The Belle of the Bog

Hello and welcome to Between Two Cairns. I'm Yohai.

Hi, I'm Brad. Hi, I'm Skullboy.

I'm made of meat. Oh, I'm Gabriel.

Oh, no.

I'm getting comedied on our hands.

And today, we're going to be reviewing

Bell of the Bog.

But first, welcome to the show,

Gabriel Slash Watcher DM.

Hello. Hi.

Hey, Watcher DM. Was that a Viagra Boy's reference there?

I don't know what the Viagra Boy is.

What is that?

It was hard to wear band.

They have a song called Man Made of Meat.

A lot of people have referred to themselves

as being made of meat.

There's a popular rock song.

I was wondering if Watcher DM was a fan of the popular rock song.

Brad's just trying to make a musical connection here.

I respect it.

Do you guys want to take a break and watch a music video?

No, no.

Okay, pretty good.

I'm trying to introduce Gabriel here.

Some of our listeners may remember

his moniker, Watcher DM,

from Seven Sealed Spirits,

which we reviewed last year.

And he's got a storefront with stuff that he makes.

Most of your stuff originally was 5E, is that right?

You know, we started doing 5E,

I think, in 2018.

We had like a bunch of little pamphlet adventures for 5E.

And then we've just gone crazy since then.

We play like so much, you know,

Troika and Shattered Arc and OSE.

It's like we play all kinds of stuff now.

So we tend to just create all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

The body is 5E.

Did you feel like,

what was the shifting point for that?

When did you, it was a just person

what you were playing personally that influenced that?

Or like, what's the pivot?

Not from 5E, but what brought in your creative endeavors?

Yeah, so for the creative part,

I think we started out kind of like a baby

with trying to just get our hands on whatever

looked like it was tasty.

And so 5E was within reach.

And it was like, okay, we know the rules were playing this.

I understand the OGL kind of,

I can do this.

And so we'd slap stuff together and,

I think, like, GM binder.

Or whatever the terrible thing of the day was,

like, just getting home brewery.

Yeah, yeah.

Just to get my feet on the table.

Yeah.

Just to get my feet on the mud, right?

And to start to play and understand.

And then,

already at that point, I had kind of like,

if I be kind of,

kind of sloggy, whatever.

And then,

basically, I think it was,

after we had done a bunch of them,

we started digging into game jams.

And so game jams just became like this kind of vector for us to say,

you know what?

I was like, I'm doing a job.

And I'm lazy as hell.

So time constraints and executing something within like a two week window

is way more achievable for me

than letting something drag on for years.

Which hilariously, I also let things drag on for years.

So, yeah, I believe you made a one point.

I think the first time I had heard of you was the,

don't play this game.

Oh.

Yeah, that's a wild one, man.

It's because it's like,

puzzle-y, occult-y,

language stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, we had a weird,

the prompt was something like,

yeah, I don't know, it was make some,

make some puzzle role-playing game thing.

And the idea was that we were going to encrypt

the rules

of the game

as the artifact.

And so the first part of the game was you had to decrypt the rules.

And then the rules,

were the game that allowed you to encrypt

your own version of the rules.

So it's kind of like,

it's like you've found your weird

uncles, you know,

strange bizarre rantings.

You decrypt it.

And then now the thing is,

you are cursed until you can re-encrypt this

and seal it away.

That's cool.

That is a lot like that.

Very few copies.

But it was great, it was really fun to make.

You're creative partner,

Austin, Austin,

Austin Homes, my best friend.

Yeah, right.

Nice.

Is that the home's basic D&D I keep hearing about?

Is that the same home?

Watch your DM?

Unfortunately not.

Okay, Eric J Austin Homes.

You know, it's a Dungeons & Dragons podcast.

I thought it was worth clarifying for people

who may be familiar with the game Dungeons & Dragons.

Not that home, yeah.

I was going to ask how that,

how that,

I was going to ask how that relationship began,

but since she's your best friend,

I think I can kind of guess.

Well, so it actually,

we started playing D&D.

So we met six or seven years ago

through a mutual friend, obviously,

who invited him and his wife.

Why is that obvious?

Now, wife.

Why is it that mutual friend is obvious?

I don't know.

We're friends, I suppose.

No, I mean, there's five ways to meet people, okay?

Right.

Work, work parties.

I don't like the direction of this.

No, keep going.

Keep going to the five ways to meet people.

This is fascinating.

Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that

a friend invited him to our D&D game.

We are all now mutual friends.

Andrew Ferguson actually is the friend who introduced us.

We've written adventures that we've made.

Oh, cool.

Andrew Ferguson.

Is that Fergie from the Black Eyed Peasers?

Stop it. Stop it.

Your jokes are stupid.

Stop it.

I think they're funny.

So Gabriel, go ahead, Brad.

I want to get back to the five ways to meet people.

Actually, because I first I didn't care,

but now that you said it,

I do want to know the other three ways to meet people.

Yeah, we have to know the other three.

How I can meet people.

Okay.

Friends, work.

What do you mean friends?

Oh, through a mutual friend.

Like through a mutual friend.

Yeah.

Friends, work, party, bar.

You know what the last one is?

No.

Bus stops.

Oh, you know what's weird.

I was in my head.

I was like, one time I met a friend

and I was like, oh, I respect it.

I like how Sam is just completely skeptical.

No, no, no, no.

I was just thinking about it,

because I would change bus stop to

just mutually witness event.

You could be on the side of the road

not waiting for a bus

and you could two people could watch

a third person get hit by a car

and that could launch from here.

Do you have an example?

Not a serious, not a serious thing.

You got a person get tapped.

Yeah, you want to go get a drink?

Sure.

Wow.

It'd be cool to dive into like friendships

that arose around specific tragedies

like as a documentary kind of thing.

You know what I mean?

That'd be why.

Titanic best friends, 9-11 best friends.

Like I just want to know about the friendship.

Like the good one.

I don't want to talk about it.

Like it's like that whole

Newfoundland.

I was guessing Maine, because they also say from away.

Yeah, it's there.

It's similar, similar zones.

But yeah, and all the people

that met for that.

Let's get back to the Watcher DM stuff.

Can I wait?

No, no, no.

I want to address this.

I have a story about

I did this girl named Lauren

many years ago.

What's your last name?

I almost said it.

Actually, what I was about to say was

who she worked for.

And I was like, no, that's easy.

So what?

Because she works for a famous journal.

But anyhow, I met this woman

and we dated for a while.

And then we broke up.

No, no, no. We didn't broke up. I left.

I moved to California from Boston.

So we stopped.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

She then moved to San Francisco,

unrelated, like a couple of years later.

I was in my first marriage by then.

So we did not reconvene our situation.

But she, you know, wanted to.

She didn't know anyone in the city.

So I said, hey, let's hang out.

And I was nice to her whatever.

Now, Lauren's unique because her father

perished at sea trying to save a dog.

And when she was a child,

it really affected her life.

It changed who she was.

Here's, here's, listen,

I made this friend also a journalist.

His name was Dan.

He also lost his father

under identical circumstances

actually in Oregon.

And, uh, anyways, I thought,

I thought, listen to this.

I could maybe make these people meet

and they would broaden over shared trauma

married today.

Whoa.

I introduced them.

They went out, totally worked out.

My father's.

My father's connection.

I'm not minimizing it to be clear.

I realized, hey, I dated this woman.

I know how much of an impact it had on her.

Anyhow, Gabriel, so you met your friend Austin

through a mutual friend.

