Cottagecore Battlewagons, Da Vinci Coding, and Children: The Home Aloning

D&Daniel
D&Daniel here with terrible news. All of my dice have been stolen. And just after that, I saw tabletop Tim strutting around town with a new sparkly vape rig sparkly like my dice. And I asked him about it and he said, Oh, no, I haven't seen your dice, but do you want to check out this vape trick? I may be able to get them replaced, thanks to the support of patrons, wonderful patrons like Hedwig Carlo and a socialist hobgoblin I can get my dice or have my revenge

Pencil
Hello, and welcome to the probably bad podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad i'm pencil

Paper
i'm paper, today's probably bad RPG idea is... Every time the players level up the campaign changes genre.

Pencil
there's sort of two obvious ways here. The obvious reasonable way is start off with like, you know, horror or low fantasy or some other like, you know, relatively power low thing. And as it goes up, it goes into like, you know, high fantasy or urban fantasy and so forth and so forth. The less obvious and much funnier way is you start off with high fantasy and as you get more powerful the scope just narrows until eventually you're an incredibly powerful sorcerer who's specifically dealing with one goblin who lives in a farmer's walls.

Paper
I mean, I feel like the way leveling up works in a lot of role playing systems is kind of that way anyway, like you just get more and more skilled at more and more specific things.

Pencil
I have reached level 20. And all my skills have been put into fighting goblins specifically.

Paper
That's like, you know, you might level up in something that world of darkness of you just get, you know, i'm a little bit good at driving. I'm kind of good at computers, and I'm really fucking good at hacking into databases specifically. gonna roll 20 D10s to hack into this database. Yeah.

Pencil
So I think what we say here is you want your world of darkness game, to progressively But inevitably, like go from investigative horror to be not

Paper
in my defense, if there's some sort of shady organization, either running or covering up all the spooky horror stuff, they probably have a database with a lot of useful information on it.

Pencil
I mean to be fair every World of Darkness game does devolve into like camp superheroes that all have fangs. Like, there there are no world darkness games that stay horror. And yes to people listening, that is a fact if you think you're in one you're wrong

Paper
The world of darkness game I was in stayed horror, but it wasn't like a very big long term one, I guess. Yeah.

Pencil
So like, no, it didn't as mentioned I am declaring a law here

Paper
a retroactive law.

Pencil
Yes.

Paper
I also like the idea of getting more highly specific in the genre gets more and more specific. So you go for like, it's fantasy. And then it's high fantasy. And then it's medieval high fantasy. And then it's medieval high fantasy investigation. And then it's medieval, high fantasy, private investigators. And you just keep going until eventually your characters are like the three people in this world whose entire job is to investigate whether the queen is cheating on the king and there's one specific kingdom that their entire job is just keeping an eye on

Pencil
what you get work that into the plot, right? You know, it's like, as you level up, like you learn more about the world. And like you get, like, offered jobs for lack of better words. And eventually you end up as like the cuckoldy wizards... Cuckoldry wizards

Paper
that is the name of my private investigation firm. It's caused a few misunderstandings with people who didn't quite know what we did.

Pencil
I I don't see where any confusion would come along. Of course, the third alternative is just every time you level up like aliens invade or the magical realm of Atlantis bursts out of the ground like introduce new plot points when people level up but really fucking blatantly. oh no i swore

Paper
something we never do on this damn podcast I mean that that is something like I have done a variation of this in like very long term campaigns where it's like okay you've you've dealt with this spooky scary problem now we're gonna go over here and do some investigation or do a heist and just keep in doing like I guess more film genre than like genre genre.

