was fun I like it's kind of it's snap yep but cute little cats and bugs yeah like it's a cool cool game so you get a uh a cat that is your cat like it's a little picture of a cat and it'll either be orange or purple and it'll have a bug either a or or green sorry uh it'll have a ladybug or a fly and it'll be a particular shape like it's kind of a round or a square cat and then it's basically snap like you uh one person acts as the the dealer and they reveal a card and everyone has to try and grab it before the the rest of the plays do but it's got to match one aspect of your cat now am I explaining that okay yeah feel

free to I think you're doing a decent job explaining it I think it's one of those games that's so ridiculously simple that when you're explaining it you get confused cuz you're like it it's easier than this but that's what it is I think that makes sense very simple party game that could get a little aggressive um yes but you will end up slapping each other and it's made by Steve Jackson games uh famous for munchkin yeah it's just cute fun uh fun game I uh I really enjoyed it it's like I said simple uh you could play with like kids could play it uh I think well all ages I think uh another little fun quick game like that that we played was billionaire banshe so we've got an interview actually from the creator of the game raslo uh it's a cute little game a dating game where you get

a uh Cork and what's the other word a cork and a and a a benefit I guess like a I'm actually we'll see what we'll see what w rlo uses I'm sure yeah I think raso did the best job describing it they're both a little bit weird for example the um when Matt and I played together he got two cards uh one said that the person that he would potentially date um could get rid of any headache by sticking a finger in his belly button the perk it was a cork in a perk yep that sounds right I don't remember what that was uh Licking armpits yeah yeah they oh that was a sexual fetish where every time they were having sex with you they wanted to look your armpit and the sweatier it was the better yes G so and we all had to vote on whether or not

Matt would date this person no no I would not it's a quick quick little game with cute pixel art y so it's pretty cool but we'll let raslo describe it because uh I'm sure there's some better words that can be used for the game than what we're doing I now give you raslo all right I'm speaking with raslo creator of billionaire Banshee what can you tell us about the game yeah so Billy or bansi has been out for a few years uh it started as just a thing that I did to make people uncomfortable in car rides it didn't have cards at that point but it was just like I wanted to keep asking progressively uh stranger questions like would you date someone if they had X tray I kind of catalog it and then at

the end go wait a minute you're okay with this but not that and it would make the car rides pass quickly but like a log of everything you know about your friends exactly exactly and you always like find out more about people which I really find a lot of fun sure uh but not everybody has as Twisted of an imagination as I do in terms of uh coming up with traits that someone could have sure and so I was like all right let me gamify this and see if people are interested in it and we're about to do our fourth printing on it so that's good so people have been interested in it and um I try to make all the games that I designed something that you could explain and start playing in less than 30 seconds and this one's not different basically we were attend for the game

everyone single and looking for a life partner M and let's say that it's my turn I grab there's two draw piles there's a perk pile and a quirk pile I grab one of each this represents two new things I just found out about this person that's ideal for me and they're going to sway me one way or the other I'm going to say yes absolutely it's additive or I'm okay with it or I'm going to say I that's beyond what I could possibly handle them out but I'm going to do it secretly everyone has these voting cards that say date or deny you put them face down and this prevents a situation from someone looking to see what the girlfriend does before they vote or someone changing their answer afterwards to try to match their partner because they're embarrassed that what

they really want you know Y and so we give you an example of some of the two cards that I have out here the perk is uh you know your union was foretold in fables all in the land know of Your Love bars sing stories about you to animals in nature would even take notice and you'd live happily ever after so that's the setup right um I personally like a very quirky person but everyone's different and The Quirk with this is so picture is Snow White they want to lick your armpit during sex uh they prefer if your armpits are sweaty they like both shaved or unshaved they Li your armpits during most sessions and sometimes they kiss you after that last line gets a lot of people but let's be honest that's a reality of what would happen in that situation and so then I would secretly

put down my card to secretly vote everyone else and the great thing is this facilitates two things that people love doing everyone wants to know what other people think about them MH or what they would say behind their backs or whatever and the game mechanics are now every time someone goes to flip their card they have to explain why they think they don't just put it they have to explain why you're definitely voting the way they chose justify that and so they would yeah they'd be like they they watched a lot of Disney movies so I know he's like really into like you know the fairy tale kind of stuff and you know I think that what he's into is like way kinkier than that so it's not even an issue you know and then you get to hear each person has to say about you before

they're either way off or or or right on you eventually reveal yes I would in this case dat this person I am a romantic even if I'm not into that with I'm not I'm going to use that as a bargaining chip to get what I want in bed and so everyone that match me then gets a point if they didn't match me they don't get a point and if we're playing the drinking version it's really simple to remember how to play you just take a drink every time you're wrong about someone in the group and so it's a game that forces people to to be social which is nice and the other thing that people have used it for a lot I've seen especially in these game groups is people will use it as a starting game like let's say you have a group of friends that's from work and you have a

group of friends that's like your local Hangouts how do you get those two groups to start interacting without being awkward you always get like the initial questions of like oh so where do you work and then if it's like boring there's no followup questions would you would you date someone who wanted to lick your armpit right there's follow-up questions right so that's forcing the conversation and then you've had like 15 minutes 20 minutes of playing this you've talked about so much stuff that you're going to have a way easier time like conversing you become close friends right exactly that's awesome uh where can people find the game uh the game's available on Amazon it's available at almost every GameStop in the country um there's an exclusive version that just

came out last week uh for Think Geek uh which is called Mega billionaire Banshee it has the main game the sexy pack uh and then 10 exclusive cards and then I mean there's tons of other probably your local game shop probably has it as well very cool all right thank you so much thanks guys nice talking to you all right so yeah that was a fun game and uh I I I can definitely see that break in the ice at parties yeah no that that's a perfect party game it's also like you know when you're in the middle of like a Katon tournament just break it up every once in a while have something fun and simple to do yeah yeah lick each other's on pits I like those party games we played another one too Death Wish oh yeah that was great aw I wish wish we had bought it yeah know you still can I know but we

could have just bought it there they had the um M sayfe for work packs there as well the expansions and that was uh that was zafy games right that's right yeah that that was fantastic uh so the purpose of that game is to kill yourself um yeah that's I mean that's that's pretty much the goal of the game so really fun diseases yeah like small [ __ ] I think that's the only one I remember um so you get uh right so you get different cards uh their symptoms um diseases right yeah this I'm doing this right yeah trying to remember you want prevent from getting diseas yeah that's it symptoms and afflictions um yeah and so you're you're trying to give yourself all these afflictions all these different diseases each one has a different number of skulls on the bottom

