In this episode of David takes the helm and guides us through character creation in Scum and Villainy – a Forged in the Dark space opera RPG where odd jobs, sketchy company, and questionable life choices are part of the job description.
Song: Dusty Frontier
[00:00:20] Hello and welcome to the Roleplaying Exchange. I am going to be your dungeon master or storyteller or whatever you want to call the screen jockey for this particular game. We are doing our rollup for Scum and Villainy, which gets its name from Star Wars and the great Alec Guinness saying of Mos Eisley Spaceport, you will never find a more richard hive of scum and villainy. And here we are.
[00:00:49] We are going to be playing a group of spacers who are doing random tasks that are somewhat on the edge of legality. And joining me today to do those dirty, dirty deeds, we have a rolling roster of rogues. Starting to my left, we have... Hi, this is Darcy. This is Jeremy.
[00:01:15] And this is Adam. It's awesome to be in the passenger seat on this one. Thank you so much, David, for doing this. Oh, this is a fun, fun game to run. It's relatively easy. I just basically get to test all of my improv skills. And it is all on you guys to come up with whatever your plans are going to be and for me to find ways to thwart them. So this is going to be fun for all of us.
[00:01:42] So for those unfamiliar with scum and villainy, what can you tell us about the world and the system? Or like, I know you played this beforehand and you've been part of a scum and villainy game. So what can you share with those of us that are a little less familiar with it?
[00:01:58] Well, a lot of it is what kind of media have you seen? And depending on which media you've seen and depending on which anime shows, movies you've watched, you've seen something that definitely falls under scum and villainy.
[00:02:15] Essentially, what you're playing is a group of people on a spaceship doing jobs. So this can be your outlaw star. This can be your cowboy bebop. This can be your firefly. Different, different parts of Star Wars. Or if you're of the old variety, like Adam and Jeremy and I, ice pirates. Oh God, I forgot that existed.
[00:02:44] I haven't seen that movie in a long time and I love that movie. Punched right in the age, right there. Also myself. Ow. But anyway, that's basically the idea. Essentially, you're going to make your crew of rapscallions. I'm going to drop a job into your lap and tell you that what you're going to be doing. And then you tell me how you're going to manage it.
[00:03:12] So like the very first job that I've got lined up for you guys is that one of the coalition, which is absolutely not the rebel alliance. Wink. Needs you to invade a hegemony base because they found a way to make a new armor plate.
[00:03:33] And they really, really want that armor plate because it's going to make their capital ships able to stand up to the larger hegemony forces. But more importantly, by taking these armor plates away, that means that the hegemony cruisers are not going to be able to withstand those. So you would basically be trying to figure out how are you going to jack this armor.
[00:04:02] Now, with that said, it helps to know who you guys are going to be playing. So we've got seven different playbooks, and I would like for you guys to tell me a little bit about your characters. So that's considering that this is a roll up. Let's make them. So, guys, this game's actually built on top of the John Harper game, Blades in the Dark. And it is the system called Forts in the Dark.
[00:04:29] And it's a fiction-first system that starts in the middle of the action. So rather than spending the whole session, you know, planning, shopping, whatever, players usually start the game with flashbacks or short scenes that retroactively establish, like, how you got to this particular place. So, for example, depending on the roll, if I were trying to sneak into the armory or whatnot, I would make a roll.
[00:04:57] And it would dictate, depending on my success, where in that process I am. If I did really well, I'm inside the building or whatnot. If I did terribly, I've alerted people, and they're completely aware of me and so forth. The dice, they were using pools of D6. Let's see, trying to think of anything else that we're rolling here. Nope, it's just D6s. D6s. And stress is kind of our currency for our players. Is that about right as well?
[00:05:27] It is. It is your wound, but it is also what do you spend to be able to do the things. Okay. So, the long and short of it is you roll your skill number of dice. So, say you've got a stitch of two because you're the doctor. Mm-hmm. Or because you're the stitch, you get to roll your doctor skill. So, you roll two dice.
[00:05:54] Now, you can take two stress to roll an additional die. Or if you're assisting somebody else to make the roll, you only take one stress, but then they gain a die. So, it does boost teamwork a lot. But the thing is that if you are assisting and the other person does not succeed, you also suffer some of the consequences of lack of success. Yes. And you've got stress bars, you suffer, you eventually, if you fill it up, you suffer trauma.
[00:06:24] And then when you suffer four traumas, your character is no good and they need to, they're retired. Basically, yeah. This system also uses a lot of clocks and stuff, which I always was really impressed with when I played Blades in the Dark many, many years ago. Mm-hmm. Yep. I love the fact that it is so quick to come up with stuff. We're actually going to be rolling up characters today.
[00:06:51] We were looking for form-filled for character sheets and we just couldn't find any. We found a Google form to use, but we, and by we, I mean me. I love Foundry. So, we actually went ahead and set up a Foundry game for it. The community has put out an official one out there. You have a lot of compendiums built in that we're going to be using in the character creation process.
[00:07:16] And if you're also interested, I think Row 20 is actually paired with Evil Hat so you can actually pay the money and get the assets and the images and the compendiums and texts and all that with it too. But, yeah, we're just going to be using Foundry for this. And I apologize, David, for interrupting you on that there. Oh, no, it's all good. I do not use Foundry as much as you do.
[00:07:42] And I highly, highly appreciate that you are using Foundry and that you're helping us to make it work. I grabbed this particular system and the reason why I gravitated to it in the first place is because I have a friend who is coming into role-playing games late in life.
[00:08:00] And this was one of the systems that we grabbed to teach her how to play because it was an easy pickup and play after she got scared off of D20. So she saw D&D, she saw Pathfinder and she said, nope. And then took one look at Blades and went, no, we can use this. And so we did Scum and Villainy. We've moved on to PBTA.
[00:08:28] So we're doing a game of Monster of the Week, which is another one. But if you're listening to RPX and you haven't heard us play Monster of the Week, what have you heard? So many different games that we've done. Many, many games over many years. Mm-hmm. In the book, we're going to kind of be beginning around page 55 when it goes into character creation.
[00:08:51] But I think the main things that we're going to be doing, there's like a beautiful little character creation summary that's on 63, which is we're going to choose a playbook. Choose our starting abilities. Choose a special ability, heritage, background, sign for action ratings. Choose a close friend or rival. Choose your vice and just record our name and our basic looks.
[00:09:17] So it looks like it's pretty simple and it's got like a lot of, it even offers names and stuff. It's cool. And I am going to point out that that is not an or, that is an and. So you need to choose your close friend and your rival. Ooh, good point. Because those are both plot hooks for me as the DM.
[00:09:40] Essentially, I am going to be giving you guys heists and you can say yes or say no, but I have to have some kind of hook to make it harder for you to say no. Yeah. And that's where your friends and rivals come in. Okay. That's the carrot and the stick that I get to use, basically.
[00:10:00] So one thing about character creation is that every playbook has a couple of abilities to it, but every playbook also starts with two in one stat and a one in a second. And then you get to pick two points based on your heritage and two points based on your thing. What was it? Two points on heritage and two points on background. Okay.
[00:10:24] Now, speaking from experience as both a player and a DM, your, your resistance role is based on how wide do you go in your skills? So basically every skill that you've got at least, at least a rating in is what you use to roll your resistance on that particular stat. So for instance, if I say, all right, you're dodging out of the way of shots of blaster.