Pencil
Yeah

Paper
like very sort of set piece type genres and like it I do think it is a bad idea doing it just every time we level up apart from anything else you're gonna run out of classic set piece genres and end up doing like weird romance plots at like level 16 But I don't know I think I think it can work as like a way of keeping long campaigns interesting just being like okay, for the for the next arc we're gonna go and do some I was about to say cottagecore Battle wagons and I'm not sure what that would involve but I think that's a genre that should exist so stick with it

Pencil
I entirely support it just you've got like you've all moved to a little little like little village to retire but you know the urge for adventure is still there. So you get your like wagons and just bolt knives to them and guns and then you fight the other little villages

Yeah, like Mad Max but everyone hugs at the end

like Mad Max but there isn't an apocalypse we're just bored because we've been doing nothing but plucking potatoes for the last six weeks

Paper
miffed Max

Pencil
Yeah. irked Max

Paper
grumpy little Maxy

Pencil
grumpy little Maxy is the name of my new barbarian. also I do feel that like we should do the romance like at level 16. Just your barbarian your wizard and your rogue have set up a new job as bankers and they have money but they don't understand love. And your Ranger has to play a manic pixie dream girl who will like bring light and joy to their life. This might be difficult to like lead into organically from the previous one where they were fighting space aliens on the moon

Paper
well what you do is they've just finished with the previous genre thing like stopping some aliens from invading the world or something and then they've got a note from whatever questgiver NPC that's just inviting them speed dating

Pencil
yeah you've defeated the big bad and now it's time to like date them

because even the PCs have been through a lot they need some time to just work on themselves

yeah like to be fair in most cases the PCs don't wait till after they've defeated the big bad to start dating him. so really it's an improvement.

Paper
Normally we end up with like, Oh, that's a game I would play and this time we've ended up with this is a thing I do.

Pencil
Yeah, this is a game I am playing as we speak. Like I think you should keep power levels completely like independent of what genre it is. So like your characters are incredibly powerful. You know, they can take on entire armies they can shoot bolts of like city leveling destruction, and then they end up kidnapped by a completely mundane serial killer in a completely mundane basement.

Paper
This feels like one of those Batmans where Bruce Wayne gets kidnapped and he's just like, Okay, how do I solve this problem without revealing that I'm Batman?

Pencil
It's like that except you're under no like commitment to not reveal that you're Batman

Paper
it's like a short but very interesting arc.

Pencil
basically you roll to attack once and then the rest of it is you cottage core battle karting.

Paper
If anyone has any idea what a cottagecore Battle wagon is by the way, because it's just a phrase that came to my head, do email us at probablybadpodcast@gmail.com. Please.

Pencil
Imagining just like, you know, those flower covered traveling wagons, but they're just covered in like welded on metal spikes they're being pulled by horses and each of the horses has a knife in its mouth to the uses to attack people

Paper
I love it. I love it so much.

Pencil
I think what it would be is like, you would train the horses like in some kind of martial art. And then it would be like Robot Wars in that you put them in an arena and the horses fight each other with their battle wagons, and all of the little farmers in like their little farmer outfits will be cheering them on. And whoever wins gets 100 potatoes.

Paper
What is the most equine martial art?

Pencil
I don't know enough about martial art. I feel you need to invent a new one just for horses to be realistic.

Paper
Violent dressage.

Pencil
yeah. the horses are of course, you know being paid as well. That that they're like contestants.

Paper
Oh, yeah, the horses are into it.

Pencil
i'm sorry you said let's go to questions and I instead insisted on coming up with horse martial arts.

Paper
I mean it raise the question. So.

Pencil
Okay, let's go on to the actual questions.

Paper
Yes, so, CedarPhoenix on Tumblr has asked, Do you have a favorite class or RPG system to play?

Pencil
I personally have never played an RPG.

Paper
So next question. I don't know. I just I think I like natury things are like, like ranges and Druids. So when that's not an option, I tend to lean towards ones that like make stuff or healers. I think. I think I just want to sit there being nice to people.