which indicates how horrible it is first person 10 skulls dies and you win the game by dying the humor in the game is great but that was the game where I was ready to win for like five rows in a round and the entire table just turned on me exactly that was horrible this is one of those really great companies too that offers the full game as a PDF printout for free oh cool so if you go to their website you can actually download the whole game print it and play it that's interesting I like when companies do that I do too but then I'm like hopefully they can survive doing that oh yeah but I think I mean I I did this at the beginning for Cards Against Humanity before I was able to buy it when it was all sold out and then eventually I did buy it you can actually

do this for secret Hitler as well right okay yeah I think the reality is when you do a print and play you're not bringing it to like Staples and printing it out on super good card stock you're printing it out on paper in your house and if you like the game and you play it the one you printed and played is literally going to fall apart yeah so you're going to buy the real version yeah and I'm sure some people will just you know continue on with that version of the game but uh for me if I really like the game I'm going to buy it totally yeah I remember Playing Cards Against Humanity printed on Bits of Paper for for the first while because it wasn't available in Australia exactly time all right so we talked about some of the the quick short games

let's talk about one of the longer games um uhuh this game had I know where you're going with this oh you know exactly where I'm going this this game had an interesting history for us at Pax un plugs uh the first time we sat down and played it super excited um love the theme it's this like Supernatural theme you're you're exploring it's a deck exploration game um you're playing these characters who who can like see things that the rest of the world can't the vampires the we Bears um it a really really cool game right uh we sat down um we we tried to play for like 20 minutes we could barely figure out how to play uh someone came over and tried to help us but but not really but they tried

which was really nice uh and we walked away we're like this this game is [ __ ] right um that was my my we actually really disappointed about it too because we were like we really wanted to play this it's just too much effort right so disappointed and we were exhausted at this point that is true this was uh what this was day two at like 5:00 um so you know so you understand you know we if for us to get the packs unplugged with like a six-hour drive and we started that Thursday night finished it Friday morning uh Friday we were at at the event from 10:00 in the morning till about midnight um and then back there 9:30 the next morning uh and this was like in the evening I don't even think we had food yet before we played this no that's right yeah we we didn't even eat

all day so we played this like this a terrible game really disappointed so Sunday morning we go back and we're like the first thing we're going to do we're going to play this game for real this time yeah we had actually discussed back at the hotel like we're going to give this game another chance CU we we really feel like we would like it yeah I'm pretty sure this actually a good game and we suck yeah that's I think that was pretty yeah that was the essence right um yeah so we we go to the booth we sit down to Play It Again guy comes over he's like oh you guys were here yesterday what' you think and you know me being me was like oh we thought it was sh we just we were tired um so we're trying again they told us that you could sit down with a designer um and actually

play with a designer so we we did you know ran over signed up got in um and the game is is [ __ ] awesome um we actually know how to play now which I get makes a difference in games um especially ones like this so the game is called apocrypha and not only do we know how to play but James now owns a copy yeah I did that um it was that good um I actually so like Sunday I thought about buying it on the con but I I didn't spend any money so I was really happy and I left and then Sunday night I got home and bought it I'm not sure that that counts I'm not sure you can say I didn't spend any money at packs when you just bought everything when you got home well yeah but I bought it at home I didn't buy it at packs so that totally counts it's true um it's true yeah so

the the game is Apocrypha it's an adventure card game if you've ever played the Pathfinder Adventure card game this is put out by that same crew right so the guys who developed the Pathfinder Adventure card game this is kind of the the Next Generation there's a little bit more going on with it it's a little bit more intense um it's a little more Cooperative actually there's more aspects to help each other but helping each other isn't always a good thing um overall the game is it's really cool um so it's lone shark games and the game is Apocrypha and it's kind of that that crazy I don't know what Buffy is type of world would you say sure yeah yeah yeah like a Gothic kind of horror um yeah it's Gothic horror basically and a b bit steampunky Gothic horror kind of

I guess I would describe it yep and I I really liked that this could be played as both a card game or an RPG yes oh yeah that part so yeah when we sat down with the designer instead of running us through kind of the one of the campaign modes levels chapters um she actually ran us through basically an RPG where we used the the mechanics of the game to tell a story and it worked so well it was really clean it was really simple um if you're if you're burgeoning DM you know if you're just getting into it what's great is that you can use the cards to kind of pre-plan a story so you don't have to create something brand new it's all in the cards you just kind of put it together the way you want it to run and it's it's super clean I like the way she framed it as imagine

this is the pilot episode of a television show and so we we kind of played the whole thing out and describe the camera movements and stuff I thought that was really that was a really cool uh angle on on on playing like a game like a role playing game like that like it was really fun yeah and uh it kind of I it was a good way to uh it was a good in in point as well like if you weren't if you sometimes role playing itself is is a little hard for people like acting like another person but it was a really cool way like you could just describe oh the camera moves over and shows this and does that and and I don't know I I feel like it was a good way of getting people on board um versus you are now this character behave you know talk to me like you are that character some people

don't like doing that that's right and we played with another guy who uh we did not get his name either so hey guy if you're listening thanks for playing with us we really we really do suck at that yeah yeah hey look we know Liz's name that's right we should probably tell people um Liz Spain that was uh she's one of the designers of the game and that's who we played with um and she was fantastic it was really cool yeah thank you we really appreciate you taking the time to do that and your dog is adorable yeah he is the dude the dude we played with I should know his name though it's cuz he has my problem um in his group of friends his job is to learn the game and teach it to everybody sorry did you say problem no no I meant uh he has that same joyous role that I have yeah right

he has that secret his super is knowing how to well learning how to play board games no I thought James just knew I don't think he puts any work into it yeah he just intrinsically knows how to he looks at a game and he's like I I know how to do this you know that that happened last night so Thanksgiving every year uh we're recording this on Black Friday so yesterday was Thanksgiving um in America you all probably don't do that [ __ ] in Australia um nope yeah no it's not like a real thing it's cool so um soing is not a real thing well I mean look if if you look at the history I think it started after the war of 1812 celebrating the War of 1812 and then at some point they're like no let's make it about pilgrims they we're like okay cool we'll