And now I'll, you and Austin and your other friend are all happy

writing stuff for each other at some point.

They can get together.

Yeah, it's some, yeah, yeah.

So at some point, you guys also used a bunch of AIR

which you then later replaced.

Is that correct in different modules?

I mean, it's kind of hit like in 22.

I think we were like, oh, great.

We can take all this stuff you've been writing

and, you know, put it out

and see if, you know, see if people like it

and take it up and stuff.

And it was convenient.

Obviously, it was kind of easy.

And it was like, wow, mess around.

Nobody cares what we do.

That was wrong.

People care.

And it was wrong to do.

I mean, I, I, right there with you.

I wasn't publishing anything.

I'd never, I mean, we all, we all played with the toys.

Yeah.

I think the first draft was like, well,

this is sort of neat.

And then yeah, it's like, you know, as things

progress.

But yeah, I think, you know, the AIR

issue, like, obviously, I've had to, you know,

try and make amends on that.

Which has been challenging because like,

I'm just a nerd who is busy with stuff.

And so replacing that stuff and republishing it.

I think the thing is I'm a little fast on the trigger

with like getting stuff out.

And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, shoot it out there.

At least fine.

You know, and that ended up creating a lot more kind of work

and churn.

The big one, I think, was Quest Crawl,

which is our GM list kind of solo experience.

It started off as a pamphlet for one-page

or two-page am.

And it's huge.

It's our biggest work.

Like, people love it.

They play it.

It's very easy to get into.

And so, but it was, you know, all AIR.

It's a, you know, one-page pamphlet.

And so we, I recently worked with a local friend

to recreate all the art, brand new art, brand new layout,

brand new design, everything.

Yeah.

And we're planning on kind of expanding the game

and bringing it to crowdfunding probably sometime in 27,

with hopes of kind of maybe doing like a card,

you know, a card deck and some, some blips and chits and, you know,

the bits.

Well, I'll give you this.

If you go to your itch page,

it is covered in beautiful human-made art.

All the way down.

And there's a, there's a metric ton of it.

The thing about the AIR is, it even,

even despite having used it a few times,

the body of art that I've paid for or created prior

and after is more than 80 percent, right?

Like, we wave more.

But you've even done it yourself, right?

Like, you did that varn thing.

I did some varn art.

Yeah, there's some varn art.

Yeah.

So I have always been this kind of illustrative,

like I like drawing, I like painting and stuff.

I have never been super disciplined and I am clearly uneducated.

So like, I have run up against the limits of my own imagination

many times in terms of what I could become artistically.

Yeah.

And it's only through, honestly, the venue of adventure design

that I've even bothered to put in the effort,

like where I actually, like I'm now involved in a daily

20-minute minimum practice of gesture study.

Yeah.

But that was like, why am I quiet?

Wasn't it?

Wasn't that watercolour?

Yeah, that was me playing along with some watercolour.

I have like all kinds of media, you know,

I've done some paintings in acrylic, I've done some,

I've done lots and lots of sketching and illustration

and like, it's all okay.

You know, it's not, I think the problem with all art,

right, from an artist's perspective is,

it's either never good enough or it's perfect

and neither is usually true.

So, because it's not my act of creation

that ultimately matters, it's kind of the viewers act of creation

and that's...

Well, I think it's great.

Yeah, man.

I think it looks great.

That's so admirable.

Yeah.

I think it's, there's a lot of value in the doing.

You know, I think a lot of people who love art

and want to make art, like, die on like,

wow, I'm never going to climb to the top of art mountain,

you know what I mean?

And they just kill themselves in their head.

But like, you know, you got to like, you got to walk,

you got to climb the mountain to get to the top of our mountain.

You know what I mean?

It's like, and that's, there's value in the climbing, you know?

Well, I think, you know, people,

I think often feel like failure is the end.

And it's like, no, dude,

every success you have ever achieved has been reached

because you stand on a mountain of failure.

You have climbed through all of the experience

of sucking at something until you don't.

Right.

And so, you know, starting off in this whole exercise,

was really that.

I looked around and was like, holy crap,

there's so much amazing stuff out there that I would love to make.

I've got ideas of my own and friends' ideas that I want to bring out.

But I could sit here in my basement forever,

achieving nothing by, you know,

trying and practicing without ever releasing anything,

or I can learn to release.

And so, making crappy things that kind of sucked for years

has been the avenue of becoming even slightly competent,

which I think, you know, seven-sealed spirits,

I think, you know, how you leveled an amazing compliment,

which was that there's talent in there,

like there's, you know, there's actual skill in the doing of it,

despite kind of the chaos of the result.

And I was like, man, that's exactly, you know,

because I'm not outcomes obsessed.

I don't think I'm going to achieve something perfect,

right, every time that I put effort in,

but in exercising the muscle of that effort,

it becomes better every time.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you.

Right, no, I think a lot of people, yeah,

they get caught up in the like,

well, it's not going to be perfect.

And it's like, yeah, perfect is the enemy of the good.

Right.

You know, good enough is better than good.

And that's the only way, yeah,

it's the only way that you do stuff.

And it's like having a practice,

having like a schedule, having a, you know,

being able to finish things,

there's a psychological thing that happens

when you finish a project where you can finally look at it

a little bit more objectively.

It's like it's not your baby anymore.

It's like it's out in the world and you can be like,

did this work?

You know, it's like, you know, it's like having,

it's like after a relationship,

being able to look back and say like,

what didn't work about this?

Like now that I've got like a cool head.

It's like sending an email, you know?

You never really feel like it's,

no, no, I mean, when I write an email,

I don't actually notice the problems I've put in the text.

Until I've hit send, which is why I have the

undo send button by the way, in Gmail.

It's amazing, because I don't,

I literally hit send and go,

oh shit, I didn't hit undo.

Yeah.

That happens like five times a week, you know?

Yeah.

The head for that is actually to send the email to yourself.

So you just send yourself the email first, always.

Oh, yes.

And if you yes, you're just like make sure to send this along

to someone when you finally realize you're in it.

It's good.

Sometimes I will send an email to myself as a note

and then get excited when it says new email.

I forget.

I forgot.

I just got it.

Brutal.

Well, watch your damn what you said.

Well, you said like you got, you know,

some kind of crowdfunding thing in the works.

Is that way you're actively working on now?

Is there anything you're cooking on now that you're excited about

that you want to talk about at all?

I'm trying to fulfill on this.

So this is the privatized little hell,

which is the 5E adventure that we wrote.

Nice quality.

Is that right?

Dude, it is so far the favorite artifact that we have constructed.

It's 100 pages.

104 pages.

Hardback.

Mixed in.

Nice.

Nice mat.

Great art from Lady Lowerly.

I like the sound of that skin on the mat finish.

Let's get a hand sound.

Can we get the rubbing?

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, that's really good.

That's the sound of a mat finish I want to touch.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm trying to resolve that.

When you write 5E adventures now,

are they influenced by your experience in Trika of all things?

I mean, do you?

Well, you know, it's funny to say that,

because I think that's always been at the heart of our 5E stuff.

If you've read any of our 5E stuff,

you're going to see it is not the Watsy stuff.

Right.

It's really weird.

No, it looks very...

It looks like an OSR product.

Exactly.

Layout presentation.

The concept has always been like,

you wanted to bring the sensibilities of kind of that OSR attitude

to a 5E audience.

Yeah.

And, you know, whether we succeeded or not,

I think is up for debate.