Pencil
Yeah, I mean, I like so my favorite system is powered by the apocalypse. I just think it's a very good system. In terms of like narrative things. I prefer characters who are like more investigatey classes who are more investigatey which are like, Ah, you're going to learn things and find things out and track down clues and so forth. cause i'm very stupid in real life. So playing like you know, a smart is a good form of like escapism.

the one I have the most fun playing is the flake from Monster of the Week, which is essentially a conspiracy theorist. And you just roll to connect random bullshit and form some kind of puzzle. I just really enjoy just like you roll and you figure out that because this building has a picture of a clown on it. And cause this car has a three in its license plate that the villain is actually in the Coca Cola factory.

Paper
So just full on like Da Vinci coding it.

Pencil
Yeah, that is my, my favorite d&d class is probably I'm gonna say probably rogue just because it lets me do the most non combative things. Like it's the best at like talking to people and stuff. It's probably not, someone's going to send a message saying actually, if you looked at the stats, the best character for persuasion is a very hot barbarian. But like,

Paper
gonna get fifty messages that are just the word Bard.

Pencil
Yeah, well, they're bard.

Bread and Thread Plug

Paper
Oh dear. So the second question I wasn't sure if it was a submission or a question, but I thought it would be the most fun to treat it as a question which is just what about a dungeon of mild inconvenience?

Pencil
Like you have an orc that just pokes you. it doesn't do any damage but they do poke you whenever they do the - the GM pokes you IRL

Paper
I just My immediate thought when seeing dungeon of mild inconvenience was just a house that contains a small child like there's this like Lego caltrops there's weird substances everywhere someone screaming

Pencil
so what I suppose you're suggesting is like a home alone dungeon crawl

Paper
Would you not love to play a home alone dungeon crawl?

Pencil
So there's so the treasure is in a dungeon and all of the like- you know has been however long so all of the monsters have died and all the traps have like decayed. But four weeks before you get into the dungeon a group of small children moved in and wrecked it all up with like marbles and spiders and whatever the hell else they do. I think they swing a paint can into someone's face at some point.

Paper
Okay, but picture this okay. It's like Oliver type stuff. Like Oliver Twist. You tracked the thieves back to back to their den their hideout with Fagin and that and you try and sneak in while they're all asleep. The entire hideout has just been rigged like home alone and you have to get through it. Get your stuff back and get out without any of the children waking up.

Pencil
Yeah, and like

Paper
would you not play that.

Pencil
Yeah, and like at the end if you roll if you have to like roll to keep quiet if you're too loud while you are you know being attacked with blow torches. The children wake up and start saying very hurtful things to you.

Paper
Yeah it's a well known fact that small children mostly do like psychic damage. Yeah.

Pencil
yeah children say very mean things Yeah. All children can cast vicious mockery at will.

Paper
that's just a life fact. You could also give it like give it a lot of horror flavor despite it also being kind of wacky and just call it the children are awake.

Pencil
Children are the most terrifying horror entity. I think that's going to be the next World of Darkness ine children the Home Aloneing

Paper
again, though, I would I would play this.

Pencil
There was a children like themed World of darkness expansion but for some reason it focused on you are a child being haunted by monsters rather than the far cooler you are a group of rascally children who torment vampires

Paper
I mean, thing is I think both of those you could just do with regular World of Darkness stuff like just get your keeper to let you play a child. Not keeper what's the World of Darkness one called I

Pencil
I think it's storyteller or something. It's something pretentious like that.

Paper
your GM

Pencil
Yeah, um... White Wolf Onyx Path if you're listening come at me. I've challenged so many people

Paper
also have some spooky children we're really good at home brewing.

Pencil
I feel like i've challenged so many people to fights this session. This session? this episode

Paper
I think most of it was Off mic at least.

Pencil
ok so yeah, if you're listening to this come fight me

Paper
specifically fight pencil don't fight me.

Pencil
Fight Paper first.

Paper
Do not come at me, bro.

Pencil
Okay, um, yeah, so back to the actual question. Yeah, it's just it's just a dungeon that's been home aloned and is full of children

Paper
i like the idea of doing almost like, like a training dungeon.

Pencil
Yeah.

