The Giant Beastcast: Episode 125

...Dan...table top role playing...

Oh boy.

Huzzah! Exactly what I needed for the last day of work for the week.

Duck duck, Grey Duck!!!

:)

Role playing?! *cough* unplugged *cough*

I hope there isn't like an hour of wrestling talk that somehow snuck in here.

No possible way Dan will reliably be able to understand tabletop role-playing and why people love it.

Giant Beastcast: Ghosts of the Precursors.

Dan has already role played on a table top game, his character was basically Rick Flair. I'm curious about what's going to happen on that segment.

Please, sir. We only take Goose cards here.

Its fridaaay, lets do this!

Also news about the Star Control sequel is the best news this year, wooooo!

@d_w: Oh crap its Smight, hes one of my favorite streamers. Glad to see a duder who enjoys watching him, too.

So judging from the thumbnail geese holes are now the new chicken holes?

Thank you Dan for standing with America (oh god what have we come to). 4th of July is Best, Halloween is definitely top 3.

Taking about that one esports Hulu show where they'll have people play against each other in a classic game reminds me of Arcade Pit. Man it would be cool to get some GB folks on there.

Eh?

Just 25% done for that episode 500

Wrestling, table top?.... oh no...nooooooooo.

Dan ruined the game last time they did table top with too much wrestling.

good lord, dan knows fucking nothing about lotr lol.

@xanxus: He's been very up-front about not liking those movies, so I guess it's not real surprise. You'd think he might pick up some of it via osmosis, but sometimes you just tune out discussion of things you don't follow.

Gonna go ahead and say, I'm not up in arms over the Battlefront loot boxes. Internet has been in a rage about it but I still plan on buying it at launch (preordering actually) and playing it to death. However I won't (and haven't yet) ever spent a dime on loot boxes. I'll take what I earn in game and that's it. Sure some idiot who drops 100 bucks may have some better gear but in the grand scheme it won't make much of a difference. I may die a little more often in those rare meetings but it's just a video game.

"We hate complex menus... and stories in games"

I really hope developers don't think they represent the audience.

That looks a lot more like MGS1 than I expected, not including the zoomed-out perspective.

@zoofame: Haha, Abby is such a Millennial she has no idea. The 4th of July has been ruined by an entire generation raised by overprotective parents.

I wonder what kind of shenanigans we can expect next week with Vinny on vacation...should be interesting

I think they confused Dan more with their explanation of D&D that they helped.

Dan needs to watch videos like from "Don't Stop Thinking". I think it is the place to start because the author explains the game to new players....with poorly animated figures...very well. Watching videos helped me get into D&D 5e a thousand times faster that just reading/interpreting the books. The videos also made what I was learning practical in terms of the "holistic" game play.

We live in a time of wonders!

Really hate it when the podcast devolves into an ELI5 for Dan show.

@danryckert if you want a game to help you understand tabletop rpgs, then I suggest looking into World Wide Wrestling RPG.

Not only is it about your favorite topic, but also an incredible system. If only you and other duders could get together and have someone like Austin Walker go through a session or two.

To the dude (Evan?) who wrote in looking for low spec games to play with his SO whose currently half way around the world - Terraria is a great game to play co-op together. I've played hundreds of hours of it with my girlfriend when we lived apart and even still when we lived together.

I really liked Star Control 2 when I played it back in the mid-90s -- there were a ton of local multiplayer fights while I was in University -- but I don't know if I feel any nostalgia for it. Like, there were tons of design things in that game that were unique back then that have been incorporated into hordes of video games since. And I can't really say I've wanted more stories in the SC2 universe, even though, once again, it was interesting for the time. I do hope it succeeds, but I wonder if there's any real audience for it outside of the diehard fans.

I see you Pekin at me. This joke may need a wikipedia reference...

I really wish they had a good counter balance when they discuss issues like loot boxes.

@danryckert Roleplaying is like writing a book cooperatively with friends. You work together to tell interesting stories happening to your characters and the world they live in. To make the story interesting, you will have to fail now and then. And having characters ignore the rules of the world they live in will make a story bad. Instead of looking at it like "my character needs to win this game" look at it like "I want the story of these characters to be interesting".
That is my take on it, as someone who really wants to play tabletop games but don't have a group/the time/the theatrical chops to do so, so this might be kinda wrong?

And hey, I like Tool, Rick and Morty and Lord of The Rings (it was my first real book, and I cannot thank Tolkien enough for making me love books) so what do I know.

You must play Starcon, Starcon 2 and Spacewar!

Spacewar! First video game, best video game.