But, yeah, we try.

We keep trying.

And so, like, yeah, all the stuff Austin writes is super weird.

This is another Austin book.

And then, I guess you asked about other things we're working on.

The other big thing that we're kind of gotten the fire is,

we had done an adventure for 5E called Long Bear Valley.

It's a pamphlet,

but it's like a hexpro, like 20 hexpro.

And we've expanded that into a ShadowDark book.

And I just got the final pieces of art from Evelyn Morrow.

Nice.

For that project.

So, very excited to have like a nice...

It's going to be so good.

So, really excited about that.

I like the idea of Evelyn Morrow in ShadowDark.

You know, I feel like ShadowDark needs some more like bendy elbows.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's very colorful and weird.

And I love it.

Yeah.

If I could complain for a second,

I do feel like as much as I appreciate the ShadowDark layout and aesthetic

that they've kind of profligated,

it's like much better than anything that watts here,

any 5E stuff out there besides, you know, maybe your stuff, Gabriel.

It's now...

I backed like 5 ShadowDark Kickstarter in February.

And they all look exactly the same.

Like the interior layout is identical.

It's the same exact layout.

So...

I have some more outfits.

Yeah.

I'm like...

You know, it's like...

No, they're not forcing you to do it this way.

You don't have to do it this way.

You can do differently.

And of course, there are people who do.

But if I just got to put this out there enough,

like we can diversify a little bit, please.

Yeah.

I think there's a certain amount of like...

So many times it's newer creators, right?

So like you're...

Most of the time you really are going to see that with newer creators

who are trying to learn the rules before they can break them.

Right?

And so like in my case,

if you look at Doom Desert in the Canada of Delirium,

it was one of the first scenes that we made that was kind of me getting my head straight.

About design.

And what I did there was I tried to ape Gavin Norman's work.

Right?

I tried to ape the old school essentials style of design.

I wasn't super successful, but like...

You know, it reads.

It looks good.

It looks clean.

I think the values you get from the OSC style of design are presence.

Yeah.

You know, not necessarily in...

You pitch perfect.

They're not quite as sharpened, but you can see the effort.

And I think like a lot of that shorthand, it achieves two things, right?

It makes you feel competent, which is important.

You want to make something.

You have to feel like you kind of have something that you know what you're doing.

It also sells it as like what it is.

You don't have to worry about somebody looking at it and going,

well, what is this horse crap?

I don't know what this is for.

They can see it and go, what's the shadow dark book?

I know what I'm saying.

I know that it's going to be readable.

I know that it's going to be usable within a certain context.

It's going to be probably a bit terse because of the space used for the text.

So there's certain things and values you get out of it that are not...

You know, I don't think it's laziness per se.

I'm sure it in some cases it is.

I do think that as shadow dark is still newer in the realm of OSR systems, things like that.

You do have those, yeah, those first offerings from people.

I think do trend towards being similar to what we've seen.

I think for this reason, and I don't know,

it's like I think about every indie metal band I've ever seen has the same black t-shirt

with white letters, scrangly, spiderweb, logo kind of thing.

And there is a certain amount of that that's just like,

well, I want to have one of the things.

I want to be part of this.

It's like I want to prove that I can also walk into

walking to the show and obviously be a metal band.

And in the same way, I think you have a little bit of that.

I am looking forward to, though, as shadow dark matures as a product

and the scene grows and you have people's get a little bit weirder takes on

and a little bit more flexibility in not just the graphic design style,

but artistically is how I'm thinking about it.

It will be nice.

You should check out Tower of the Spectral Sorceress,

which is an adventure that we made for shadow dark.

And it's very colorful.

It's very cartoony.

The layout is, again, kind of, you know, it feels shadow dark-ish,

but it also has some color to it.

It's got some tone to it.

It's got some stylistic decisions that are a little bit outside of that.

Yeah, I've seen a couple of things.

This is one of them.

I've seen a couple of things that are leaning more into, like, the sort of

stoner metal, like psychedelic, and shadow dark.

I really like that.

I think that's a good...

But as a system, you can make it look like whatever you want.

There's morkborg adventures that are not morky-borgy at all.

You know, there's...

This is true, but I think a lot of people when they're getting in,

that's not their objective.

They're like, oh, I want to make a morkborg.

I want to make it look like that.

Yeah, you want to signal that you belong, you know, to...

Walk before you can run.

In many cases, right?

Yeah, exactly.

They want to get their pieces before they go change stuff.

I do not understand.

But let's move on.

I'm going to read it right now.

I'm going to read this new book.

No.

Let's, instead of that, instead of doing...

Instead of that, let's move on to...

Sores, let's move on.

Let's move on.

Sores, let's move on.

Let's move on.

This is what we do now.

We're going to buy a book and read it to the person who...

I just read it aloud.

Just the rest.

We're going to read it to them.

Did you know you wrote this, sir?

So anyways, can I just move the show on?

Please.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's move on to our main review.

For today's review, we're going to be talking about Bell of the Bach.

This was written by Tom Legier, who also did the layout and almost all the art.

He also lists himself as editing credit, which I never buy self editing.

I think it's kind of impossible, but I know what he means.

He also did the maps, you know, cartography.

There is some art from Bach Boa, casino graphic doodles that was included.

And it was published by Tom again in 2025.

It's an A5 book, 80 pages long.

For Dragon Bane.

And before we continue, this is our...

So this is our first published Dragon Bane episode.

There may have been another time where Brad and I read a module for Dragon Bane fully

and then decided not to review it for reasons I won't go into.

But this is the first that has ever come to the airwaves.

I just want to read something.

So I ordered this right after it became a hardback.

I purchased the PDF initially and then later when the hardback came out.

I ordered it.

And I got this nice little note.

I'm going to read aloud to you guys.

It was inside the book.

This seems personal.

It's not personal, but I think it's nice to...

This is my way of saying thank you back.

Shut the fuck up.

Okay.

Deer your chi.

Thank you so much.

I want you to know it so much is underlined.

For being one of the first people to buy a hardcover of the bell of the bog.

In quotes, by the way.

You and my friend Bryce, who turned me on to Between Two Carons,

are most directly responsible for its creation.

So it makes me incredibly proud to send this book to you.

I'll see you at B2C-PDX.

Cheers.

Tom.

Ah, sweet.

Whoa.

He's coming.

I feel like I had to read it because he specifically shares out our show.

It's cool.

I'm wondering who his friend Bryce is.

Bryce Richardson, I believe his name.

He's listed as a play tester in the book.

I don't know, Bryce.

I was hoping it was Bryce Harper, the baseball player.

That would have been cool.

He's got like a famous baseball player into...

I'm guessing it's the same Bryce listed as one of the play testers.

All right.

It's got to be at least one professional baseball player that's heard of the OSR, right?

No shade to Bryce Richardson, by the way.

Shout out to Bryce Richardson.

You know.

Okay.

You do you buddy?

Keep it up.

You're doing great.

Before we hang in there, slugger.

Okay.

Before and throughout there, if you're listening, hint us up, man.

We'd love to have you on the pod sometime.

You know, you make that joke, but these things have happened before.

Right there.

We thought if that guy on my, yeah, man, he's fine.

Okay.

Okay.

Let's just hang on.

Before we get into talking about what this adventure is all about,

I had already bought this before talking to you, Gabriel, but then you actually pitched

it as a review to us because it was people like us, you knew or whatever.

So why don't you talk about your experience just with the book itself prior to coming

onto the show?

