Welcome agents to strain 97 dash SNA of the zero point report.

Number one broadcast all about the news surrounding the secret world IP.

Today is Thursday, November 21st, 2024.

I almost forgot what today was.

And with me tonight, we have two ton waffle.

We have Jimmy the rabbit.

I'm no longer associated with this production.

This is where we already go off the rails.

Rails?

What are those?

And I'm Ocho and tonight we have special guest with us, Brandon Verhalen from Star Anvil
Studios.

Hello.

How are you, sir?

I'm always fantastic.

Always.

Always fantastic.

It's much better than saying you're miserable.

Nobody cares.

It's true.

It's true.

I mean, people care, I think just do they really?

Kind of.

Some do depends.

Like if someone was it?

I think they told us once in a sociology class I was taking and they're like, if you go up
to somebody and you say like, you know, how are you?

And they say anything but like, I'm okay.

I'm doing okay.

I'm doing fine.

I'm doing whatever.

And it says something more along the lines of like,

I'm not you know, it's been the absolute worst.

It's sort of like, that's when you're like, okay, like, know, like, it's the you expect
the normal thing of just saying, right?

Yeah, I'm good.

Yeah, I'm okay.

Nobody's really asking how you're doing.

It's just a greeting that it's rare that they actually want to know in the day to day.

Correct.

Yeah, it's more like a like a ritual.

They expect you to say everything's perfect and fantastic.

Bury your real feelings deep down inside.

We do still hope that you're doing OK.

But yeah, we're just going like nuts.

And if you don't just do the thing, then you're just going like this.

And you're like, like, this is not working.

You just want to be like, yeah, we're good.

Yeah, moving on.

Next.

Say, but we do hope you're doing OK.

Welcome to the Zero Point Report, Zero Point Report, where we talk all about the news
surrounding.

the secret world IP.

Hope you're all doing well.

I already see we have Vomr and Massick.

Massick, I haven't seen you in a long time, Massick.

Dan Van Dam coming in here.

Hope everyone's doing okay.

But yes, first and foremost on the list tonight is we have Brandon Verhalen.

Tell us, tell us why you've come on the show.

Well, because you asked me to and I'm a generous man with my time.

Also.

I mean, yes.

Well, that and I asked if you'd invite me on the show.

you know, so true.

You know, so we're working on our next book for the Secret World RPG.

Next one come up is going to be focusing on North America, the Illuminati.

So North America, we're down.

Yeah, yes.

And you already set up the you already set the Kickstarter page for it.

Yeah, we got that set up to just start getting people to follow.

So what you know, the big thing is.

The hardest thing with kickstarters anytime is getting the word out to get people to know
about it.

So you want to start as early as you can because I will.

got 50 emails after then to go, I didn't know there was a Kickstarter.

I'm like, really?

Where were you?

I thought it's so it's so easy to miss or people go, I didn't even know there was going to
be a Kickstarter.

mean, you never know what channels people are observing or watching or how they get their
news.

So exactly.

Yeah.

So you try to hit them.

From any channel they can so we're going to put it out there ...

Kickstarter.com.

Star Emblem Studios Secret World North America.

Launching soon but you could also you could save it you ...

could save it and then.

To get notified on launch when it launches you get a nice ...

email.

me all about it.

if you're if you if you have kickstarter if you just ...

pull you know part of whatever favorite.

It will alert you the day it launches if you've forgotten and say, don't miss this.

so that of course, yeah.

So we're going to focus on, know, what we're going to do at least, you know, provided
nothing bad happens to me and meteorite doesn't fall on me or whatnot.

strange assassins come out of the woodwork.

we're going to do North America, Illuminati, you know, Europe, Templar, dragon Africa,
just kidding dragon Asia.

So no one gets.

yeah.

Dragon age.

Yeah.

then I'm also looking at longer term, like maybe a roachy Africa, something, something
which I won't, I won't name South America.

So this is just the start basically.

Yes, hopefully so.

So far, it's so good.

I mean, we did the 5e version of the Savage Worlds version and both did really well.

Total book sales are, yes, I don't know the real secrets.

That's Josh's job.

He's gonna write.

So, the book sales for both total sales so far between the two are almost equal between 5e
and Savage Worlds, which is pretty amazing.

I'm a little shocked by that in some ways.

And then again, some other ways I'm not so.

So write on...

Someone asked, Louisiana, yeah, so we have some cities we plan to visit, expand a little
bit on.

They might get between three and five pages in the book with, you know, interesting lore,
history and stuff.

And actually, I believe, let me just double check my working list right now.

New Orleans is on the list.

Okay.

I was gonna say, we're getting to that, man.

What'd you say?

I I heard rumblings of Atmat?

Yeah, that's on there too.

We'll see.

I say they say, you write on the Kickstarter page, say, an age is ending and the darkest
days are already here as magic begins to fail.

Ancient enemies cast their avaricious gaze upon our world.

Threats, both mortal and cosmic, once thought merely myth, but horrifically all too real,
begin to reveal themselves as a clock counts down towards apocalypse.

In the midst of these growing shadows, some hope yet remains.

And you are that hope.

Can you discover the truth behind the Secret World?

The Secret World North America focuses the story on the Illuminati and the North America
region.

New player options, new cryptids.

Always good new cryptids.

Seven new locations, three new interconnected adventures.

The Secret World North America will be available for both 5e and Savage Worlds.

Yep.

Nice.

Well, now you've done it all.

Now I can leave.

Bye.

Okay.

right.

That's it.

Good night.

Thanks guys.

Yeah, it's probably going to be more than seven cities, but that's what we're going to
promise.

know, okay.

and I have a, like, for example, I was talking to a Darrell, Darrell did a lot of writing
for the first time around and he, you know, Josh oversaw it.

My wife did, did some writing in there and, but Darrell was the one who just, he read
everything and he had the

the bulk of the writing assignment.

And so he's kind of become my core writer, writing a lot of stuff with Josh still write.

Josh is probably gonna write the Illuminati section.

My wife is really good at researching the cryptids.

She's already got a document about like 50 or 60 monsters where she's got locations and
details for me.

then Darrell's gonna do like the cities and the adventures themselves.

Because it's in some ways easier to write that than the specifics of say the Illuminati.

We have to be really correct You can't just make it up as the city we can add details and
so on And but I was talking to I said, you know, we've got all these interesting cities

but you know the first book we kind of skipped over a little bit because We said well
everybody knows about New York, but we're actually gonna probably do some more New York in

this as well Nice.

It's not like New York is a tiny tiny place.

There's a there's a lot going on in New York Yeah, it's important to the game at all

So what look can you tease maybe some of the other locations you guys are already looking
at?

I'll tell you some of the cities that we have on the list right now and this could change.

So there's no guarantees these will be the final cities when we get there.

We may decide, well, that doesn't work well for us.

New Orleans, Tampa, Mount Shasta, Atlanta, Seattle.

Springton, Ohio, which is going to be a made up town, which we could do whatever we want
with.

Okay.

That's fair.

Vancouver, maybe Montreal and Mexico city.

Okay.

Okay.

Possibly at least one other city in Mexico.

You know, I mean, obviously we're mostly in America probably because of some level of
familiarity for familiarity for us, but we got a couple up in, you know, Canada, a couple

down in Mexico.

And that's as far as we're, you know, I mean, there's always so much room in the book.

So there's going to be cities people want.

It's not going to happen.

We could do some of them ask you, what about Dallas?

that would be cool.

Sure, what about New Mexico City or whatever?

People are going to have all sorts of cool possibilities, but we have to start off with
some limits.

But future adventures might take place in a city that you might get like a page primer on
that city.

Like when we do our three-part adventure,

I might say, hey, let's expand on a city that's not in the book in these adventures so
that we can add it there and give a page there.

It might not be as full as what the book gives on a city, but we can keep adding more bits
as we do adventures and stuff too.

Like I heard that, Joshua had done a, he made one of the, one of the Kickstarter, what
they call those, the extra stuff added onto the Kickstarter, stretch goals.

It was they paid they paid for a tier to get the reward to play the game if that's what
you're talking about.

Yes, yeah, that and that they played a session with with Scrivenomancer with Joshua Deitch
himself.

And I think they said it took place in Chicago.

Yeah, where is where he made their the session last.

And I have talked to him about writing that up into an adventure and expanding something
we can release later.

Yeah, one of those things where it will probably happen, but when?

more than anything but since he's already got the notes for and stuff and he knows it
pretty well there's no reason not to expand that so that's definitely a possibility that

could come out and we've also got 12 with Savage Worlds calls one sheets but we did them
for 5e and Savage Worlds that we're working on it's gonna be their 12 adventures all over

the globe and again they're one sheet so it's literally D &D might be three because just

Stats are bigger, but really the front back of a page So not gonna get a whole lot But
they give you a hint of this city or that town or this location the world and the

adventure takes place there So those things will come out once we get to a certain point
and start releasing them regularly But you'd be surprising how expensive it is to produce

even a two-sided piece of page a paper two-sided piece of paper into a product you can use
so how much You don't mind my asking

Depends on writing layout costs and stuff.

I mean you could easily drop, you know, 75 to a hundred dollars for one page.

If not 150.

And so, you know, right now the big, the monthly from the, from the Kickstarter,
everything is kind of ebbed away and been put into projects and keeping things going.

So now with the next Kickstarter is when I will take money from that and do the next line
of stuff, whatever.

So that's part of the reason to always do a Kickstarter.

We're building an audience to get some regular sales, but not at a level that we can just
say, hey, I got, you know, 1200 bucks to blow right now.

These adventures, because adventures don't sell a lot, unfortunately.

Okay.

mean, I'll, think, that, that was actually true of the original game as well.

Yeah, that was, I was gonna say we, we understand that because side stories.

