Armor Goes Clank 032 August 9, 2022 (Guess Who's Back!) (55:03)

Episode 32. Guess who's back?

The only one. Things have been, well, I mean, just look around.

So, I mean, I don't think anyone's going to fault us for just trying to survive in the world as it exists.

Welcome to season two. There you go.

That'll do it.

Or three or whatever it is we're technically on.

I think we're 2.5.

We've got a lot of catching up to do.

I've got a little bit about one of the segments that we've...

It's not a whole lot about one of the segments.

Because I'm going to let you all out there pursue at least some of the specific information.

But I've got a little something on one of the things that I covered a while back.

Then, of course, we're also covering the peoples of the World's Columbian Exposition.

Actually following on what we left off on.

And you have...

I've got some advice on running one-shots.

And I will give you more details about that coming up.

That'll be handy for me because I'm...

Running for the RPG Buffet in the near future.

Outstanding.

So I'll be interested to hear these.

Because even as experienced as I am running games,

you can always use a little reminder of things.

And even I might learn something.

That is my goal.

But before we get into that,

we've got some drive-thru picks because we're still doing that.

Would you like to go first?

I certainly will.

So one of the things that I've been doing

is I am slowly...

I'm slowly amassing the Scion 2nd Edition books

because I've been backing every one of those Kickstarters that has come up.

Because Scion is one of my favorite games.

But one of the things that is not included in the Kickstarter

is a player's guide called Saints and Monsters.

And you can get that on DriveThruRPG for $14.99.

And I did get it on DriveThruRPG.

And it's really excellent.

It's got some really cool stuff.

It's got new rules.

It's new callings.

A couple of new subsystems.

And mostly just some really, really cool ideas

for one of my favorite games.

And how about yours?

Well, I've been getting into Battletech a lot more recently.

Seeing a lot of resurgence.

They've had some Kickstarters run.

They finished one for their Clan Invasion box recently.

And actually, the book that I'm mentioning for my drive-thru pick this time

is kind of related to the clans.

Kind of.

For those folks who don't know,

I don't know.

For those folks who aren't as familiar with Battletech,

it started off with just five different houses

fighting over the leadership of the Star League

that broke up, oh, two and a half centuries

before when the game starts.

During the fall of this,

this one great general who was fighting to restore the Star League

in the first place saw what was coming,

took a bunch of the Star League defense force

and got out of the Inner Sphere.

That guy's son turned the remnants of the Star League

the Star League defense force into the clans.

And then they popped back in shortly after, like,

I think the core game originally started in 3025.

In 3050, the clans show back up.

And they've totally reworked how they work.

They've got higher technology

because they've been able to preserve a lot of the older tech

and stuff like that.

It was a big shock to the system back, you know,

playing in the late 80s, early 90s.

Oh, when those books came out, they were awesome.

That, uh...

A 3050 technical readout.

But this is not the book that I'm doing.

The book I'm doing is called Ill Clan.

It's the newest era introduced by Catalyst Game Labs.

And, you know, it's gone through different eras

with the clan invasion, of course.

There's the jihad caused by an offshoot of the Comstar faction.

Then there was the Dark Ages

where the Interstellar Communications Network has gone down.

And it's apparently still down.

But now we have the Ill Clan,

and basically the basis of that is the clans

who so long ago were trying to get to Earth

to declare a new Star League.

They finally make it.

Specifically Clan Wolf, and they become the Ill Clan.

That is the setting for this new era in Battletech.

You know, you've got all the different factions

either in a strong position but a little bit on the edge,

and then the ones who are kind of weaker

but have opportunities to,

you know, get theirs, basically.

It's looking like a really cool new era.

And that book's 1999.

That's Battletech Ill Clan from Catalyst Game Labs.

And that's stuff that I'm looking forward to

since, you know, I'm getting back into the game.

I've got primed BattleMech figures on my table over the way here

that when we get done with this,

I'm probably going to go paint one or two of them.

Outstanding. That is a good use of your time.

Yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, that's one thing I got to do this past weekend.

Normally around this time of year,

I mean, right now Gen Con is happening,

but a little bit earlier in the month normally

it would have been Hypericon.

Right.

And folks who've been following me on Facebook or on Instagram

have seen my hashtag not Hypericon post.

Alas, yes.

I'm sure with games that we were trying out then,

and we did play, get a glance on Lance Battletech

and then, you know, I think we played that game in.

We went with Clan Mechs because I had some of my figures in that there.

And I had my 90 ton Assault Omni Mech taken out on the very first turn

due to a head hit with a Lagoss Rifle.

And of course, the other guy running our Lance

wouldn't cooperate with me after that.

So it's like we're not going to win now.

So I guess what I what I what I could,

I will leave that person nameless.

But I'm sure you can guess.

You know what? I bet I can.

But, yeah, that was a whole lot of fun.

I got to try out Azul, which is an awesome, awesome game.

I love it so much.

I didn't pick it up when I was at the game shop today

because I was picking up the Clan Invasion box set

and a bunch more battle mechs and painting stuff.

So that was where all my money went this time,

but it is definitely on my list.

Oh, yeah. Azul will be around.

Yes. I mean, there's already another version of it

and several expansions.

So, yeah.

And I played Splendor.

Another one of my favorites.

Yeah, I got to finally try out Definitive Edition

Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Ooh, how was that?