Yeah.

So it's actually super weird.

So Tom and I worked together in San Francisco 10 years ago at a software company called

Glyphi.

And so yeah, we like, we worked together on some JIRA plug-in.

We're both software engineers and after, as he and baby.

Yeah, right.

And so like after years apart, I think he had somehow caught wind that I was doing some

publishing stuff through LinkedIn and reached out and was like, hey, I'm making a thing

for Dragon Bay.

And I was like, oh, I haven't played that yet.

I really want to.

And it was just a super casual, like, yeah, I'll see you in five years, I'll just like

move down.

I didn't really talk about it after that.

And I saw it come out.

I was like, oh, that's exciting.

Tom made his thing.

That's so cool.

And I was like, that's dope.

Good luck.

I hope it does really well, whatever.

And then when you hit me up, I was like, oh, dude, Bill of the Bug.

Yeah, I know this guy, like we worked together and we're buddies.

So sure enough, when you said, okay, cool.

I was like, well, great.

I got the book.

I hit up Tom and was like, I don't, you know, I'm not going to have time to run this thing.

What do you think about maybe running it for me and some friends so I can get a player's

perspective?

Because I think I don't know that I've heard too many players perspectives on between

two canes.

So I got the chance to kind of chop wood as a, I think Zeke, is it Zeke Graves?

There's a guy of Graves, one of the included pre-generated players.

So you're telling us that you, you are coming to this review as a player.

That's cool.

I have a player's perspective.

I haven't also read it.

Yeah.

But no, but run by Tom himself.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's a double, that's a double unusual situation.

I tried to bring it up.

Bring it hot.

Yeah, that's like, I did, I did not know that.

That's a good question.

All right.

All right, all right, all right.

Side note, I have used Glyphy and my previous job.

We used Gira for network diagrams.

I just got to throw that out there.

That's so fucking weird.

Okay, it doesn't matter.

Why don't we talk about what this adventure is all about?

Brad.

All right, this is a, this is an adventure that takes place on a river boat.

Kind of has some of that New Orleans flavor.

I don't think I can do that.

I'm not.

I won't do the voice.

No.

They say, they say, they say New Orleans, that's what they say.

Okay, I'm my, I can't give it some jazz really hated it when I said anything other than

New Orleans.

They fucking hate it so much.

All right, that's fair.

That's right.

All right.

I'm sorry.

New Orleans.

New Orleans.

New Orleans is fine.

If you said New Orleans.

Oh, they get real mad.

Okay.

They get real mad.

I won't, I won't, I won't.

Although they all, they did teach me, I will say two things happened with my old co-workers.

One was, I once asked for help and one of my co-workers said, I'm your Huckleberry,

which I loved.

And then the other time was, they taught me the expression, how your mom and them, how

your mom and them, how is your mother and them, I guess it means, which is a way of saying,

like, how is everything going?

How's your mom and them?

Okay.

Love it.

Love it.

Okay.

Go on.

There's a baby inside, like a little, like a little, little, little cake, cake, cake,

cake, cake.

I got it.

I know that one now.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So this is, I'm going to call this something like a party crawl.

It's, um, players are getting onto a boat.

This is, this boat is docked in a town and there's a festival going on.

The festival is, um, what does it call it?

Yeah.

Yep.

That's the festival.

Fett debene.

And, uh, this, this guy, old Billy, he's got this river boat and he's like, come on, you

know, let's go on the boat.

There we got gambling here, join the party, the party's going, you know, so you get on

this boat and you quickly find not all is as it seems on the boat.

And escaping this boat may prove difficult.

Yeah.

It is, um, there are a lot of NPCs.

This is a very talky adventure.

Um, it is not like as overtly hostile as like a lot of modules.

This is kind of a module where you kind of walk on this boat.

You might explore.

You're talking to people.

You're kind of just trying to figure out what the heck is going on and how do we get

out of this sticky situation?

So, um, river boat is quite a large location.

We have 28 detailed locales of some of them are like the river and like the nearby swamp.

So I don't know.

It's probably like 25 detailed, uh, room locales on the, on the boat itself.

And that's what it is.

Anything else we'd like to add here?

Oh, I don't want to add that.

So this is for Dragon Bane.

Anyone here besides Gabriel played Dragon Bane before?

I have played it one time.

Yeah.

Cool.

For those who, it's, for those who don't know, it's, uh, it's the English translation to

the, uh, in 1982 Swedish game, drug car, octaminer, which is dragons and demons, uh, which

is a Swedish RPG.

Um, it's a roll under skill system.

Is that right?

Yeah.

I trust you.

It's got, it's got ducks.

There's ducks in it.

It's got the mallards.

Yeah.

Even the modern one has ducks.

Yeah.

It looks like dark winged duck.

It looks honestly.

And Wolfkin.

Yeah.

It's second coolest ducks in games that I've seen.

So I'm, I'm normalized to Wolfkin because they're in, um, uh, palladium, but, uh, the duck,

the duck thing, I just, I've never been okay with the duck stuff in any game, but,

yeah.

There's a fine tradition of duck people.

The room, room quests has got the duck people.

Yeah.

Rune quest is the most notable duck based, uh, is another one of the, uh, gen, genel

de clays did a, did a, uh, uh, duck.

She did the least one thing for them.

Yes.

Duck tower, which was a parody of her own dark tower.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's ridiculous.

Uh, all right.

Well, let's move on to talking about the art, you know, the, the artist is the creator,

which is always a unique thing when you get to see their vision as, I guess as pure

as you could imagine it, you know, um, so I'm curious.

What, what did you all think about the art?

I love it.

Personally, uh, so I know for a fact that Tom, as he described it, he taught himself how

to draw for this module and like, uh, as somebody who has also taught myself how to draw,

he tried way harder than me, like, there is a lot of effort bound up in each of these

illustrations.

I, that's, that's infuriating.

That's, yeah, that's really obnoxious, actually.

So, um, yeah, looking, yeah, looking at this, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

like this, I, I, I had that as like, uh, as I was looking at this, I was like, I wonder

if this person, I wonder if this is the first thing that they've, like, that, that they

taught themselves to draw for this.

Uh, and I say this in a loving way, like I love that, uh, you know, we've already talked

about AI art once here.

This is better.

It's better.

It's more fun.

It's better.

Look at all the personality.

It's better.

No, you're acting like this is chicken scratches or whatever.

This is, these, these things look like the things that are, they are describing.

I mean, they're, yeah.

They're, they're much better than like what I would do in this situation.

So I, it's not just, yeah, yeah, not just like normal illustration either.

He does some really challenging stuff in here.

Yeah.

The illustration on page 32 is just a really great example of like attempting a very

difficult angle.

It's got good foreshortening.

I don't love the laziness and the shading with the dance, but like everything else about

this piece feels like, man, that looks hard to draw.

Totally.

Yeah.

The panel on 35 is just robust with texture and depth.

Just really good.

Really good.

Yeah.

There is, there is a lot happening in a lot of these drawings.

And yeah, I was going to say very ambitious, really good.

Yeah.

It's a lot of good, a lot of good facial work in terms of like, you know, conveying, conveying

character.

Yeah.

That's not the easiest thing to do.

That's, and it's done really well.

Like, I think, yeah, it's like, this person is obviously new to like render.

But yeah, what they're doing, I think, yeah, they are like, and having seen, I looked

at Tom's blue sky before we started this, and he has some new pieces that are like traditional

watercolor pieces on there.