make it about pilgrims um but pilgrims Jenna told me it was about Cowboys and Indians it it yeah it is we're celebrating the Cowboys and Indians yep that's what yeah that's what we give thanks for all the spaghetti West that's what I that's what I was told yeah but we were playing um betrayal at house on the hill um and they had the expansion right so we sat down we're setting it up I I read the rules for the expansion as we're setting it up and then we start playing and they're like oh what does this do and I tell them they're like wait how do you know like I read the rules they're like we didn't see you read the rules apparently I do [ __ ] very sneakily at board games you do you do we'll be playing a game and then I'll be like oh

now we have to you know Advance this this token to the next step and I'm like what the hell it's already moved and it's cuz you did it at some point yeah there's also been games like Cooperative games where I've just straight up cheated um for the entire group and nobody nobody knows what happened like everything's in the center of the G table it's all right there and I'm not I do this slowly so I don't understand how people don't see this but I'll like flip cards over and then just tuck them away somewhere else and the group like yeah no we're doing great I'm like yeah no we died like 10 turns ago guys but it's cool I'm pretty sure that happened the other day when we were playing at game night yep yep pandemic we lost pandemic no no no it happen

again Marvel legendary oh oh it did yeah oh it happened twice then it happens more than you might think no we're really good at games yeah they're really good at games so good well speaking of role playing games uh we were very keen to check out the uh Sentinels of the Multiverse role playing game okay that was needed I've been waiting for this game forever um if you haven't played senos of Multiverse the card game it is hands down my favorite card game out there so much fun um the role playing game they announced a few years ago they were working on this uh PX unplugged was the very first time anybody got their hands on it uh which was really neat um we got to to talk with one of the designers Dave um and you'll get to hear an interview with him in a moment um but

this was his first time getting his hands on paper copies of it as well up until I think the day before he had only been looking at PDF versions so it's really neat um I'll try to give you like a super quick rundown of Sentinels if you're not familiar with the world the designers are a little bit I I would say crazy I guess um and here's the reason why right so they created this card game where you're playing as superheroes and you're fighting against super villain so they have this whole world of superheroes and you're like that's awesome they created their own world of superheroes yeah but they went one step further they didn't just create the superheroes they created the world in which the comic book ran that created the superheroes so think about that for

a second right it's not just one level it's it's multiple levels of creation here so they created a world where a comic book company called Sentinel Comics exists and then in that world of Sentinel Comics that's where they created the superheroes so when they tell you the stories about their superheroes um they don't just tell you the story of how that Superhero progressed but they tell you the story of what the writers and the authors were doing with that Superhero say in the 1940s in the 1970s 60s 80s and how that story changed um one of my favorites is a character named Unity who did not get her start in the comics but actually got her start in a 1990s cartoon show for kids um and her name was Debbie and everybody hated her

and then in the 2000s they the writers brought her into the comic world as unity and now everybody loved her and it was like it's really cool that they put way too much thought into this game like way too much a lot of effort in story building right it's like a stupid amount you don't need it but they must have a huge marker board at home to connect all the dots to these people they do um so they've got a p podcast called the letters page um and if you listen to it they like legitimately will spend entire day beforehand with a giant whiteboard writing out the story of one of their characters so they can tell it CU they have to um amazing but they brought that element into the RPG and it's really cool cuz you're not just playing a

superhero in their RPG you're playing a superhero that is in a Comon book and that comic book has an impact on how the game gets played um I think Dave did a pretty good job of explaining it so I don't know if you want to toss that up and we'll see if he he can get the right words out that I can't get out hey guys this is James from multiple nerdgasm I am here with Dave from greater than games we're looking at the new Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG Dave you're one of the designers on this how long has this project been in the works oh it's been years and years now I mean we reached out um you know I have my own kind of game Studio where we reached out to the greater than game guys at Gen Con like four years or so ago now maybe even more and said we'd really love to do an RPG

and they said we would love to have an RPG but then these thingss take time to both come to like oh you have a hole in your schedule and then actually like making the d game and then making it good because it definitely didn't start good you know and So eventually we got there and um the starter kit here is kind of the first real release of the game uh in it's playable form yeah so I've been following you guys for a long time this is the first time i' ever even heard of the starter CIT did you was there a pre-release announcement that I missed or is this kind of a surprise here we uh have done some amount of announcements like on the website and we have we've been doing demos at Gen Con we were doing pre-orders at Gen Con because we had the like very first

sample prints of it that we were running there but this is the first time anyone's actually been able to get their hands on it including myself actually I've just had the files up until yesterday afternoon but actually holding in my hands Prett exciting yeah um can you give is a quick rundown of what is in the starter kit what do you get absolutely so the starter kit is designed to teach players and GMS how to play the game and also give them a complete kind of mini campaign experience so what it comes with is the gameplay guide which teaches the rules of the game and also how to GM the game and then it comes with six character booklets that are some Sentinels characters that you're probably familiar with uh it's the freedom five plus their now

former intern Unity who are coming together to stop a new threat and the story is picking up kind of right after the big Oblivion event happens where a bunch of the world was destroyed and the Multiverse collapse and nothing will ever be the same and that kind of thing and so it kind of picks up there both as an introductory to the game and uh kind of an explanation of where the story is at now and where the the RPG is going to start so you get the gameplay guide those six character booklets and then there are six complete issues as we call them because it's a comic book RPG and not just like a superhero campaign RPG and each issue is about 2 hours or so of gameplay you know plus or minus and they all are interconnected together including a chunk that you players can

play in any order that they want so they'll actually experience kind of a different series of events depending on what choices that they make wrapping up with issue six and then youve played a full what we call trade paperback as you collect all of those issues into kind of one complete thing and that can be a springboard for your own sendal campaign later or if you want to um put it aside until the core book comes out and then make your own heroes from there but it'll give you you know like 12 hours of uh gameplay that teaches you the system and how to run it at the same time that's fantastic so if you're a f like me at the letters page and everything that censos offers you guys know that they not only run a whole new universe of Heroes but they run a whole

new universe of comic books and [Music] gaps as well and then we get to make up new stuff so that's cool that's awesome man um so we got the the starter kit out now and then the core rule book when are we expected to see that so we are working on the corebook frantically right now and we are shooting for next year um there will definitely be a Kickstarter uh probably like early to mid next year to uh fund the core book and if it does well enough try fun supplements and some other cool stuff with it you know make the book better that kind of thing uh and you know sometime next year is when we're shooting for but I can't make any