Yeah.

You had side stories.

And apparently labeling something side stories does not bode well for sales.

No, people want to buy the core book.

And so the least amount of sold item is probably anything for the GM.

You're already making some players want everything.

The people are fans and will just buy it all anyway.

But generally speaking, you got the GM.

Well, there's maybe one GM for eight players.

If you make a resource that's only for the GM.

You're selling to one of your population.

your base.

Yeah.

And a lot of games like black can make up my own stuff.

I don't need to buy your stuff.

There's that too.

So you even less of that.

So but if you make a book like the core book, that's going to represent the setting that
the GM can dig into.

And for example, we're going to include some new player options.

Since it's good for useful to everyone, then it will probably sell.

But you still got to do some adventures because there are people want to see kind of build
that into the project cost.

yeah, yeah.

I was I was pointing out that like, it is a

I don't know.

I've never understood.

Like with secret, the game, right?

Like, even, even with the, the, the role playing stuff, right?

Like if you liked the content and the lore and you got the first one and you liked the
writing, why in God's name, but you not get any additional material?

Cause the reason everyone generally likes this and likes the game.

Isn't like the video game is this amazing.

I mean, it's fun, but.

It's not like it does think the other video games don't.

It's the writing, the stories, historically keeps people coming back to it.

And yet they just labeled something side stories and people are like, nah, I'm not going
to buy that.

Yeah, that's what you're saying, the original problem with the sequel world.

You like the story.

That's why you're playing it.

Why wouldn't you buy more of the story?

It's a conundrum we cannot overcome.

Yeah.

You just have to like label things differently.

mean, sometimes that is naming issue hits.

That could be.

I legitimately, I remember there was like a dev stream or something.

I don't remember if it was tilty or if it was Joel, but I remember them talking about the
fact that they, realized in retrospect, they really messed up by releasing instead of an

issue.

Cause like normally the DLC stuff for TSW, the original game was issues, right?

And the combo covers, I love that stuff.

But they released mission packs for Tokyo called side stories and that those did awfully.

But they were they should have just made it an issue and said, you know, hmm.

They should have used the same the same naming conventions.

It shouldn't have gone off the.

Yeah, this is a less than it's a value proposition.

If you make it sound like you said less than even though it could be just as good if the
people perceive the value to be less They're not gonna buy it.

They feel like they literally said it's side stories like old side story doesn't matter
That's not part of the main story.

So I don't need it.

It's like that's insane Yeah, nobody goes out with the side quest like it's always a main
storyline that they go for They did kind of learn that lesson.

I think

Yeah, a little.

Because you recall, I think one of the last issues, the issues like a comic cover that got
released for TSW was essentially a side story pack.

Like it was not like their prior issues were more like an actual concerted effort, like
around a theme.

This is the thing we're releasing and this has like a, you know, it's all tied into her
bow.

And then they released sort of like a an issue that was like a grab bag.

There was like, here's the stuff we have left to release for TSW before it shuts down.

It was like, and then it was as an issue.

think that actually did do better.

Yeah.

Well, exactly.

They bundled side stories into issue 15 issue 15 had a whole bunch of shit, but it was
just better to like culled an issue and do it that way.

Then try and sling a bunch of individual shit out for five bucks or whatever.

you're saying you have issues.

it.

Always.

I'm saying I want more issues.

More issues.

wish I had more issues.

So another thing, because of that thing of making it valuable, we're also going to do some
new classes for 5E's, what you call them.

And for Savage Worlds, it'll be like edges or backgrounds.

OK.

And one of the focuses is like we've had people say, what about non-B characters?

Because obviously in the video game, that's the focus, but that's not the, as I talked to
Josh, I think we had a call.

obviously bees aren't the only protagonists that exist, but that's what the video game is
dealing with.

Right.

Cause they don't want to design 20 different types of things.

They already have, you know, these different ways of making it work.

So we're, we're, we're exploring some like a purely normal human Illuminati operative, for
example.

Okay.

So that idea of like, okay, so I may be around,

to use the idea of like Star Wars or something in that idea of, there's Jedi over there,
but I want to be the smuggler.

want to be the, Yep.

And like, may have the superpowers over here, but I just want to be the normal guy who is
also powered, who is also skilled.

Yeah.

I'll be Boba Fett.

Give me some cool gear, maybe.

Yeah.

think the, wouldn't the Sigurd version of that be like the Phoenicians or something?

Well, I mean, obviously there are people who work for the Illuminati who aren't bees.

That's very much a fact that we know that they recruit bees because they're useful, but
their bulk of their operation isn't bees.

was just thinking outside of the main three factions, You have Venice, think is primarily
non-bee, the council.

And they use these as their administration outside.

It is not going to before the stream, you go into Venice, Mikey, you saw like the Mason
representative.

If you go into Venice in the game, there's like regular people with like different tags on
them hanging out in Venice as like representatives of different parts of the secret world

sort of faction bases.

Including I think there's some that say they're journalists or something if I'm not
thinking That could be something and then you know, could be interesting to do is for

example stretch goals now I'm this idea down this way.

These conversations are good I'm gonna go look now.

I'm almost positive when you walk into Venice waffle.

Let's field trip

Almost positive when you walk into Venice, there's like someone with like a like a
journalist.

Badger something hanging out there.

But it it'll be interesting to see like stretch goal like if we're doing crazy like hey,
why don't we add this other class?

I mean we don't want too many of those.

Because there's a lot of work and making a class for 5E.

It's very easy to build something for Savage Worlds Savage Worlds.

It's one or two edges and you're good to go.

I mean you've made it.

With 5e, it's about balancing and building a lot of different abilities.

And something just don't translate.

Druids are definitely on a list, but I don't know if we're doing them with North.

I don't think we're going to those with North America.

But maybe a witch?

you know, a Bostonian witch maybe, you know, like, what you call Salem, Salem style,
something like that possibly.

And then maybe some kind of shaman, North American shaman type thing.

Well, again, it's all about really looking at it see what makes best sense lot.

A lot of it's like we have a pretty good idea that that might be cool.

Now let's let's sit down and see how we really make this work.

It might say, as I like to say, it's crap, it again.

So we may take the idea and toss it when we finally get down to it.

So yeah, there's things like that for the player bases to give us something more fun for
them too, not just for the GM to handle.

So locations, adventures, player options, and then actual, there's even a sort of a mini
adventure we're talking about where it's, each location might have three, and I say an

adventure, it's gonna probably be like two or three paragraphs describing something that
could happen in this location.

so that the GM can say, if I go to New Orleans, here's three ideas that could happen there
and same with Tampa and whatever.

So that as the book is going to give the GM a ton to do, plus we're going to have the
three adventures plus this over the next year, we should be releasing those 12 one sheets.

And so then we could also Sorry, my daughter was asking something I lost my train of
thought The 12 the 12 one sheets and the the three adventures.

and we're gonna get contagion converted to 5e probably with the Kickstarter as well
because that was the world's one and So I'll just wrap up doing that as part of that so

that the 5e players can have that and going forward

everything will be done at the same time.

So there won't be a...

So they'll be concurrent instead of having two separate Kickstarters.

Right.

And you won't have to wait to see, they got contagious, but we didn't.

That's what we're just going to do at the same time.

We're also...

I'll just put this out there so people know we're going to...

I want to rework some stuff with the 5ebook.

I think we could do better.

That was our first Kickstarter.

Of course.

There's ways we can improve it.

So we'll probably put in the format to match the Savage world size book Because that the
reason that sounds weird like why would you that we either have to match the 5e size or

the Savage world size because Every time we do layout if we do it for two different size
books We're doing two different complete layouts what the lore is all the same Why am I

redoing lore for a bigger page for a smaller page?

We could just copy paste the lore over if there's no stats in it.

That's gonna make it

more efficient for us to deliver the book to you guys sooner, for example, when we do
stuff.

Makes sense to me.

Yeah.

Every book reduces my costs, which I like.

Because the more money we save, the more stuff I can make.

So just different things I'm learning as I go on how we can streamline our process and
improve so that we can deliver faster and more stuff.

Excellent.

What does does my say?

Obviously, Tampa requires somebody to do with a Florida man report.

Yes.

I mean, that really should be part of it.

Yeah.

Florida Florida man cryptid Florida man cryptid.

You realize every news report is actually the same man is actually the same man.

Right.

Shape shifter.

Yeah.

Shape shifter and doppelganger just keeps cloning himself and coming back for more
problems.

They actually just use the Florida man report to cover up the scripted that keeps doing
things.

Actually, that's a good idea.

write that down.

man.

There's that comedian that did a whole bit.

I love it so much.

It's like a really long segment too.

It's like 20 minutes or something, but it's on a guy in Florida that attempted to rob a
Wendy's through the drive-through with an alligator.

I mean, there's so many things wrong with that story from the get go and then you an
alligator in there.

Yeah, so so he was like, give me your money.

And they're like, no.

He's like, I've got his alligator.

They're like, and then he chucked the alligator through there.

But then he didn't have an alligator anymore.

So they still wouldn't give him the money.

Like, are you just giving us an alligator?

And then so like the.

So again, there's this comedian, Shane something.

He does an amazing set like on this story, like describing it from like from the point of
view of the people in line behind the guy in the drive-thru.

Yeah, watching that.

But the greatest part about the end is the fact that like they caught the guy pretty
quickly and the...

And in the newspaper articles like no drugs involved.

Are you sure about that?

Sure.

No discernible drugs involved.

without drugs involved is attempting to rob a Wendy's drive through with an alligator.

Jesus Christ.

What happens when you're on drugs?

See in here, I thought we referred to waffle as Florida man.

I mean, I used to live in Florida.

Florida man makes RPG and calls it the secret world.

That's right.