I really like them because these, these strike me as probably playing with at least digital

tools for like shading and things like that.

I really like the watercolor stuff.

I got to say, if you can swing it, keep going in that direction, Tom, it's looking really

good.

Yeah.

I have a question.

How is the turtle wearing a shirt, though, because how you get the shirt over your

shell?

I didn't understand that part.

There's the classic turtle.

There's a problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the shell is actually attached to the suspenders.

So, you know, you just take the shell off, and you put the shirt on, and then you just

make sense.

Yeah.

My favorite, my favorite from this is the card player perspective.

There's like a point where there's like just a person playing cards.

I just really like the simplicity of that piece, and I also like the boat maps themselves.

I thought it was really nice.

Yeah, the boat maps are really good.

The pieces I didn't like so much, I don't know.

Maybe you have the words, Sam, on page 12, look at that piece, and then compare it to,

for example, page 19.

Like I much prefer the disgusting person on page 19, or the funny little people around

the table on page 21.

The difference is that I'm pretty sure the lines for this piece on page 12 were also

done digitally.

At least that's what it looks like to me.

So, the digital person is starting as an alarm?

I'm guessing it's all digital.

I think, I have a feeling this is all, like, appropriate.

That's my...

You think everything?

I think everything.

But again, I don't think...

I like the control panel, so it's not like a knocking against digital.

I'm just saying, there is a line art style that I like more than whatever the one on page

12 is.

Again, this is tall, all, so suggesting this stuff.

Is that the one that...

Because there is an additional page 9 is the different artists.

It's not actually on page 9, I think it's page 8, and I think it's the texture behind

old Billy.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Just to speak to the illustration on page 12, I think the challenge with this piece

is the crowd.

Trying to draw a crowd in a reasonable way is daunting, and I'm sure at some point

he was like, ugh, this is good enough.

I can't...

It's the style...

It's the people's faces.

I don't know.

There's something about this style that doesn't work for me, maybe because it's not full

color.

I don't know.

I like the other pieces, though, a lot more, and I especially like the boat piece.

I think...

Yeah.

I think...

There's just so much natural talent here, like you said, like some of the perspectives,

like those overhead of the ants, like that is just, like, that is such a unique vision

to approach an illustration with, you know?

And I like that kind of scratchy rendering of, like, we're, you know, we're using the tools

we have.

I think that works a lot better for me than you mentioned the turtle, let me find that

one.

Tom Page.

55.

55.

Yeah.

I think there's sometimes an overuse on that soft, like, Gaussian blur shading.

Yeah.

I don't like that.

That gives it a really, like, mushy, vasolini kind of quality that I was like, man, I just

wish we did more of that scratchy pencil rendering, you know what I mean?

Like, that just reads a lot better, I think.

I'll give it this, though, that turtle image.

I like that the items behind her are drawn and identified.

Yeah, true.

They're not, they're not like a blur or they're, you can, they're detailed, you know,

they're a ton of work went into these illustrations, you know, regardless.

So no, great.

All right.

Let's, let's move on.

Um, now I was originally going to make you go first, Gabriel, but now I'm thinking,

like, as a player, should I make you go last?

Um, all right.

Well, let's, yeah, let's just move on.

Uh, Gabriel, you, you, you have the most recent exposure to being a player in this

module.

What did you think of the bell of the bog?

Yeah.

You know, it was, it was really enjoyable.

So, um, Tom, what, what he's delivered here, and I think Brad, you're exactly on point

is it's an NPC extravaganza, right?

It, every corner of this place is filled with some weird, nudily creature with interesting

desires and, you know, weird habits and ways of speaking.

And, um, you know, I've, I've kind of recently come into the idea that like NPCs are biggest

bang for buck in terms of world building and painting an interesting scene.

You can't get more value than you can from an NPC with good wants, needs and desires and

fears and stuff.

And so, uh, having played this, it was like really intoxicated to just kind of be in this

world with these really interesting characters.

And I, I remember my character, like being immediate, so I'm a gambler, I think I played

Zeke, who was a gambler, who was like gambling addicted, priest.

And so I was like, oh, great, I go up and I start playing cards and I'm, oh, CC this

chick who's, uh, who's also into gambling, I had a gamble with her and we're going to

be pals.

And honestly, the whole first half of the game was just us enjoying the boat as a place

to be.

Uh, the wolf can win immediately to the buffet and was like, I want to start around

and heat some food.

And so, yeah, just, it was this really, um, magical, wonderful time and he had a playlist

of music.

I think it's actually in the beginning of the book of some actual jazz.

So we got to listen to some jazz while we were playing.

Yeah, a lot of a cuphead.

Yeah.

You have the cuphead soundtrack.

Great music to that.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was, it was just really, um, it was really, really fun.

Now, I also lived in, uh, New Orleans for a little bit of my youth and, uh, have, have

a great love for, for the South, I lived in truthport as well.

And so, um, it was very nice to go back onto a river boat and kind of be in that space

again.

It was very nostalgic for me personally.

Um, and when things got dark and weird, it was awesome.

It was terrifying, all legitimately terrifying.

Um, and I think my favorite bit of the whole thing was how undeadly it was.

It was always, there was an escape hatch to violence that allowed us to keep digging

into a worse situation, uh, that was exciting.

It was, it was very a different, you know, lots of adventures are like, well, you made

the wrong choice.

Now you die or, you know, now you've got to retreat because things have gotten so bad

that it's, it's violence.

But Billy always has a reason it seemed to kind of, you know, postpone your judgment,

which was great.

So great time.

All right.

Well, that's, that's a great player view, um, we'll get your, uh, GM perspective in the

deep dive.

Uh, Brad, what did you think of the bill of the bog?

Yeah, you know, I, I've said this before, some of my favorite scenarios to run are the

party, you know, that, that, that, that was the motivation behind me writing an adventure

called, uh, demon driven to the mall.

I have had the most fun in when, in my DMing when it's this kind of like, yeah, it's, it's

not overtly hostile situation.

It's a party, but something's weird and you investigate that.

And this, I think firmly lives in that genre.

So I always love new additions to that, um, that, that kind of way.

I think that's a good, this does a good job with that.

There's a lot of interesting stuff to, to dig into.

I think like the theme is really interesting, the, like, uh, the NPCs are interesting.

There's just a lot of like good details packed in and obviously a lot of thought has gone

into this module.

Like this is extremely like thoughtful.

There are lots of connections, lots of hooks, um, yeah.

So I, I think that's all pretty solid.

I, I'm something that, you know, not having played it, I just have to wonder about is kind

of like the immediacy or the urgency of action here.

It seems like a lot depends on investigating rooms, right?

And but I don't see a lot of immediate motivation to get players to want to go start breaking

into rooms that they're not able to get into.

Like, I, I don't know.

It's like that drive isn't there like it is in like a dungeon deal.

So I'm curious about how that would actually like play at a table like, I, you know, players

A, we should really get into old Billy's locked cabin.

They want to find some answers like what's going to actually motivate them to actually

do that when there is a lot of action happening in the immediately accessible places, you

know.

So, um, but that said, like, yeah, I think this is a really interesting module.

I think this should probably be a lot of fun.

Um, I, you know, I, I don't know.

Yeah, I think I can end my review there.

What did you, what did you think?

Uh, I, so yeah, I, I really enjoyed reading this.

Um, I really, I enjoy, so this is very, this, I mean, very much in the tradition of,

you know, death on the Nile, you know, murder on the Orient Express, like sort of a bottle

episode.