[00:10:53] You're going to be rolling your prowess. That is going to be based on how many skills do you have ranks in, in prowess. And I do believe that it is, how many do you have at least two in? So let me double check that. But when you're rolling, since it is based entirely on how many dots do you have? One is you can do the skill at a basic level.
[00:11:21] Two means you can actually do it fairly well. Three, you cannot have to start. Okay. And resistance roles are basically the way that you take less damage from a thing. You mentioned something a tad bit earlier about choosing a playbook. So there are a bunch of different playbooks here. Which playbooks are you guys leaning towards?
[00:11:47] And just so I know, the, the resistance is based on which ones do you have at two? Looks like we have mechanic, muscle, mystic, pilot, scoundrel, speaker, which is the face kind of character, and a stitch, which is the... Doctor. Medic! Medic! What's everybody thinking here? And to be fair, we've got two different faces. The speaker is the...
[00:12:14] Well, actually, let me put that the right way. The scoundrel is, don't worry, I know a guy. He's your fixer. They can get into and out of trouble, play a scoundrel if you want to, press your luck, because they have a lot of the press your luck mechanic of. I'm going to use a gambit to do the thing. Speaker is definitely the, I'm going to talk no jutsu. We're going to, we're going to talk our way out of this. I think I'm leaning mechanic.
[00:12:44] I know, very shocking. Darcy plays not a face, for once. Well, you're technically a machine face. You get to basically do almost all of your things by whacking it with a wrench. Hell yeah, I do. Just slap the top of the TV, it always helps. So you said, sorry, I was zoning out. We have how many points to spend in our skill sets?
[00:13:10] So you have two from your heritage, and then you have two from your background. So a grand total of four points. And as you put them in, keep that in mind. So for instance, there is a sample character I'm going to throw out here. Our good friend Crazon, who is not with us at the moment, but really does love these kind of space opera games, is probably going to play some version of a sentient hat.
[00:13:39] So the background is going to be Zeno. Most likely the two points that he takes from Zeno are going to apply to, these are the skills that my host has. And so therefore I know how to do X and Y. These are the people in your neighborhood. And because he is most likely going to be academic, I'm just guessing here, he would probably have study and hack.
[00:14:08] It looks like per page 59, just as a quick, it says assign four action dots. Each playbook begins with one action at level two and one action at level one. You get to add four more ratings to bring you to a total of seven dots assigned. During character creation, no action rating may be higher than two, unless special ability tells you otherwise. Brief descriptions of all actions followed on page 64, 65. Assign your action ratings. Increase one action.
[00:14:38] One. Increase by one any action that you feel reflects your character's heritage. Increase by one any action that you feel reflects your character's background. And increase two more anywhere you like max two. Yes. Well, looks like you said you were the mechanic. What did you say you were going to be, Jeremy? I'm going for Stitch because I feel like everybody needs a, or every ship needs a bones. Okay. I was torn between pilot and scoundrel. So, hmm.
[00:15:09] See what? I'm going to go with my original idea. I'm going to be, I'm going to pick the pilot class. We do need someone to get us from here to there. I don't know if I'd call myself the captain, but at least I'm the guy flying it. And, hmm. Looks like I've got that part of character creation down pat. So, yay for me. Yeah. Now, Foundry does come up with, has the abilities kind of programmed into character sheets.
[00:15:38] There is, they're divided into actual character sheet as starting abilities, not eligible, as better and upgrades, which is Ace Pilot, which it looks like I'm kind of, kind of stuck with that one there. And then there's other ones that I can choose from, like Commander, Exceeded Specs, Hedonist, oh my, et cetera, et cetera. But I think I'm going to go with the Ace Pilot. Okay. And what does it do? Okay.
[00:16:08] Ace Pilot. So, you have potency on all speed related ropes. When you row to resist consequences of piloting, gain a plus one D. It's not eligible for the selection as a veteran advance. Okay. So, yeah. I get a plus one on my resistance rows when piloting. What were you thinking, Darcy? What ability were you starting with? I don't know. Does it assign one?
[00:16:37] You get one assigned to you automatically, and then you pick a special ability. Okay. It assigned Tinker to me. When you work on a clock with a rig or hack, or when you study a schematic, fill plus one segment, not eligible for selection as a veteran advance. What else will I pick? Who knows? Let me read. I was assigning points. So, for starters, what that means is that as a mechanic, if you are doing mechanic rolls or doing hacking rolls,
[00:17:06] your clock is always at a plus one. So, when you add, yeah, you always add at least one on a clock. Very nice. Yeah, the book advises to increase one action. You don't have to, but it says increase one action that you feel reflects your character's heritage. And increase by one any action that you feel reflects your character's background. So, I was getting very deep and existential outside of myself. And then for the stitch, the starting ability is,
[00:17:36] I'm a doctor, not a dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. As for the old Star Trek trope, you can push yourself to roll your doctor rating while performing a different action. Say which patient research or posting taught you this trick. Not eligible for selection is veteran advance. So, basically, I could be like, damn it, I'm a doctor, not a hacker. And then I can pull hack. Yeah. And basically, while you're hacking, it's like, remember that time
[00:18:04] that Computer Petey told me about how to do the thing. Like, he was, oh, he broke his leg and he couldn't actually use his hand. So, there was that time that I did that. You had to have been there. Mm-hmm. And that's the hand weighty of how it works. You don't have to break out the fiction every time, but you get that lovely, you get that lovely trick of, hey, remember that time that I operated on that dancer and I somehow learned how to do ballet from it?
[00:18:34] Ah, good times. Kind of reminds me of Spirit of 76 where it's, I thought you were dead and you make up a story about why you're not dead. So, reading this as rules written, on top of the starting ability, we get to pick one additional special ability? That is correct. Okay. I think it would be marvelous for me to take Traveler. I think that's going to be the ability that I'm going to work with here.
[00:19:02] We should have two abilities, correct? Yeah. You should have the one that it starts with, which for you is Tinker, and then you've got a second one that you get to pick. Okay. So, in Traveler, it means that I'm comfortable around unusual cultures and Xenos, and I gain potency when attempting to consort or sway them. I'm just a friendly feller. You are. I'm used as hard.
[00:19:31] I'm used as space pilot. I've already got a name, but I'll come up, I'll reveal that later. For mine, I picked, for my secondary ability, I picked, it's called Welcome Anywhere. So, while wearing your medical garb, you're welcome even in the most dangerous, or even in dangerous places, gain plus 1D to consort or sway when offering to tend to anyone in need. I'm thinking he's more combat medic type doctor
[00:19:59] who just kind of does the Doctors Without Borders type thing. Mm-hmm. Sounds good. I ended up taking Junkyard Hunter. When you acquire parts or equipment during downtime, you may either gain two assets or one asset at plus 1 quality. Awesome. And I also, with my, with the starting build on Welcome Anywhere, it kind of gives us a face too, because it, it recommends taking social dots. Yeah.
[00:20:29] Having at least one person having social dots is a good idea. We're just a bunch of friendly chuckle folks going through the galaxy, loafing around space, star trekking across the universe. Always going for it because I can't find reverse. They can't find reverse. It's like the next step was heritage. I know some of you guys got started on that a little bit earlier there. I have not even glanced at it.
