Seth is in a new game! Here for it!!

Keep the longer episodes please! It’s hard to put my finger on why, but it just felt like a sweet spot in length. Keep up the great work!

Seth should absolutely be in more of their content. The dude is a AAA player! I wonder if he'd be up to GM something on the Network?

As a New Orleans native (now 10 years removed), it makes me very happy to imagine the GCN crew wreaking havoc in my old stomping grounds. You could easily spend 4 days just eating, drinking, and enjoying some of every type of amazing music you might want. In Naish speak, "A little Creole, some soul, and cocktail jawns with jazz diiip!"

So glad Seth is getting to play games thanks to yall. Will always watch anything he is in!

What!!!! These new shows are gonna be so awesome. I can't wait to hear Skid GM again. I just re-listened to his Star Trek game, what a treat!

One of the ways I get over mid campaign fatigue is to take a break from the campaign after each book. We end Book 1, then for the next month, one of the players in my game will GM a short term game (and I will be a player) or perhaps we try a new game out. Then we all come back for Book 2 and we feel fresh and revitalized! I also try to take advantage of tone shifts between different books of a campaign, such as changing the music (seriously, just changing the music can set the new tone and make it feel like a fresh new game). For example; when I run Rise of the Runelords, for the 1st book I had the tone feel more "generic fantasy" when it came to background music and music for combat. Then in book 2, I went for a more horror tone so I had spookier music for both the background music and combat. Then book 3 I went for more hillbilly/Banjo kazooie style music. And so on. . . .

Last week Gatewalkers was great! Glad to see how you all worked thru the flat check issue from the week before!

Fan crits/fumbles are a GREAT gimmick. Keep 'em coming. Also very excited for any Jared Logan content.

Those NEW CASTS! I love new shows and now that you have such a large group of performers you can really mix up the casts and they sound... AMAZING!!!

keep them long! I love having more content because I drive for work all the time. I'm caught up on everything so the more content the better!

My teeth are getting wet, the FOD hasn't even started playing yet

Laundry Files is one of the best book series ever and we need this permanently in the Naish!!!

Bond villain in training Hans Batista here. Thanks for taking my question guys!

Am I evil because I heard "conflict resolution" and thought "Roger Cumstone"? 😉

Yes to more Jared DMing skills. Your channel would be great for some Brindlewood Bay and Heart and more Mork Borg.

Laundry Files! F** YES! i love that series! I heard they were making a new edition. Can't wait to see the show.

If Skid is GMing something it is going to be great!

Joe: "New stuff at live shows could be a better business decision". Yes Yes Yes!!!! Went to the last Boston show and loved it! Thinking of going back this year. Might, might not, lot of moving parts, but if it were a different game??? And a different one next time??? I'd cancel everything and make it a lock down annual event.

Mary Lou to join the Haunted City crew for a one-shot?? I can't wait!

Adding Mary Lou to the Haunted City cast for ANYTHING is an absolute win.

Great fod, i'm so excited for the return of Friends of the Pod.

GREAT new game announcements!! Consider my teeth wet!

Oh wow, the FotP sessions sound like they're going to be amazing

Mid-campaign fatigue is real. In our campaign, I've run little side quests just to give the group a chance to breathe. I've also opened the door for players to swap out characters if they're not feeling the character they're currently playing.

How to combat campaign fatigue. 1 encourage players talking about the game outside the game especially days before a session 2 as a group ask what was the best moment their character had 3 ask what they think was the best moment for others characters 4 ask what happened to make their character grow as a person 5 ask what made their character like/ dislike another character 6 ask how their character is feeling about the current party they're on and why. This will open up the floodgates and encourage player interaction.

Fan crits and fumbles add a bit of spice to "just another encounter" AND involve the community. I always enjoy the splash of randomness. Glad you don't listen to the haters.

When I heard Cubicle 7 I was super excited for Warhammer! But I'm sure Laundry Files will be cool. BUT yes please do more Warhammer! This was a good FOD from beginning to end. The campaign fatigue discussion was useful. A Syd and Kate FOD would be fun! Like Gencon when they took over - it was hilarious! Do that!