Oh, it was smooth. It was really good.

Good to hear.

Really good, yeah.

We had, I think, Captain Cosmic.

Who?

Did the other people take?

Wraith and Tachyon against the Matriarch.

Nice.

And once we figured out the one time through that,

no, we don't want her flipping over

because she gets all of her points back.

Oops.

So the mask has to stay in play.

Once we figured that out, the first...

Well, I mean, we actually won overall,

but we wasted a little bit of time letting that happen.

Gotcha.

Because, well, something cool must happen.

Right?

Right.

But our host's son is...

They're sort of getting him into board games

with a couple of things.

They have the junior version of Ticket to Ride,

which was interesting.

I didn't actually play that one,

but it's really not much different from the core game.

It's just a lot less stuff to actually put out.

I gotcha.

And a game called Outfoxed,

which is a mystery game.

You move around and you turn over clue cards.

The way that the dice work is you can either go for clues,

which is wandering around the board picking the clues,

or you can find suspects,

where you have little eyeballs or something.

Oh, cool. Okay.

And you roll all of one...

You have three rolls for all three of your dice

to be one of those kinds or the other.

Nice. Okay.

And if you succeed,

then you either turn over some number of suspects

or you can move your piece towards a clue,

however many spaces as you rolled paw prints.

If you don't,

then there's this little miniature fox

that moves across the board.

And if it gets all the way off the board,

then we all lose.

It's a co-op game.

Ooh, that sounds good. Okay.

And each of these suspect cards has a card that you...

a deck that you choose from.

It has all the stuff...

aspects that the perpetrator has,

whether it's they have a scarf or a wristwatch

or a necklace and other things like that.

And you have the card that you put into this little plastic folder

and there's a little sliding door on that.

When you get the little clue thing,

that fits into the hole there

and you pull the door back and you see...

And each of those clues is one of those aspects.

So you can determine whether or not they have those

and narrow it down who it is.

It's sort of a clue with fewer steps, kind of.

Got it. That sounds really cool.

And it's a kid's game,

but I can use...

I can easily see something like that

done with a more adult theme to it.

A hundred percent.

Yeah, yeah.

That sounds like my kind of co-op game.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to think what else I may have played.

I don't remember.

Those are the main things that stick to mind.

So I got to do that.

And that was just a few days ago.

And we did play that one Battletech scenario.

Yeah.

Yeah, just a little bit painful losing a mech first turn,

but that was our fault for using only one map board,

I guess.

Yeah, and someone got lucky and rolled a 12.

So, oh well.

Yeah.

That'll happen.

Let's see.

As far as what I've been up to,

I've been watching a lot of TV.

Really, I can highly recommend both Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight.

Yes.

Liked both of those a whole lot.

For those of you with HBO Max subscriptions,

Westworld is back and just continues to be great.

It's Westworld.

When I first started watching Westworld,

I didn't expect it to turn into...

the cyberpunk series I've been wanting,

but here it is.

Yeah, I've really been enjoying those.

I did run a one-shot of Monster of the Week over on Jim Ryan's channel.

And once that shows up on YouTube,

I will throw a link into whatever show notes are closest to that.

Coming up, I'm also going to be running on October 21st,

I'm going to be running a game of Hollow Point for a charity called Play Cancer Away.

So I'll have a link to their Twitter and other information about that.

And the player sign-up sheets are already live.

Click over to that if you're interested in playing

and help us raise some money for cancer research.

Awesome.

In the gutter Skypes, I've been running Traveler with the Secrets of the Ancients.

Nice.

So that's pretty good.

And the other group that I was playing with,

I was doing the Mythic D6 Ordo Noctis game.

Oh, yeah.

I ended up having to abandon that, too, for similar reasons.

But we're getting ready to start a fringe-worthy game using the Cephas engine.

Ooh, I like the sound of that.

Which is basically Traveler.

Yeah, in a lot of ways it is, isn't it?

Yeah, pretty much.

That's what it got derived from by a couple of steps.

And I'm also going to be, for the RPG Buffet next month,

I'm going to be running a one-shot of...

Star Trek Adventures.

Oh, which is...

So I've got to figure out that whole thing.

Yeah, that's going to be fun.

And I really like that system.

I have played...

I think I may have played every Star Trek game.

I think I have played and or run all of them.

And this one is my favorite.

Awesome.

I like what they did with it.

The last Unicorn one was close second.

But I really like what Medivius did with this.

I like the system.

I like the way it feels.

I've only run it once so far,

but it was such a good experience.

I really want to do it again.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing this one.

Yeah, I am glad to hear that

because I'm kind of dreading trying to figure out

the different point economies that are active in this thing.

But we'll see how that goes.

Yeah, it's got a lot of stuff.

But...

Yeah, for me...

Well, I'll tell you, my favorite part of it, though,

is the character generation.

So if you're doing pregens, if nothing else,

you'll have fun doing that.

Yes, absolutely.

Before we get into the one-shot advice, though,

I do have one quick update about the man from TARED.

And I was so surprised to hear this.

There's a YouTube channel called Disinference.

We'll have a link to them in the show notes.

I'll make sure that Brian gets that.

There's a video called

How Reddit Solved the Man from TARED Mystery.

A thread came up about it on the Unsolved Mysteries subreddit.