There's, you got a through line mystery, um, and yeah, and you just have, there's so much

to do.

The density of activity on this boat is so like, even if you, even if you wanted to like

run this as like not, uh, not a, uh, dangerous location at any point.

And you wanted it to just be like, oh, I need a, I need a good riverboat for a game.

Like, this is your module.

It's got so much like thought out mechanically, like thought out mechanics for that kind

of, uh, that kind of adventure.

Um, I was a little bit worried when I started reading it.

I was like, okay, dragonbane.

I don't know anything about dragonbane.

Uh, and then I looked it up and it was like, okay, so it's basically just fantasy, you

know, it's, I mean, it's, it's own flavor of fantasy, but it's fantasy.

And I was like, hmm, fantasy plus like, you know, New Orleans riverboat, like, you

know, like, is this going to be too much of like a hat on a hat?

Like, am I going to be, but like, honestly, I was like, as I kept reading it, I was like,

kind of into it.

I was like, yeah, I like that there's sort of too much going on with the, uh, with the,

the themes and like the genre of stuff that's happening here.

It's just all sort of crowded together, uh, you know, in a way that really emulates the

boat itself.

So I, I thought that was pretty cool.

Um, yeah, overall, uh, this, this kind of thing, this is very sticky fingers, D&D,

uh, which is the most, uh, daunting in my mind to run.

Uh, I'm always very impressed when people successfully do that.

This is the kind of adventure that I would absolutely recommend somebody run if they

wanted to like have like a, you know, a, a, a, a good chunk of like actual play stuff

if they were doing like a podcast like that.

I think this would be an excellent candidate for, uh, that kind of game because there's

just lots of opportunities for like, you know, fun character voices, fun high jings, like

lots of like, you know, unraveling mystery stuff like that I think is sort of the cornerstone

of that sort of corner of the hobby.

Um, but yeah, yeah, I think, uh, I think it's pretty cool.

Right on.

You're high.

Well, um, uh, two things, uh, we didn't mention the layout at all in our art review,

which is a misstep because I think the layout is very good.

Um, uh, you know, it's not like beautiful, but it, it's extremely functional.

The information design is very good.

You have a lot of logical sequencing of bullets and indentations, not a lot of use of, um,

like text gradients or, you know, different kinds of font to draw the eye, but a lot of

use of symbols, you know, there are symbols that indicate different stages that the adventure

might be in.

Um, and, and I think they're done very well.

Like I, I never once had to remember what an eye meant or what ship syncing means, you

know, whatever.

Um, so I, I want to just say, I really appreciate how easy this was to read.

This is not a short book.

It's 80 pages, um, and I read it in two settings comfortably.

Yeah, it's very easy to read.

And it's, and there's a, and there, and whenever there is cross references, there are always

linked, which I really appreciate because then I'm not left thinking, oh, did we already

cover this?

And I just forgot, which is that, that's the real reason that I, I care so much about

linking references to NPCs and items that occur later is that if you don't put a page

number, then it makes the reader assume that they have missed something.

But if you do put a page number, then you can say, oh, I'll just pocket that away and learn

about earnest later, you know, which is exactly what happened.

So I think the readability is 10 out of 10, really good, um, again, not like beautiful,

but really functional, strongly, strongly recommend, um, people follow this example, uh,

when designing adventures of this type, um, as for the setting itself, um, I loved it.

I actually didn't like the included fantasy elements that you're describing.

Like whenever it said, like, ah, you know, an elf preacher, I just, to me, that doesn't

work.

Like I, I'm very much a human's only person.

It's so normal to have elves and dwarves and stuff in there.

And it even makes sense because there's a character who is on the lookout for non-human.

So like, I get it.

I think that was cool, but at the same time, um, there is a, uh, a juxtaposition of imagining

fantasy races in what is clearly like, uh, you know, like a, I don't know if it's like

a gola inspired mythos, um, of course, there's also like, you know, fairy queens and stuff

in it.

So it's not that, it's not that weird to include, um, standard fantasy trips.

So I, again, I'm not knocking it, but it's just not necessarily to my liking.

I do love, um, all the NPCs are fantastic, make total sense.

I like the sort of who's really behind every NPC, uh, uh, structure.

Like I love where you start reading and you're like, okay, okay, who is this club?

Who is this club?

Oh, of course, they're a blah, blah, blah.

That's why there's such clutches.

Um, I, I think that was really well done.

And again, presented in a way that was easy to remember.

I will say there's one part where they mentioned, um, a very important NPC in a very random

space.

And I didn't think that was an ideal location for them because I will not remember that

that's where they are.

Not a big deal, you know, easy to scan for, um, except there's no illustration.

So I would have maybe moved this one NPC, but, um, uh, overall, I, I think it's a great

adventure.

It sounds like a lot of fun.

I would probably struggle as a GM knowing when to hit certain beats and there's a couple

of reasons.

Um, so there's no actual timeline in this.

Like I don't actually know how long the fed lasts.

Like they tell you it starts, um, actually, I'll bring it up, uh, it starts, yeah, there's

no set plot, yada, yada, yada, uh, uh, two to three sessions, one second.

Here it is.

The adventure begins in the evening of the third day of the fed debony.

So, um, the third day of how many, how long is the fed for that part, confused me.

And I searched for it and see that they mentioned how long it's for it.

I couldn't find it.

So there's, at what point does a certain major event occur when the fed is, is happening?

That was confusing to me.

I think a timeline of literal, like at this point, this is when things translate at this

point, this is when you cross the veil or whatever would have been helpful.

We'll go more into that in deep dive.

Um, so I would struggle a little bit with that.

I just have to decide it for myself.

But, um, I think maybe some pointers would have been helpful.

Overall though, it seems like a great adventure that I would love to run or be a player

in.

And I think it's a great, uh, example of how it doesn't fucking matter what system you're

using guys.

Like, you can have fun with rules, like OS Arish, uh, systems, even when you're not

running a door D&D.

Wait, what are you saying?

Are you saying the system doesn't matter?

Well, shut the fuck up.

Brave stance.

Actually, I have a response to that.

Gabriel, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yeah, it looks like you want to say.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, I, that it's such a funny statement.

So system doesn't matter is such a statement about the religiousness of brand.

And systems matter is such an obvious statement about how systems improve the, uh, direction

of play.

So I feel like by saying, uh, systems don't, the system doesn't matter.

Uh, you're, you're kind of invoking the wrong thing.

It's like people talking past each other.

So that's my opinion about system versus systems.

Right.

They're not, they don't mean they, they aren't their opposites.

They're not their opposites.

They're like one is like, no, no, no.

I care a lot about these foundational mechanics that make game, the game

experience the way I want.

And the other one is like, no, don't be such a North of Doc.

Or, you know, a heterodox, uh, adherent to your systems.

It's like, both can be true.

Absolutely.

You know, that's why system matters.

And so it doesn't.

Does it matter?

I don't understand.

Okay.

Yeah.

Uh, you're, uh, you're, uh, you're a lady of the night as far as I'm concerned.

You have no allegiance to any.

I'm a what specific system, a lady of the night.

To a person to a midnight cowboy.

I know, no, no knocking in sex workers.

I'm just describing.

I've got to go stare into the mirror for a while and really ask some deep questions.

And now, okay, um, anyhow, overall, okay.

I've really enjoyed it.

Um, I'd like to get into deep dive so we can just, um, really talk about the screws.