promises till the thing's out of my hands basically all right and the price of the starter kit I believe it's $20 $20 y do we have a concept of where that core rule book is going to be coming in yet no clue and a lot of that's like Kickstarter math that fortunately is not my area to figure out I just have to you know make the game and write the game and they'll figure out how much to sell it for and you know if it if there's a lot of interest it might be a slightly larger book that we able to afford for the same price it's not going to be like uh Pathfinder size to no matter what you know it's going to be more spread out across multiple books but the core r book is still going to give you uh you know all these rules that you'll get in the starter kit but expanded you know to

uh offer more advice and also options that kind of thing you know the rules are are identical to what's in the starter kit but there'll be more you can do with them or you know more situations that come up it'll cover that and then there'll be more for game Masters to cover and there'll also be tons of rules for creating your own Heroes uh changing Heroes as they go through different events and storylines saying like now I have ice poers and set of firep powers and like it'll represent all that kind of stuff uh for GMS they'll be able to create their own villains or modify villains that are already you know in the SEL Universe uh they'll be able to create their own environments which environments are actually a piece of the RPG as well as you know how the car game

works uh and just all kinds of advice you know toolbox things uh sample issues to play through if uh youting it through the starter kit or if you want kind of smaller stuff to explore and uh yeah so all that stuff will be in there awesome and that sounds amazing we're looking forward to it and we're hopefully going to be doing a full playthrough of this on a podcast coming up soon y so stay tuned guys so I I heard you dropped a little spoiler in there yeah he dropped a spoiler at the end that's a little bit I dropped a little bit of a a a foreshadow what oh yeah oh are you talking about uh the play through yeah um so uh I I might have like lost my geek mind um but we are going to be working with greater than

games uh talking with Dave the designer of the RPG um and we're if schedules work out we are going to be doing a playthrough of the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG with the gentleman who designed it uh Dave Chalker uh for you guys so it'll be if we're able to so yeah we'll let you know what's going on with that and and when when we can coordinate it all so speaking of RPGs James do you want to run us through 10 candles yes um because this is a game that I'm not very familiar with but I know you have brought it up to us before as something you wanted to play um and we actually met with an interview the developer Steve yeah so um 10 candles is a game that I've wanted for a very long

time which cost so much money um I think it's $10 I don't know why I don't have it like it's one of those like I just I think I don't have it because I have so many games and my wife kill me I think you can actually download it from the website for free I think I'm fairly certain he told us that it's available on the website no I think so the I think the PDF is $10 oh I see right so the PDF is $10 the book is $30 um but you don't care about that right you want to know about the game okay sorry so the game um the game is a it's a one night RPG um it's a it's a tpk game total party kill game right so the whole concept is that you are telling the story of the end of the world um you start the game with 10 tea candles lit on the table this is not

just like oh it should be you know some nice avian uh like how we play our Dungeons and Dragons with candles um that's that really does sound so horrible like we're super geeky um okay so this game needs it's awesome what are you talking about you guys are crazy and in this one the candles are part of the game as the game progresses you slowly blow out the candles and when the last candle goes out the game ends period that's it it's done it's over everybody's dead um but what you're discovering is how did you die what happened um and one of the cool Parts is that if a candle accidentally goes out if somebody opens the wrong door and a breeze comes through that's cool that's the game you know it's going to end that much sooner um but I think I think Steve

did a really good job of explaining it um I honestly I didn't even know he was a designer I walked in I was like oh my God I love this game I want this game who are you he's like I'm the guy who wrote it I was like oh [ __ ] awesome um yeah so we got to talk to him and let's hear what he has to say all right all right guys I'm here with Stephen he is the creator of 10 candles which is an RPG you should have heard of if you haven't yet but just in case Stephen can you give us kind of like a quick 30 second synopsis what is this about sure so 10 candles is a tragic horror storytelling game played by the light of 10 T light cand um players are survivors in the middle of some horror movie scenario and at the end of the game when the last kendle goes out all of the characters die so

when you say all the characters die you mean everyone dies everyone dies at the end yeah it is not a survival horror game there's no survivors making it out at the end everyone knows going in this is a game where no one survives it we will all die and we'll all die at the end of the game now there's a couple key aspects to your game that I haven't seen any others uh which is meaning that you're giving other people Secrets is that kind of the the right way to phas it yeah so everyone has some hidden knowledge uh they have a secret that is what they're basically capable of when pushed to the absolute brink of Madness and despair and that's something that they know and maybe another character knows too um but that is kept secret until everything else in the game has

literally burned away and that's all they have left if they want to embrace that secret they can choose to or they can try to resist it now game play time wise how long does it take to play at the absolute most uh you really can't play past the light of a tealight candle so depending on where you actually get your candles that varies between 3 to 4 hours cuz if those candles go out on their own they're out uh usually sometimes you since you're going to be darking candles as you play you usually land somewhere in the 2 to three hour range but it could go as much as four from a complication perspective people who haven't played a lot of RPGs from what I've heard this is a relatively easy one to get in and flow with but what's your take on that yeah this is a

great game for people who have played for a while or people that are brand new to role playing games I I've heard a lot of people say this was the first game they actually ran for their friends who haven't run games before it's very rules light it's a lot of focus on the narration but the rules do just enough to give you a strong support to the story they get in do what they need to do and get out of your way that's fantastic and then the cost of the book how much is the core rule book core rule book's $28 um you can also buy a PDF of it online on Cavalry games.com for $10 uh but 28 for the actual soft cover Rob book that's fantastic man um is there any other cool little things you'd like us to know about this um we do we did did also just recently release a

supplementary volume called and we are alive uh which is actually a book of 10 short stories a book of fiction inspired by the world of 10 candles uh so if you like 10 candles or are looking for some creative inspiration for it you can check that out as well on Cavalry games.com all right awesome Stephen thank you so much for your time today thank you for having me awesome that sounds like something that could also be very fun to do a podcast with I was about to say I I might want to propose that we do that at some point uh I would I would definitely do that if you guys buy it all right let me get my uh let me get my credit card out yeah you got you got that house money saved up you're good I'm tell them we don't want the house we want to play 10 candles 10

candles sorry guys I can't afford the down payment on the house I'm buying that $10 PDF I was I was I in my mind I was like 10 candles or 16 Candles no 16 Candles is something very different could we play that RPG too yes that's the that's the one where we each role play somebody going to a dance Everybody Plays yeah no no I want to play the I want to play the kid who gets the underwear Anthony Michael Hall yeah that's him y so um while I was off doing my own thing uh you guys went out and you you played Cutthroat caverns and you actually picked this game up too right this was smirk and Dagger yes we were uh we were run through the game by Drew from smirk and dagger games thanks Drew he ran us through kind of a a preset

