Money Mech, Beneficial Brainwashing, and Fly Fun

D&Daniel: Blow winds and crack your cheeks. Rage! Blow! Oh, sorry, you caught me in the middle of auditioning. Anyway, thanks to our patrons, Hedwig and Carlo, for supporting our podcast, which is fine and not just a stopgap while I see if the career takes off. Anyway, have a probably bad day

(theme music)

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

(die rolling)

Paper: D&D but you play the treasure

Pencil: I mean, it’s good for if you’re too tired to do a proper game. “I roll to not move.” “You succeed!” And then you have a little nap

Paper: So the reason I picked this one out, I was on an Unlimited Realms stream yesterday

Pencil: Mmm

Paper: And I was playing basically a personification of a dragon’s hoard, who was very cross that the dragon had been killed, and I just think that that’s a great character, and I’m very pleased with it

Pencil: Yeah. I mean, there are games which are…where you do play inanimate objects. Well, sentient inanimate objects. I don’t think anyone’s yet made a game where you play a rock, but I’m sure it’s gonna be hitting the indie stores any time now

Paper: I guess the question is, if you interpret it more as literally playing objects, what is the goal of treasure? What does it want out of life?

Pencil: That’s a good…I feel treasure is torn between the two conflicting goals of wanting to be used to buy things and wanting to be hoarded. It simultaneously wants someone to take it and use it, and it wants to sit in a vault forever, and all treasure is torn in a deep existential conflict between these two conflicting but extremely strong desires to define its existence

Paper: That sounds difficult, it wants friends but it wants to be useful

Pencil: Yeah, which means, what the treasure needs to do is it needs to get taken, but it also needs to make sure that all its treasure friends get taken. That’s how it gets around it

Paper: Mm-hmm

Pencil: If someone steals a part of the hoard, then it has failed, but if someone steals the entire hoard then it’s still being hoarded, but it’s also being used

Paper: So it needs…it wants to be a mobile hoard

Pencil: Yeah, which means, as the treasure, what you need to do is you need to help the adventurers, and you need to sabotage the dragon, without the dragon realising that the hoard is plotting against it. And also you can’t do much to sabotage it ‘cause you’re money

Paper: Yeah I feel like…I guess the main thing you could do to sabotage would be falling at an inopportune moment

Pencil: I feel like…so you know you have some GMs who are probably better off writing a book than GMing

Paper: Oh yeah

Pencil: I think we’ve got the ideal game for them to run? You just sit there and describe people fighting a dragon, and every so often a player raises a hand and says “can I fall over slightly” and you’re like “ok, sure”, and then you go back to narrating your story

Paper: I’ll admit the idea of a story told from the perspective of an inanimate object does intrigue me, and I’ve just realised that’s a Simpsons episode, ‘cause everything’s a Simpsons episode

Pencil: Yeah. This is a Simpsons episode. D’oh. Don’t have a cow, man. Et cetera. I think…I feel like we need something more than the ideal RPG for GMs who don’t like players

Paper: What if we allow the magic items a little bit of sentience and movement?

Pencil: Yeah, if they can move around a little bit. Maybe if they can only move when people aren’t looking

Paper: Oh, we Toy Story this

Pencil: Yeah. What the dragon doesn’t know is that, because of its love for its hoard, it’s given it life and sentience. This imply the dragon is playing with its hoard, but that’s adorable so I’m sticking with it

Paper: I mean, if you had a hoard, would you not occasionally pick up two candlesticks and play with them like dolls

Pencil: Yeah. The dragon has given each coin a name and a backstory. That’s a little-known fact about dragons, that’s why they get so upset when you steal from their hoard, it’s not about greed

Paper: Oh, it’s like an empathy thing

Pencil: Yeah, dragons only feel empathy toward gold coins

Paper: That explains so much

Pencil: Yeah. What they think they’re doing is they’re rescuing the gold coins from their human oppressors, and the gold coins agree, but…so all the gold coins have come to life ‘cause the dragon loves them very very much