I like your orc voices :D

"I want to win Wrestlemania because I'm the best" worked out for Hulk Hogan

Every time I see the headline "Are loot boxes gambling?" I do wish we'd just change it to "are loot boxes exploitative?" so that we don't get people nitpicking over what is, or isn't technically gambling. The discussion this week was really good though, really thorough and covered all aspects of it!

One move publishers/devs could make is to add a maximum spend per day/week on these things. It wouldn't really solve the actual problem, but it could potentially be a positive step in terms of harm reduction?

To answer Vinny's question about when did esports really become relevant or catch on, it's basically whenever Twitch caught on. Yes, yes, Jeff, Brad, and Vinny can talk about old man Fat4Lit33333 all they want because it's funny that his name is so dumb, but I guarantee you that the worldwide number of people who have ever actually watched an "esports" match of that era of Quake is remarkably low, because who the fuck had time to download a video file of like an entire tournament, or even the finals. I knew very, very few people who actually cared about the competitive scene back in the 90s and early 2000s compared to how many people can follow esports now through Twitch.

Enjoy your vacation, Vinny! I'll be on vacation myself, probably enjoying it, too!

That's a big duck!

@jaqen_hghar: Decently accurate, but psst while I definitely understand the whole time/lack of group thing ( there are people who're always lookin online though and there is such a thing is short campaigns/brief oneshot games! ), theatrical chops are not a requirement for tabletop RPGs whatsoever. Sure people with a flair for storytelling probably have an easier time, but one of the reasons why people play tabletop RPGs instead of just sitting around and telling stories is because by nature playing the game and engaging with the rulesets of a well-written RPG just kind of automatically gets you roleplaying and telling a story whether you like it or not. There are games that are written to be more focused on dungeon crawling and combat than storytelling, and there are games that are written to be more narrative and character-focused, and on the very far end of that side of the spectrum there are even games that are really just secretly little improv story-generators in disguise.

So basically just try it and as long as you engage with the game you'll be surprised at how much of those "theatrical chops" you might actually have.

@rasrimra: I agree! :D

@scylo: good post! I agree with you, and have been a little worried at how calling it gambling has already been kind of used as a loophole to morally dance around the issue. This is especially true if Vinny's speculation about using data against a player (to essentially manipulate a dopamine hit) is accurate (which I personally, and admittedly based entirely on anecdotal evidence, believe that it is).

@rocketfalls: For sure! I would not let that aspect of my personality stop me from playing a tabletop rpg with someone, as I think I would learn and grow as a person having to "act". I have always been really bad at stuff like that (read terrified), so having to do so in a fun setting with friends is certainly a great way to try it out.
But for now I will have to get my fix through Friends at the Table and The Adventure Zone.

Vinny saying the showdown in Toronto town made me laugh way harder than it probably should have.

There's a really good tabletop RPG about wrestling though.

The key thing to me that seemed to make Dan completely incompatible with most tabletop systems is the question of 'But there's a winner at the end right?'

I have not tried 5e (or even 4e) but most actual wrestlers would be either Monks and/or Bards in my head. There are occasionally Monk/Bards who multiclass as Sorcerers or Druids and make a lot of money. I could see thinking Barbarians or Fighters would be a natural fit but I think it would be fun to focus on the CON and CHA side of pro-wrestling to do more of a martial arts and mockery style of character. Depending on the setting and rules the closest you can do skill wise is to dump ranks into acrobatics(tumble), athletics, perform (buffoonery), and maybe intimidate. If you're having problems dealing damage you could probably find ways to work around it if you have a good DM.

In the past few years I've probably consumed as much or more tabletop RPG content on the internet than I have the past few years of GB content. There are some incredible RPG shows out there that have me on the floor laughing in ways that this site doesn't nail quite as much these days. When I read that last sentence in the deck I wanted to skip this episode entirely. Vinny did a great job explaining RPGs in a fun goofy way but Dan dismissing everything being told to him by a cogent, articulate adult is the worst. It's probably less a problem of not understanding the appeal of RPGs and more an issue of not being able to do improv well. I never feel good about dunking on him in the comments. It's just that he's working with 4 of the funniest people on the internet and he's just not cutting it for me. Anyway thanks as always for the great podcast.

As much as I love SC2, I think that'll probably be the case. I mean, the game is basically the precursor (no pun intended) to Mass Effect.

Ugh, the unplugged stuff. All I remember from that is that Drew and Brad has a pretty solid grasp of the rules and Rorie kept contradicting them with misinformation.

@bisonhero: I'd argue that around the late CS 1.6/Halo 2 era (when MLG was born) was when e-sports got notable in the mainstream conscience (at least in the West, StarCraft was big in S. Korea long before). But I do agree twitch.tv is now leading the charge to the next level of 'ascendence'