A little more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, uh, deep dive for the bell of the bog starting now.

All right.

Let's, let's, let's do deep dive.

Deep dive.

That's a deep dive.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's a deep dive.

What's the deal with the deep dive?

Spoilers, spoilers.

That's the deep dive.

Spoilers, spoilers.

Yeah.

Forget all the stuff we just said.

Here's the deep dive.

Ready?

Here it is right now.

Okay.

Okay, Brad.

What's this really about?

Yeah.

So this, um, this river boat was built by a fairy queen.

Uh, centuries ago, it's falling apart.

Uh, it was taken over by a frightening ghoul-like creature called.

Is it a bowdag?

Is that what it's called?

Yeah.

It's like a reference to the boo hagg.

Uh, yes, it's good.

This is this guy.

Oh, Billy, oh, Billy.

And, um, he is, uh, he's trying to eat, eat some souls.

Well, he's trying to take souls to power the boat.

And so he is, he lures gamblers onto his ship,

and he cuts some shady deals to trade their souls for luck.

Um, and he's filling their souls into these jars and the jars are sitting around.

You can like, you know, just use them for arcane power for your dragonbane spell casting.

If you find them or you can release them and put them back into their owner's bodies.

Um, but this river boat is going to bounce along the river and cross over into

a fairy.

When it does that, um, the illusion drops.

And there's this big reveal where all of a sudden the ship no longer looks pristine.

It looks like it's falling apart and held together with vines because it is.

And all the crew go from looking like, you know,

dapper riverboat employees to like animals.

So the NPCs, you were just talking to the lady who is not moving from replace on the deck.

It's a big oyster, for instance, and stuff like that.

So, um, really fun payoff here and also ferries a dangerous place.

There's like a kind of a scripted beat where like a gambler tries to jump off.

And is it immediately eaten by like a fairy shark or something like that?

Um, so the challenge becomes how do you get out of ferry?

Because it is going to a town called I think Toad Hollow.

And it's just going to sit there for three years until the next vent where it's going to roll back in.

So there's a lot of different possible ways to escape.

Um, really not scripted at all.

There's many, many, many ways that you could potentially get out of here.

And it's not overtly hostile.

Like there's not ghoulies chasing you around, trying to kill the players.

It's just like while this ship is in a place you don't want to be.

And it's full of, you know, weird creatures and you want to not be there anymore.

That's kind of it.

So some of the confusion that I had was around, like when are the PCs?

At risk.

Yeah.

Like what is the time?

I don't just mean when they do stupid stuff.

I mean, like when are the PCs at risk of being pulled into the boiler room and had their,

having their soul taken out or the back room or whatever, um, and that wasn't very clear to me.

I know it happens on a 15 minute, you know, uh, interval after they enter the, the, the ferry realm.

But I wasn't sure how that affects the PCs.

Also, because I don't know when you're supposed to pierce the veil and how long the fat last,

it was a little hard for me to know, um, what the expected timing is.

So I'm curious, Gabriel, like how did this go down for you as a player?

Yeah.

So the, the way that it worked out for us was, um, that basically one of the PCs, the mallard,

of course, just when that, his whole, everything he had.

So you go get some chips from Edna, right?

When you first get to the cashier's cage and you get some chips and they give them to you

and you trade some token, some bit that you've got.

And so he went and traded some bit and he came back and he, you know, blew his whole load

in one shot.

He lost all of his chips.

And immediately the bouncers were like, Hey, you can't be here without chips.

So he had to go back and get more and that happened one more time.

And then he lost them again, basically the same way.

He just debt everything and lost it all.

And once that happened and he didn't have anything else he was willing to trade, they

were like, okay, we need to make another deal.

And so that kind of pulled him into billies.

And so the motivating component there was mostly that, um, that absence of chips for him.

Right.

And you're right to mention that there is this additional thing where if you, you get

taken to the back room and you have to make a final promise or whatever.

So I, I, I didn't consider that as like that can happen if the PCs are gambling,

but if they're up to other hijinks, you know, trying to find some guy that's missing

or they're trying to break into the safe or whatever, they won't experience that directly.

So the idea is you're not just standing around your, you know, um, uh, either gambling.

And then there's a risk of being pulled aside or you're getting yourself in trouble,

which is giving you risk.

Oh, that, that makes sense to me.

You're gambling or you're buying drinks or you're, you know, it's like, there's other

ways to spend chips on the, on the boat.

Um, and I think that kind of surprised me was how effective that was because I was not,

I was like, okay, I'm going to hang out in this party and I was winning.

Like I was up chips, um, in my gamble.

So, you know, it was, it was great.

But also I was sitting opposite C.C.

Who is trying to steal the, the trinkets.

There's the whole, like glass cabinet of crazy magic items back there.

And so she's like planning a heist to get some, some loot.

And my character is a kleptomaniac.

I played Zeke, the, the elf preacher.

And, uh, so he's, you know, I, oh, I have so much fun playing a kind of fast talk in

New Orleans preacher, uh, who was like, you know, just couldn't help but steal things.

First thing I met Billy, I did a pickpocket.

You know, next person I met did a pickpocket every moment I got the pickpocket.

And so when it was like C.C.

was like, well, we're here for those things in the back and gave me a wink.

I was like, yes, we all, man.

You know, so it was really fun to kind of engage with her.

And if you guys all do voices, I don't think anybody else did other Tom and I both did.

I was going to say, how did you not?

This is like voice heaven.

Oh my God.

Rips out of you.

You can't stop it.

If you're into voice, this was exactly the game for me.

It's not like such a murder mystery, like, uh, game vibes to me.

And now it's out the guy who's coming through for sure.

Totally.

I want to talk about the fishing.

I love, I love that there's a fishing mini game.

This is so cool.

We got a fishing mini game.

Yeah.

This is not only did they give you a couple of like card games to play at the table

that are like nicely simplified.

This is like for so long.

I'll never forget the first time that I looked at the game fate and fate.

I've run fate.

Yeah.

I'm sure you have.

I'm not a big fan of fate for.

I thought either dude, but it was like, it was a, it was a journey or a, it was, it was part of the journey.

Well, you can finally, uh, you know, stop everybody from saying, have you tried fate, which is,

I think the main reason to run it, um, nobody says that anymore.

No, nobody says that anymore.

That's like, that really dates me in terms of the scene.

But like, man, that was like all the people were saying for a while.

Anyways, there's a thing in fate where there's like a whole, there's like a whole

part about like faking a chess game, which drives me absolutely bananas.

I hate it so much.

Um, and we, we brought this up earlier on the podcast.

And I remember Brad had like a, a perfect like, well, you should just do this instead.

Um, and that's, that's what I knew that this was a good fit.

Uh, but I like that there is these sort of simple card games that you can play at the table

with the players that you can, you know, use game mechanics to augment things like

cheating stuff like that.

I like that.

I think that's cool.

Um, it doesn't, it, it, it, it, it, it makes things better.

It doesn't like, I don't know, it's not like, I don't know, it's, it's giving you the juice

of what you're looking for without making you learn like a whole bunch of stuff.

Um, and similarly, the, this fishing mini game is like super fun.

And there's this like neat little game that you play with your elbows on the table.

And you're like trying to like throw a D4 at like a little, um, sheet of paper, like,

uh, like target thing.

I just thought that was really neat.

I love, uh, little things like that that, uh, work because, you know, sometimes, sometimes

they can take over and these feel like very unobtrusive, but like a really satisfying sort

of, uh, you know, Yakuza style, uh, mini game side quest mission thing.