Paper: Mm-hmm

Pencil: But they want to go and be used to buy things. Ironically they don’t love the dragon very very much, it’s very sad, and they can only move when they’re not being looked at, so they need to slowly sabotage things so the adventurer can take all of the gold. This is quite sad from the dragon’s perspective

Paper: It is, but also I’m just thinking about different abilities that different items of treasure could have. ‘Cause in these treasure hoards you always get chalices

Pencil: Mmm

Paper: You always get big gold plates, and you always get candlesticks

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: And I just feel like they should all have unique abilities

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Obviously the thing that the plates do is roll around and make lots of noise

Pencil: Yeah. The candlesticks presumably have some kind of fire thing

Paper: Mm-hmm

Pencil: The coins, I feel the coins are able to merge together. They’re able to combine into bigger things, like coin people

Paper: Like a money mech

Pencil: Yeah, like a money mech

Paper: Don’t tell Elon Musk about our idea for a money mech

Pencil: Elon Musk is already making a money mech. He’s putting chips into your brain to patent your orgasm, but back to coins

Paper: I’ll patent your orgasm

Pencil: Hey baby, want me to patent your orgasm?

Paper: (cackles)

Pencil: As a thank you for listening to our podcast, feel free to take that incredible flirting line and use it yourself

Paper: As a thank you, we will not patent your specific orgasm

Pencil: (laughs) Anyway, moving on from what I feel might become a felony if we continue talking

Paper: Possibly

Pencil: So, the coins

Paper: Mmm

Pencil: I think the artwork is the charmer of the group

Paper: That makes sense

Pencil: It can talk to people, and you know, they turn around and there’s artwork there you’re like “oh it’s a creepy dungeon”, but you know, it can persuade them. What other things are there? Swords, usually

Paper: Yeah, weapons. I mean, weapons it’s kind of obvious, they can do a fighting

Pencil: The swords…I like to think the weapons have a life outside of that

Paper: Oh I’m sorry for stereotyping

Pencil: Yeah, the sword does impressionist art, is its thing. It’s trying to move beyond its assigned role

Paper: And how does that help?

Pencil: It doesn’t, but do you want to be the one to tell a flying sword that it’s not being helpful. It might stab you

Paper: Fair point. I guess then you would have more artwork to do the persuading, as well

Pencil: Yeah, the sword whatever the shit it likes, and no-one can tell it to not do that, ‘cause it’s a sword

Paper: Mm-hmm

Pencil: The sword is actively unhelpful

Paper: Well you can’t spend a sword, so it doesn’t have the same desires as the rest of the hoard

Pencil: Counter-argument, if you go into a shop and pull a sword you can often get things from the shop

Paper: Yeah, but they don’t take the sword. That’s just getting more stuff, it’s not spending anything. What I’m saying is swords are NFTs

Pencil: True. This is a completely accurate statement, I will accept no clarification

Paper: I mean have you ever funged a sword?

Pencil: I’ll funge your sword. Going back the terrible…feel free to take that line too, by the way guys

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: I apologise if I seduced any of you with my lines today

Paper: This is gonna be the episode that gets us our first animatic

Pencil: (laughs) I think we were talking about treasure or something?

Paper: Yeah

Pencil: Armour. Armour, that’s the other one. I think armour protects all the other items. They just go in there, and it closes, and then they’re safe. And again, that doesn’t really help much, ‘cause no-one’s attacking the items, generally

Paper: So what you’re saying is I can’t stereotype swords as being really into fighting, but armour’s really into protecting?

Pencil: Armour is very stereotyped, yes. Unlike swords, armour just enjoys its social role

Paper: Good for the armour I guess?

Pencil: You know what they say, do a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life

Paper: That’s why I’m unemployed

Pencil: Mood. I mean, my job is to be a sword, but I pointedly refuse to do this

Paper: I feel like we missed a very obvious part of the treasure horde, which is the gems

Pencil: True. I feel gems are magical, just ‘cause they tend to be, you know?