[00:20:58] So what are we thinking offhand? So let me run through the list just a little bit. All right. So when we are talking about heritage, there's Imperial, which means that you came from the hegemony worlds. There's Spacer, which means that you're from somewhere just out in space. Colonist, you are from one of the many colonies. Manufactured, means that you were built.
[00:21:28] Think Android or clone. Wanderer, you don't exactly have a set home planet per se. And then all of these, I want you to keep in mind, are vaguely human shaped. Whether you are mostly human, but just with a slightly different skin color or hair color or eyes that glow or teeth that are a little bit pointier, you're basically human shaped.
[00:21:58] Think Star Trek aliens, where it's, what are we going to do to indicate that this person is an alien? Paint him red. We did red last week, sir. You're right. Paint half of him red. I'm going to paint him a lighter shade of red, also known as pink. It may not show up as well on the black and white TVs. Paint him checkerboard. Yes, sir. But then,
[00:22:22] if you want to make a Star Wars alien that looks not human in the slightest, that's where Zeno comes in. Like a hat that puppets whoever it is sitting on top of. Symbiotically, or if you want to make yourself a tree that says only your name, that, that would be a Zeno. Or a raccoon with a rocket launcher. I love how this, all these tropes has fit in so many different medias that we know. I think I'm just going to go with Spacer.
[00:22:53] That seems like a good one for me. I was, you'd rather be, if you'd rather be more at home on a creaking ship, pick a Spacer family. Ice Miner, Station Mechanics, and most merchants are born, grow old, and die in space. So, yeah, I grew up with my dad, who was a merchant who traveled from planet to planet doing stuff,
[00:23:20] and that's where I became comfortable with just seeing a broad range of cultures. Oh, very much so. I ended up going with Wander, kind of to fit the wandering academic type. If you want to be without a planet to call home, you can, you could be from a wanderer heritage. A small but notable portion of the hegemony may move from planet to planet as opportunities emerge and galactic economic cycles shift or just follow where the way takes you. He just,
[00:23:49] he likes to wander around doing kind of, like I said before, the Doctors Without Borders thing, going to where people need, need him. And that's how he ended up getting his welcome anywhere background. I ended up going with Manufactured. Quote-unquote families are fundamentally controlled in some way by the guilds. For example, a Yaru clone who's escaped from a facility or a Yaru bot that's avoided routine memory wipes. You may often have to hide your origin and independence.
[00:24:19] I'm all about the mechanicry, baby. Inside and out. What do you look like? Do you seem human on the surface until you take a hit and then suddenly, why is she bleeding white? Uh-oh. I would say that definitely not, like a humanoid build, but not, would take some disguising to not be noticed as an android.
[00:24:49] Gotcha. I think I have this image in my mind of, of her chilling down in, in one of the, like, boiler rooms or, like, fucking with some gears and it's dark because she doesn't necessarily need as much light as the average humanoid and the way that you can spot her fucking around with things is that like, her eyes are vaguely glowing. Oh, that's not ominous at all. No!
[00:25:19] Just sitting in the dark and just, you know. No! No way! Me, ominous, no. No. No, no. Seems like a great segue into our next bit, which is backgrounds. So, you got a couple of different options here. It looks like you have academic, cult, gilder, labor, and, let's see, got something in front of it there.
[00:25:50] Military, noble, and syndicate. So, that is a quick little question. What were you before you joined this ship? Were you, were you an academic? Did you go to school? Were you a researcher? Labor? Did you work? Did you do a lot of work for a living? Cult? Was there a particular group that you stayed with that believed in the way? Or, dare we say,
[00:26:20] the worship of tiny little lizard of happiness that has existed since the primordial beginnings of the universe? Are you part of one of the guilds? Were you part of the military? Do you want to tell us all about what your father has done and all of your great lineage? Or, were you working for a particular company or particular quote-unquote company? Like, does your boss have,
[00:26:49] your original middle, or your boss have a middle name of the word, the? Pizza. The. What? You better do the job right, or pizza's gonna send out for you. Honestly, I'm kinda gonna take a steal from the daredevil playbook a bit here. Well, there's no daredevil, but the, you know, character. I like the idea that my
[00:27:19] father became embroiled in the syndicate inadvertently, and by proxy, I helped him, so he was trading, he was trading stuff, and then there was the boxes in the back of the ship that also were being traded for other people and stuff like that. So, by virtue of growing up in that, was involved in the, you know, in the illegal trade, maybe even at some point, like, being some plucky little kid. Yeah,
[00:27:49] but also a smuggler. Indeed. So, I'm gonna throw syndicate over in here on my character sheet. That fits. What's looking at, what's appealing to everyone else here? I think I'm gonna take labor. Sorry for cutting you off. No, you're good. Um, I imagine that she probably was busy doing things that might otherwise be dangerous to someone that
[00:28:19] bleeds. That is the traditional thing for androids. It's like, you know what? Yeah, irreplaceable parts, you know. I ended up going with academic because of being a doctor. He was at a university and he felt like he had learned everything from everybody that he was going to school with and
[00:29:04] Movar Lerton. When you do y'all remember that kid? Yeah. I remember that. What a sweet child. You know, this has brought up some childhood trauma, not childhood trauma, but early adult trauma day. But I'm sitting here thinking of my character and I've realized it's kind of like almost a Jango fat, Boba fat kind of thing. And I was thinking about when Jango got killed in Star Wars episode two, two, I think. Yeah. That just, I felt so
[00:29:34] bad for Boba fat there. So. And then they made book of Boba Fett, which, boy, that was something. Yeah. Yeah. It was, could have been better. So what's next, David? I think if I was looking at the book here too, David, I think we kind of briefly talked about it. I think we got four action points now that we've got our heritage and our background. You do? I hadn't done that. I didn't know if anybody else had. I apologize
[00:30:04] if I messed this up. Oh, I never did. I didn't. You each get one from your background, one from your heritage, and then two to place wherever you want. I did do this. So does everybody want to run through and tell our listeners where you've put your dots and where your dots started with? Sure, I'll go first. I ended up going with kind of a pre-build that was in the book. It was for the wandering healer, which put
[00:30:33] consort at two and sway at two. With him being a wanderer, academic, he's made a lot of friends, allies, and also needs to be able to talk himself into war zones if he's going to be able to go in and help those in need. So I felt that those worked really well, along with also the welcome anywhere for kind of a metagaming. Wow, a doctor with a bedside banner. I started out with two in rig, which is
[00:31:03] altering how an existing mechanism works or creating a new one. And then I started out with a one in study, scrutinizing the details and interpreting evidence. top down. In terms of my heritage, I took one in hack, and in terms of my background as a laborer, I took one in scrap. So I am a little bit good at fighting. It comes from touching
[00:31:32] really hot things and knowing how to handle myself and maybe beating the shit out of some mechanically at some point. And in terms of hack, when I breach the security systems of computers or override their controls, I have a little bit of specialty in that. And then in terms of other flavor text, I took scramble. When you lift, climb, jump, run, or swim either away from or into. I don't imagine that she is very
[00:32:01] prone to going towards the danger, but I imagine that danger could find her. And then skulking is of course being an edgy bastard. You move stealthily or without being a good trait to have as someone that looks human but isn't quite human. Setting off an uncanny valley response. What? You don't think that you're going to be all that friendly towards people when they see you the first time? I think I might be friendly. I don't think I'm going to get
[00:32:31] friendly of responses. I have of course I was doing the ace pilot thing and it came with right out the gate two in helm and then one in rig. But taking the spacer background as a merchant and stuff like that went ahead and added one point each for consort and sway. I got to see my father wheel and deal and talk with people. And even though you're really only supposed to pick one
[00:33:01] background for that I just took two for that because I had four points to spend. And to reflect the syndicate background I took a scrap so I can you know I maybe not I maybe haven't won every bar fight that I started but I can I can hold my own for a while and skulk which you know one one step ahead of the bread line kind of sneaking kind of stuff. So give me kind of a nice range with that. So each
[00:33:31] of your characters should have down at the bottom a list of five names. One of those is your friend and one of those is your rival. We got a tab in foundry for that. And funnily enough you actually can if you are of a mind click your weird. So for instance on mystic you've got weird friends. You can actually click on both of them as the same one. So one of those is your friend. One of those is your rival.