Paper
Or, you know what I'm thinking about now. The dungeon & dragons movie where he puts them through this like, mini dungeon with like, very mild traps to test their worthiness. I feel like that is a dungeon of mild inconvenience.

Pencil
Yeah, like there's a pit trap but it's only like six inches deep.

Paper
Like, oh no. there's an acid pit, it's full of lemon juice

Pencil
i think if you're going to do that you should have all of those joke traps and then one track where legitimately just a massive fucking blade swings out at you

Paper
it should specifically be I think the penultimate trap

Pencil
Yeah,

Paper

like you've gone through it you got a false sense of security you get hit by the massive swinging blade and then you see there's one more trap you're like, oh god if that's the escalation what's this one going to be and it's just a sleepy mouse in the way

Pencil
i like if the trap opens up and just gently places the sleepy mouse on top of you

Paper
what they don't tell you is that actually if you wake the mouse up it will bite you. there is some peril there.

Pencil
The mouse does have the stats of the great worm red dragon

Paper
terrasque mouse

Pencil
I think if you give all my stats of a great wyrm Red Dragon and just don't tell the players and see how long it takes them to die that's not relevant but you should do it

Paper
it'll be fun because the basements full of creatures or are always rats not mice, so they won't notice. Imagine what mouse traps would look like at that point though.

Pencil
I like like you just go down It's just Oh yeah, you mentioned like that. That's just a nice new level that they found on mouse trap that is just like this massive like, does 16 D 10 pile of like magical blades and then one goes in and it closes and the mouse just bursts out and they team up with the children.

Paper
Oh no.

Pencil
We're forming a very specific dungeon.

Paper
I feel like this is no longer mild inconvenience.

Pencil
No, I think this is now a

Paper
moderate fantasy peril at least

Pencil
a six year old and a small mouse just beat the shit out you discuss. I feel like I don't know if we answered this question. But I feel like we've discussed this question

our final question is anonymous. How would you run underwater games dunk your GM in the sea.

Paper
I feel like the the first question you have to ask yourself there is like is this gonna be one where the PCs can or can't breathe underwater? Because it's gonna make for two very different games.

Pencil
Yeah, I guess like so yeah, I think if it's a mermaid game, it's really just a kind of aesthetic flavoring of like, instead of the guards it's the guards instead of crime it's sea crime instead of experience points it's sea experience points Just treat it like a 1950 film, sci fi film in deep space space, but in the sea

Paper
That include completely ignoring that you can move in three dimensions like most 50s films set in space.

Pencil
Yes, obviously. At one point, you're you're sort of trapped at the bottom of like a chasm. And you have to climb the walls of the sea walls. Sea climb up the sea walls

Paper
to get to the sea top.

Pencil
Yes. Like yeah, I mean, you could probably do some like quite interesting world building with

Paper
definitely some interesting peril there because you've got like, underwater volcanoes and steam vents and weird undersea creatures. Like imagine an angler fish that's big enough to eat a mermaid.

Pencil
I love the idea of like an intelligent anglerfish that could change its look to like attract different people.

Paper
Isn't that a thing in the SpongeBob Movie was disguised as like an old lady with some ice cream.

Pencil
Okay, to be fair, the Spongebob movie is far from the worst resource if you're determining how to do an underwater campaign.

Paper
Actually, yeah, the spongebob movie's pretty good

Pencil
with all seriousness watch the Spongebob movie

Paper
I think if it's not like a mermaid type thing. I do think you need to consider how are you going to like track the air because how long can most people honestly hold their breath underwater? I know DND has like weird breath hold Holding rules where it's like oh you can hold your breath for 20 minutes but one holding your breath underwater is harder and two that still means that you have to track all of the timing the game down to the minute

Pencil

I think like Yeah, I think it will be easier to so yeah that's the obvious way of like are you have a submarine or some magical equivalents and then it's like normally you can get around we have tents things oh no, you have to leave the submarine to investigate this sad mermaid and then you have like the time limit of yo can only be out there so long before things start getting like Yeah, I think I think I would go with suffocation being more of like, an occasional thing. As in normally you have breathe underwater or submarines or scuba gear or something. But like, in certain situations, it's like oh no or something's damaged a suit or even Oh, no, this is some kind of magical water which even we can't breathe

Paper
magical less breathable water.