Paper: Yeah. They have little cantrips that they can do

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: I just feel like, because they are so small they don’t have room for a lot of magic, like you have one gem that can do acid splash, and one gem that can do friends and things

Pencil: Yeah. One gem that can do summon gem that can do summon gem

Paper: It’s just really shit infinity stones

Pencil: Mmm. What it is, is you’re really shit infinity stones, but you have to convince the…I do like the idea of you play a really shitty magical artefact, but you’ve got to convince your wielder that you’re an item of incredible power

Paper: Oh, I like that

Pencil: Otherwise they’ll throw you away, so you’ve got to convince them with your power to mildly levitate plant life, that you are an incredibly powerful item

Paper: I enjoy this, it’s like Psych for magic items, like “I have one ability, I’m gonna use it to convince you I have a better ability”

Pencil: Yeah. The alternative is you play an incredibly powerful mystic sword that’s just sick of its destiny, so you’re trying to convince your wielder that you’re shit. I don’t know why I am trying to help swords break out of their stereotype so much

Paper: No, I like it

Pencil: They need to be free

Paper: Sentient items are people too

Pencil: But only swords

Paper: Yeah, I do like the idea of a sword that’s just like “I’ve spent 500 years slaying orcs, I just…I wanna see what it’s like to be a centrepiece for a while”

Pencil: Mmm. “I finally want to live out my dream of being the world’s most terrifying accountant”

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: Manage your budget or I will decapitate you

Paper: I mean it would motivate me

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: I enjoy being capitation

Pencil: I support this sword’s attempt to just force people to stop spending all their money on candles

Paper: But again, we have a magic item going against the desires of the rest of the magic items

Pencil: Hmm

Paper: Because we’ve established they want to be spent

Pencil: Yeah. Maybe it’s you need to persuade the rest of the magical items that they want to be spent but they want to be spent productively, ‘cause, you know, you don’t want to be wasted, as a coin

Paper: The sword cannot be spent, and that is its villain origin story

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Where it goes around getting all of the other money spent

Pencil: Yes

Paper: As a “ah, i got you”

Pencil: This is how capitalism came to pass

Paper: It is, it was just one sword named Henry Ford

Pencil: What not many people know is that Adam Smith was in fact a sentient sword

Paper: Well they didn’t have photos then, they had to rely on just what people said about him

Pencil: There are paintings, but you can’t trust paint

Paper: They definitely did have photos, but you know. He chopped them all up, ‘cause a sword

Pencil: ‘Cause he’s a sword. But yes, so there you go, capitalism was invented by a magical sentient sword. Prove me wrong without searching the name of the history of capitalism

Paper: Yeah. Speaking of money, we have a patreon, patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas

Pencil: If you’d like to appease the magic sword

Paper: Yeah, the magic sword that is waiting for us if we don’t get a certain number of patrons. In exchange, we will funge you things, like bonus episodes and homebrew. I definitely know what fungible means

Pencil: We will funge your homebrew right off

Paper: We do have a patreon goal at the moment, actually, which is not just “not getting decapitated by a magic sword”. When we get to fifty patrons, our editor is gonna post a youtube poop of the first D&D movie. But before that, questions

(music)

Pencil: Our first question is anonymous. “How do you make up magic items on the fly?”

Paper: I mean, personally i just kind of go “noun of spell”, like sword of vampiric touch, now you have a cool sword

Pencil: Yeah, I tend to just be like “what would a cool and useful thing be for something to do and what would do it?” The alternative, look around your room, or where you are right now, look at a thing, and imagine what power it would have

Paper: So basically what we spent the last ten minutes doing

Pencil: Yeah. For example, I, currently, am looking at a laptop, and it would have the power to connect to the internet. This was a shit magical item and a terrible example, I’m sorry

Paper: I am looking at a bottle of hand sanitiser. I feel like it would maybe have some sort of attacking the undead, or removing area effects

Pencil: I mean, undead are just the ultimate infection

Paper: Well yeah, that’s why you can’t let them bite you

Pencil: I feel like it would either have that or it would have super healing, like it doesn’t just sterilise a wound, it removes the wound

Paper: Oh I like that

Pencil: Or it kills metaphorical…like you put it on your hand and, not only do you no longer have an infection, you’re no longer held back by your envy of others, kind of thing. It resolves your spiritual sicknesses

Paper: Ok, my brain went in a different direction. I thought you were suggesting hand sanitiser of brainwashing

Pencil: I mean, you know, one could argue it’s the same thing from two different perspectives

Paper: What is deprogramming if not beneficial brainwashing

Pencil: Yeah, you put on the hand sanitiser, and now you’re worthy to go to heaven, even if your pastor said the wrong words

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: A few more items. There’s a stuffed penguin, I feel that would shoot ice beams at people

Paper: Oh definitely, but specifically you squeeze it and it makes a little penguin noise and does it, ‘cause why shouldn’t it be adorable?