I don't have the full details right in front of me,

but apparently it comes down to there was an actual guy,

but rather than being from another universe or something like that,

he was running on a fake passport.

Hmm.

There's a reference to a city that turned out to be actually in...

Algeria, and there are a people there called the Toreg.

Right, okay.

And that's where you start getting some of that in there.

And there was references to this in the...

There's apparently a reference in 1960 in a Canadian newspaper

about the case in Japan dealing with this guy and his fake passport and all of that.

And apparently it got discussed in the Canadian Parliament.

At least the name of...

The actual name of the guy got mentioned in something to deal with the stuff there.

So, yeah, it turned out to have been based on an actual guy's just, like I said,

using a fake passport rather than some other mystical thing.

And it turned into all of this.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm looking forward to reading that.

Yeah, once...

Like Mark said, we'll have the links in the show notes.

And as soon as I get them, I'm going to go check it out.

Yeah, the...

Notes thing on the YouTube video,

it has a link to the Unsolved Mysteries subreddit post.

So you can find that easy, and we'll have all of that for you.

And that is a less fantastic thing now,

but you can still use it for all kinds of fun.

Absolutely.

And so we'll take a quick break here, and we'll come back with tips on one-shots.

We'll be right back.

I'm glad I read them, because it put me in mind of running this specific session differently.

And I've run a lot of one-shots before,

and I have sort of just naturally, over the decades that I've been game mastering,

made adjustments here and there.

But despite the fact that I have been game mastering for a rather long time,

it actually didn't occur to me to go in with purpose, if you see what I mean,

in order to...

run a one-shot.

I thought that what I would do, because as Mark said,

even those of you that have been game mastering for a long time,

and Mark and I are certainly among them,

I've never stopped encountering new things,

and learning new stuff,

and paying attention to the way other people run things.

And so part of this is having read other people's advice on it,

part of this is just having done it for a long time,

and a big part of it is watching and or listening to it,

and a lot of actual play sessions,

most of which, you know, a whole lot of which end up being one-shots.

So I've been kind of paying attention to what worked and what didn't for them, too.

And as with all advice, of course, your mileage may vary,

every single one of these is conditional on the way that you run things,

and the way your players for that specific session go.

But I can just say kind of what's worked for me.

So first off, the reasons you might want to run a one-shot,

the biggest one for me is like if I'm at a convention,

because even though I have not been in a...

attending conventions in person for a while,

I have virtually attended some conventions and I have virtually run some games.

With a few exceptions, convention games are always going to be one-shots.

Sometimes, let's say that you're normally a player,

but you'd like to just try your hand at game mastering,

but you don't want to tackle a whole campaign,

one-shot's perfect for that.

It'll just give you a taste of how to do it,

it'll give you, like, some more confidence,

and just using the skills,

and especially if you're playing with your group that you've been playing with a long time,

if you're like, hey, I'd like to try running something.

That's how I think a lot of people will get started.

And another reason you might want to do it is you might just want to play something different

from the game that you and your group are usually playing.

Maybe you don't want to, again, maybe you don't want to do a campaign out of it,

but you just want to try a new system.

Everybody's interested in this new game that came out, let's just see how it works.

So my first actual piece of advice on this is,

pick a game that works well for one-shots.

You could probably make almost any game really work well for a one-shot.

And in this case, I'm talking about games with traditional Game Master and player setup.

A lot of the GM-less games work really well as one-shots.

For example, Fiasco, Follow, Kingdom, stuff like that.

But if you're wanting to run a one-shot,

I would pick something like Hollow Point by VSCA,

which is basically designed to be a one-shot.

Which is basically designed to be a one-shot.

The first game in the convention, Monster of the Week,

works particularly well.

It's right there in the title.

You can just, you know, you turn it into an episode of a show that you wanted to see.

But for that matter, I mean, Pathfinder and D&D work exceptionally well

as long as you craft your adventure properly.

I would also, if you're at a convention, always do pre-gen characters,

because you don't want to take up part of that session doing character generation.

Unless you're playing a game like Hollow Point,

in which character generation literally takes 30 seconds.

Other than that, you need pre-gens for a convention.

I would actually recommend pre-gens no matter what,

unless you have the opportunity to get together with the people beforehand,

either online or in some manner,

and have them make characters before the session.

Whatever you do, try not to take up session time with character generation.

Or if you're going to do that, make sure you plan it.

Make sure you plan like a six-hour session.

And just build in that time.

I would definitely recommend that.

The other thing I would do,

if you are making pre-gens,

make more characters than you have players.

Because that way,

when you're handing out the choices,

people have more of a choice.

You don't get that one person at the end

that's just stuck with the one character that's left first off.

Which, you know, maybe they're fine with,

but at least this way,

the person at the end has three or four to choose from,

as opposed to doing that.

And also, everyone gets more choices.

Now, the challenge for the Game Master in that case, of course,

is make sure that your adventure works

with any combination of characters people might pick.

Just make sure when you're making those,

they all fit.

Make sure whatever you have for your adventure

doesn't rely on someone picking the wizard,

because you know what's going to happen.

I've been in that situation.

I've seen that happen, too.

However, having said that,

you can use anything that they don't pick as an NPC,

because you've already made the character.

So, worst-case scenario,

you can have them show up,

but that's less fun for the players.