So yeah, that's awesome.

That's a bit, you know, that we got our list of, you know, cryptids.

Charged with attempted Florida manning.

like that.

Jersey Devil.

Shadlock Dark Watchers.

That's one that's what I'm very familiar with.

Jersey Devil.

Jersey Devil.

It's my neck of the woods.

We'll see what again.

Those all sound good right now and we'll probably be in there, but.

things can change.

mean, had a, we had originally, and I was unaware of this and I don't know how much it
applies or not, but we had, you know, I'd read stuff about cryptids and you know, evil

lizard people trying to take over the world and all that stuff.

I will.

That's it.

That sounds interesting.

And, we got several messages from people saying, well, you know, that's the thing about
Jewish people.

And I was like, I've never heard that before.

So we dumped it because we didn't want to.

go down the path of some, you know, being supposedly it was some kind of ethnic slur thing
to say that I was completely unaware of that.

So I'd never heard that before.

So said, well, since that's being said, let's not do that.

So sometimes we might have an idea that, you know, I haven't heard something that some old
men still say, well, let's change what we're doing.

yeah, sometimes.

Yeah, especially when you're dealing with history that it can get, it can get tricky at
times.

Yeah, well, I think it's more of a

mixing of conspiracy theories that have come before it was just some weird conspiracy
theory and from what I understood a more recent person started equating that to something

and it's merged that into a problem now which it might and me being older probably when I
heard about it I just heard weird lizard people I mean I remember the there was the old TV

show Land of the Lost and the bad guys were weird alien lizards yeah yeah yeah so my mind
I'm thinking well

that thing but they take on human form.

You know, I don't think anything bad and I'm there's also looking at like Mark Zuckerberg.

He's a lizard person.

Yeah, I mean, in a human suit.

Wasn't there a show like, was it V rising or something?

V, well, that's the redo.

V was originally the V visitors was, yeah, they were essentially lizards, aliens, bad
guys.

So yeah, I mean, that was like, that's been a constant thing and stuff for a long time
that I heard back from, I can remember.

No, but I get you're saying.

at some point, if it's.

If it's just a little too close to.

Current events, I guess, right?

OK, I have a good example of this, so I like to sometimes like watch reactions like I like
to watch people enjoy shows that I that I like, right?

So I do like watch reaction videos or something on YouTube on board and started watching
people watching Archer so we like Archer.

So you experience it for the first time again through someone else's viewpoint.

But the agency was called ISIS for like the first, I don't know how many seasons, because
ISIS wasn't a thing when that show was Right, right, yeah.

And you see people nowadays reacting to like episode one and they're like, what the shit
is this?

Why is this called ISIS?

yeah, you can't do that.

And they did have to change the agency's, like the show had to change the agency's name.

Yeah.

Even though it had been on for years.

because you have to react to the world around you.

Language has meaning.

Language is important.

I knew a person whose name was ISIS.

That's unfortunate.

Because ISIS is what?

It's an Egyptian goddess?

Listen, my name is Brandon and my kids say, let's go Brandon.

We'll leave it at that.

We're not going to take it further.

saying, I'm seeing all these flags.

I saw these flags around one time and I hadn't heard the stories like, wow, why do people
like my name so much?

Yeah.

You just felt this overwhelming support, you know?

Yeah, I so important.

All these guys riding around lifted trucks with the flags.

You know, they like me.

They really, like me.

So anyway, there's so as we go through stuff, we look at stuff and go, hey, you know, when
you're dealing with mythologies, there's what it used to mean.

what it means now, how people are perceiving it now at the time of writing.

So even if something I write now that might seem great, we put in a book, know, 10 years
from now we go, gosh, I would have written that if I'd known the future.

Yeah.

But, yeah.

I mean, look, when I first started working on this, I would rotate the different symbols
for the factions as my, symbol and my, on Facebook, like for my name, whatever, I don't

usually put my mug on there.

Nobody really wants to see it that much.

So I put up the dragon and I put up the Illuminati, which no one reacted to, but I put up
the temporal one and I got the whole you're a Nazi.

my gosh.

there's been a large adoption of that symbolism in that group now to the Vikings and
crosses and Viking mythology and cross mythology.

okay.

Tempars is being adopted.

so there's a lot of negative.

negative people who will grab a symbol that they quote unquote powerful whatever and they
adopt it and now yet we can't take it out of the game here.

Literally as part of the story and I mean so we have to say look that's not what that
means we're based on this we're have to ignore that but there are things we can just say

hey we don't need that you know and we can bypass it so.

Yeah, so they had switch their messenger logo because people were probably saying garbage.

And so I had a bad reaction from someone time.

I took it down.

Now I put it up again because I realized it was just a few people overreacting, but some
people will make a big deal out of something and not bother to ask you what you mean by

it.

So you got to adapt.

That happens.

Yeah.

Which, which makes writing for RPGs, especially an RPG that deals with secret societies,
the conspiracy theory is really tricky.

I actually thought that,

That was one of my ideas as far as like, know, because here in Secret World, the game
itself, Secret World Legends, that the last piece of content we received was in South

Africa.

And it was, when did they release that?

A while ago.

Yeah, I'll just say a while ago.

2018?

South Africa?

Dawn of the Morning Light was 2018, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's been, you know, it has, it's been a while.

But, and I always thought that that's why, like, and they were like, we're going to go to
the Congo next.

The Congo in real life is not exactly, you know, going through a good time right now, to
say the least.

And so...

I really think the part of the reason why we haven't seen anything so far is because the
areas of the world ...

that they want to go to the areas of this world are sort of.

tricky, you know, like, yeah, for like, for the same reason.

It's like, they don't want to, you know, have something come out and then all of sudden,
you know, have like, gosh, how dare you.

It's like releasing a world ending movie about hurricanes right after hurricane hit part
of the, you know, hit part of American killed 100 people that movie launched right then,

because it's too close to that time.

My wife said this the other day and we're big into musicals.

We do like our Broadway musicals.

And there's a Broadway musical called Assassins.

And it's a big Stephen Sondheim musical and Stephen Sondheim is one of the biggest in the
business.

they were going to do, they were going to make a theatrical movie release of Assassins and
then 9-11 happened.

And they were like, nope, we're not doing it.

You

And right, yeah, they altered Lilo and Stitch.

Yeah, Lilo and Stitch, there was a big scene in that.

They had to alter it.

Yeah, was the Right post 9-11 as well.

Yeah.

The plane, instead of going through the city of like, Honolulu, is going through random
valleys, mountains and stuff like that instead.

Right, instead of going through a major downtown area.

Yeah.

Isn't the biggest one from 9-11, wouldn't that be like the Spider-Man?

Spider-Man movie at the time?

Yeah.

Because the trailer, the original trailers had the towers in it.

Right.

did digital.

And then that that all had to be like redone.

They're like, nope.

Yeah, there's you'll see any number of cultural or, you know, natural events can occur.

And then you have to look at what you're writing at that time.

Right.

is now the time to do this and go probably not.

Or this was like I started writing my sci fi setting Starbreaker.

20 something years ago.

And I was.

mostly educated high school in Florida.

And I thought, you know, it'd be really interesting is the name the planets, the
Confederate systems Alliance.

And eventually become the United system that'll become the United systems Alliance, just a
little play on CSA USA.

And for obvious reasons, as I got older and read history, said, let's not do that.

You're like, maybe I shouldn't joke around about that.

Well, it wasn't a joke.

just, I, know, in Florida, they said it's only about state's rights.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And the right was to do things that are not nice.

So my point is, as you read and learn, so if you go, I drilled down further and to get
that's not something I want to deal with.

So I changed how I wrote that a long time ago.

I mean, that never came out like that.

Obviously, the whole story changed and then you write something.

But had I written it, then it wasn't a big deal that nobody would have batted an eye back
then.

Mm hmm.

Perfectly would have been perfect.

Starcraft had the Confederate flag for the

And the first one is why in the first game they were they had a Confederate flag.

And nobody remembers that because they don't share that anymore.

No, that got changed.

That's why, you know, and then and then you'll people claiming, you know, censorship or
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

So that's why you're doing anything that uses real history, doing anything that uses real
places, which secret world as part of the whole brand is that it's real places.

It's.

real myth, it's real legends, it's real, you know, like that real real real myths.

Real fake stories.

mean, real fake stuff.

I mean, yeah, you just it just takes you look at and go, does that seem good today?

So yeah, it's been a lot going through it.

And I mean, you know, it's going to take a lot more work.

The reason one of the reasons why The Dragon and Asia are going to be the third book we do
and not the first.

is because that's going to take some, I'm gonna have to find some people that say, Hey,
this cool idea you have.

Yeah.

That's not really a cool idea.

It looks cool to you from all your pop culture, but people may not like that idea.

know, you need it.

You need like a focus group, right?

To turn around and say, Hey, at least, at least avoid some of the, the, worst tropes that,
know, or because the other thing is, you know, sometimes things we think are bad.

Some for the culture, they know it's not bad.

You just think it is, but I still have to explore.

that it's a little easier.

You don't want to pull a Ubisoft.

That's what you're saying.

Yeah, try not to.

mean, try not to.

And so it's going to it's going to be something where we're still going have something to
say, well, I don't like X.

And I'm like, well, we didn't we didn't know you didn't like X.

But no harm is intended.

We'll do our best.

So I think it'll be pretty good with, you know, most that's another reason why I started
with America is easier.

We can just touch on other subjects and kind of go with a broad brush and try and stay
away from the trickier subjects.

So if you've said we didn't go very deep on this particular thing as well because we don't
have the tools to go deep enough into that one and feel safe or good about it.

So you can fill it in the way you want and we're just going to go over broadly and you can
go and deep rotted if you want to.

So I mean every mythology was someone's religion.

