Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat, Episode 035: Do You Want to Build a Sporeman.
This week at Talking Combat, let’s be honest; we’ve mostly got PaizoCon on the brain.
As you’re reading this, the various members of Team RFC are winging their way across the US, headed for the Paizo Mothership in Seattle. So, while I don’t want to blow off this week’s episode entirely, I’m probably going to turn the majority of this into a soft preview of the weekend’s fun.
Part of the problem is that this is one of those episodes that lives and dies with the table banter. We’re not fighting, we don’t have any social encounter, we’re not particularly moving the plot along – most of the episode is just a snapshot of Life At A Gaming Table.
As a listening experience, I think it’s valuable to include an occasional episode like that. Yes, sometimes the fun of a gaming table is going on weird mental field trips where you talk about the Star Trek transporters to beam human waste out of the body. But it’s kinda tough to write about an episode like that without just resetting every joke and saying “remember that, that was funny” like that one Chris Farley sketch from SNL.
For the record, beaming your poop out of your body totally sounds like something the Vulcans would’ve come up with – why have a completely unsanitary system to remove waste with an access point in every home, when you can just beam it away? (Oh dear God, they probably repurpose it into the food replicators. Vulcans eat their own shit. It certainly explains why they’re so humorless all the time. Head-canon established.)
If you’re looking for tangible accomplishments this week…
Well, I guess we may have established that Rusty is using some sort of technological solution to hide his undead-ed-ness . It’s a curious development, but we’ll have to put a pin in it and come back to it once we’re out of the jungle. My inner Rules Lawyer does wonder: if he’s turning undead, shouldn’t he have immunity to the jungle heat? Maybe I’m operating from a Romero-centric view of the undead, but they never struck me as being all that concerned about the weather. Show me the episode of The Walking Dead where a zombie takes a break from brain-munching to go put on a sweater. I’ll wait.
Tuttle also took his first (half) day au naturel. I’d been holding off as long as possible because Fortitude saves aren’t Tuttle’s strong suit, but as Bob said (and it mirrors what I was thinking) I want to have a couple days’ worth of cooling left for potential dungeoneering at the destination, so I’ve reached the point where I kind of have to take a day. Also, I have CHDRR as a bodyguard, so I’m a little less worried about getting attacked while armorless (though the temporary hit points are still an issue).
I have to admit I’m getting a little mentally tired of the jungle trek and I’m ready to arrive somewhere soon. From a game design point of view, I get that surviving the environment is What The Challenge Is, but I share Chris and John’s frustration on getting nickel-and-dimed to (non-)death on non-lethal damage. Very frustrating.
As the episode ends, I was worried we were gearing up for another ScorBaMonk attack, but it looks like it’s more of an environmental challenge, with some sort of pink dust storm headed right at us. It doesn’t seem like “the dust is poisonous” is going to be the big reveal, because we’ve got environmentals for that. So what is it? Hurricane winds? Falling trees? The storm gets us lost and we have to re-establish a path? I assume there’s a cherry on the top of this sundae yet to be revealed, but I guess we’ll find out what it is next week.
So let’s talk PaizoCon. Full disclosure: I’ve never been to PaizoCon before, though I have attended GenCon and Origins. Obviously, those other conferences are more general gaming and this is more laser-focused on Paizo games, but there will still be similarities. On the other hand, my drinking game of taking a shot every time you see a new variant of Settlers of Catan won’t be of much use this time.
Most of us are getting in Thursday, but between managing the time zone change and decompressing from 8 or 10 hours in the clutches of the airline system, I’ll need some Me Time. There are a couple different versions of the plan (none of which are so pretentious as to involve a hot stone massage), but it will likely be both low-key and unrelated to gaming.
To compensate, Friday is pretty much going to be wall-to-wall dice-throwing.
In the morning, most or all of us are playing SFS 1-12 (Ashes of Discovery) together, including the rare sighting of GM Steve as a player character. It’ll be nice to play with these guys in person, instead of as disembodied voices.
After lunch is the one lottery event I got in – Awesome Mix Vol. 1, which is basically a conversion of the Guardians of the Galaxy characters to the Starfinder system. As a huge fan of the Marvel movies (negotiations with the ex-wife to rename our son T’Challa are still ongoing), if I was going to get into ONE event, I suppose I’m glad it was this one. Having said that, I’m going to lobby hard to play someone other than Rocket, since I’m reaching my Furry Tech Rodent saturation point.