And I think when you're, if you're going to do a adventure that, you know, is very, uh,

golden saucer, if you will, uh, it's good to have, yeah, it's good to be able to play

the games.

Like that's part of what people want to do.

It's fun.

Yeah, I agree.

Uh, so it's interesting because we played online, we did not actually get a chance to try

the, the physical version of the, the fishing game was absolutely going to print it up

before this morning, uh, and try and play it personally, but I didn't have time, um,

but we didn't end up using the fishing, uh, as part of our escape.

So it was critical to the adventure.

It was a critical path.

Amazing.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, overall, uh, it sounds like we all like this module, any final thoughts from

any of you?

This is like the closest thing I think we've, we've reviewed that, uh, reminds me of something

like kidnap the arch priest, yeah, where there's like so much going on and so social and

so considered and I guess I just, I just appreciate that and, uh, anytime, like a module like

this comes across, it's like, it's, I, it, it makes me happy because it's like, there's

a lot of care that went into this and like, it's like, yeah, perfect, but so much intention

and so much thoughtfulness, like, I love that.

I just think it's, I think it's good for the hobby.

I think, you know, like, there are kidnap the arch priest, priest kind of vibes here,

but I think it's such a much more condensed space, you know, it's a little less daunting

and I have to see it's like, tend to not move as much.

Like, there's NPCs that are just sometimes always in one play, like the band is either

in the room where they're playing or in the break room, taking a break, you know, it's

not like timetables where you need to really track everyone.

Oh, Billy is just basically like a random encounter table.

He could be like anywhere.

He just moves around the ship all the time.

There are a lot of tables in this.

Yeah, and I read every entry.

They're very interesting.

Yeah, it feels, it feels complex.

Like, there is a lot of moving pieces here, but it doesn't really feel overwhelming.

Like, I feel like I could read this again and be like, yeah, okay, I'm ready to go.

Whereas like, kidnap the arch priest is like two more reads.

Yeah, no, kidnap the arch priest is still.

You need a class.

They should do it.

Someone should just teach.

We should get Daniel Kwan to teach a class on that one.

That'd be cool.

Okay, one criticism I mentioned during the non-spoilery section was how Queen Bene is just

in the captain's quarter, the explanation for her.

And the reason I don't like that is because she's kind of an end-conditioned for the game.

Yeah, that one.

She shows up and then it's like, okay, she's basically a god.

That's very queen, yeah.

Quite very queen, right?

I think that that should have been somewhere else personally.

I understand why it's there.

It's because if slick-wing escapes, then he goes and gets her.

To me, I would put her front and center right in the beginning.

It's weird to have her just on page 41, you know, randomly.

That's minor.

The only time that happened, but I agree.

It's one of the points of that.

All right, well, this has been between two carons.

You can find us at between two carons at gmo.com or on our Patreon, patreon.com, such

between two carons.

We're also running a convention this year between twocons.com, check it out.

And you can also find Gabriel's workware.

Where can you find your work?

WatcherDM.com.

That makes sense.

You can also get our merch from Skullboy's website, which is betterledgens.com.

And Brad, you got Bradker.net, right?

Is that Brad Heifenker, by the way?

No, no Heifens.

BabyBradker.net.

It's one of the websites online where you can click and read, click out the things as

well.

It's online.

Okay.

And you can find me at KarenPrest.ink.

Thanks to our patrons for making this show happen.

And thanks to Bobby McKelver for making the music and spoiler bumpers and all that stuff.

All right, Brad.

WatcherDM, anything else you want to say to the people?

Thanks for being here, by the way.

Anything else you want to say to the people at home?

Yeah, jeez.

You know, I appreciate the work you guys do so much.

Also jeez bot.

That thing slaps so much harder in real life.

That was just a podcast all the time, but like having it actually here in my headphones

with you guys was like, different, different sometimes, so thanks for that.

And yeah, it's kind of weird being in a room with giants, I guess, in a way.

My mom was kind of making fun of me a little bit.

She's like, you know, they're just guys like you know, I was like, yeah, obviously we're

all just guys like us like, whatever.

But you told your mom about it?

Oh, dude, yeah.

Yeah, hang out with mom every day.

Yeah, in fact, my mom would never understand what this was.

I mean, I've tried.

So for years, my mom has not played role-playing games.

I just got her into into the odd and I'm running the Wonderland by Andrew Cole for her.

Oh, man.

There's like a two less thing.

And then I just got her to join another game or playing his majesty, the worm.

Whoa.

Yeah.

No, crazy stuff.

Mom's a worm.

Yeah.

Yeah, she's a mom.

Mom's a worm.

Okay.

That's for you, Josh.

Yeah, Josh.

That's a slogan.

Sam Poin.

That's going to sell some units.

Mom's a worm.

We're pushing units for Josh.

Okay.

Let's catch up with Shadowdark.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Well, folks, that's the end of the show.

Thanks for tuning in.

Thanks for tuning your dials.

To us, it'd be cool if we were on a radio as you could tune your dials.

I don't know what we got to do to get on a radio.

Who's back?

Do I have to rub?

Do I get on the radio?

That's what I want to know.

You know?

No, we don't need that.

The quid pro quo.

No, I'm talking about it.

I'm not above it.

I want to get on the radio.

You get to get on the radio.

The start of the thing.

Go nuts.

Yeah.

That's what I'm all about.

That dials.

You know, it's pretty.

I think podcasts are cool, but at the end of the day, FM is king.

Crystal clear signal.

And not a bad range.

So that's going to say, of course.

A lot of radio bands that can beat FM.

FM is not the king of the range, but it is, I would say, the king of clarity.

And that's why we respect FM.

No static at all, baby.

That's what we say about FM.

Crystal clear sound all day.

And that's what we respect is the clarity of sound.

And thanks, folks.

If no, we're not on the FM.

Thank you for tuning in.

For doing what you do.

And for spending a little time with us.

At the end of the day, there's only so much time.

That a human has.

You know, you can spend it here or there or everywhere, but at the end of the day.

Ooh, it's like a little bit of butter and you got too much bread.

And that's what life's about.

You know, where do you want to spend that, but spend that butter?

And folks, we thank you for buttering our bread.

That is to say, spending your time on earth.

You're with us.

And that's what we really celebrate.

Appreciate it folks.

Thank you so much for all that you do.

I think you, we, you try so hard.

And even though you might not be recognized or appreciated, we see it.

And we recognize it and we applaud you.

All that you do.

Try it.

You're washing the dishes.

You're putting them on the rack.

You think yourself, oh, if only I had a dishwasher, if only I had one.

But you know what?

You don't need one.

I think the work that you put into those dishes, washing them and putting them on the rack is admirable.

And I think when you only have so much space, the skill required to stack them just so so they don't crash down is a skill.

I think it's an under appreciated skill.

But I want to shout out and salute the dishwashers and the dish stackers with the small rack.

But there's not too many dishes and you keep them stacked up to dry and they don't fall down.

That's worth applauding and we applaud you and everything that you do.

We see you.

Even though some others don't, we see it and we celebrate it and we applaud it.

And we applaud it and we love you for it.

And that's what we have to say.

We love you so much.

And thank you for spending your time and buttering that bread.

Ooh, the butter.

It's all about that butter, ain't it folks?

And that's the end of the show.

Thanks for listening.

And goodbye and so long.

Between2carns.com.

Okay.

Signing off.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Bye.