Right.

And if and hey I mean that's part of that's part of what tabletop is is that if you

have that, you know, if you are,

What am I trying to say?

we're well, I it's able to, you can run your table and you can run your own stories.

And if you have a specific thing that you know a lot about and you're comfortable with
running, yeah.

Then by, all means, like, you know, use that story, use that setting.

And you can go as deep and dark as you want into it, your own table.

If your people are happy with it.

mean, there are storylines are the mature group can handle and could be really awesome
stories, but that's not for everyone.

Like when I run to the convention, I'm like,

Okay, we're going to go to surface level here.

We're not going very dark.

We're going to focus more on the action.

We're not going to, know, trust.

mean, I ran contagion at the convention, which was pretty dark because you're after a
young woman who's infected and you have to stop her by any means necessary before you

caught.

But I mean, there's those, there's levels you like, well, I guess it will, how old is she?

said, well, she's, she's not a child.

She's an adult.

Cause you make her like 14.

people get weirded out, which I personally do.

law by law Biden citizen off camera, they let you know that they're killing his daughter.

I almost walked out of the theater.

I couldn't take it.

I got kids and I don't see that.

And they didn't show anything.

Obviously they're not going to be, you I was like, no, I don't want that.

I don't want to watch a movie about this.

Yeah.

and so there's, there's things that you just, everyone has their limits.

And I, I played a D and D game, for example, where for two years,

the mage was absolutely evil mage doing terrible things and I was playing a paladin who's
supposed to be the good guy.

I played my character so what I knew as a player was different from my character knew.

I knew as a player he was doing terrible things.

My character they always were careful to hide stuff from me and that was a really cool and
intense story because by the end he took over some demons abilities and you know terrible

things happen but that was fun because I was mature enough

And the rest of group was to let the story play out and not be offended as a person.

But there are other people who conflate the two too much together and it can be very
negative.

So you just have to know your group.

Right.

Right.

It's kind of like separating the actor from.

Yes.

character.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's people who meet their favorite star on the street and they think they're going to
be just like they are on their show.

And I mean, why Mark Hamill is really cool, for example, from Star Wars.

He's not Luke Skywalker.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, he's not gonna be the wise old Jedi when he moves.

He's kind of a goofy guy when you see him in interviews, which is cool He's very friendly.

I mean, but he's not that character and you know But that's what your expectation is.

Yeah, it's a problem.

So you hopefully your plan of people's role playing is very

Wait, what?

He's not?

mean, I played that same D &D game with the same group for two and a half years back when
I was 18 and on up, like I was 20.

And we would play every Saturday and Sunday, sometimes 12 hours at a pop.

So you get, you literally live this whole life with these characters as they go through
all these events together.

You feel like you explored this castle together as GM.

And so your character is really true to take on lot of personality.

So it can be.

If you can't separate yourself, can get really intense.

People can get very angry.

I mean, I played a game with a player one time who was playing his characters as very
negative person.

And he just told me to shut the F up one time in a game.

And I was like, whoa, wait a minute.

that character?

Was that you?

Slow down.

Were you telling me to or you're telling my character?

Wait, where are we at?

So.

You but we talked about it and said, this seems a little personal.

need to do some like OOC brackets.

Yeah, exactly.

This is, wait, was that out of character?

You really hate me.

It's a really cool hobby.

It lets you explore worlds and build things together and have all these memories together
of all these things you did.

Same as when you do the video game, except for you can tell more in-depth stories that
your characters have more control over.

General speaking.

Very nice, very nice.

I'm also chuckling over here because a waffle, they change what you look like.

really?

And me as well, even though I'm still tiny.

Keep me tiny, please.

you're, what's her face?

From,

This is it.

my God.

Sorry.

Hold on.

Leith spawned on me.

Crap.

Your what's her face from?

Shattered Forest.

She's across the lake with the wagon.

Cricket has to be ill at it.

Anastasia.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So other than that, does anyone have any questions?

Because I kind of covered broadly, you know.

You did.

You did a good job.

So you mentioned loosely that there was maybe some more classes.

And that's part of the, said new player options are coming.

Right.

What would, so can you share what one of these like new classes would be or what some of
these in Savage Worlds, they're the.

So arcane background established worlds for the powered ones or, you know, it's just to
put another group edges get put together.

Edges.

That's what it was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I mentioned that, you know, we're looking at the Bostonian witch or the
Illuminati operative.

Things like that are definitely being considered likely to be made.

But again, we could go back and say, this just doesn't work.

So, I mean, everything I'm sharing is like one thing I do want to do is, for example,

Now that 5e's really kind of come out with, and again this is just me looking at things
I'd like to do.

5e's done a thing where the weapons have special abilities and effects and I'd really like
to play that up and take what we did with Savage World's version where the weapons kind of

define some of your powers and abilities, or more so in Savage World, less so, not at all
in D &D.

Similar to when you change those out in the video game.

I'd kind of like to have that weapon maybe grant you're a cantrip or something or you
know, very, very focused on the way like you get the pistol, you get to do X.

and so, and I'd also like to do maybe like where we have the nine different, you know,
yeah, chaos magic, elemental, chaos elemental and blood magic.

And then you have your, you know, your pistol or your shotgun and your rifle, et cetera.

Anyway,

It would be interesting if we could add three more.

items that like I don't know what a new magic would be or like a magic that's not even in
the game.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then possibly do something like that with a, Hey, we got, you know, you've got
knuckles, you've got a sword, you've got, know, whatever.

What if we said, well, you know, ancient weapons exist.

What about if we had a bow?

I mean, somebody wants to use a bow and have a magic focus with that.

Would that be something that existed before?

But in modern times isn't really used, but someone's brought it back.

I mean, you know, because bees have been around for a while.

You know, technically, I guess the whole the whole point of the focus is not necessarily
that, this is a it's a it's a it's it's simply a really a focus for your power.

Right.

So it could be anything.

It's just then you have to theme it to work in a way that makes sense to a degree for that
item.

Like what if someone got a quarter staff?

Would that be a cool new melee type thing to have?

Would that be interesting in the game?

Would it not be?

Massac had a good question here.

He is he plan to able to grab the base book with the new Kickstarter?

Yeah, absolutely.

So they got the 5e but didn't get the Savage Worlds.

Well, so we will, you don't need to have Savage Worlds, you can have Savage Worlds or 5e,
whichever you want.

either one,

You have to like with with 5e we put all the rules in the book With savage worlds, you
have to buy the core rule book as far as how the rules work from pinnacle You know savage

world suede But The if you say hey, I want savage worlds right now for example with my
current kickstarter We're doing the late backer for that sci-fi one.

You can click and buy

Or you can buy it on Drive Thru RPG, the books and stuff if you want.

You don't have to wait.

But, you know, for example, so if you say, I want that, you can go buy it.

Sure.

And but we will make a package that says, catch up.

You didn't get this.

You can get all of it now.

Plus the new stuff.

Okay.

Because why wouldn't we let you spend more money?

Yeah, right.

Why would we stop you?

No, to throw money at you and you're not letting us.

Yeah.

Shut up and take my money.

So, yeah.

I see, but yeah, it reminds me of, and you may not know this, you may know this, I don't
know.

In the original Secret World, they sort of had something relative to that, what they
called auxiliary weapons, which we don't have in Secret World Legends.

Well, were...

Sort of, we do.

Sort of, sort of.

There's like part-time.

There was what, a whip?

There was...

Flamethrower?

Rocket launcher.

Chainsaw.

And the brazier, yeah.

it was like a magic brazier.

Tabletop role playing, I don't think maybe the rocket launcher and or...

Like this is my standard weapon, my rocket launcher.

You could absolutely do the rocket launcher because we made an ability where you can hide
your item in a pocket dimension.

OK.

And since well, that explains why players in the video games want my focus swords and
hammers that no one ever sees until they pull it out.

So, yeah, we did.

There is one ability you can actually hide in the Savage Worlds when hide it in a pocket
dimension.

Pull it out.

There it is.

That was worse like this like video game explanation, but you know It's the bag of bolting
Yeah, yeah It's just your pocket really I Do have the I do have the art for some bracers

We do have that those could be that could be interesting That would be interesting if you
want to quantum bracers was like was really sad because it was One of the coolest looking

ones and the mission for it was one of the best

but it was the most useless to actually use in Well, that's the cool thing about, you
know, an RPG.

We can make it as bad we want.

You can make it useful.

Yeah, the quantum the quantum bracer was a healing thing and it was bad at it Not only was
it not damaged right which It was heal only and it was bad at healing.

So like it was just a bad Here it is.

Yeah, the mission for it.

The mission for it was cool.

Shit the actual like Aesthetic of it was cool.

It just had really bad abilities Well, we can change that all we want so that won't be a
problem

Even had its own Had its own like monster Or the mission where you get it.

It's like a quantum enemy The only time you ever see it in the game like the model still
in legends like you can make it like show up with photo mode I like I like the image of

Hell's flamethrower right here.

I'm looking at

Yeah, the weapons had different skins for the Ox weapons.

Yeah.

So like you could get like a you could have like an Orochi, you know, flamethrower or, you
know, demonic one or like, the Soviet, the Soviet one skins were pretty cool.

Like a Soviet chainsaw was was pretty nice.

Here's the darkness wars.

Quantum weapon.

Yeah.

Waffle.

I'm pretty much sure you were changed to that creature.

Which one?

Waffles in first person over here.

there you go.

Nice.

That is the character from the Quantum Bracer mission.

He comes out like a quantum thing and starts shooting at you.

That's the only time you ever saw him in the game is if you did the mission.

I was wondering because my screen jumped a little bit like, what happened here?