demo Cavern uh of the game this is a a Cooperative backstabby kind of uh semi Cooperative yeah like you got to help each other but also you want to win so uh it's a little little you get into some backstabby kind of cool um PVP stuff as the game progresses uh it's it's quite simple actually it's very simple once you once you get the swing of it um you uh you have a dungeon which is a stack of cards uh you flip one over to reveal what you're going to be fighting and then everybody uh plays cards to to either attack the monster or to [ __ ] with other players or to heal or to boost other attacks there's very diff various different things you can you can

play uh and then whoever deals the killing blow to the creature receives Prestige points for the uh for the kill and basically if you survive then the play with the most prestige points wins and that's the gist of it really yeah uh and we did get to interview Kurt from smirk and dagger games to tell us a little bit about that game and about the concept of their kind of backstabbing games in general I'm with Kur from smoke and dagger games we had the pleasure of playing Cutthroat Cavin yesterday uh could you tell us a little bit about the game or any other the games that you have here at the show you like to our listeners to check out sure uh yeah Cutthroat Caverns is one of our perennial favorite games um it is now in

its almost 10th year and it is a an amazing Cooperative backstabbing game that takes place in a dungeon um the nice feature about the game is that you have to work together just to survive right but it's a game about kill stealing So eventually if you don't trip someone or Edge them out way to get your blow in and not theirs yes you're never going to win either yeah you want to help each other but not too much right and quite honestly the more you mess with each other the creatures stay alive they do more damage and you all get closer to death yeah but it doesn't stop you from acting in Your Own Worst interest just to get the win yeah and so it's got a great Dynamic tension um and the game now like I said it's it's it's been uh in print now for 10 years it's

expanded five times including uh our fifth expansion which just launched at uh in August very cool and um the creatures are what really make the game interesting every single one and there's now over like 120 creatures in the game wow okay um not one of them plays the same so it's like playing 120 mini games in that Universe yeah yeah um the game itself is kind of funny I the it was inspired by um the dichotomy between my two role playing groups right so when I was in high school I had a very unusual DND D group it was me and six women right oh wow okay that's unusual would have been and this is back in the 80s totally um so in any case um it was very token very lawful good man if you found a magic weapon it went to the person who could wield it best right right I went

to college and I had a whole new play group all these dudes like and I was shocked and horrified sitting and playing with them the DM was never going to dish out anything as horrible as the people sitting right next to me right and I was like oh my God what what is this people of jerks yeah so that moment that I experienced I wanted to to capture and hold throughout the entire game and that's really what the game is all about yeah excellent um where can our listeners check out the game and and anything else that you guys have oh sure well um you can come to smirk and dagger. comom um we've got all our games there uh both for sale and just to kind of peruse and take a look um they can read about you know all the different reviews and things uh plus um

you know it's for sale at all the local game stores um if you can't find it there you can ask for it at the counter cool or you can come to our website it's on Amazon it's all over the place excellent um but um yeah it's if if you like um kind of a a mean-spirited twist to a game where you're lining up your friends and just enjoying sinking a dagger in their back man this is the game for you excellent all right awesome thank you so much for the time you bet thank you yeah so he he mentioned it briefly but yeah the way you have to kill each monster is completely different based on the card so uh every encounter is is different like for example there was one we played it the other day and we had to uh if you don't

kill the monster in one round then you have to kind of it's Health goes back up uh and your attacks stay but their power is reduced so the next round you'll do a little bit more damage the next round after that you'll do a little more damage and eventually you you'll kill the monster but uh all of the encounters are complete different it's it's a fun game I I yeah no um so we played that together um you know my my take on the game I think it took maybe 45 seconds to learn how to play yeah simp super simple it it starts off a little slow um the first couple of rounds I'm thinking like all right this game is okay it's kind of lame um and then suddenly you started backstabbing each other yeah and that's that's really the essence of the game right like that's where I had the fun um

was trying to do the best you can while still [ __ ] over everybody else at the table mhm and we had that fun monster that you had to fight in ascending order of damage points right that was cool yeah that one was cool to um we actually got the expansion pack from them as well the fifth edition or fifth expansion which introduces some other Concepts to it yeah the fifth expansion is called death incarnate it's got some really uh awesome art uh for the for the creatures the creatures are kind of based on uh there's there's the 7even deadly sins in there it's all very very uh dark and death themed yeah most of the artists uh are listed in the instruction book actually and they were all uh deviant artists some of these are like amazing it's got It's got a bunch of new events

uh and new relics all themed around the kind of the death and despair uh angle I guess it puts like a dark Twist on on the whole thing it's a little light-hearted I guess in the core pack and this takes it to a nice dark place so uh I need to just spit in about siren Escape real quick mhm yeah so I've been playing with this um their sounds are mapped to the keyboard as well oh so when you pull up a soundboard um the the new board that you mapped is mapped to the numbers so you can just hit like one two three and pull up different sounds and then your core set of sounds is mapped to your uh your letters keyboards the [ __ ] that's horrible sounding um but you know like you hit like ABC and you're going to pull up those things for ABC so if you have it mapped out

appropriately for what you want to do you don't even need to look at it you can literally just be looking at your group type in what you need to type in and suddenly have a myriad collection of sounds come up that explain what's happening that's awesome it's [ __ ] sweet we'll be using that in future on on our live stream role playing games and and also just privately when we play so and also just around the house I'm going to be using it oh without a doubt anytime Sarah asks you to clean something James she'll love that she will she will and then when she actually cleans something so we got to play a bunch of games at the atlas Booth yes I love this

company because Gloom is one of my favorite games if you haven't played Gloom it is a wonderful storytelling game with beautiful cards uh they're all see-through so they stack and you can see everything that's underneath them um where you try to uh kill off your family members at their most miserable moment while trying to kill off your opponent's uh family when they are most happy mhm it's a great game yeah super fun we got to play Murder of Crows the style of the cards were in a Tarot form where you spell out murder when you play a card it has a letter on it and it also has a uh an action associated with it so it's like you can play an M but when you play an M what does m stand for so the m stands for misplaced so anytime you play

an M you can take uh one card of your choice from another player's uh already spelled out murder um and put it into your hand um there are things like uncover when everyone else has to reveal their hands to everyone um expel when everyone discards their entire hand um things like that so anytime you play a letter uh it has an action associated with it yeah I I actually found this quite difficult to follow until we started playing and then and then and then it came very quickly it's actually it is a very simple game yes it's very fun and he also he mentioned that the the tarot card layout is the is the new edition is that right that's right originally it was standard cards and it comes in a fun tin box now uh as opposed to the old