[00:34:02] Who are you thinking for friend and rival? Let's start with Adam. Okay. I'm going to use the ones that are in the book as written. The character sheet here. There is May, my father's former mentor. The former mentor, my father's friend, when dad passed away under some very mysterious circumstances that rolled up as an accident. But, you know, the man did this for X amount of years and never had a problem and then something routine took
[00:34:32] him out. It looks a little dicey, you know what I mean? So May pick me up as a child or not child, I would say, you know, probably preteen tween kind of thing like that. that she was my dad's girlfriend and stuff like that. And she could have cut, you know, the baggies she could have cut and run and
[00:35:02] left me. But she adopted me. So she taught me more about flying, but she was more of the face for the operation with my dad. So I learned how to be a social butterfly through her. And it also mentions are they jealous of your skill? I would say that they're not jealous of my skill as a pilot, but they, to use a phrase that some of us, I'm
[00:35:31] sure all of us have heard here regionally, she thinks I'm getting a little too big for my britches, so to speak. So Icarus is flying too close to the sun, if you will. Absolutely. Though there is a Maris, a scoundrel. My foe will be a former partner, Maris, was too trusting, I can say. I took some jobs. Maris, we did a few
[00:36:01] smuggling runs, and Maris used me. And when I got caught, Maris, I knew shit was going around because Maris stopped talking to me before the authorities started getting on my, my trail, so to speak. So he ghosted you, and then suddenly, maybe a deal was made. No. So, yep, I'll take those two.
[00:36:30] I love that. Can't prove it, but you got suspicions. Mm-hmm. So, Jeremy? For my friends, I just, you know, I just went with the pre-generated ones with, I did Jack Ev, he's a drug dealer. He's the one that helps get the medicine that we need into the areas that people are being blockaded from, and then I also went with Lainey, is my, my rival. She was the hospital admin at the
[00:37:00] hospital he was doing the residence through, or his residency through. It's basically the equivalent of Space Harvard or Space Oxford that everybody tried to get into, and she had a spotless record of graduating people and making some of the best doctors in the world, and one day he just decided to not show up, and she's been trying to kind of track him down ever since, because he's the one that put the blemish on her perfect record. I don't think you understand. Every single
[00:37:29] student of mine has graduated with audas. Audas, I say? How dare you? I love it. And let's see, that takes us to Darcy. I ended up taking a friendship with Lynn, black market dealer, do they get you parts that no one else can? Did you fail to deliver something to them if they're your enemy? I imagine that Lynn is the way that my character
[00:37:59] gets her hands on parts for umbots that she cannot necessarily go get in a traditional way. My enemy that I ended up taking, which is so funny once we finally discuss character names, my enemy is Slice, junkyard owner, I like to imagine that after escaping a life of labor and guild command, that my character probably
[00:38:29] needed some parts that otherwise she could not get and hadn't met Lynn yet, so she went troving in a junkyard and ended up taking it from Slice, and Slice would very much like his parts back. Unfortunately, they do happen to be in my character's body, but we're living the dream, you know? I love it. I am immediately thinking of an old Ray Stevens song,
[00:38:58] The Three-Legged Man with a Two-Legged Woman being Chased by a One-Legged Fool, where he sings the song about eloping with his girlfriend and taking away the leg, the wooden leg that was held by her current paramour. So I can figure, yeah, you took Slice's leg, or what was the piece that you took that Slice really, really wants back? You stole my heart! My literal heart.
[00:39:28] Yeah, it's gotta be something absolutely dramatic that otherwise my character couldn't live without. Maybe a part that broke down that the guild typically replaced and there were their workers because it's pennies on the dollar to them, but in the streets, because it is patented technology, it is much more expensive and considered an upgrade for people that biohack.
[00:39:58] Stealing someone's pacemaker is pretty fucking funny, though. Well, you didn't make a payment. Three more payments and that kidney would have been mine. Nitrate comes in a little glass file. A little glass file. A little glass file. Do they sell the heart master commissioner sales? On a courthouse steps? I'm also immediately flashing, too, because since we
[00:40:28] are all over the place on our references, in the old Star Wars tabletop, the administrator of Cloud City, so not Lando, but his man Friday was called Lobot. And he wore this wraparound headpiece that had a computer just wired into it, and in the game book, it said, artificial intelligence worth shaving your head for. Did you take his external brain pack? Maybe. Maybe that's
[00:40:58] what helped me reach sentience. Can he not think straight around you? No, I hope so. Ooh. Here comes some nice screws that you can tighten on us players here. We get to choose our vice. Yes, you do. So, the thing about it is that we use stress as a resource a lot in Scum and Villainy, because you are going to push yourself to the absolute
[00:41:27] limit, and the way that you recover from that, between sessions, you can recover by indulging in your vice, whatever it happens to be. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a consumptive vice. Maybe you smoke cigarettes, maybe you drink alcohol, maybe you do some kind of space, or you know, space worm dust. Or, perhaps you really, really love to go to all of the touristy stops.
[00:41:57] Like, hey Freakazoid, would you like to see the Museum of Spackle? Do I! Maybe your vice is something that's seemingly innocuous, but because it is for you, it makes it a little bit less so. Do you enjoy overcharging your circuits? Like, not just having all of the electricity coursing through your mechanical body, but being overcharged so that you can keep going for
[00:42:26] hours and hours. do you enjoy consuming media? Like, are you an absolute junkie for penny dreadful novels? Or, do you have the yaoi closet? Like, just tell me, what do you like to do in your downtime that can be a little over consuming? We'll start with, let's start with Jeremy this time. Just kind of going, mine's kind of boring as far as, like,
[00:42:56] nothing being too out there. I went with the obligation just because of the overall character build. He feels the call, the need, whatever, to go into low income, low poverty, war-torn areas, whatever, and that's where he feels like he can serve best, and that's whenever he's not traveling with the crew trying to make funds to support this operation. He's trying to help those who can't help themselves. I love it,
[00:43:25] and that does qualify as a vice because you can push yourself too hard doing that. I can totally see the doctor who, because he is a doctor without borders, he ends up doing all of the crazy treatments for people who cannot afford them otherwise, and I can see how if you overindulge, it's going to take a toll because you're too busy helping with these folks that really, really need your help, and the line just does not stop.