Well, I mean, think stuff like that there's things we can play with and add to and or
yeah, yeah, this is stuff that's stuff that's in the game, you know, I mean, what we could

do is like if, for example, instead of say making a new weapon, you have your pistol.

But if you get this version of it, you get extra abilities that you wouldn't have like,
you know, could say like, hey, here's here's here's the ability for the sword.

But if you get the chain sword, it also does this.

You know, there's different because one thing I want to be careful is that people are
like, well, make it I've had some people make it work exactly like the game video game.

Like, well, this isn't a video game.

And other people said they have told me I made it too much like the video game.

I'm like, well, it's still I don't think that's true either.

But you try and find the balance between what works best for the tabletop, but gives
enough to the game for those that can appreciate it and just keeps things all organized,

you know, kind of thematically the same.

So there's that.

It makes a sound I know I'm talking about.

I would say that would always be an issue, right?

Trying to go from one genre to another, essentially.

Yeah, I mean, you don't have the, for example, in the video game, your powers have like a
timer and they react and they reuse them over and over and over again.

And that same amount of time that you've used that weapon in a video game,

You would never use it that much in a role-playing game.

And we also have to limit the power points or something in the game to give it some, to
give that, that timing is going be different in a role-playing game because you have to

leave that resource management as part of always role-playing, playing a role-playing
game.

So you want to have, you don't want it to be so easy that they can just spam that attack a
hundred times.

It would be unmanageable on a tabletop.

It's like a video game where something else is handling all the roles and the damage
you're just clicking, you know, so you have to, it's going to play differently.

It just gives you sort of a feeling of that, but not a copy of that.

Yeah, because you can't really shoehorn one system into another, like video game
characteristics into tabletop too well.

Vomr says, but you can spam Eldritch Blast in D &D.

But only once per round.

Yeah, not 20 times per round.

You know, you know, so you're you're doing it.

What do they call that?

The.

You see.

It's a cantrip.

The cantrips, the cantrips.

That's a cantrip.

I was thinking like the global cooldown.

I mean, we have that too, technically.

It's just our global cooldown is not a round.

It's a a it's a second.

Right.

game.

The video game does have a have a GCD.

It's just of a second.

Yeah.

When you're playing with.

I think I think D &D rounds are probably longer than a second.

Well, it doesn't matter how long it supposedly represents us how long does take everyone
to roll their dice add their damage and tell the GM what's going on and that could be

okay, so 20 minutes I played with a person who when they would roll their dice and were 15
minutes waiting for them to do that one roll

So yeah, it's a thing, definitely.

So I mean, that's always that's always usually loosen in tabletop anyway, that it's like
one round equals six seconds.

And it's like, yeah, yeah.

that's why I used to roll a D10.

And then you'd know that you're going on this six second thing.

And yeah, it's it.

You know each game to tries to tell you to is that like for example in D &D you make your
attack and someone says well I Swing my sword and I hit them for eight points of damage It

never represented actual damage but it's it's such an abstract way of doing it because the
whole the whole representation is more like You may not have actually but people will say

I hit him with my sword for damage and it gives the idea that sort of say it's some free
points of damage So I hit this normal human for eight points and they're dead, but I hit

you for eight points and you're fine

because it never was actually damage.

It's you dodged, you parried, you're getting tired.

You're supposed to, and because we all described it as damage, it feels like, in six
seconds you hit them, you'll hit them once.

Right.

That takes six seconds.

It's supposed to be, you're supposed to, you know, understand that it's more going on, but
that's not the way it's ever really explained when people play it.

So you, you, if you were to take the time and explain, if you explain it every time is
that intricate and all that stuff too, it also takes too long.

So time to time you just say,

Like you take eight damage, but that damage isn't actually like, you know, you just got
your arm sliced open, right?

You know, you got pushed, you got kicked, you blocked with your sword, but it hurts your
arm because you get like stabbed through the chest.

Yeah, it's the stab something that you still come back from.

No, I'm the Kool-Aid man and I lost this amount of my liquid out of it.

That's when it gets empty.

I am dead.

But that is why we're on the other hand.

Savage rules.

freaking me!

That's why Savage Worlds, think one thing I do like about that is that you have three
wounds.

Yes.

Yeah.

Everyone's essentially the same.

There are a couple exceptions where some people can be a little bit tougher, but you're
roughly the same level of, of once you take three wounds, you're down and could be, you

know, the fourth one, you're incapacitated fifth when you're So it's just how hard it is
to actually hurt you.

And so it's just,

Different ways can different games can represent different things.

So it's interesting.

I'm looking at another system for I'm interested for something later on as well.

So there's just different ways of representing everything.

It's the fun part.

The mechanics I pay people to be smarter than me to figure it out and say, I like this
idea.

Will it work?

And they say yes or no.

smarter people than we do everything.

Now, I will point out someone asked earlier today.

mean, yeah, we were talking about, don't, I don't play the video game anymore.

I don't want to put on my computer too many problems trying to make it work.

And I can't have my computer go down.

I've got gigs of art and other stuff.

I just, don't have the time to mess with anything that messes anything up.

And so they're like, well, how do you, how do you, you know, create this without having
the source material?

Like, well, that's not true because number one, when I first got the license and they
were, you know,

They were joking, think, or maybe they were serious.

don't know.

And my answer is, well, of course I have the source material because my wife plays and she
has three level 50 characters.

But there was a reason why I waited two years before we even made the book is because I
was looking for people that were actually they played or in my case, the case, Josh writes

it, you know, put it in there.

You glowing I have been turned into a what I think is a bowl of soup.

I think it's a bowl of soup.

Yeah.

Yeah I'm just a jumping bowl of soup Well, there's you're gonna be empty our soup will be
on the floor and you'll die we just talked about that It's a call back to this this

comment Mikey stop swimming in me

I was sorry across the floor negative 6 HP.

Sorry, I had to I had to I had to do that.

Yeah, there was sort of there was a quite a little discussion that came up in our in our
discord earlier.

I was feeling it coming to be like guys calm down calm down It's just a matter of like,
you know, I found people that I knew like I kept I was like hey You got anyone who

actually does this stuff?

mean vomer early on had me pestering the heck out of them and I ended up getting a hold of
Josh and Josh became our Resident guru which worked out well because of the amount of you

know direct connection with Funcom there's definitely good for us as far as getting stuff
done

And then you know, of course, like I said, I I asked my wife is this a good idea she goes
no No, she'll say no No, you don't know about this it's like like listen I what I played

secret world with her.

Mm-hmm.

I don't like puzzles Yeah, I'm not the puzzle guy.

I'm the guy who when you're going to a fight I go who am I supposed to kill?

Okay, that's how I play most of my video games, which is why I mostly play ruminant now I
kill stuff

And I was like, okay, you solve the puzzle while I fight so and so, you know, and and and
puzzles are great.

I think they're amazing.

If you like them, do more puzzles.

Yeah, 10,000 puzzles, Moamer.

But that's not me on your team.

I'm the guy who's fighting the bad stuff while you solve the puzzle.

So, you know, that's just the way I like to play games.

I like to kill it.

And I'm not even a first person shooter.

I like more MMORPGs like worse more to it, but I don't want to.

like solving puzzles and riddles and stuff makes me go crazy.

I want to say when we played with Andy, remember when we did the sort of test game with
Andy, that he was sort of like that same way.

was like, he's like, usually in games, he's like, I just like to play like the, like the,
just hit things character.

Like I just, I just, I just smack everything around.

Absolutely valid way to play and you should enjoy it if you do so long as you're yeah as
long as it works well as whatever team you're playing with you know what mean, like

there's You especially in the game where there is combat you want someone's good at it and
you want some maybe was better at the puzzles and all together You know It as long as

everyone has their role to play it can be great

I still I should have gotten to play in the game that Josh ran that would have been
interesting.

I had to go that day so I didn't get to sit there and listen to it.

apparently I'm not quite sure who was there.

But I did see someone talk about it.

I did see someone basically say, yes, it was awesome.

Yes, it was amazing.

And mostly in Chicago.

What's that?

Old average Joe.

Yes, yes.

He was there.

Yeah, he's on my stream all the time.

Kind of worked out well because Josh, he knew Chicago real well.

He knew the story.

I gave him a crash course on Savage Worlds prior him to running it.

Like, let's do a couple of roles of combat and stuff and all that.

Just kind of showed him how the basic target numbers were achieved.

But he didn't know the rules really well because he doesn't play a lot.

The one of the guys playing it knew the rules really well.

So he was like, we're going to do this.

And I said, yeah, but you got to roll this.

He said, great.

Everyone roll that.

And that's how that went.

That's You know, like, I'm going to go off a year.

That's fine.

Yeah.

You tell me what role I'll tell you how the story goes.

But everybody that and real honestly that again, you don't really have to know the rules
to run the game.

You just have to be consistent in your decisions.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't don't change the rules on the players every session.

That's not good.

Yeah.

Or if you're going to do that, make sure you have a nice fancy wheel that you spin.

Yeah.

Best way to do it.

And we're like, aha, so this week, right now, I think I'm going to take that to a
convention.

I'm going to make the wheel of the wheel of doom and roll stuff out.

This is what happens now.

I mean, that's basically what Dark Agartha is, right?

Basically, it's basically a every day.

We a have a dungeon in the game called Dark Agartha, and it's basically a futuristic
version of Agartha, where basically it's almost like the like the end of time,

essentially.

hell, it's broken loose.

Can't wait to get the story in the RPG.

And it's a different timeline.

Every time you go in every day, it's a different timeline.

So it's all it's always messed up.

It's just whatever bosses are there to fight and then whatever modifiers they have is
different in that version.

But the one consistent is it's always fucked.

But the future is fucked.

Sorry, ahead.

mean, Vomers like Darker Garth, there's a potential alternate dark timeline.