cardboard we also played I don't know how to pronounce this lost in Rel yeah that'll do which is a c game Rel cool cthulu game that plays uh as he described it it was a cross between Uno and Jin Ramy but with awesome awesome awesome cthulu art awesome cthulu I really like that game was it was a lot of fun well yeah you bought it yep both of those actually we we came home with yep they make good games they do um we played a full deck building uh board game from them too uh which unfortunately we did not come home with uh but at some point I like too it was called witches of the Revolution yeah that was good that that was cool um and as a history geek like the the reference is you know when they say a revolution

they're talking to Revolutionary War and so the the references in the cards were were all going back to that time period and it's it's really neat it's a fun game um we also got to play fun little memory game called squirrel or die which was uh not made by Atlas but it was uh published by them it was made by the company fight in a box and we've actually got an interview with uh sepy the creat of the game who's so happy he is a happy guy I like sey hey with sey we're going to talk squirrel or die tell us a little bit about the game squirrel or die is a seven-minute game where you test your mental might to see if you could survive winter as a squirrel the most lethal backyard in the history of board gaming and uh how does

the game work how do how do we play this out okay it has two phases Autumn where we're going to hide stuff and winter when we're going to eat the stuff or get eaten by the stuff that we hid very cool and uh and and how do I win against the other players in the in the game in Autumn you're going to secretly hide food and traps all over the backyard and in Winter it is your job to make sure you eat food and avoid the traps trying to outs survive everyone else so you'll get three hit points the person in Winter who uh makes it all the way to the end is the winner and uh how many players is the game uh up to four up to four cool and where can people find copies of the game where can they get more information about the game uh the favorite local game store any place you

can get Gloom you could probably get squirrel or di awesome all right cool thank you very much yeah thank you he actually had something to add after that he did once we started playing the game H he started goofing around and uh and he want I guess he wanted to add uh add this what is the perfect stocking stuffer for Christmas squirr or D it has artist by Graham Jud who worked with his father to make the Illustrated botanist Guide to the Lord of the Rings that is fascinating trivia it is really it's really awesome he and his dad his dad's a professor for botany from Florida and uh he's an illustrator and he's done this version the original version of squirrel die was a handmade tile version that I made myself I made 1,200 of these by handmade I mean I put it in a laser

machine a laser machine is basically fire it Pew peed all over the laser that I had to scrub them so they're shiny and then uh we hand printed the bags and then we sold all those that's how I went convention to Convention to uh get a community big enough to Kickstart our other game into the line that's awesome and now you hear hear you our packs yes thanks to Atlas Atlas uh distributes all our games very cool all right thank you again absolutely we picked up a cool game um from hasashi Hayashi uh called Oki doki which looked like a it was a free game we were a little skeptical about it until we had few spare minutes sat down and played it and it's actually a very difficult it's intense yeah yeah especially to play as a team it can be played um Solo or it can be played as a

team uh where you don't really talk about what cards you have but you have to go in uh numerical order it's pretty fun it's kind of solitar is it's definitely fun but yeah it's not definitely it's not a kids game like no no hell no got little cute animals on it I thought it was a children's game yeah yeah the name is oky DOI and it's got little cute animals was playing a music like it looks definitively like a little kids game like you know a a 5-year-old type of game yeah totally dude it's it's impossible yeah it's really hard it's probably not hard people people are laughing at us right now they're like what that kids game yeah right no six-year-old play that when the guy gave it to us right he's like you know I played this for 3 hours one night

and won it once and in my head I'm like it's a [ __ ] kids game no that's not true and then we sat down and I was like oh my God you want it period like you want it ever yeah it seems like you'd have to there is a bit of luck involved with how the cards get dealt and everything like that I don't know well maybe that's not true but it feels like it's not necessarily always possible to win if you get what you get what I'm saying M like I don't know that might not be the case maybe it is play tested and it is always feasible but I feel like it's not I it didn't seem like either we screwed ourselves when we played it or it wasn't possible to win if you know what I mean could be the former I'll be honest the game that I wish we could have played but he was

actually all out of copies of the game was necronomicards yeah now we got drawn to this by the I I just want to hang all these cards on my wall so the the art on that is so good that my wife went through the business cards I collected I unplugged pulled that one out and was like oh my God I love this we're speaking with Andy Hunt the uh arst and designer of the necronom cods CoD game how you doing could you tell us a little bit about the game uh yeah absolutely it's a super fast and easy game to learn how to play uh you have two decks of cards spells and summons spell cards have different magic symbols that you're trying to match together to essentially create a summon spell you want to find like two match or three matching pairs or two pairs of triplets like three of

one symbol and three of another symbol when you find that you can discard those to draw a card from the summon deck summon decks have various monsters demons mythological creatures lovecrafting and Elder Gods urban legends anything that I thought would be fun and creepy to put in the game and each of those cards also has an action that either helps you or hurts one of your friends which is one of the most fun things you can possibly do right uh the first person to play seven summon cards wins the game it's super simple easy to learn um you can play two to four players takes about 30 to 45 minutes to play a game so it's a good filler game but still has a little bit of meat to it uh and if you go to necronomicards expansion coming out in about a month

okay very cool and then uh yeah it's it's sold out here at Pon plug so you you have to get it through the website uh and definitely check out the website cuz you 's fantastic you a really good job thank you so much I really appreciate it all right thanks for talking to us it's actually sold out on the website as well at the moment oh my God but uh there is a mailing list so I would recommend you go to necronom cards.com and join that mailing list because these are awesome every kind of Gothic horror monster you can think of he also thought of and he has made an a really great artwork for even if you don't play the game you could just like Mount those cards on your wall oh yeah they are so gorgeous congratulations like you sold every copy of the game

like that's awesome like uh I imagine that's probably probably feels pretty good I think by day two also I don't want to uh hurt your guys' wallets too much but um he's actually selling T-shirts of the what okay what's the website if you just goom necronom cards.com follow it through think is down at the Bottom t Fury interview oh wow look at him so you're going to be getting that plague doctor the Pence oh yeah yeah oh my God that's awesome all right we got a a brief chance to play a new game from Big Potato who are the creators of coup M which is a very fun game where you lie and accuse your friends of lying uh if you haven't played it you should definely check it out it's fun uh chameleon is similar in