A few years ago I went to my friend group (Everquest / WoW guild) and said "I'm going to run Curse of Strahd in D&D 5e, who wants to play?" and I got a dozen people asking for seats. So instead of telling half of them "no," I ran 6 of them on Tuesdays and six of them on Saturdays. Figured it would save me prep time from running two different campaigns if they were the same module. But about a year into it, when my players were 7th or 8th level (where D&D 5e breaks) I was just not having fun. They were ridiculously overpowered and steamrolling over all my encounters, then complaining about how easy the encounters were. I finished those campaigns (18 months long) through sheer force of will. I completely homebrewed a final encounter for them with a boss with ten thousand hit points (they couldn't kill it, had to find some other way to get through it, and they did), but I think I enjoyed like 3 fights that whole 18 months. It's good to hear that my TTRPG heroes suffer from the same thing. Thanks, guys. You're the best.

What makes Glass Cannon content unique is that the cast really savors playing- I've watched plays where the pacing feels like they are trying to cram as much as possible into the time, GCP doesn't seem to care (obviously Troy wants to time the cliffies). Even in "home" games (games over Discord with a VTT) there seems to be an unwillingness to banter or if there is a slight slowdown people will apologize. If a session is fun and has some laughs that is a great session to me. Regarding two dice rolls and Skid, he had some first hand experience dealing with that pain when he played as Dr. Friss!

I'm there for laundry for sure.

Longer episodes are required in the new Pathfinder 2 adventure paths as the maps are jammed with rooms and every room has an encounter

So hyped for the new episodes of Friends of the Pod!!! Such good casts! 🙌

Hello mother, hello fodder

I rarely have a campaign run long enough for campaign fatigue, but I usually have a few whacky one shots on deck so we can explore a new space or two to keep game night fresh. Sometimes game night will just be beer and movies or video games if everyone really just needs to veg out and not think to hard.

I don't mind Fan Crits and Fumbles because they are just as (if not more likely) to effect the players. That silence fumble could have gone to one the players, or the enemy could have critted. For me it adds another layer of uncertainty and a random challenge to overcome or a glory moment to bask in.

I think everyone has suffered campaign fatigue. For me it helped changing systems. I completed my 5e campaign and moved on to a different system.

Holy shit. Laundry files with that cast sounds like my birthday present but my bday isn’t until tomorrow.

What?!?! No Fod next week? #DarthVaderNOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo......... You all should make Skid and Sidney do the Fod!!

If you're doing work with FreeLeague, you need to bring in Ellinor, again!!! Her work (with Sydney, and Anne Richmond) on Vaesen's Lost Mountain Saga is exquisite! And, besides, we all miss Elli!!!

Have you thought about streaming strange aeons once or twice in between live shows? People could still easily follow along and it will move a bit quicker

Unless the healer is Joe. Stay away from that healer if you want to live

I used to run a 5e home brew campaign for a few years with some friends, but then Covid hit and we tried to play online and didn’t like it. I took the time then to re-evaluate whether I wanted to run it any more and realised I wasn’t gelling with it and there were some things about 5e that, mechanically, I didn’t like. Walking away made me realise that I liked being a GM, but the story and the system didn’t work for me. Now I’ve started a PF2e campaign, and have also picked up the Marvel 616 system (thanks to you guys) as well as Fabula Ultima to give myself and my group a wide range of choices, something I wouldn’t have done if I stuck to the original 5e campaign

I just ordered the first two novels in the Laundry Files on the strength of your enthusiasm. 😁

How can you be working so closely with Free League and not playing the "Forbidden Lands"!? Skid would love it.

We are stupid time for chaos edition: Brawl is used for all melee combat in call of Cthulhu unless you are formally trained as a fencer or something. so unless its a formal duel where fencing rules are applied then any character can use brawl for any weapon as long as you try to injure the thing in front of you with a varying degree of success. Also when is the strange canada aeons going up on youtube?

The "grass is greener on the other side" phenomenon is terrible. I can and have GMed amazing campaigns where half way through I'm telling myself "I wish we could change to this other AP" or "I really want to try a homebrew adventure"

I cannot tell you how excited I am to hear about The Laundry Files. I gasped so loud I scared my wife and kids.