One other use for those extra PCs, though,

is if one of those characters

that the players did pick gets killed,

then you've got someone else for them to play.

Immediately, they're just like,

oh, looks like you can choose between

the rogue and the ranger now.

Which one do you want to play?

And you can throw those in,

assuming you have things set up that way.

But hey, you're the Game Master.

You can set things up that way.

The other thing that I would recommend is

start the player characters out

already together in the same place,

and knowing each other,

and having watched together before.

At this point, you kind of need to decide

what your philosophy behind running the one-shot is.

Do you want this one-shot to be

like the pilot of a TV show,

or do you want it to be more like

the final, like a season finale?

Because if you do,

then you can make adjustments.

But either way, once again,

I would recommend not having the players

meet each other in character.

Just say, if they're making the characters up

during character generation,

have people come up with connections.

If you're playing Monster of the Week

that's already built in,

a lot of games do that these days.

So that's kind of nice.

Having said that,

don't be afraid to make adjustments

to the game, for that matter.

Monster of the Week suggests starting the characters

out with fewer luck points

than you would have if you did a campaign.

So that way, they can run out of luck points,

or they're more likely to run out of luck points,

and they get to the end,

and then they have to make those decisions.

Yeah.

I like that idea a lot.

Another thing I like to do on a one-shot,

I did this with,

when I was running Scion first edition,

and it was just a one-shot,

I started the characters out as demigods

instead of heroes,

because it was only a one-shot,

and I thought it would be a lot more fun

if people could just start out

with some of those advanced powers.

And on top of that, again,

it was a one-shot,

and we just, you know,

we wanted it to be big,

and just, you know,

people throwing all kinds of stuff around.

You don't have to start people off

at the beginning level,

I mean, you don't have to do that

with a campaign either,

but sometimes that's the fun of a campaign,

is letting people grow.

But in this case,

yeah, just see what happens.

If you're like,

let's say you just got a new source book,

and it's got some new stuff in it,

and you're curious about how they work,

okay, fine,

you're all,

eighth level now,

because that's what you need for this spell.

I would recommend keeping puzzles to a minimum,

because you don't have much time.

I'm assuming here

that you maybe got a four-hour session.

Especially if you're at a convention,

you do have a four-hour session,

and you've got a hard stop,

because the next person needs that table.

If you're just playing, like, you know,

with some friends and stuff like that,

you can make it a little longer,

but sometimes, you know,

people have lives,

and they have places to go.

Anything that takes up

a whole lot of time

unless your players are really,

really into solving puzzles,

I'd recommend keep them to a minimum,

and also rely more heavily,

this is just good advice anyway,

rely more heavily on what the characters can do

rather than what the players can do.

As far as, like, investigation

and stuff like that,

and speaking of investigation,

if it is investigative,

if people are trying to figure out,

like, a mystery or something like that,

make the clues super easy to find.

Easier than you think they should be,

because you came up with,

so you know the answer.

The other option, of course,

is don't have an answer in mind.

See what the players suggest,

and, oh, it turns out they're right.

Just improvise.

Let the players tell you what it is,

even if they don't realize

they're telling you what the answer is.

If nothing else,

borrow the design philosophy from Gumshoe,

and just, you know,

they're going to get the clues.

It's a matter of how they put them together.

And that is an excellent point.

I forgot to mention Gumshoe,

but Gumshoe games also work well for one-shots

for exactly that reason.

If you are doing an investigative game

and you want to do a one-shot,

I would check out any of the Gumshoe games,

specifically for that reason.

But check it out.

Pilgrim Press does the Gumshoe,

and it started out with Esoterrorists,

Trail of Cthulhu also.

So, yeah, there are some really, really nice,

and it's expanding a whole lot.

They've got a new fantasy one out,

so it's really cool.

I'd say good elementary ones

to start with that gets you to the core concept right away

would probably be either Esoterrorists

and maybe Fear Itself.

Those would be my...

Oh, Fear Itself.

Thank you.

Yeah, those would be my recommendations.

Fear Itself specifically, I think,

would work great for a one-shot,

now that you mention it.

Oh, also a game called Inspectors,

which Esoterrorists always reminds me of.

And I'll have links to these in the show notes,

but Inspectors also work great for one-shots.

It's sort of like Ghost...

It's basically Ghostbusters.

Yeah, and the...

The investigative thing there

kind of ties into one of the other things

that you mentioned,

except it is explicitly

when the PCs make a task role of some kind,

they decide what happens.

So they literally make up the mystery

as it goes along with the little side tracks

whenever they fail a role,

and the GM has input on it then.

That creates some wonderful stuff.

It really does.

And that's one of my favorite things

about systems like that.

Monster of the Week works the same way.

In that I get to be surprised

just like the players do.

And I love that,

because that's one of the reasons I play games,

specifically role-playing games,

is for those surprising things.

And I like it when I learn something about the plot.

Yeah.

Even though I've made up the skeleton of it,

a player will come up with something,

and I'm like,

that's so cool,

and then we run with that.

And I really like games where that's built in,

so thank you for that recommendation.

I'm really glad that you mentioned that.

Okay, so another thing that you might do,

is make sure that each player character

has some sort of goal

that is related to the adventure.

At the very least,

put something from their backstory in it,

like an actual character for the backstory works great.

Sometimes the relationships between the PCs

can do this for you.