that it's a kind of a social party game uh but you are given a sheet that either has a grid to look up a word like it's got like a numbers across the top and the side and it's a grid you can you you roll two dice you take the numbers on the dice to look up on the grid what the word is but one person gets a card that just says you are the ion so they don't know what the word is and then it goes around a circle and everybody says one word that describes the the item so it's either a food or it can be like a it can be anything like a a device you know like we got eggs for example so everyone goes around and says a word that they associate with eggs without saying eggs and without being

too obvious because you don't want the chameleon to know what the word is and then the point of the game is to discover Who is the who's pretending that they know the word but doesn't really and uh that's the game really and it's uh it's fun it kind of reminded me of um faking it you know the jackbox game in um the third party pack yes where somebody has no idea but they're just pretending that they are also on board you just want to fit in with what everyone else is saying yeah but yeah it could it it I could see it being very funny because as the chameleon you could completely draw the wrong conclusions from what everyone said saying and then you know like say say something ridiculous so uh yeah that that was fun they uh they almost sold

out of copies of that too I believe they may have by the end check that out at Big pot.com sorry big po.com now listeners if any of you got a chance to play sword and sorcery over the weekend please write in because James may have been your DM yes yeah um so we thought about interviewing somebody who was running those games and then just realized it was me so there's there's no need um so James tell us about sword and sorcery so sword and sorcery is um [ __ ] it's [ __ ] no sorry I wow [Music] uh um all right so if you've ever wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons with your friends but they don't want to play Dungeons and Dragons because it scares

them or you know they don't want to put the time into it sword and sorcery is the place to go um sword and s is a RPG it's a board game based RPG you're going to be creating Maps you're going to be playing a storyline um it did an amazing job of working through combat working through storyline having all of this played out on the table in front of you um where even the where all players are working together um and you're playing against the board the board is dming itself um so for those of you who don't really kind of understand that concept enemies are coming out and they have an AI built into them so the players will play the enemy and you don't know what's happening in the game until it happens there's a book of secrets I mean I guess you could read the book of secrets ahead

of time but that's just don't um so as the person who sets the game up you're still getting surprised by what's happening in the round that you're playing which is really cool um one of the aspects I love about sword and sorcery is it finally brings alignment to the board game tabletop so alignment in RPGs has always been a huge Factor in how your character plays out and how storyline progresses and they they brought that into a a miniature combat based game in such a brilliant way um your characters do have an alignment um there can be I believe it was chaos lawful or neutral um and depending on their alignment actually changes how that character can personally progress the skills they they can get over time um but it also changes the storyline and

what happens in the game so depending on who kind of STS up this next some of the storyline pieces your alignment is going to change the decisions you make and so it's just an absolutely fantastic game uh right now they have the first uh act one is fully released um and you're looking there seven chapters in act one so you're probably talking somewhere between about 14 and 16 hours of gameplay in that um and that's just one single run through uh it comes with enough characters in the game that there's replayability and again because of this align Factor you can actually replay the same character but completely differently and you can replay the same chapters but find different things inside of it um so there there really is replayability to this game and it's a

it's a ton of fun U this is one of the games that we have in rotation um at our gaming day uh what do you got I mean you guys play it what are your thoughts on it it's got a lot of nods to other games that we've played for instance it's it's narrated by someone very similar to decard Kane um there a lot of in jokes I mean they make sense in the game but you wouldn't really pick up on it unless You' played other RPGs yeah I really enjoy it it's uh it does it takes away like the it's D and D light right yeah yeah yeah like you can play and it's kind of like D and D but you don't have to like uh like the the DM doesn't have to come up with the whole scenario and everything like that everybody can play like everybody's a player there's no one person who's kind of takes on another

role so it's and and so it's completely cooperative uh in that sense and you don't have to come up with your own character you don't have to like it takes a lot of the like you said the scariness out of playing D and D for the first time yeah it's it's like a board game video game mhm yeah it's that awesome intro um so when I was running demos there um I got to run about four or five different demos um I had groups come in uh multiple times I had groups come in where you know it's a husband and a wife team and one of them is the gamer and the other one is it's here cuz well I had nothing else to do on a Friday and I might as well come with you um Father and Son team where you know the kid is super into games and the father is just being supportive um and

this is the game where they all sat down everybody looked at it and the gamers were like yeah I'm so excited The non- Gamers were like I'm so nervous um and then after playing for 20 minutes half an hour The non- Gamers were into it um it was simple enough for them to pick up on it was deep enough for for them to to Really grab into it and they loved being able to take those actions do those those special unique traits that only their character had but the game is laid out so cleanly that it was easy for them to play with and I think that's that's what makes it such a nice little introduction into this world uh we got to see a few of the Dungeons and Dragons based panels at packs uh my favorite of them was the dice Camera Action panel and the Friday night I really enjoyed

that panel I thought they did a a great job of playing d and d and making it entertaining uh it was really good that's dice Camera Action is an official series from Wizards of the Coast the creators of Dungeons and Dragons uh you can check it out on YouTube on the official Dungeons and Dragons channel uh and also on Twitch I believe they stream the whole thing live when they play uh like they did a pan they did it live at the at the at packs but they also do it I think every week uh on on the twitch channel so it's run by Chris Perkins uh who is the dungeon master to the Stars uh and yeah check it out and we also saw the acquisition Inc panel The A Team the uh the original Acquisitions

Inc with uh with Jerry and Mike From Penny Arcade also run by Chris Perkins he's a great yeah he is um's I think he does a very good job of uh keeping the story moving um if they get caught up on something he's very fast at making a slist transition he's an expert at hurting cats that's true that's true um and I think one of the things I love that he does a lot is he says yes um and and by that I mean you know as a DM your players come at you a lot and they're like oh I want to do this thing or don't I get to roll this extra die because I did blah blah blah um I guess it's called pulling a Patrick ruffus um yes and and Chris is he's he's amazing and being like you know what yeah like let's let's roll it this is Dungeons and Dragons is a cooperative storytelling

game at its core right um and as a DM he gets that and he he rolls with it and it's so clean he sets up such a great world and then really lets his players kind of take it to where they want mhm well that's the whole concept behind uh improv as well the the yes and right which is what makes D and D great because otherwise it's kind of just one person running the whole show yeah I feel like the best D and D games Cooperative like when I say that I know that I know that it's Cooperative but you know I I think the dungeon MAA isn't telling everybody what to do he's just kind of moving around and helping people navigate what they want to do we've actually got a special surprise for you listeners um surprise we spoke