Friday night is my first block of (unintentional) free time. I had a Pathfinder game booked, but then we decided to move that to Sunday morning. In the meantime, the other official games either filled up, or I didn’t have a character of the right level, so that kind of left me without anything. So either I’ll use Friday night to relax, or maybe try to find a pickup game if one’s available.
Saturday is the day of “soft” stuff – mostly panels and other podcasts – though that’s another spot where I could toss stuff overboard if a pickup game emerges. I’ve got both Know Direction and Glass Cannon on the schedule, and I’m on the fence about attending Steve and John’s WoW talk. On one hand, there’s a chance I’ll have already heard some/most/all of the stories they’re going to tell, just by virtue of our friendship. On the other hand, I didn’t see another event that was more compelling, and there’s a little bit of “support the team” vibe as well. My other question mark is whether to attend the Celebrity Gaming session with Jason Keeley – I do want to see him in action, but I might not want to spoil an SFS adventure we might play on the show. And then we’ve got the banquet at night.
Sunday morning, Team RFC is playing again, though this time it’s Pathfinder instead of Starfinder (8-16, House of Harmonious Wisdom). There are a few hours of downtime (I think I could fit the monster design panel in if I didn’t mind rushing a bit), and then we’ve got our “official” appearance with Order of the Amber Die (and now, with Perram from Know Direction moderating the interview portion). I have to admit I’m intrigued how Steve’s going to combine Pathfinder Iconics and the RFC crew, though I keep mentally rooting for an homage to Battle of the Network Stars. “Next up, Mo vs. Seelah in the tug-of-war, with guest referee… Buck Rogers’ Gil Gerard!”.
The last* event will be Sunday night’s 8-99C (Solstice Scar) game, which is the community event where 300 people play the same large-scale game at the same time. This is also the event where we’re specifically trying to be extroverts, break up Team RFC a little and play with our fans, contest winners, and whoever else wants to join the reindeer games. If you’re going to be at PaizoCon and playing in this event, you should try to track us down and game with us.
(I put an asterisk on “last” because I signed up for a playtest of the card game on Monday morning before I go to the airport, but that’s more of a palate cleanser than anything else.)
You will note there are a few things missing from this.
First, I want to track down John Compton and give him a big hug for creating CHDRR Mk 3. It may get awkward, security may even be called. I make no promises.
Second, I have a half-formed notion that I do want to get out and see Seattle a little bit. I mean, yeah, I get my check-box for any “what states have you visited?” games the moment I step off the plane, but it does seem a shame to come all this way and only see the inside of a hotel. If I don’t do this Thursday night, there’s a chance I’ll ditch some of the panels on Saturday and go wander. Screw the Space Needle – I need to go visit Funko and open their eyes to the glorious possibilities of the Tuttle and CHDRR Pop! set.
Third, it feels like a low-key betrayal to admit this in a blog for a Starfinder podcast, but I want to see the Pathfinder Playtest in action. Don’t get me wrong – I’m really enjoying Starfinder, but at my core, I’m still a swords-and-sorcery guy. If Pathfinder 2 is going to be a cleanup of Pathfinder with some of Starfinder’s Greatest Hits grafted onto the frame, I’m absolutely down for that. I didn’t sign up for any of the lottery playtest events, but Steve assures me we’re going to get a look at it.
I’ll close with a few logistical notes. The first is that, as Steve said, we will be doing some sort of coverage from PaizoCon. We absolutely want to share some of the fun of PaizoCon with people who can’t actually be there. Having said that, we’re still sorting out the logistics of HOW to cover it – formal blog posts vs. updates via Discord; single post per day or multiple smaller posts throughout the day, etc. And there’s also the question of folding into our schedules that we can still… you know… enjoy ourselves.
The other thing I wanted to say, even though it’s been fairly heavily implied: if you’re going to be at PaizoCon and you see us wandering around, absolutely feel free to say hello. (Unless it’s within 50 feet of the men’s room, because… you know… boundaries.) We all share this common hobby we all love, it’ll be fun to put faces to the random Discord screen-names, and we’re happy to hear what you like and don’t like about the show. Though Emily Post says if you’re going to criticize a man’s podcast, you have to buy him a beer first. Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just believe in a polite society. (Now I know you’re going to say podcasts didn’t even exist when Emily Post did her thing, but she was a very forward-thinking lady. Possibly even a time traveler. Ignore her at your social peril.)
OK, I gotta roll. Next time you hear from me, it’ll be from the convention floor. Whether you’re following our updates or have another holiday weekend (at least in the US) plans up your sleeve, hope you have a fun weekend.