But if I write it into the book, it might be the timeline when I'm done writing the book.

No, that's think that's a that's an assumption.

I think that's an assumption bomber.

I think it is the end of our timeline.

I have some ideas what the end of the time.

a potential end of our timeline.

A potential end.

mean, when I had the call way back with

guys at Funcom, they kind of told me how the story is supposed to go.

What the theory was stuff that for whatever reason, I can't say what the specifics they
said were.

Yeah, sure.

I'm not gonna I'm not even gonna ask because I know you can't say they gave they gave me
ideas.

So I know what to work with.

Like this is what we want to do.

And whether that ever happens, I don't know.

But like this was the intended story.

And I'm like, okay, so now that I know that I that did influence the way we wrote some
things.

That's kind of it does influence

the existence of why the choices matter with your character.

But anyway, well, it's like 1015 guys.

So I enjoy hanging out with you you're amazing, but I think I should probably head out for
the night.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for joining us.

Brandon Verhalen from Star Anvil Studios.

you.

Thank you so much for joining us and enlightening us about what's coming up with the
secret world North America.

I'm going to once more plug the Kickstarter.

Go check it out on Kickstarter.

Not up yet.

Is there any timeline as far as when it might come up next?

Early first quarter.

First quarter.

OK.

All right.

That's definitely going to be first quarter unless something like unless I fall off a
cliff.

It'll be first quarter.

I'll give you a more definitive timeline.

It'll be announced in December.

End of December, I will announce the definitive timeline.

But anyway, thanks for having me.

Excellent.

Secret World North America.

Awesome.

Okay.

And a whole bunch of other stuff we talked about.

As we get changed into random random shit.

I think it was all relatively related.

Off my computer.

Except for possibly the soup thing.

This might not be related.

Soup not necessarily related.

No, actually, that's not true.

It is it is related.

It was related to taking damage in the TDRPG and like the conversation about you took the
blame.

I I take great damage.

But what is a damage really?

right, right.

Right.

I hope it happening in a round.

You said you were the late man.

It's like obviously when I lose liquid.

And now now I'm soup and now I'm soup.

That's how that it all ties together.

The Secret World version of Kool-Aid Man, yes.

The bowl of soup.

When my bowl is empty, I am dead.

I said stop.

I think I said stop drinking me my picture that got a response Wasn't expecting that part
they're like stop stop swimming in me I did get a nice I did get a screenshot now that one

got a chuckle, but stop drinking me part Disturbing something he's like what I was in like
the the ravenous

like, stop eating me!

kinda thing.

that's what I was going for.

But no, it was good.

was great having Brandon on.

Yes, but he does understand how we how we are how we roll sometimes.

I sounded like he got a couple ideas.

He mentioned he was taking notes on a couple of things.

yeah.

Sometimes you just let the madness out and things are...

I did like that idea of making Florida Man their own cryptid.

It's just a great idea, really.

All right.

Just like a shape shifting version of the fuck is that guy's name on the commercials?

Mayhem.

yeah, yeah, This Florida man is just like a shape shifting version of that guy.

It's just like fucking shit up.

Like stop.

Yes, the insurance guy.

They are their own.

mean, he's basically he's basically a cryptid, right?

Like he is all the mayhem happening all the time.

So Florida man would be like, like I pictured be like that guy kind of except he
shapeshifts into whatever bizarre person is doing whatever thing.

I Sounds very, sounds very plausible.

Be like, it's a more modern cryptid.

You know, they need Florida man insurance.

That's what need.

Be protected from Florida man.

And then, and then like the, they're actually working in, in cahoots.

They're actually, teamed up.

I'm saying like, you should like waffles should have Florida man insurance is what I'm
saying.

And then you have something really bizarre happens to him.

Like he would, he would file a claim, you know, Florida man insurance.

They don't, they don't, they don't do any claims in the state.

He left as well.

Like I made this claim and then mayhem showed up.

What I mean, you know, I mean, it makes sense.

Yes, I'd play that.

I'd totally go for that because we even have certain things like what in Tokyo, there's
Mr.

In-Between, right?

Yeah.

It's just like, it's just the idea from just that one classic song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, know.

The the mess between it's the he's trying to suck up.

It's not into our well.

I don't remember if it says he's pulling us in, but he's definitely trying to eat our
energy and feed it to the dead guy.

Yeah, that that part is correct.

I don't remember if he's actually like pulling us in.

I don't remember the exact specifics either, yes, any anything that you any I guess any
any anything, right?

Everything is made of stars.

Anything that crosses his path, he's trying to feed into the into Gaia.

But it really turned around that song, I didn't, what is it?

I heard it a couple months ago in something and it was like, yeah, don't mess with Mr.

In-Between.

And I was like, shit.

Okay, there it is.

That's right.

I Don't hear it.

Okay.

Okay, the damage guardian is unhinged its programming is frayed its work protocols compel
it to reach into other times and Pull Gaia imbued bees to it like you sweetling it will

try to extract anemone from you and feed it to dead Gaia a sorrowful sight were we alive
to see like a deranged toddler stuffing meat into the mouth of its mother's corpse pushing

her drop and drown trying to masticate for her even as the flies land upon her crowded
eyes

That's an amazing visual.

that is visceral as all get out.

I know a bomber pasted it in chat.

I I- I'm in the game, I just pulled up the legend, because I'm in the game.

You can always check TSWDB.com TSWDB.com

zero point worth of pork sponsored by a possible future in the writhing bouquet of
existence

But this it's a one by the way, it's the one legend where the the buzzing comes clean and
says, we didn't have to tell you everything.

Like all the other legends like that don't really say like you sort of implicitly trust
whatever shows up in the lore from the buzzing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I remember some Dev streams or tilting was like basically no one is a reliable
narrator.

Yeah.

Even the buzzing.

And this is the one official.

from the horse's mouth they're like so we didn't tell you everything we withheld they're
not saying they lied so much as they lied by omission but you can do you can do a lot of

damage with lying by omission

So yeah, don't know the Dark of Garth of Legends in general like it's some of the I think
it's is that some of the last legends that happened as well I want to say That's gotta be

some of the most recent legends.

I would think it's probably some of the most recent I mean a cult defense I guess
technically comes after that but that's specific to the druid stuff

The stream is brought to you by Kool-Aid, Do Not Drink Me, and Campbell's Pooky Noodle
Soup, podcast by The Spoonful.

I like that.

It's really good.

Shunky.

do you guys want to try and do a little bingo before we...

Bingo?

Finish stuff out?

Jimmy created a way to basically play Daley's bingo.

Say, would you like to explain what this bingo is?

It's bingo.

Yes.

So the idea is it's to do with the daily challenges.

So the main thing is that I put together like a set of, like, think it's like 128 bingo
cards.

And you can use bingosync.com and make a room and paste in those cards.

I have the file on my website so people can grab it.

And yeah, you can generate a random bingo board and then...

Do these different things that all should count towards your daily challenges and attempt
to get a bingo.

It's basically a way to, as we discussed, make it so that if you're going to be coming on
and doing your daily, that you're not just hitting the same exact stuff over and over and

over over again.

That's a way to randomize your own play, essentially, so that you get to replay stuff that
you may not have seen in a while.

So in this card, the middle spot is Dark Agartha.

Middle being pretty powerful for trying to get a bingo line going.

But also, me, maybe not the quickest.

Right.

There's other things that would probably be quicker.

Kill 100 Peduri, my god.

Yeah, some of them are easier than others.

So let's see.

One is this one, So for example, I can do this.

And then, where the hell's the board?

my God.

Where is the board?

I've got the board up.

BAM!

I stole Empower Lucktowsman.

Get screwed.

God dammit.

Now you can't get that one, I already Empowered my Lucktowsman.

and my bank is filled with stuff.

no.

I'm powered waste house man.

And wrist talisman, which gives me three different talismans.

God damn it.

I've been playing for about five seconds.

I'm like, I have, wait, finger, finger, finger signet.

God damn it.

There's a couple signal ones, there's only three different signal ones.

I'm like, wait.

Do I even have wrists?

I got a call to Alvin.

God damn it, that's what I...

no, that wasn't what I was working on.

But I don't have a bingo yet, I just have squares.

Though if we can't get bignos as majority, I'm definitely in the lead for majority at this
point.

We don't have anything to shove into it, god damn it.

Okay.

Freezing?

Get down.

Freezing?

He is being a pain right now.

This one, this one.

She's decided now she's trying to get behind my computer again.

Wait, which things are spirits?

You.

Is that the green ones or is that the fire ones?

Bomber, do you remember?

Could you stop?

Please?

It's spirit was so what the other ones are wisps.

Okay.

I couldn't remember which which because they they're this they're basically look the same
right just different colors.

gosh

I have no idea what Waffle's doing because he's got the bingo board covering the entire
screen.

He does.

Just FYI, what I do Waffle is I just crop just the board and throw that up in the corner
when I'm doing it.

now I'm a floating head in a bowl of soup.

Since I teleported away.

It's the best kind.

Alright.

I realized I looked in my bank and I've got all kinds of from Halloween that I have not
been keeping up on.

Oops.

Okay, I think I can track this.

and then the weapons.

I don't have those weapons on me!

Do you're are you using OBS?

No, I'm using the cam.

do you have a way to like so in OBS you can like.

Crop what's showing?

Can you crop what's showing?

Yeah, I that.

So like I'm saying you could make it just show the board.

You don't need like any of the rest of the screen.

I probably better.

You have a lot on there to empower signets and I'm like I got.

I got shit to empower significance.

I did read I did re-randomize the board a few times because there is a couple that were
like.

Have a good night masick.

Have a good night masick thanks for something by my friend.

I got one a cab.

You got one a cop.

There's two.

Ouija boards.

Do we need Ouija boards?

39.