Like if one of the characters

is the bodyguard of another one,

then they have a built-in goal,

you know, protect that character.

Or a built-in secondary goal,

or to them it might be the primary goal.

It's like, I don't care about this mystery,

I just want to make sure

that this guy doesn't get killed.

You might think about starting in Medias Res,

just like have them in the middle of action.

At the very least,

cut out the travel time to wherever they're going.

You can say,

so you've heard about these mysterious goings-on

over at Old Man Johnson's farm.

Here you are at Old Man Johnson's farm.

What are you doing?

You can also cut out a whole lot of the

investigation they might have done.

You can literally just take five minutes or less

and just say, okay, so it turns out,

that you just did a bunch of investigation

and you learned that the weird stuff

is centered around Old Man Johnson's farm.

Go there.

Or more to the point,

you are there, hit it.

Cut out as much of the stuff that,

it's fun and I like doing it during a campaign,

but in a campaign you've got the room to do it.

In this one,

I recommend just cutting straight to the action

and immediately,

sometimes you might want to start with them

actually, I don't know,

being like in some sort of danger or something,

being shot at or something like that.

Or, like I said,

take it a step back from that

and just have them arriving at the place

they would normally go to first.

And then from there,

they have the freedom to do whatever

they're looking to do.

Another thing is,

even if you're just playing with some friends,

you've probably got some sort of time limit on it.

So you need to keep a closer watch on the time

than you would normally do during a campaign.

Because you don't have next week

to kick things over to.

It's just not going to happen.

So once you see that you're getting

pretty close to the end,

you've got maybe an hour,

half an hour left or something like that,

go ahead and jump to the end of the thing.

Do whatever you need to,

to get them to some sort of finale.

Have one of the bad guys get wise to them

and just attack them or whatever.

Whatever you need to do.

There are a lot of different ways you can do it.

But if things are obviously building towards

a specific sort of finale,

go ahead and push things there

so that way you don't have to really,

really rush it right in the last 10 minutes or something.

Because I've been there and it is difficult.

I hate doing that.

It always works better for me if I see it coming

and I can throw in a scene or something

where people just jump to the end.

One other thing I do like, though,

is that you can tell stories

in sort of smaller lines,

smaller areas.

You can do like a world-spanning one-shot.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But one thing that helps me

is if I keep the setting really small.

If I keep it in like, for example,

the one that I did for Monster of the Week

took place in a shopping mall.

And the whole thing was in a shopping mall.

And they never left the shopping mall.

And there was plenty to do,

because it's a shopping mall.

You know, plenty of different locations within it.

But everyone knows what a shopping mall feels like.

So it was pretty easy to describe stuff.

Another thing that works really well for a one-shot

is sort of the classic guard the caravan mission,

where your location is basically

always going to be the caravan.

You're never leaving the caravan.

And, you know, you as the game master

just keep attacking the caravan.

And that helps a lot, because you've got

your beginning, middle, and end already set up.

You know the destination.

And all you have to do is

throw enough obstacles at them

before they reach whatever the destination is.

This advice isn't just for GMs.

Let's say you're playing in a one-shot.

You can take risks that you wouldn't

take if you're running a campaign.

In fact, I'll wrap this up with an example

of exactly that.

So back in the 90s, I basically spent that whole decade

running Vampire the Masquerade.

We played once a week.

It was a multi-year campaign.

We had detailed the city.

We knew the NPCs.

We knew the politics. We knew the history.

It was a really, really rich campaign.

And because we played once a week,

we could move at a fairly slow pace.

And we did.

But the Guide to the Sabbat came out,

and I thought it had some cool stuff in it.

But I was running a Camarilla campaign.

And I did use

some of that Sabbat stuff

as antagonists, because

that's a lot of what it was for.

But it had

some really cool ideas that I thought

my players would be into.

So what we did, I pitched it to them.

I was like, would you guys like to do just a one-shot?

We do some Sabbat characters.

And they were like, yeah, that sounds fun.

We talked over the thing. They were like, yeah, that'll be different.

And let's give it a shot.

So what we did was, we set it in a completely different city.

We came up with

just enough backstory for them to have

reasons to be in that city and doing stuff.

But because the Sabbat have a

completely different philosophy from the Camarilla,

everyone played their characters

really differently.

The other reason they played their characters differently

was that it was a one-shot. They were like, okay,

I'm not that attached to this character, to be quite honest.

I just want to see where this goes,

and I want to tell a cool story.

Separate characters came up to me

at different times, and

independently of each other,

each of them decided that their character would

go out in a blaze of glory during the finale.

They were both like,

I think I want my character to just

die, but I want him to die

in some really amazing manner.

I want him to die taking out something.

And because both of them said that,

they had ideas for what they wanted to do.

And we still talk about that game

because that ending was spectacular.

It was just amazing.

Two of the five characters

just literally, there was fire.

They literally went out in a blaze of glory.

And they wouldn't have done that

if it had been a regular campaign.

There were other things I could mention,

but I think that hits a lot of the highlights.

If you're interested in this kind of thing,

we don't do a lot of advice stuff,

but it occurred to me, just like Mark said before,

I have learned a lot

from other people doing exactly this kind of thing.

Well, one of the things

I learned from was,

I'll throw a link to this video

in our show notes,

is when I was preparing to run

Monster of the Week, I looked at

a guy that does a lot of videos about

Monster of the Week, and he had some

really good stuff to say.