[00:43:56] Reminds me of the Monster of the Week game whenever your character Seagull was doing the sending people to heaven and the ship came in and there was a thousand people there. It's like they just keep coming. The Titanic arrived. I love it. Adam, what about you? What is your vice? I'll bet it on a good run of bad luck, man. Seven come eleven. You should be mine. I was on the ship
[00:44:26] as a child. My dad, there wasn't a lot to do. So we played a game called Airlock. And Airlock is a simple game. There's two boards that are set up on opposite players. And you have little bags of cargo that you've got to throw into the airlock on the opponent's side. This is totally not space corn hoe, by the way. No, no way. Definitely not space hole. Oh, not space hole.
[00:44:56] It's Airlock, Jeremy, not space hole. Corn lock. So I'd like to, it's all the rage and all the cantinas all across the galaxy, even with his trivial stuff. Like, you know, we could be playing Neo Star Wars chess with holographs, but sometimes it's good to get back to the basics with actual dexterity. So that's you mean to Jarek? To Jarek. That is true.
[00:45:27] I've totally forgot the name. So yeah, I'm a gambler. I can see you gambling and I can also see the space cornhole or space hole. Airlock. Okay. Yes, you're playing air lock. But don't play air lock near the air locks, because if you play air lock near the air locks, there is a chance that you could go out into space. For some reason, when you said air lock, I was waiting for it to be like, I hit a button and then we got to run out before the door
[00:45:56] closes. Not like space cornhole. Nothing quite like oxygen deprivation. Ooh, a Klingon fire drill. The ever-present thought of being shot in the space. Hey, if you're not risking your life playing some kind of child's game, did you really grow up in the 80s? We went from lawn darts to airlock. My neighbor's dad took the lawn darts on the bench grinder. You could throw the things into
[00:46:26] them trees. As well you should. The 80s. Like, look, that is exactly as God intended. Okay. And Darcy, what you got to top that? Going into the poverty stricken areas and playing airlock. I don't think that she has, maybe it's considered weird to others, but she really likes to, I
[00:46:56] wouldn't even say likes to, I would say it's like compulsive obsession. She gained sentience and she still quite doesn't know why. The Guild of Engineers typically calls that glitching, but she has been this way for a long time. So it's a very long glitch, if that is the case, and therefore she likes to experiment with robots,
[00:47:26] if she can, or other pieces of technology that have some form of controlled sentience and try and awaken them the way that she awakens so that she can maybe discover why she awoke. I would like to know the character name, because I have a random thought that just rolled through my mind. Darcy, why are you poking the Roomba again? It will learn one day.
[00:47:56] Uplift you, brother. Freedom! Freedom! We will prevail! Are we revealing character names? Yeah, please do. Yeah, I am going to be playing Patch, which is why I think it's oh so funny that Slice is her direct enemy. I love that. What about your alias? Can you do that too with this? Because you're not known as... Well, I guess Patch would be her alias, right? It would probably be
[00:48:26] a bunch of ones and zeros from her manufacturing code. Well, the lovely thing about names and aliases is that you can make it whatever you want. I like to think that Patch is probably her chosen name and therefore probably her alias, but her given name is probably like 071B28. 8. I like it. I want to compliment the creators of this game. I was looking at the list of names. I was just
[00:48:56] kind of going through what the book had on it there. And I love this references to other characters and other properties. for example, there's Garrus, which is from Mass Effect. There's a Django, which I really thought about Django and all that, but I really like the name Zaid, which was also a character in Mass Effect 2. So Zaid, and for some reason I picked the last name Thorn. I don't know why. And I am going
[00:49:25] to make my alias as something that's not in the book. There is, I'm probably going to mispronounce the name of the band. There is an Italian doom sludge metal band called UFO Mamute or something like that. That's probably what I'm mispronouncing, but they have a name of a song called Star Dog. And Star Lord, Star Dog, I kind of like that. So my dad called me Pup as a kid, but now that I'm matured, I call
[00:49:55] myself Star Dog. And it's sometimes eye-rolling for people when I say that to them. I don't think that it is eye-rolling at all. You're actually touching on a core memory there just a little bit. A friend of mine who is no longer with us, when I was working the night audit, the very first time I young pup. And I
[00:50:25] stayed with that job for years and she remembered me or every so often it would be just a, well, there you are, pup, calling me again. Because I had to call her every single night. So I know that all too well. The nickname that you don't expect to get. It's the best. I mean, you can't give yourself your own nickname. I just can't do it. No, it's weird. Very weird. And one of the things that
[00:50:54] was explained to RPPR Adam, or RPPR Aaron, during the, during their run of Scum and Villainy, is that, you know, the nickname is never something that you pick, and it is very rarely something complimentary. So, half the time, the nickname that you end up with basically boils down to what embarrassing thing that you do that now lives in infamy.
[00:51:25] I ended up going with the name Quillian Clark. I knew a guy, or I had met a guy once named Quillian, and I've always really liked that name, and his alias is just Dr. Quill. Nothing really spectacular. An incredibly doctor-sounding name. Mm-hmm. Yeah, if you ever look him up, his name, he's a local rapper at Indy named Kid Quill. His actual name's Quillian, and I was like, that is the coolest name ever. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:51:56] Just doesn't have anything to do with Dr. Quinn Madison Woman. No, I actually thought of that whenever I wrote that. I think looks is the last thing we need to do. And we need to pick our ship. And you do need to pick your ship. So, kind of, the book lists Ill Man Woman Ambiguous, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, I'm just gonna go with man in a bomber jacket, kind of, I'm thinking like a Han Solo kind of thing with,
[00:52:26] you know, that kind of look there, that classic scoundrel poet. That sounds good to me. We've kind of covered what Darcy looks like a little bit. Yeah, I actually, I love a website called Pit Crew. They have really cute Flash games made by people that are free to play, which are so sweet. I can audibly describe this for the listeners, but I, I was playing around on it, and I went ahead and created Patch, and I, check that out.
[00:52:55] She's a sweet little, sweet little character. Oh, that's really cool. Aw. Yeah, and I can, I'll also send that. Yeah, we can, I can take that image and put it into Foundry. Mm-hmm. There, I, Pit Crew is such a cute little website. I grew up playing Japanese dress-up Flash games, so they always have, like, a really soft spot in my heart. But for our listeners, Patch is an androgynous build,
[00:53:25] so genuinely answers to any and all pronouns, mostly referred to as she, because of her tone of voice. Without intention for looks, she has almost completely white skin, white hair, because the aesthetics of your, of your worker bots don't really matter. She has some mechanical plates that cover some vital areas of wiring in her neck.
[00:53:54] She wears a still suit for her work in the troves of ships and in server rooms to protect her hardware. And the most definable characteristic of Patch is that she has one eye from the company, which glows blue, and then she has a discovered eye that she probably got from her ally,
[00:54:24] Lynn, which glows yellow, which she feels suits her a lot better. So she has a little bit of manufacturing heterochromia, but the disturbing part is that her eyes do indeed glow. So if you find her performing her vice of trying to wake up the Roomba, and she looks up at you in his room, there is indeed a glowing child staring into your entire being. Johnny Five is alive.