Pencil: Yeah. So basically, to create magical items just look at things

Paper: There is also the option, of course, that they didn’t mean in an RPG context

Pencil: Yes, if you want to make magical items in an actual sense, subscribe to our patreon at top level and we’ll send you some mystical rites. I can’t guarantee they’ll work, but what do you have to lose?

Paper: To create a magic item on the fly, first you must contain the fly, so it does not fly away with your magical item

Pencil: The main issue with it is that flies are really small, so you’ll probably need tweezers and a magnifying glass

Paper: Yeah you’d have to make very small magical items the size of a grain of rice

Pencil: The sword that you make is not going to be useful at fighting people

Paper: Unless you enchant it to be really good at fighting people despite being tiny

Pencil: Which would be amazing. You’re just holding…people don’t even know you’re holding a sword, you walk up to them then boom, they’re cut in half

Paper: What I’m picturing now is one of those little plastic cocktail swords, but when you swing it there’s a whip cracking sound and whatever’s in front of you gets sliced in half

Pencil: Actually, that sounds amazing

Paper: Magic item

Pencil: There you go, we made a magic item on the fly. Could also enchant nanobots, if you want to combine sci-fi and fantasy

Paper: Mmm

Pencil: ‘Cause nanobots are basically sci-fi magic anyway

Paper: That is true

Pencil: You can just do whatever you like, say “oh yeah, it’s nanobots”, so you might as well make them little wizards too

Paper: Oh, I thought you meant using the nanobots to make the magic items

Pencil: No, making the nanobots magic, ‘cause they’re on the fly, so you know

Paper: Yeah

Pencil: Flies and nanobots are roughly the same size, right? I’m not a scientist

Paper: But you could coat something in nanobots

Pencil: Or in flies

Paper: To give the appearance of being a magical item

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Did you say “or in flies”?

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: I guess it would make things hover?

Pencil: This is my magic item, it’s a chair I’ve superglued 1000 flies to. Its power is it banishes people from the room when I show them my chair

Paper: That’s horrific

Pencil: Abracadabra motherfuckers

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: I like how you were getting into a legitimate Clark’s Law, any sufficiently advanced technology thing, and I was going “here’s some glue and sad insects”. I’m like the world’s worst druid

Paper: I was wondering where you would get all the insects, but then I remembered D&D does have that one staff that can summon a swarm of insects, so you’re good. Not aligned good, but you know what i mean

Pencil: I have my staff of summon insects and my staff of summon glue, and I’ve finally got a use for these two magic items

Paper: You just duct tape the two staffs together and point it at someone

Pencil: All I need now is (laughs)

Paper: Staff of duct tape

Pencil: I feel like a spell that covers someone in glue and flies isn’t the most high-damage spell, but it probably is going to be one of the least pleasant things you can do to someone

Paper: It’s like a more horrific version of tarring and feathering

Pencil: Yeah. Less painful, but more horrific

Paper: More existentially horrific, I think

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Especially if the flies all work together and fly you away afterwards

Pencil: Which flies can famously do

Paper: How many flies would you need to lift someone up? Do I have to google the carrying capacity of a fly?