That was the other reason I wanted to do this,

because even as long as I've been doing this,

he made my game a lot better,

because I hadn't really played

Monster of the Week that much.

Anyway, like I said, if you're interested in this,

we can do some more of these advice things,

and yeah, I did pick up a few things

that I can put towards that

Star Trek Adventures game

that I had in mind, because I have a basic scenario

in mind, and it is sort of a

it was originally going to be a

sort of a pilot episode of a larger campaign

that I was going to do, but it's detached from all the rest

of it. It's an entire

sort of separate thing from what the

quote-unquote main series would have

been, except that the

antagonist would have shown up again towards

the end of the first season,

in the completely different place.

I'm not going to go into all

of it here, but maybe when we

finish the call or something, I can give you the

capsule. I would like to hear that. Yes, I would.

But before that, though, we've

got the World's Columbian

Exhibition Part 2,

The People. Nice.

Right after this.

Of course, I say right after this, and it's just bumpers

right now. If folks want to send us

ads or something, we need to figure

out a rate sheet and that, but we need to

be more consistent

first, and we'll see how that happens. Fair point,

but I want to say no

to some ads, so that'd be fine.

Or just convention

promos or something like that.

Well, that's a fair point.

Like we used to do.

So, the World's Columbian

Exhibition. We talked about this

back in episode 31.

If it's been a while, I encourage folks to go back

and listen to that. That was

the basic overview of the general

situation of that particular

World's Fair, and

I planned on the second

part being a

deeper look at people that

you might run into, both real people

and I made a quick list of

fictional people and

situations for the

late 19th century

that folks might have

fun including into this somewhere.

And I figure that the first thing I need to

mention is one that we mentioned on there,

but in the wrong context, and that

is George Washington Carver.

He is, of course, famous for

peanuts and its various uses

like we mentioned there, but he's not

going to do that work until the 20th century.

His presence at the

exhibition is a painting

exhibit at the Horticultural Hall,

I believe.

At the time, he was a student at

Iowa State working on an agriculture

degree there, and

he painted up various

plants, fruits, and that kind of thing,

and had that on exhibit

at the exposition.

He was also the first black

student at Iowa State, so

that ties into that too, and

yeah, granted he's not doing the

whole peanut thing yet, but maybe you could

make that part of some kind of a

time travel plot where

people are coming back in for

some reason wanting to divert him

to something else, or

something, I don't know.

Because why do we need peanut

butter, I guess?

I trust all the game masters

out there to find a much better

reason than that.

I did want to clarify that

since we leaned into the whole

peanut thing back then.

So, I mentioned

that at the close of exhibition,

the mayor of Chicago,

Carter Harrison Sr.,

was assassinated. The name of his

assassin is Patrick Eugene

Prendergast. I love these late

19th century names.

The interesting thing about that though is

after all of this and during his

trial, because he was represented by Clarence

Darrow. In two trials

they were trying for an insanity defense,

but it didn't work

out because Prendergast

is also the only

client of Darrow's ever to

receive the death penalty.

Edmonia Lewis,

she is of African

American and Ojibwe heritage,

the first African American sculptor

to gain national and international

prominence. She was there.

Joan Imogen Howard,

an American educator and principal

from Massachusetts,

characterized as a black liberal

integrationist. She was the first

African American graduate of the

Girls High and Normal School in Boston

and the only African American to

serve on a state board for the

Columbian Exposition.

We went through some of the

issues last time.

Right.

The people who were part

of the exposition could be

there, but like for

an example we mentioned Frederick

Douglas, who represented

Haiti in the exposition

and in fact had

the tract I believe

that we mentioned last time that he

had there.

Nancy Green was

there.

Wouldn't be such a popular choice today.

She portrayed Aunt Jemima for the

R.T. Davis Milling Company, but that was

a big thing then.

Saretta Jones, a soprano known as

the Black Patty. She was already a famous

opera singer when the

exposition came about.

There were numerous other black artists

at the fair from

minstrel and ragtime shows to

more formal classic ensembles and

just street buskers.

They're not entirely absent, but again

getting into the main

white city.

I remarked on the

naming there last time.

I won't do it again.

It was supposed to

only be because of the buildings,

but yeah.

Also given the times, yes.

The street in Cairo

included a popular dancer

known as Little Egypt.

She introduced America to the suggestive

version of belly dance known as the

Hoochie Coochie.

The tune said to have been improvised by

Soul Bloom and now commonly associated

with Snake Charmers, which

you know, it was the

1890s.

He proposed that apparently when his

dancers had no music to dance to at the

time, and he didn't

copyright the song at the time, so it

went into public domain pretty quickly.

Joseph Douglas, classical violinist,

achieved a wide recognition

from his performance

there. Became the first

African American violinist to conduct a

transcontinental tour, and the first

to tour as a concert violinist.

Moving on to some other peoples.

A 250 voice

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

formed, well they competed

in the

taking second place prize of

$1,000, and this was their first appearance

outside of the Utah Territory.

On

August 12, 1893,

Antonin Dvorak conducted a gala

Bohemian Day concert at the exposition

besieged by visitors

that included the conductor of the Chicago

Symphony, who had arranged a

performance of

Dvorak's American String Quartet.