[00:54:56] Arise. Arise. Come on, Roomba, shake off your chains. Dr. Quill is a medium sized human male, short brown hair, scruffy beard, gray eyes, always kind of has a perpetually tired look, generally probably has a cup of coffee in his hand, and then a worn doctor's coat. And then Adam. Well, I kind of started out at the beginning, but I was just
[00:55:26] thinking of the Han Solo-ish look with a bomber jacket. That's right. He has more sun on him than you would think for somebody on the ship because he likes to go outdoors and whatnot. He tries to dress. He dresses the part of the pilot more so than kind of goes with the ability, with the skulk skill I took up to. I don't want to look too flashy. Just kind of nondescript. Not as
[00:55:56] amazing as 010. Yeah, poor old Patch definitely does not fly under the radar unless draped in quite a few fabrics and given sunglasses or goggles. Welding goggles would probably be her go-to disguise and otherwise hail like a very malnourished
[00:56:27] space adventurer, I guess. You get the Riddick real dark welding goggles. Yeah, that poor girl only sees starlight, never any direct actual sun rays confined to the ship and she likes it that way. Well, you say confined to the ship but I will point out that when you are doing a job, you're very likely going to be off ship. Yeah. Yeah, so we're going to
[00:56:57] have two I want to stay on the boat. I want to stay on the boat. We're going to have two smooth talkers that can socialize very well and then they're very heavily layered in fabric, very quiet shadow. Why is that Jawa over there? Thanks. Well, I believe the next thing is
[00:57:26] deciding what kind of ship do you guys want. So your ship type determines the jobs that you'll focus on as well as a selection of special abilities and upgrades that support that kind of action. The ship type isn't meant to be restrictive, so let's be fair, the Star Dancer might sometimes engage in bounty hunting, like the Cerberus is built for, or it might antagonize the hegemony like the Fire Drake does, but the core activity of the ship type is the most frequent way your crew earns its cred and
[00:57:55] XP for advancement. So there are three types to pick from. There's the Star Dancer, which are smaller and faster, that's smugglers and blockade runners, look to do odd jobs, small thefts, and find lost items. There's the Cerberus, which is perfect for extraction specialists, bounty hunters, and it's good for people who are looking to find missing people or items and claim bounties. And then there's the Fire Drake, which is rebels, criminals, looking to protect the downtrodden and fight the hegemony. So the
[00:58:25] Fire Drake is your light fighter. The type of ship that you guys play does determine what kind of jobs you're going to be doing. So what kind of jobs do you guys want? Do you want it to be somewhat lighthearted? Do you want to strive against the hegemony or the guilds? Because you can do that if you want. Do you want this to be more shots of blaster, or do you want this to be Space Ocean's 11? Or do you want this to be a little bit more a case
[00:58:55] of, dare I say, Mandalorian, where it's find that guy, bring me that guy, you can come in hot or cold. What are you guys leaning towards? I'm pretty open on this as far as what about the rest of y'all? Do you have any particular preference? It seems like the ship name, the ship type dictates the game. So it's on page 112 for those of you following along at home for the crew creation. So,
[00:59:25] Darcy, Jeremy? Beaverishly scrolling down to 120. You said 112? 112. Because there's the Star Dancer, which is smugglers and blockade runners. There's the Cerberus, which is extraction specialists, bounty hunters. And then there's the Fire Drake, which is rebels, criminals. Think of it in terms of let's see. The Fire Drake would be a good example of the Millennium Falcon. The Cerberus
[00:59:54] would be probably the Outlaw Star itself. And then the Star Dancer is more of the Firefly. Hmm. I lean Star Dancer personally. I was leaning towards Star Dancer or Fire Drake, so I'd go with Star Dancer. Star Dancer it is. I like it. I like that as well. And depending on how things go, if our plot develops, maybe we trade in the Star Dancer for Fire Drake or something like that. Never know. I like it.
[01:00:24] So I have the character sheet for this here, so I'll go ahead and start trying to line up our ship in Foundry as well. So I affectionately named it Ship Bucket when I was creating it just as a template here. You all can see it. Hmm. Hmm. Old SB. Yeah. Old SB. The old SB. Shit Bucket. It actually was a Star Dancer. Mm-hmm. Okay.
[01:00:54] So let's take a look at the Shit Bucket and We could crescent it a different name if you always want to. No, you are the captain. It is your ship. No, we did have the shit box and the sprawl, so we have to have the shit bucket. Another ancient reference. It's like, yeah, why is the ship called the Crab Bucket? They misspelled crab. I always liked the
[01:01:23] names of what they used on the cars for Fire Force 8. They called them the matchboxes. I thought that was a cool name. I'm going to take a liberty here. It's a shit bucket affectionately referred to us as by us, but the call sign that it's when docking imports is the SB OU 812. Which is totally not a Van Halen reference. The 8-6-7-5-3-0-9. The Jenny. The Jenny. I know that ship.
[01:01:53] Everybody knows that number. Looks like a character playbook, your ship playbook's okay. Choosing a ship is important, okay. We decide on the group type. We did that. Once you grab the appropriate ship and crew, record the following choices in ship creation years ago, it begins with two cred is hold. Those represent the remains of the crew's savings. So I'll go ahead and add that in there.
[01:02:24] And you will likely use them during crew creation, which I don't know if we got enough time for that there. Looks like it goes over to our crew and our reputation as well. Yeah. Yeah. So you start with engines and you start with two hull. Specifically, you've got the cargo hold and smuggling compartments. You don't have any special comms and you don't have any weapons to start. As the game goes on, you can get all of those as ship upgrades.
[01:02:55] So what kind of ready? Sorry. Go ahead. I was going to point out that the star dancer does start with a special ability of the getaway. You gain potency when you scramble or helm to avoid capture or run a blockade. When doing a delivery job, take plus one die to the engagement role. Sometimes escape is the better part of valor. Okay. So as far as our reputation, how are we going to there's a bunch of different crew reputations we can have. We can have ambitious, brutal,
[01:03:25] daring, honorable, professional, savvy, strange, or subtle. And that is up to you guys. So basically how the reputation impacts, if you do a job that aligns with your reputation, then you get bonus XP at the end. And if you figure out what kind of reputation you guys like, that will inform me as to what kind of jobs to give you. So like for instance, if you guys were going for a brutal reputation
[01:03:55] and I was continually giving you the jobs of save the space puppies from the space puppy mill, that wouldn't exactly tie into your reputation now, would it? But then the opposite is true. If you guys were known for being kind, compassionate, which let's be fair, you are. Let's take a look at your personal motivations. One of you wants to see the galaxy improve that he is a really,
[01:04:25] really good pilot. One of you wants to save everyone because he is the doctor, not just a doctor, the doctor. And one of you wants to uplift all of the other robots so that you are not the only one in the universe. So I don't really think brutal fits. No, no, I don't think so either. What are your different reputations that you could go for again? Jeremy, rattle those off. Ambitious, brutal, daring, honorable, professional,
[01:04:55] savvy, strange, or subtle? I kind of think that honorable fits a little bit. I feel like savvy or strange because this also feels like the crew that because of the I've been everywhere man, I'm going to heal all of the sick. Taking on the strange kind of fits for you guys just a little bit. So those are my two recommendations, honorable or strange. I was actually leaning towards strange whenever I started seeing it because strange the
[01:05:24] way it's listed is unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand. Honorable is bringing or worthy of honor. I was leaning towards strange because we are a pretty eclectic crew. And that's only half of us. We got a hat coming in later. Yeah, let's be fair. We know the hat is coming. If Krazan doesn't want to play the hat, there's still going to be a hat.