Can’t wait for the two new shows!!!

As a DM I always roll in front of my players (unless it’s a secret roll) because then when the rolls happen the players are never thinking that the DM is fudging the rolls and that makes the game more thrilling to everyone. Keep the rolls honest and the players will trust in the game and your story.

I’ve had the same problem with continuing an ongoing long campaign. I started a Kingmaker table about 4 years ago and right around the middle of book 4 it stated to feel very ‘samey’ in that the creatures, NPCs, and plot lines were all hitting the same notes. So I started Blood Lords which is very different in tone from Kingmaker. My plan going forward is to switch between both campaigns to keep the flavor of both fresh and when the Kingmaker campaign completes we should be halfway through Blood Lords and start something else. I think you were on to something with switching between Runelords and Ruins in the games Skid runs and should consider using that model in the main show.

That new Light cantrip is pretty sweet! Have fun getting rowdy on Spring Break 🍻

I for one would really prefer the live shows to be one AP. Maybe a 3 book AP that is less story heavy like Fists of the Ruby Phoenix for some tournament stuff. Like Troy says, with a bunch of new games and oneshots there are simply no stakes, there is no drama.

Is there any chance of a series of The One Ring? I loved the short series Skid did, and would love to see him return to Middle-earth with the GCN crew!

Too bad Troy isn't doing Laundry Files. I'd love to hear his collection of English accents. Buahahahahaha Time for Chaos has been killing me with that shit, too funny!

If Jared could run Vampires of Pittsburg on GCN that would be awesome.

Definitely do the retreat next year in New Orleans. Just sell like 75-80% of the tickets that way (depending on how long the wait list was for Nashville was) and boom sold out venue

Why did you have to get my hopes up mentioning Warhammer?! You need to! 40k or Fantasy ❤

Don't listen to the haters. I love the fan criticals.

I'm the guy at the table that loves to get into the crunch of the rules, character building (and projecting to 20), and finding thematic but strong or fun builds that feel right. I recently started playing pf2e (Blood Lords) and picked an evil champion as my first character, and I thought I had a good grasp of the rules but we all know when rubber meets road the experience can feel very different than what I predicted building it out. Also the remaster came out and rules got a bit odd as champions weren't fully fleshed out in the remaster yet. I talked to my table and my GM and decided that my character could be "retired" and a new character could be brought in, worked with the gm about starting gold, etc. We made it fit the story, waited for a break in the action at the end of book 1, and hopefully it all goes well. This is my 2 cents on the campaign fatigue issue because where I see fatigue is playing the same character using the same tricks over and over can get repetitive. If this was a videogame, I'd have an "alt" or something to help mitigate this but time playing ttrpgs is so precious I can't get the same "try it all on your own time" vibes without committing time I don't have anymore now that I have kids. My group has been loosely gaming for the last 10 years and the dudes are all great. They know I get the fatigue sometimes and this has been our most recent solution and it feels like it is working wonderfully. I get to try a few characters/builds/things out and they have solid foundational characters in the party to anchor the story. I will say there is something amazing about characters who make it 100% through a story. I've done it exactly once (Deadlands 2020: Blood Drive, SWADE) in over 20 years of gaming. In every other game it either breaks up or I try to play recklessly with my character which feels really weird to get a "character death reset". The last 2 campaigns though l, we've come up with good story reasons to change it up and all I can say is so far so good when handled well. Love the content, @Joe, keep championing the rules as written at the table. I'm the lawyer/librarian in my games and I question anything I think might be off book and youve found a good pace of doing it when its not disruptive, because stopping the action totally can be nit picky and toxic. You do it well. You're my spirit animal at the GCP. Stay gold. ❤ -Austin from Chicago

I think there's correlation between the awkwardness of "taking up time" roleplaying in duos/trios etc. as an actual play, and the episode length. One can understand if its bant + 60 mins of gameplay that a 10-20 min scene or conversation can give a feeling of not much happening that week in terms of driving the main plot, as opposed to something with a 120-150min runtime or more, then those moments can transform into something that's really adding more depth and substance to the episode. I also wonder if PF2e would ever have more options for milestone levelling. Could make things a little less grindy, and can shift focus for encounters to be more impactful to the story as opposed to a requirement to get you to the appropriate level for bosses or whatever.