Helen Keller

and Anne Sullivan were there

during the summer of 1893, as well as

Alexander Graham Bell.

Catherine Lee Bates visited the

fair. She is of course famous

for America the

Beautiful, and apparently

her mention of

alabaster cities was apparently inspired

by the white city of the

exposition. Okay,

I'm going to go through this

name slowly to make sure I get this right.

Persian traveler Mirza

Muhammad Ali Moeen

al-Saltaneh,

he departed from Persia

on April 20, 1892,

specifically for the purpose

of visiting the exposition.

Swami Vivekananda,

he was a key figure

in the introduction of Indian

teachings and practices of Vedanta

and yoga to the western world,

credited with raising interfaith

awareness and bringing Hinduism to the

status of a major world religion

during the late 19th century.

He visited the fair to attend the

development of the world's religions

and delivered a speech there called

Sisters and Brothers of America.

Edward Muybridge gave a series

of lectures on the science of animal locomotion

in the Zoapraxagraphical

Hall, which was built specifically

for that purpose on the Midway

Pleasance. That's a great word, too.

Yeah. He used

his zoapraxascope

to show his moving pictures

to a paying public, making

that technically the first commercial

movie theater. Nice.

So there was a great deal

of space occupied by the Westinghouse

Company devoted to demonstrations

of electrical devices

developed by Nikola Tesla,

including induction motors

and the generators that they used

to power that. And

in fact, Tesla himself was there

for a week in August to attend the

International Electrical Congress,

being held at the fair's Agricultural Hall

and to demonstrate his

wireless lighting system in a

specifically set up darkened room at the Westinghouse

exhibit.

And he had done these demonstrations

previously throughout America and

Europe before that, including using a

nearby coil to light up a lamp

that he held in his hand.

So there's some fun there. You also

had Harry Houdini and his brother

Theodore performing on the Midway.

And the final really big one,

Buffalo Bill Cody

came to Chicago despite

the fact that he was denied a spot

in the fair itself.

He just showed up. Yeah, he

brought his

Wild West show with him. They set up just outside

the edge of the exposition

near where he was doing

that. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner

would give academic lectures reflecting on

the end of the frontier era that

Buffalo Bill represented.

Now, an interesting thing that I found out,

I don't know if this was done in particular for the

fair, but the year 1893

seems right, and it's the kind of thing that

you would probably do for an event like

this. He changed the title

Buffalo Bill's Wild West and

Congress of Rough Riders of the World.

It began with a parade

on horseback, participants from horse

cultures including, you know,

from the U.S.

and cowboys,

American Indians, and performers from

all over the world including Turks,

Gauchos, Arabs, Mongols,

Georgians, featuring their

distinctive horses and costumes

and all the stuff

that they would

do there. It seemed to be a show developed

particularly

for an event like this.

They didn't let him in, so he came

anyway.

Sounds about right.

And I don't know how many of these

folks were there, but part

of his show during 1893

was not only Annie Oakley

and Frank Butler, but Martha Jane

Cannery, also known as Calamity Jane.

That's a whole

all-star thing on its own there.

No kidding.

And that brings me to fictional

people and events that can

be part of this. I did mention

Sherlock Holmes last time because

I've seen a

couple of possibilities for when

the final problem, which was when he went to the

Reichenbach Falls, happened.

I've seen December 1893

as one possibility, but May 11th

1891 is another one.

Now, of

course, December 1893 might be when he came

back. My notes

were not particularly...

I sketched a lot of really brief notes

for these.

And even if he had faked his death,

which was, you know,

what Boyle rewrote

later, right?

Even if he had,

maybe he was in disguise and decided

to head over to the States for a while to lay low.

Right.

I've got Mark Twain noted down here. He's an actual

person, but he was alive during

the era and he could have been there. I don't recall if he

was actually there or not.

As far as sticking with the whole Holmes thing,

if Holmes is there,

it's entirely possible that Irene

Adler could be poking around there,

or Irene Norton, as it

would be after that point.

Dracula was published in 1897.

The date of the actual events,

I believe, are indeterminate.

And so, you know, you could have

fun with

stuff

branching off of that, including Abraham

Van Helsing. Oh, true.

Mm-hmm. Dorian Gray

could be poking around because, you know...

Nice. Right. It's the

right era. And then,

they did have art exhibitions.

They did. They did.

Professor George Edward Challenger

would be a bit long in the tooth,

possibly, but he was the president...

In the canon, he was the president

of the Zoological Institute of London

by 1893.

So he may not have had his

ideas of the whole lost world

and all that yet. Yeah.

But he was in, I think, other stories

than that. Yeah.

And he's...

He's an interesting character.

Another book that happened...

Well, it was

serialized in 1897,

and that's War of the Worlds.

Again, date of the events

indeterminate, but imagine

the World's Columbia

Exhibition, and you've

got an

exhibition of the

Martian war machines left behind.

Or maybe they land

while the thing's going on.

True. There's some fun

you can have there. Now, they

had these characters running around in the movie version,

but I believe that the canon...

the comics canon of

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also had Alan

Quatermain and Captain Nemo running around in

that time period. Yes. Although Nemo's

a bit long in the tooth by then.

He does seem somewhat

younger than he ought to be in the movie.