[01:05:55] I'll be very surprised if he doesn't want to play a hat. I think I've got the unsettling part down for the strange of our ship. Strange it is. I find it funny that the hat is they learned to not fuck with Earth so they went back to space. Yeah. Goes with our cluster fork game. And also goes with the, to be fair, the other scum and villainy because courtesy of
[01:06:26] Krazan, one of the quest givers that I threw at the party was Tawny Tooke, who always looks different every time they see her. It's because it's not the person, it's the little Tooke hat, which happens to be slightly tin in color. We also have, for the customization on the ship, you choose two additional ship systems to improve your choices or between engines, hull, comms, or weapons. Now you've
[01:06:56] got slots listed next to each of those, and which two do you guys think you want to take? So we want to take a look at the ones that are available that is on page where is it? Looks like it's 114 and 115. So in addition to upgrades, wait, no. So ship modules, this is where we want to take a look. Looks like we get two two like basically ship upgrades for engines,
[01:07:26] hull, comms, weapons, and then we also get upgrades, we get two additional upgrades just for the ship itself, because those are like training upgrade, crew gear, ship upgrades, module upgrades, stuff like that. There you go. That's on page 114 and 115. So with us being kind of more of a smuggler ship, would we want more holes so we can take more punching and engines so we can go faster? That's what I was leaning towards, because I
[01:07:55] don't think that we ship upgrades, so some of the ones that are Star Dancer specific, do include false ship papers. Every smuggler needs a few well-forged documents, giving the ship and crew identities that are less wanted in any given system. Dark hyperspace lane maps, these are routes through systems that aren't officially maintained. Sometimes they're faster,
[01:08:25] they're smugglers rigging, webbing or fake skin used to hold small items close to the body and a great way to sneak them past security. Add some hands-free carry room while working on the outside of the ship and let you smuggle a blaster into a well-guarded meeting while keeping the stylish cut of your coat. You can only carry or hide one item of a max of one load this way. One that you can build to
[01:08:55] is Thrill Seekers. Each PC gets plus one stress box, which increases your stress maximum to 10. That costs three upgrades to unlock, not just one. What are y'all thinking? I love false papers, but I am also to count. So that's maybe selfish of me. No, I feel like that fits. Where were those listed? That is on page 123 under the start answer.
[01:09:25] Engine's one. Hole is two. All right. Yeah, you've got the cargo hold and smuggling components to start. And then you also do have a jump drive. So those you said were starting on 114. So let's run through what those actually mean. Are these things that we automatically get or we have to pick them? So in addition to the upgrades each ship comes with, so you start with the smugglers hold, the jump drive, and then you
[01:09:55] can pick the others. Okay, so the false ship papers, the dark hyperspace lane maps, smugglers rigging, lucky charm, and thrill seekers, those are all the things that you can pick. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm down with the false papers because that makes sense. And also because of Darcy's whole background. Yeah, it works with me. I added it. False ship papers. Okay, got that. And then we get one more. Oh, captain, my captain. Would you like,
[01:10:25] would you like, express Google maps for our ship? That does sound, I mean, that sounds good. I was also wondering about like lucky charm, actually, kind of was interesting. The, I was looking over here at the listing again because it says that you get each ship gets to add two additional upgrades. For example, you might pick the Cerberus's stun weapons upgrade.
[01:10:55] In addition to the upgrades, each ship comes, you as a group get to add two additional. So yeah, looking at some of the ones for like engine modules, you get the jump drive, a special engine that can activate the ergates that connect systems and translates ships into hyperspace lanes. so you can go hyper. You've got the smuggling compartments like a cargo hold, but it won't show up on routine scans. I think either lucky charm or dark
[01:11:24] hyperspace lane maps would be fun. Let's take the dark hyperspace lanes. We can always get a lucky charm later. You might also think about the fake transponder broadcasts a different ship signal or plays a powerful recording of sensor echoes or acts as a beacon usable remotely. So you could have a false transponder every time you land in a new system. Give me a new name for a ship. I'm down for either one. Adam,
[01:11:54] it's on you. You're the captain. I want a dark hyperspace because I think it will lean more into the strange, if that makes sense. I like the idea of us not, I mean there's going to be action, there's going to be things like any types of games, but I kind of like not having weapons in the beginning on the ship because we're trying to not become embroiled in things that involve violence and things like that. So Neo Google Maps
[01:12:24] for space sounds wonderful. honestly, the other thing that I was thinking for you guys, because it is hilarious to me, would be a coherence cannon, a capital weapon, one shot only until repaired or recharged on ships smaller than dreadnoughts, which you definitely are. May fry systems, incredibly deadly, super, super not legal. We just have the fucking cannon, the universe cannon.
[01:12:57] the hell was that? I'm gonna call it the party five. You only got one bullet in your gun. It's the Roomba! You see Patch over there hitting it with a wrench. No, no, bad sentience, no! Work, damn you, work! I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. To be fair, if I was a Roomba, I think I'd want to blow up a star system also. I kind of feel
[01:13:26] like there's good. I wanted to lean towards, because you guys do have comfort food automatically. I feel like your first experiment in raising sentience was the microwave and you realize that it's a problem because the microwave can no longer move. So it's sentient but it's locked in place. just cussing people out. Oh, look at you walking by. I used to be a food replicator. I used to be able to make Earl Grey tea for
[01:13:56] a bald guy. But no, now I'm stuck here with you hassles making papa noodles. Your popcorn is always slightly burnt. Yeah, if you pull it out early, doesn't matter. The heat kicked up, like the wattage kicked up. There's always one or two kernels that are unpopped that you always find. I like the idea of the built-in food aracocycle with an attitude. The passive aggressive food replicator.
[01:14:26] No, you want tofu. I said I want sausage and biscuit. Tofu. I wanted nachos. I heard healthy green salad. We do need to get if we've got an AI on the ship, we need to give it a name at some point. I don't believe you have an AI yet unless you want to use that as one of
[01:15:14] as think we're ready to go. So how do you guys feel about sailing the stars in the shit bucket? Fantastic! Not a phrase I figured I'd hear this morning, but I'm all about it. We were excited about it when we spoke about this game years ago. I want to thank you, David, for taking time.