Pencil: So suppose I don’t have a fly spell, but what I do have is a staff of summon insects and a load of glue

Paper: You don’t have a fly spell, but you have a flies spell

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: You would need approximately double your bodyweight in flies

Pencil: Ok. I mean I don’t weight very much, so this should be easy

Paper: So now I need to find out how much a fly weighs, and we can do some maths. Not a lot, is the answer

Pencil: No. They are famously quite tiny

Paper: About a hundredth of an ounce

Pencil: Ok, I do weight slightly more than an ounce

Paper: So for every ounce that you weight you would need about 200 flies

Pencil: I can’t weigh that many ounces. I’d say probably 600 flies should do it

Paper: You’re claiming that you weigh three ounces

Pencil: I mostly do metric rather than imperial, so I’m just guesstimating

Paper: That’s fair, the conversion is tricky. Since we’re suitably horrified, shall we move on to the other question?

Pencil: Ok. Our other question is also anonymous. “I really love sci-fi and fantasy games. How do I move away from that and still have an interesting game?” Have you considered horror, specifically relating to being super glued and covered in flies?

Paper: I guess…if you wanted to do it without your players knowing, that could be quite fun. Like you introduce this big, sprawling fantasy setting, and then you’re like “ok, now you need to do your taxes”

Pencil: Yeah, set it in a fantasy world but pointedly refuse to include any fantasy elements

Paper: There’s a dragon over there, but you’re robbing this bank with your normal weapons

Pencil: I like the idea

Paper: Oh! Star Trek holodeck episode

Pencil: That’s a fair point. I was thinking like, sci-fi but you crash landed on a planet so there isn’t really any of the sci-fi elements. You’ve maybe got what tech you can scavenge from the crash, but otherwise you’re sort of on your own

Paper: That would be a really good way to start a Numenera game

Pencil: Yeah, you’ve just crash landed on this planet that used to be…or you wake up having been put in cryogenic freezing for a very very very long time, and then you go out and you’re like “oh no, everyone’s forgotten about how cool my supertech was, this is the one thing I’m sad about, apparently. I’ve been thrown

Paper: You land on a planet and then slowly turn into a lizard. No, that’s Star Trek

Pencil: Everything’s been done by Star Trek, it’s like the Simpsons of Star Trek

Paper: Star Trek is the Simpsons of Star Trek

Pencil: Yes

Paper: I mean, I do feel like you could take…obviously the lizard thing was a joke but you could take inspiration from Star Trek, ‘cause they do have a lot of very kitchen sink type drama, just on a spaceship

Pencil: Yeah, so the two ways. One way is to go into the more mundane aspects of these kind of things. I do like “you’re on a USS Enterprise-esque ship but you’re not the away team dealing with things, you’re doing the everyday politics of the ship

Paper: Which is also a thing Star Trek has done, ‘cause that’s Lower Decks

Pencil: Yes it is

Paper: We need to move away from Star Trek

Pencil: The other way is, of course, play one of the genres people make RPGs of, by which I mean rip-offs of the World of Darkness, and occasionally the World of Darkness

Paper: I mean, World of Darkness is still fantasy, it’s just low fantasy

Pencil: Yeah, it’s more urban fantasy. There’s not a lot of properly horror games. There’s also not a lot of properly mundane games

Paper: I think the problem is, when you’re doing an RPG you inherently want some element of escapism, and it’s hard to get that from normal problems

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Maybe some sort of like House of Cards type game

Pencil: That’s what I was thinking, wealth or politics or something. You all play the one percent, and you’re all competing to destroy the planet and patent people’s orgasms

Paper: Competing to destroy the planet?

Pencil: Yes, and patent people’s orgasms. Your character classes are Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, other guys. Those are the two billionaires I know, but I’m sure there’s more

Paper: What about a game where you’re trying to save the planet by taking down the billionaires?

Pencil: I guess that’s possible, but unfortunately we are presenting on Amazon, we are being put on Amazon, so we do have to be pro-billionaires-destroying-the-planet

Paper: If they didn’t take us down for calling Jeff Bezos the BBEG of the world I think we’re good

Pencil: Ok, so here’s how you punch Jeff Bezos - you use your fists. But, I feel like some kind of revolutionary game might work, ‘cause I mean there’s various allegorical revolution games

Paper: Yeah

Pencil: But there’s not really a lot of games that are straight-up “you are revolting against the one percent”

Paper: I guess there is also the option of going historical with it if you don’t want