What did that be?

The little ones count too

Here I am like, hold on.

Updating my inventory.

I'm organizing, organizing my inventory, dang it.

Wait, wait, wait,

39, I think.

my god dude, fire spirits fucking...

They like, sometimes they just launch.

They land and just launch you.

It takes longer than you think to find 50 of these fucking things to kill.

Bank lady!

Okay, here we go.

No wait, I want the bank.

Jimmy are you you're not you're not soup anymore right no I am soup and I have a floating
head actually it's okay so you stayed soup okay good I'm still soup I was worried I was

worried that I wasn't soup anymore that you weren't soup anymore no I'm definitely still
soup good but but somehow when I teleported I it added the floating head back

So I'm a floating head above soup.

Well, I mean, someone's gotta drink that soup.

You threatening me?

I don't know what I'm doing.

Are you threatening me?

setting myself on fire by accident.

So we did have some other news.

Did we?

We had news?

Did we?

We did have some news but it's news now mostly relating to other funcom properties.

Specifically Dune Awakening announced that it's coming to ...

PC early 2025.

They're really pushing hard for Dune Awakening right now.

They released the Communinet Signal number 3 for Dune ...

Awakening to basically say how they're going about the ...

world with it.

They said we're back again with our third edition of the Communinet Signal.

As with previous issues, we're going to round up all the goings on and happening
surrounding Dune Awakening in the past weeks for your reading pleasure.

In the last issue, we shared everything there was to see at Gamescom in Germany.

This time, we're going to take you to conventions in California, Japan, and Brazil.

So even if you didn't get an opportunity to check out our booths in person, we can share a
little bit of Arrakis with you here.

We also have some fantastic artwork created by our community.

New assets right from our own artists and answers to some of your burning questions.

And one of the coolest things I thought they showed in that entire thing was they showed
an Ornithopter work in progress image and it looks baller.

It does, it looks great.

do you what you said on emails reminding people to do the beta sign up surveys relatively
recently as well?

Yes.

I mean, the surveys have been going on.

They have indeed.

Ornithopter.

Insect.

Type.

Flying machine.

Yes, love it.

let's go check that out.

put up there.

Communion and that signal.

Then other things, Dune Spice Wars came up with their community update number four with
new conquests, which I believe in Dune Awakening the conquests are the story mode, sort of

like a way to run through it with like a story progression almost.

mean, wait, you mean Dune Spice Wars, right?

Yes.

That's what I said, right?

Well, since I misheard you, I thought you said Awakening again.

no.

Dune Spice Wars, yeah.

You just said it or I misheard it.

One One of those two, yeah.

Yes, Dune's Spice Wars, the RTS, and they added Fremen and Smuggler Conquest.

So a Fremen conquest, a whole Fremen storyline.

could be cool.

What's that?

What?

I missed that.

did you say?

that's cool.

OK.

Yeah, I thought that was really cool.

And other than that, Aloft, which is a game developed by Astrolab Interactive, published
by Funcom, and they've been pushing it, though, described as a cozy sandbox survival.

So.

Not Conan Exiles, but still survival.

I know I'm in.

I first saw that I was kind of meh.

But I saw the more recent trailer and I kind of like want to check that out.

I kind of dig it.

It's the the artwork looks cool.

The artwork especially looks really cool and it's all about like floating from island to
island.

Got 50.

Nice dude.

What did you get 50 of?

There you go.

Someone else is on the board.

I'm about to be too.

just took a break to talk about the news.

But yeah, no, Aloft looks cool and it's being published by Funcom, so it's developed by
Astrolab Entertainment.

I'm sorry, Astrolab Interactive.

My bad.

Yeah, when I got that email, I'm like, what is this game?

Funcom?

What?

Yeah, and they've been pushing it

I was doing this the other night and like I swear to God I needed to get I think the other
night it was hotel as well I needed to get hotel and like I must have queued for a

scenario like fucking 15 times I kept getting like either castle or mansion I was like god
damn it just let me fucking get hotel already this shit is wrong with you

And I went on a rant about how it's really dumb that we can't pick our stuff.

Don't I mean I generally don't like it I don't like that you that you can only randomize
into dungeons or scenarios It's just super annoying

Yeah?

Yeah.

I mean, it's not changing anytime soon, probably ever, but like, it's...

doesn't make me less annoyed by it.

Actually, that's probably just as more annoying that it's not gonna change.

Weirdest part about being soup is I can't see where I'm attacking.

At least I can run and jump though.

Like, you know?

You can still attack.

I don't think it affects my sprint speed negatively.

And I can jump.

Because apparently, rabbits can't jump and spools of soup can't.

Make it make sense.

I see some other people are getting on the board.

doing the dag signets.

Damn it, that's what I was looking for.

I was like,

I like, I know I got stuff, but I didn't.

Clearing out my inventory.

There we go.

But what do they say?

Earlier, I don't know if it's the same way because I haven't been in the beta,
specifically because if I was in the beta, I couldn't talk about it.

How do we know how to trust you, Mikey?

That's what I mean, we know how to trust you?

Well, I'm not in the beta.

That's exactly what a person that is in the beta would say.

That's what they would say.

I side no NDA.

I side nothing.

I'm allowed to talk about it.

You

Fight Soup Club?

That's the first rule.

Fight,

Soup Fight Club.

Yeah.

don't was trying to- thinking of what would it be like Campbell's Fight Club Soup.

That'd be a hell of like a movie tie-in.

It's chunky.

Actually, I literally think I'm blocked always.

Except for if I go run and do Dark Agartha.

I mean nothing says you can't do like E1, Dr.

Garter.

You know?

Try as you may remember how to jump down.

First try!

jumping down to Dark Agartha.

even have a Dark Gartha build.

Look at me.

Look at me.

Look at me.

It's like I've played this game before.

One could almost be fooled into believing that, that's true.

I know.

Sometimes it's not the most experienced that you hear from.

Sometimes it's just the person who wants to talk about it.

Always remember that, right, when someone is talking about a topic.

Sometimes they are not going to be the most...

most well known on a topic.

They're not going to be the person who is the the biggest expert in the world.

Sometimes it's just going to be

the person capable of talking about it.

Now you, I set this room up as lockout, which is why we can block.

But you, you, when you make the room, you can actually pick.

So if you made it not lockout, then you both would pick the square and it would color it
like split it diagonally and color the square.

know, I don't know what it is for third, but I've seen it diagonal.

Like, so it'll, it'll, it'll split color.

And if you don't do lockout mode.

Okay.

You know, think lockouts more fun because it gives you like, you know, a strategy around
blocking someone else's bingo versus just you both can use this.

you without lockout, you both can just do the same five squares.

It's just who does it faster, I guess, technically.

Gosh, it's been a while since I've done Dark Agartha.

Been a while.

That's the thing, Palmer, I can't see what he's doing.

Okay, so you could if

If Mikey broadcast his shit on Discord, then you could capture from there, potentially.

But you'd have to actually do that.

Would you like me to?

share your screen.

the game.

That is a nice thing about the discord right is it like like literally anyone could be
like yeah I'm just gonna share what I'm doing yeah and you know what mean like you don't

have to like strip like have streaming shit set up yourself or anything like that.

You don't necessarily need the audio.

You trying to tell waffle what he needs or doesn't need?

How dare you?

You don't need that.

How dare you, sir?

You don't need that.

you trying to trying to Florida's plane?

Okay, Florida Splain is a thing now because I just made it up.

I everyone to use that.

Instead of Mansplain, Florida Splain.

Florida Splain.

I shared it so yeah give me one second I gotta move this word into that I was gonna say do
it do what you got to do on your end

my itty bitty self.

Alright, you're tiny.

It does add the added challenge of when you go to target something, I do have to look up
at them.

Yeah.

All the way the heck over there.

What are you doing all the way over here, dude?

I don't know you can run away from me like that.

And just to make it interesting, I'm not just doing E1.

shoot.

shoot.

Get out of there.

Get out of there.

Get out of there.

Move.

Yeah, you don't stand a nap.

Now you're trying to Florida's plane to Mikey.

That's right.

It's a Jersey explain Jersey.

Wait, I thought it was the whoever is doing the explaining.

That's what the name that's what it's attached to.

That's why it's called man.

No, no, no.

I it around for the Florida thing.

That's the whole point.

I changed.

I changed the rule that that rule has changed itself.

Go, go, go, go.

I'm not even looking at what the things are.

So means you can New York-splain?

Yeah.

And I can Jersey-splain.

sounds as a toxic spores did Jersey's plane sounds a lot like a thing though also kind of
just sounds like you're saying Jersey is a plane it's Jersey plane yeah that's just a

version of playing right playing playing old Jersey

it's probably a thing I have to stand in.

yeah, that one.

That's the...

You stand in the ring so that you don't die to the...

the fungus?

Yeah, it's the fungus effect.

Or something.

I think that's literally like the fungus trying to consume you or some shit like that.

Hey GK!

Pardon me, hatchling.

Move out of the way.

I'm trying to see what this GK can do.

No, you're not gonna move?

I'm just gonna die.

That's fine.

I was just stepping into spores.

It's okay.

But where the fungus that survives in the world, for it feeds indiscriminately, this diet
may have had some unusual results.

And why is it that color?

Did you just die while trying to read the lore?

Is that what happened?

No, no, almost.

Almost died while trying to read the lore.

I wasn't paying attention to that screen for second.

I didn't actually die.

didn't actually die.

I almost died.

Almost died.

difference, yeah.

Alright GK, I forget this fight.

Do I need a...

I think I need an Impair?

Only if he has Animadrain and or Redistribution.

No.

doesn't have anima drain or anna retribution.

You don't need an impair.

okay.

I was like, I thought this one, I thought he always did.

So that's good to know.