to Mike Cameron from dog Mite he he used to be a game developer but has since moved into woodworking um and now has this huge company and they make beautiful dice boxes um and playmat dice rollers that double as uh hangable art MH and he has given us a dice box to share with you guys um we've got an interview with him that we will play shortly but what we want you to do is to email us with your game pitch and we will choose our favorite and send you a dice box you can see some pictures of it we will post it on the Facebook the Twitter and the Instagram so you can go and follow us um M nerdgasm on Twitter uh multip nerdgasm on Instagram and facebook.com/ multipl nerdgasm you can get in touch with us in any of those ways or you can email us at

info@ multipl orgasm.com unfortunately we are going to have to limit this to us listeners only because we are not rich and cannot afford it's real expensive to send stuff can't to sh expensive I have to send my family things sometimes in Australia it's real expensive guys but you can go on and have a look at the Box anyway and if you'd like to play for fun just let us know where you're located and send us your game pitch yeah bonus points if it's multiple nasm based yep those bonus points will not go towards much other than our laughter yeah yeah you won't win the game you we'll pick the best game no matter what but if uh if you make it multiple orgasm you'll just earn points in our hearts but we will pick our favorites like our top five maybe

and uh read those out on the main podcast that Matt does with Dan and Luke and you'll find out in a few weeks who who the winner of this is yeah so why don't we play that interview speaking to Mike from dogm uh what what do you guys do well dog m games we do a whole array of custom wooden gaming accessories we have stuff for dice we have custom pieces for Rolling trays we have Adventure cases for GMS we have smaller boxes for players just about anything you need to pimp out your game weake everything is completely customizable you can order it online at dog.com get the wood the felt the Finish pick all of your options we'll build it exactly the right way it needs to be built for your character and ship it right to your door that's fantastic thank you so much

thanks yeah they're really awesome and uh I'm looking at this right now it's you can hear this uh it's held shut by powerful magnets that's what that noise is uh it's got space for a mini fig and and your dice and uh it's got a cool design on the outside this thing really cool so uh you want to get those entries in yeah look at the photos of it cuz you'll definitely want it more once you see it yeah and then head over to dog.com and check out their other stuff there's dice Towers uh like they do wallets wooden wallets they do dice uh card stands if you're a magic the Gathering or some other card game player they got it's all just really really beautiful wooden game accessories check them out dog.com thank you so much to Mike for giving us this to give away to

our listeners yeah thanks so much we really appreciate it was there anything at packs unplugged that you guys had wanted to do but missed uh I would have liked to play a game of thorn watch because I backed it on Kickstarter and it's I still I guess in beta at this point they they still demoing it at the conventions and and you can play but I've never played it I uh but I I will eventually have a copy of it but I have not played it yet so but the line for it was was very long yes it was and and I'm not that patient yeah I feel like every time that um we've seen this game cuz it's been at every packs um the line is always very long and yeah we played it we're terrible at going to sign up for things in the morning Luke has played it so uh he I

guess he could but he played a very early version of it I think for a few years ago did but he played with uh some of the designers of the game yes yeah I think he I don't know if he played he play with Mike actually from Penny Arcade yeah it was made by a few miks but yes he did play with Mike From Penny Arcade yeah that's what I thought I kind of wanted to play um vampire the Masquerade uh the RPG yeah but uh we had looked into that and we had discussed doing it it was a sign up there were only there were limited spots available I think there were only five or six um and two runs of that a day but it's like five hours long exactly it went for a long time I know I still would have liked to have done that I

think because I I'm very familiar with vampire the Masquerade because we had the books as you know when we were growing up but we just never got around to playing it like the we had the Dave had the manual like the the play the whatever the core rule book is uh and also he had a lot of the novels based around it and we all played the video games ire the Master Grade Redemption and and Bloodlines yep so I'm very familiar with the law uh so maybe we should do that at some point they had a lar uh vampire the Masquerade session going as well yeah unplugged like Lop is live action role playing for those who don't know that's where you actually walk around in costume and play Lightning Bol yeah exactly there's a what's that documentary I can't remember the name of

it about uh kns of bad Asom oh that's a movie there's one called Monster Hunters or something like monster Camp monster Camp yeah that's a great documentary about Laing uh you should check it out it's very very interesting that is something that I've never done that I think I would really love to do yeah I agree like you know they do those weekends where they go it's like a Renaissance Fair almost but that is something I've always said that I will never do we'll do it without you well no I was just I was just going to say I'm assuming I'm doing it now well let's find a monster camp nearby and we'll do that come on it'll be fun it it I mean honestly it would it would honestly aome time all right and I just signed us up for one in two weeks

oh fantastic very good um the the only thing I really wanted to do that I didn't get to do was go back to snap pizza and have another Pizza yes if you live in Philadelphia and you haven't been to snap Pizza go there now and then know that I hate you because you can go and get that whenever you want that was like legitimately that was the best [ __ ] pizza I've ever had in my life uh the people there were awesome they were wicked cool um hopefully they're listening to this now hey everybody thank you so much that pizza was amazing everybody at snap Pizza you guys are [ __ ] awesome yeah and if you guys like want to come to Rhode Island open one up down here that' be that'd be sweet or if you ship yeah can you deliver his pizza on

Tuesday night here I wonder if you can get an Uber driver to bring you a pizza from Philadelphia I'm sure if you pay them enough are there Uber drivers with ovens in their car they should be if there aren't they should be all right guys if there is any other game that you want us to go more into depth on um send us an email and we'll uh we'll get it to you in some way um yeah and please email us your game pitches we want to get this dice box out to somebody yeah send them through hey and if you want to support the show if you like what we do you can head to patreon.com multipl nerdgasm and become a patron and that helps uh helps enable us to do more things like packs and uh and more Live Events and uh we've got tears on there for us to do videos and stuff we can add some more Gam ging

based stuff uh if there's something you think we should add to the patreon as a is either a reward tier or as a as a level to be unlocked let us know podcast multiple nerdgasm tocom or on our social media and if you have any game suggestions for us or things that you think would translate well into a podcast let us know we're up for it see you peace out you don't have a cool sign off James no I sorry wa am I supposed to have a cool sign off yeah I I I feel I feel like I was supposed I feel like I was supposed to text you tell you that I'm sorry I must have oh [ __ ] um I don't know bye nailed [Music]

[Music] it