Also, Walter Sobchek is one entertaining mother f@#$er... Just like our best friend Troy. part of the reason that movie is so awesome.

I was so excited about a Cubicle7 sponsorship, hoping for Warhammer, but was heartbroken. I'm sure the new show will be terrific, but Skid deserves a bite at the Warhammer apple. On show length - I'm watching Aeons marathon episodes and am happy with those shows (one clocked in at 5 hrs). I'm fine wherever you land but seems like 1.5 hrs is the most common length in current shows I watch. NOLA - if you go, remember it gets HOT. I mean crazy uncomfortable shirt wet with sweat 2 mins after you go outside in certain times of the year. But yeah, music and food is off the hook. Check out Deanie's and the D-Day Museum.

COME TO NOLA BABY!!!!!!!!

Loved Strosses' world Walker series

hell of a cliffy this week

I thing there is one big thing you're missing with this fight, and it's that except for brother Ramius, all characters have low light vision or darkvision, so they shouldn't be rolling for concealment. That especially affects Kate, since she's the one with the strong range attacks. A little help for her, that's been having such a terrible luck, she doesn't need to nerf herself XD About the middle campaign fatigue, I've felt it for sure, although I never thought about it this way! It's very true there might be a lot of reasons for that, and especially the one player who is not enjoying it, brings the rest of the players down has happened to me. Or I mean I've been that player lol, especially when I was younger it happened more. And it isn't councious but once you realize you have that effect on the group, it helps to be mindful about it, and trying to manage your reactions and being willing to work with the GM to find solutions, because it's true, for some reason, there are some personalities that affect more than others haha.

PSA: Lsu is in Baton Rouge not New Orleans.

About episode length : though I have plenty of free time, I love the current format of about 1 to 1.5 hour, as I have other shows I watch (like Critical Role which is a rather long 3 to 4 hours almost every week), other activities, etc. Over 2 hours a week becomes hard to digest for me.

Yeah, when it comes to Strange Aeons I do find it SUPER hard to keep track of what's going on just because it's seldom played.

Did you guys post a Strange Aeons recap?

I agree with what Joe is saying about crits and killing encounters due to unlikely die rolls, but you are increasing the chances of neutering interesting encounters by having nat 1s (on the creatures turn, not even on a failed save or from being hit with a player crit) completely screw them. That can be unsatisfying when it happens to an unique encounter with an interesting enemy.

Charles Stross also created the gith races from Baldur's Gate 3

Guys, love the shows, long time listener. Love strange Aeons, it is great but so long between EPS then like 2 in a couple of weeks then nothing for so long is tough. What about bringing back some live stream Strange Aeons marathons like 2-3 times a year? That would allow you to really chunk out some sessions even if you break it down into smaller EPS for the pod releases, then you can get some more play time in and move on to some newer 2e 3 book APs or modules.

One GM i used to play with a lot has early campaign fatigue. Not sure ive ever had a character above level 4 or 5 in any of his games. The last one lasted 3 sessions because he folded and lied to us instead of confronting the guy not paying attention. Sigh.

I ran a Cyberpunk RED campaign not too long ago. It was mostly homebrew as there's not too much written adventure stuff for it. I found myself spending less and less time on prepping and not really wanting to continue this story that I haphazardly put together. Eventually I ended it. I just couldn't do that to the players. My half assed stuff just didn't sit right with me. What I wanted was a sci-fi game that's close to Star Trek but I'm not a fan of the Mobius Star Trek game and not really all that into the way Traveler works either. I'm not really sure what to do. I like running games, I want sci fi but I have a really hard time making adventures myself.

Go to new orleans and hang out with the STF crew

Also, no problem with super long vids. I listen to them while I go out and get errands done, so one vid will be with me through driving and costco and the cafe and whatever else i'm out and about doing. Any chance of getting Brennan Lee Mulligan from Dimension 20 or Quinns from Shut Up and Shit down to play with you all? Both people would open this channel up to large groups of like minded gamers that may not be here yet.

Yo!