Pencil
Yeah. It is magic.

Paper
That's pretty scary.

Pencil
It's like burning away at the suit or something or like pushing its way in.

Paper
you said suits not soup didn't you.

Pencil
I did it's also eating away at your soup. It's a magical ocean and like it doesn't do anything to you while you're in it. But all the soup you own just gets slowly more diluted.

Paper
I mean, that that would make me sad. I'm not I'm not sure that counts as a real threat.

Pencil
Like that is in the dungeon of mild inconvenience

Paper
Although I guess, you know, if your soup gets diluted, it's it has fewer nutrients in the amount that you can eat. So it's less good for you?

Pencil
Yeah, I think like, we missed the opportunity for like completely innocuous curses.

You know, like, the soup have erm like, Yeah, we could put them underwater now. So it's fine. And then you have a curse where it's just like, yeah, every time your character rolls a dice gets a natural one, not the player that just

Paper
could could be hard to roll dice on the water.

Pencil
yeah that's why you need sea dice from the mermaids.

Paper
They're just like normal dice that just got rocks inside to make them heavy.

Pencil
But they're just a rock that the mermaid throws.

Paper
But yeah, the distance that the rock travels in feet is the roll

Pencil
Yeah, mermaids have like a much simpler rule based system. And what it is, is to play and the DM stand like, well swim apart from each other, and they throw rocks at each other. And whoever survives has won the contested role.

mermaid RPGs are much shorter than human ones but they are a lot more awesome

Paper
um yeah, okay. i've decided to just accept this

Pencil
mermaid Oh, so do do cottagecore battlewagons, but theirs are pulled by walruses. The walruses know martial arts and sometimes the land League and the sea League and the air league which is run by harpies and has like Griffons pulling them they go to like a swampy island and they do like a freeway contest to see who wins and the reason that there's more ocean than land is because ocean is currently winning

Paper
Okay, so the way to stop sea levels rising is to make our cottagecore battlewagon stronger.

Pencil
Yeah. Which like the only reason global warming is still happening is just because our horses are shit

Paper
we need better horses to save the world.

Pencil
i don't understand Griffons wouldn't just win every time against horses and walruses

Paper
Maybe that's why it is so much those long tusks. Yeah,

Pencil
yeah, maybe that's why there's so much air air wins, and then sea come second and then the land comes third

Paper
And the fire ones is don't even show up. And that's why very little fire in the world. Yeah.

Pencil
Yeah everything changed when the fire horses karate chopped someone

Paper
They're little salamanders why they're not good at fighting the battle wagons pulled by salamanders.

Pencil
Yeah, they wanted to get like the mythical fire lizard what they instead got was the amphibian

Paper
um, so we are going very off topic and I'm, frankly-

Pencil
i hope this helps you understand how to play underwater game

Paper
So yeah, as I said we have an email probablybadpodcast@gmail.com. If you have a question or if you want to send the word bard 50 times, you can either email that, or message us on Tumblr, probablybadRPG ideas or at bad probably on Twitter. We have bonus episodes and homebrew and being thanked by weird voices at the start of the episode as you will have heard if you go to patreon.com/probably Bad RPG ideas. We also have a patron discord where we play oneshots based on probably bad RPG ideas which tend tend to go a way. I'm not sure what that means.

Pencil
Things certainly do happen.

Paper
They do events transpire. But it's fun. At least I think it's fun and the people who play it come back for more. So yeah, thank you so much - and have a probably bad day.

Pencil
and have a probably bad day [crosstalk]

Transcribed by https://otter.ai