And if you're going to be doing some

time-shifting there, Phileas

Fogg of

Around the World in 80 Days. Granted, that was

in 1872,

but

surely at that point he was young enough that he's still

kicking around during the

exposition and

might even be there to tell the tale of

his voyage. Yeah.

And that kind of thing. And that's

most of what I've got written down here.

So,

running a game based around the

World's Columbia Exposition or having

it as a factor somehow, there's all

kinds of things you can do with that.

All kinds of people you can work in.

They could be the basis, like I implied earlier,

of time travel plots.

If you're playing something like Time Watch or Time Master

or Doctor Who, for that matter.

I mean, since

they can turn up whenever.

And, in fact, the

Torchwood Institute would have been around by then.

Surely they would have sent some

agents if they were around, because

you know,

what better thing to do there?

And given that it's in America,

you could use a lot of the American folklore

for that, too. You could bring in, like,

Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan

or Johnny Appleseed

who was a real guy.

But, also, some

tall tales were told about him.

Yes. There's lots of possibilities there.

There's one guy that I've left out.

And I'm saving him for

the next episode.

And,

in our crime blotter,

I know that one of our rules is we're

avoiding murder

unless it's particularly interesting.

And I think H.H.

Holmes is particularly

interesting. I agree. Yeah.

So, next time we will be talking about

I'm not going to say the

good Mr. Holmes, but

Definitely not. No.

And that's not even his real name!

But we'll get into that next time.

Looking forward to that one. Yeah.

Any thoughts before we move along?

No, no. I just wanted to throw in my

American folklore thing, but

I love the idea of

basing something there, because

so much was going on. Absolutely.

And it was so busy and it was so crowded

and you could get away with a whole lot of cool stuff.

Plus, exhibitions

are rife with ideas

of science or super

science or...

I've been watching the

both the Librarians and

Warehouse 23 recently. Oh, yeah.

And both of those

have a whole...

Any artifact from either of those shows

could be on display

and maybe the person knows what they have

and maybe they don't.

Absolutely.

Alright. Sounds like a good place to

wrap that up there, then.

I'll have a few last words before

we head out for the night.

I know we posted

about it back when it was

happening, back before our

unexpected hiatus, but

I know that Carol, our

former co-host over at All Games Considered,

she had a stroke

back in February, and she's

getting better over time. I think

the last I heard directly from her, she was

accepting editing work again.

I'm glad to hear that.

I'm not sure exactly

where she is with all the rest of it yet.

I haven't looked up

to see if the GoFundMe

is still up or not.

They haven't quite hit their

goal yet, so I will send you that

link, too. Yes, we'll definitely get that

in the comments. They've come a

long way on that

particular fundraiser, but it looks like

they're still a little short of the

goal, and I know

that she's still

getting back to hopefully

100%, but we'll

definitely put that in there. In fact, I'll

go ahead and drop that into the chat.

Excellent.

Because I have that right here.

I don't have to

wait and dig it up

from somewhere. Anything

else on your side?

No, nothing else from here.

By the time you all hear this, it's probably

Gen Con has

come and gone. We'd love

to hear what you all encountered

then. Maybe we can work that some into

the next show. Absolutely.

In the meantime, we'll hopefully be getting

back into the regular swing of things here,

and I'm

looking forward to it. Yep, and

if you have ideas for stuff you'd like us to talk

about, or just want to mention anything,

or if you have something

you'd like us to expand on,

we're about to give you a whole bunch of ways to get in

touch with us. Yes. First

off, you can email us at ArmorGoesClaims.com.

spelled in the

American fashion. Indeed.

A-R-M-O-R.

You can catch us on Twitter at

ArmorGoes, again spelled

A-R-M-O-R.

We do have a Facebook

page, but it doesn't get updated much.

Well, I mean, it's been pretty much

the episodes, but you can definitely

check in in there. Comment on

the episodes. Yeah, if you're subscribed

to our Facebook page, you

will get updates when we have a new episode.

Same thing goes for Twitter. We always do new episodes

and updates on Twitter, and

our website is

AGCPodcast.info

where you will find

these show notes we keep talking about.

All of these links are in the show notes,

and we have

a comment section on there if you want to comment on

any of our stuff. The other

thing we have on our website

are the links to those drive-thru

products that we mentioned before, and

a banner at the top. So

if you just click on that banner, even if you're not

interested in either of the things that we point

out per episode, if you click on that

banner and you get anything from DriveThruRPG,

and let's face it, if you're listening

to us, you've probably gotten stuff

from DriveThruRPG in the past,

it does help us out. It's an

affiliate link, and

if you were going to get something from DriveThruRPG

anyway, we would appreciate it if you would do it through there.

Can't believe I forgot

particularly to

mention that.

Well, one of us is always going to get around to it.

You know, like I said,

we're getting back into the

habit of this.

We're blowing the dust off.

And one final thing is that

we have a Discord server going.

We haven't been doing a whole lot in it

because there's been

a break going on, and

we've got a handful of people in there now.

We do, and the link

to that is on our show notes.

Alright, so

I hope to talk to you all again

soon. And thanks as always for listening,

and we really appreciate it.

Have a good night.

Good night.

Armor Goes Clank is produced by Brian

and Mark, and is available

under a Creative Commons

attribution, non-commercial,

no derivatives 4.0 international

license. You can find out more

information at

agcpodcast.info

.