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: If you don’t want it to just be “the world sucks, let’s pretend we have the ability to fix it”, you could do like “it’s the French Revolution, go guillotine people”

Pencil: Hint hint

Paper: And, you know, if people want to carry that through into their everyday lives, that’s not your responsibility

Pencil: We’re gonna get called murder fetishists again

Paper: To be fair, that was specifically you

Pencil: You know, it’s not just me any more

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: We’ll both be murder fetishists now. Also

Paper: I’ve been brought onboard

Pencil: For a more mundane game, pick one of your players and just roleplay their life. They play themselves, and everyone else plays their loved ones or bosses or what-have-you. Don’t tell the player in question ahead of time, and see how they respond

Paper: So you’re suggesting surprise therapy, is what I’m getting

Pencil: Yes. Yeah, you sit down and you think you’re about to play an orc, and then you get handed a new character sheet, and it’s just you, and then everyone else roleplays the people you love telling you that they’re worried about you

Paper: This is…I think this is more horrific than the flies

Pencil: I’m doing fine, guys. All I want is for everyone to roleplay my friends telling me they love me. Anyway, RPGs

Paper: (laughs) Oh dear

Pencil: So, yes. There’s definitely ways to do mundane RPGs, they’ve just not really been expanded on much

Paper: Yeah, I think…I guess the problem is, which is probably demonstrated by the start of this bit, is that it’s easy to equate mundane with everyday

Pencil: Mmm

Paper: When really all mundane is is not sci-fi and fantasy, really

Pencil: Yeah, there’s been a few James Bond heist movie action RPGs. What was it called? Guys, pause this while I try and remember what the show was called, about the thievey people. It began with an I

Paper: A show about stealy people?

Pencil: It’s not called Inception, ‘cause that’s a different thing. Nick Blake

Paper: Leverage?

Pencil: Leverage! That’s it. Edit all that out. Anyway, there was a Leverage RPG and that was surprisingly good and well made

Paper: That does sound interesting, ‘cause I haven’t seen Leverage, but what I can tell it’s basically about scamming rich people?

Pencil: Yeah, essentially the main characters are thieves for hire, and if a rich person has screwed you over and you can’t get back at them legally then you can hire them to get whatever they took from you back, and it’s a good heist game, and there’s various other games like that. There’s been various attempts to make D&D into a modern-day heist system, which

Paper: I think at that point you’re just making a new system

Pencil: Which doesn’t work, fundamentally. D20 Modern was a great idea, but it’s really hard to make a D&D character who doesn’t have some kind of superpower. Even if they don’t do magic, they’re gonna be able to survive getting a knife through, a spear through the chest, and throw something through a building

Paper: Yeah, so I think either the conclusion of this is either avoid Star Trek, or copy Star Trek, or do the French Revolution. These are your three options

Pencil: Yes, those are the three settings: Star Trek, Not Star Trek, and The French Revolution

Paper: Which, as we all know, is half Star Trek

Pencil: Hmm. If the French Revolution goes on long enough it becomes Star Trek

Paper: I mean, I guess the French Revolution happened and eventually Star Trek happened

Pencil: Exactly

Paper: We cannot prove the Star Trek would have happened without the French Revolution

Pencil: Yeah, so here’s my idea for a setting. It’s the multiverse, but the only difference between universes is whether or not the French Revolution happened, and the only differences between our 2022 and French Revolution 2022 is whether Star Trek is a thing

Paper: That would be wild. Like, briefly putting on my history hat, French Revolution had a lot of ramifications which may well have partly led to the general utopian vision of Star Trek

Pencil: Hmm

Paper: And also possibly the development of modern capitalism, but rather than going into that we should probably end the episode

Pencil: I can’t believe the French Revolution didn’t have any ramifications other than inspiring someone to make Star Trek

Paper: (laughs) But yeah, ending the episode. We mentioned the patreon, patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas. If you have a question, you can message BadProbably on twitter, probablybadrpgideas on tumblr, or email [[1]]. I’m gonna put a link to the stream that I was in in the episode description, ‘cause it was fun and is made by some fun people

Both: And remember to have a probably bad day

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