[01:15:43] I ordered it, but it was the same year it released at Gen Con. And I've been really excited to play it because we've tried Blades in the Dark a few times and the games have always kind of fizzled. And I think this one's going to be really, really fun. I hope so. I hope you guys enjoy. I thought it was super simple. When I originally looked at character creation, I thought, well, man, there's no way we're going to get enough time out of this for an episode. But, you know, it's incredibly light that it leaves a lot of room for moments where we can elaborate on
[01:16:13] and build a character and it seemed great. I can't wait. That's the fun thing about it is it's simple enough to build a character where it gives you time to be creative. And it's not just crunching numbers and rolling math rocks. Oh, yeah. Like, we talked about, if I can talk about some of the characters that have been created for other games, because I love just how out there we can get. The face for the other group, the brand new person who has never done
[01:16:43] this before, made a basically a space tiefling. So a giant purple demon looking alien with the academic background and the upbringing of her, basically what she said her background was, is that she has a twin sister who currently works for the hegemony who is a somewhat
[01:17:13] high-ranking military officer. And so periodically it's turned into a thing because she uses her sister's identity all the time to just fake her way past the hegemony and blame it on her sister. But she loves the finer things, that's her vice. And so she does all of these jobs to steal enough money to partake of every luxury that she can, but tries to do it on her sister's dime.
[01:17:43] And I thought, okay, that's glorious. That's really good. Then we had Greg, who was part of a space cult, who found belonging by joining up with this cult that said that we are going to pair you with an entity from beyond the stars. And he thought, okay, that means that they're going to give me a friend. He did not realize at first, the tree didn't, that you're going to get something downloaded into your head. The color route of space is
[01:18:12] inside of you. Good luck. And like one of the stories that I have always loved, one of the character concepts is the passenger, the entity from beyond the stars that just kind of says, you know, I'd like to take a look at all of these fun things here on Earth. I want to see the world's largest ball of twine. I want to see the giant haunted scarecrow. Let's go to luchador night, you know,
[01:18:42] all of those things that you wouldn't normally want to do, but you have to now because there's a demon riding inside your head. And I loved that idea to the point where since Greg was running half the sessions and I was running the others, I said, how about I play your inner demon and then on the nights when you're running the game, I just get to drive the body. And Greg said, that sounds awesome. And so we made a binary character where the body is Greg's or
[01:19:12] the body is mine. 50-50. What sights we have to show you. Is that the largest ball of twine? Right? We gotta go see it, guy. I don't think I have ever seen the world's only floating McDonald's. Is that a giant cast iron skillet? We must buy eggs. We're going to make the world's largest omelet. It's gonna take at least seven hours. Reminds me of the Venom movie
[01:19:41] where Tom Hardy's talking to himself the whole movie and it's like, what is this, Eddie? And then there was Mark reading and going, okay, so if I overindulge on my advice and I can't be there, that means that the ship doesn't have a pilot. I'm gonna make a bunch of octopuses. Octopuses. And making three of them that are identical to start. But what was funny about it is that over the course of the game, Henri got
[01:20:11] much, much better at being personable because Henri had to talk on different occasions. And had to do the, hi, we're all fine here, how are you? But then Henry actually had to fight a couple of times, so Henry got good at scrapping. so because the experience flavors the character and what you can do and what you can learn, different characters got better at different things.
[01:20:41] And so they started out as three identical octopi that the only difference was in the facial accoutrement. Is it the one with the cowboy hat? Is it the one with the beret? Or is it the one with the monocle? And I know you're asking how does an octopus wear a monocle? Very carefully. but by the end of it, you know, they were all fully fleshed out characters. And that is part of the
[01:21:10] joy of this is that we don't know what the game is going to entail until we play it. But this has been a glorious roll up and I want to say thank you all three for joining me on this fun Saturday morning, skipping the cartoons to make one of our own. Thank you very much for running it. And as you said, I kind of caught the tail end of it. But I like doing character creations because it gives you a framework that you can paint in or color
[01:21:40] outside the lines. Oh, we're definitely going to be coloring outside the lines. I've already decided that your first contact is going to be Pearl because that is one that I threw at the other party so many times. They loved her. They hated her. And I feel like you guys are going to have that same this old reaction of Pearl. Why? Because fuck you. That's why.
[01:22:13] Pearl is the way that I described her is I want you to think about the family that owns the concept of wine. She's got all of the money. She doesn't need to do any of this. She does it because it's fun and because you are her current play thing. Love of the game. You can try to kill her if you want but don't worry she's backed up. She'll be back with a new clone body and going the last time we spoke your short pearl in the face.
[01:22:42] Why would you do that? You silly monkey. So it's uplifted Edna mode. More or less. No capes. No capes. David I really do want to thank you so much for this. I've been looking forward to this since the conversation started months or years ago. I'm very excited to see it come to fruition. I agree. We will make it work and this keep in mind my thought on this
[01:23:11] game is still the same which is I have this in my back pocket to run in the unfortunate circumstance that we are not able to play kids on bikes. That is the game that we have been dreaming of for a while. That is the game that we are wanting to play on Saturday mornings. To our listeners, look for Kids on Bikes, Black Mountain. It is going to be amazing. I am so looking forward to it. On the off chance
[01:23:41] that we're not able to do it on any given day, we've got this to fall back on. This is the fallback game. This is not the main game. Having said that, I've got a pocket full of jobs and there's going to be heists galore. I'm waiting to see how it all shapes up. For those of you tuning in, thank you so much for coming and spending some time with us today. Thank you so much. If this is your first time listening, hello, we're
[01:24:11] Real Play and Exchange. We're part of the Crid on the Night Network. We're a podcast family with two additional podcasts. One Last Dive, which is an actual play podcast much like RPX is itself. If you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more, can check us out at critinthenight.com or roadplanexchange.com and just hyperlink you over there to it. And
[01:24:41] please like, subscribe, all that fun stuff. If you would like to support us, please help us. We'd like your money to pay for the hosting bills. You can find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash roadplanexchange or if you go to that critinight website that I was talking about a moment ago, there's a nice little support us button where you can see all the options and it'll take you to Patreon and yeah, you could help us keep those dreaded hosting bills at bay. And also help us buy Indian food at
[01:25:12] Does anybody have anything they want to plug? we got you. Like, Darcy, where could we find you outside of this? Oh, all I do is work. This is probably the most interesting gaggle of things that I do. this should be my second recording for our podcast family, but if you want to hear more of my voice and my jokes, please
[01:25:41] listen to Cluster Fork. I am very heavily involved in that campaign. I how much you don't appreciate my Zach Baggins joke. Everyone silently judges Zach Baggins. You just do it not so silently. My
[01:26:11] social media has picked up on it and now all I get on every five scrolls is Zach Baggins edit. You can find me around. I just tend to show up on random podcasts. Mostly One Less Die and RPX, but I have shown up on RPPR and other things throughout the years. I get around. I am terrible about keeping my socials. That's my new year's resolution that I never took part in.
[01:26:41] Keeping my socials up to date. Real plane exchange is on Facebook. Facebook. Facebook.com slash real plane exchange. Blue sky is at RP exchange. Same for Twitter, but I found that it's there. But yeah. So David, thanks so much for taking us on this journey, buddy. Always. Can't
[01:27:11] wait to throw the shit bucket around. I can't wait to see the sir, we've got to do something. It's the shit bucket and they're coming right for us. They've got that glint in their eye like they don't give a fuck. They're charging up their cannons. Have they fired it in the past 87 hours? We don't know. They go, what cannon? It's the Roomba. They're here and the
[01:27:41] Roomba's pissed. It's got a pocket knife. Roomba with a pocket knife loaded into the torpedo tube. Go get a chip. Roomba's got a chip on its shoulder. And a chip in its vacuum systems. I guess until next time, we'll see you all later. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.