He has the anima drain, like I feel like most of the time, but it actually isn't
mandatory.

It's just like the most common one that he has.

It is trippy fighting from the smaller angle, I must say.

Jebus.

I'm just running around like a madman and sort of like how like you're in your first
person playthrough you have to you know you find yourself looking directions you don't

normally look yeah yeah it's that same sort of effect like I'm always looking up

Yeah, GQ?

So that wasn't the E level that I'm currently at.

That wasn't my max E level.

I'll just say that.

But wasn't E1.

But it wasn't E1 either.

It was like E3.

Gotcha.

We did you get it?

Yep.

You got to mark your square, dude.

I'm getting there.

Bam.

I technically should have marked it like as soon as gatekeeper died.

That's when the.

Well, I also knew that neither one of you was in darker Garthas.

was pretty safe.

I mean, pretty safe from that being stolen.

I'm operating like in the back of my head, I'm still picking up like bingo brawler stuff.

It's like you know like think like five seconds to mark the square or something Okay,
yeah, or if you're actually playing people that can see what you're doing right like if

you're then The other person could be doing it neither of you would know that so I mean
kind of the point of yeah Yeah, yeah You don't want to waste you like it would be

detrimental if you don't immediately mark it

If for no other reason than they could mark it before you, technically.

Right?

Yes.

Yeah.

You just lose it.

I remembered about something the other day.

And it was,

The idea that when you died, you had to, if you wanted to transport somewhere, you had to
reset yourself.

Yeah.

In old TSW.

Yeah, I had like a...

I had a set of gear I used for that.

I had like a set of white gear in TSW that I put on before I did a reset.

Remember your gear had to be repaired?

Mm-hmm.

So that was sort of like, want to transport somewhere and yeah so you had to...

You had to kill yourself every time.

You remember like the first Matrix, right?

When the guy starts unplugging people.

of the guy that betrays them.

Mm-hmm.

It starts like literally unplugging them in real life and in the Matrix they just sort of
like fall over.

Like they just flop.

I was like TSW like during anniversary stuff or whatever.

Like world bosses.

After it's dead you see a hundred people just flop over like they just got unplugged.

That was always funny.

Just flub-flub.

Yeah.

something

I'm like trying to figure out.

I'm doing one of the kill ones and I'm like how do I remember?

I'm just trying to count in my head.

I mean you could look at your achievement and just see like where you're at I suppose.

Yeah.

I have In Farmer installed so I just check spirits and then did it until it went up 50 you
know.

So just hear me just ranking up numbers.

You're not a familiar.

At the way, you're not a familiar.

Run.

to

46.

50.

58 because I will easily lose count 62

63.

67.

69 noise nice.

Thank you 70

my game crashed no 71 no that should be on the board game crash game crash yeah 72 will
just fucking like control delete their game that's not

FutureTech Cash.

Wait a minute, the future tech cash is dropping again?

Yeah.

Nice.

74.

think that's where it was.

76 I have a theory by the way

I have a theory by the way.

My theory is that my character is really small, right?

They shortened me, right?

We all know this.

That's not the surprising thing.

The thing is that I believe that the drop rate for caches is extremely small for me.

And my theory is that they somehow tied

in the spaghetti code way.

You think you drop rate to your size?

That the drop rate for caches is tied to the size of your character.

I don't think so.

It sounds crazy, right?

Well, because it is crazy.

It is crazy.

I am now...

Okay, there we go.

That's probably 100.

I probably killed over 100 now at this point.

And guess how many caches have dropped?

There is code for it actually though.

There's,

like a hundred I just killed a hundred and how many cash is one one cash.

Bingo!

you didn't get the bottom.

Very nice.

Very nice.

by the way, I literally killed the gin, the last boss, and then the game crashed.

And I was like, mother.

Congratulations, Jimmy.

Well done.

Well done.

I close.

I was going for that diagonal.

I had blocked your diagonal with the Hellfallen.

Yes.

I was like, but I was in the middle of killing Familiar, so it's not like I was actually
at that point yet.

Although I could have done Hellfallen why did Hellfallen before I did Hotel?

What's that?

I did Hellfallen before I did Hotel.

Yeah, and I didn't see it.

So it would have been like, well damn it, I don't have anywhere to go.

That was the only one I had.

That's why I said once I did the signets and I looked and you had done the wrist talismans
and you had done the luck talismans down at the bottom.

Then I was like, well, I can't go that way and I can't go that way.

The only way I can go is diagonal.

If two person bingo, you would have more options.

Yeah.

Well even still, that's just you and me.

you would have, sorry.

So basically if Waffle wasn't playing, you would have had like row four to go for.

Right, yes.

Okay.

That would have been the only one I think you could have gone for.

Other than if you tried to do Hellfallen quicker, I suppose.

But it's like after Dark of Gartham, maybe I could have tried Hellfallen, yeah.

Like maybe could've done that with the familiars, but you may have already been in there
already, so I would've already been little bit I'm E12, so like doing Hellfallen story

mode, which is also the only way you can do Hellfallen anyways, but is stupid fast, right?

I'm just like, two-shotting a boss or something.

And I can still do it fast.

And then I mean, I would honestly say the scenarios are kind of like the evener because
those are just straight time.

Right.

So whether you're doing S and P one or 17, it does not matter.

Right.

I mean, I guess technically the kill time on the boss could be if you were trying to win
like really hard, you would just do S and P one if only to make the boss timer shorter.

Right?

Sure.

the waves are just timed, period, flat.

Like, you can't do it.

Like, no matter how fast you kill shit, the wave is the wave.

Yeah.

But the boss can be shortened.

Now, I did as high as I could go.

I did an E12 S &P because I just needed this to live.

You know?

But if I was racing someone, I would do level one just so that the boss timer is quicker,
I guess.

Yeah, I don't know.

And again, this is is set for lockout.

If you play without lockout, then we both could have been marking squares.

Right.

Then I wouldn't have had to have chosen.

I would have I probably would have done darker Garth.

I probably would have done something else.

But I was like, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm going for it.

I went for the bottom one because I felt like it was probably the fastest, but I'm not, I
guess I'm not positive.

Maybe, so like column one is the thing I didn't like about a lot of the other ones is they
have like kill a hundred of stuff, right?

A hundred ghouls and a hundred cultists in column one.

Everything else is fast.

Empower, empower, empower, right?

Like those are really, really fast.

Mm-hmm, but killing 200 of anything I mean I did have to go to the to the auction hall and
and find if I sign it's the stuff in there That's why yeah, I had to buy a salt rifle.

I'm like, don't have Yeah, yeah same I was like, yeah the assault rifle that I have is it
even though I've just been playing so I think I've done two streams so far Where I was

playing bingo like just with my own dailies just okay what I could do

And,

I will say that I have straight up with my legendary gear paid like 2k to rip out a glyph
that's maxed to put in a non-level glyph in order to empower that glyph in that slot to

get the challenge and then rip it back out and put the right glyph back in.

Like just to make the, just to get the bingo card, you know?

But no, I was,

go back a bit.

When I started thinking that there was a correlation between your character's height and
drop rate for caches, it was because of the FutureTech cache.

Before they instituted, before they, they started with the, what cache do they have for
Halloween?

It was the...

think of it.

The haunted cash.

Yes.

They had the haunted cash for Halloween and they had the future tech cash before that.

And so I was like, I'm going to go farm some future tech cashes so I can get my stack back
up to 100.

Because when we did the show where during the anniversary where you were giving away the
keys and I was giving away the cashes.

Yeah.

Almost everyone asked for future tech.

Yeah.

Right.

And so and I guess they took notice of that and they said, hey, we're bringing back future
tech.

Because we have not had it in a long time.

And so I use that time to bring my future tech cash stack back up to 100.

And I was sitting there farming zombies for what felt like forever.

And I only got like five.

You get like a diminishing return as well.

I'm not sure.

Like Vomr said, like, of the day, but I think it might also be one of those things where
it's like, maybe not of the day for you, but like of the day, period.

I mean, like of anyone's day.

my gosh, wait, my cat's behind the computer again.

Is he going to decided to cut you off?

Quite possibly.

It's bedtime.

I'm biting through your power cord now.

How did you get back?

How did you get back there?

Okay, well I can't reach her.

Ways and means, that's how I get back there.

Gosh, this cat.

Okay, so just as an example of how I know this is a thing in Seeker World in general is
that, you remember in scenarios dropped augments in TSW?

they could drop gold augments, they were rare.

Which is behind me the drops rate of that seemed like horrible like just but but then also
some people were just like have this rain gold for them and then other people it gets you

go like never get a fucking goal, right?

Okay, and I remember specifically tilty addressing that on a dev stream was that the
correct amount of gold augments were Being given out like the the code was like, you know,

so many X gold augments should

be given out a day essentially, right?

Like didn't want to flood the system with Go Log Rants.

However, the way it was doing it was like,

was not spread out.

basically whoever was in the time zone that was on after like the server restart or after
that the internal ticker ticked over like got on those fuckers that would rain gold and

everyone else would be fucked for the rest of the day.

And they're like no the server's giving out the right amount of gold.

They're like it's perfectly fine.

You're like is it all the same fucking time jackass and all of the same people which
explains like shoddy was always up like

in the morning like in Germany and he every time he did his S &Ps he fucking gold and then
by the time I get online and do my in my morning nothing interesting okay like just know

that

It's a thing that the game has done in the past where it's said like there's a drop rate
and we're making it sort of thin out after it's reached a certain amount, but it's not

necessarily for you.

It can be server wide, right?

Okay.

And they've in the past done incorrect waiting or essentially no waiting at all.

And so they just sort of go when they go and then they...

sort of disappear or get super rare.

Okay.

So I would be more inclined to think that something like that is happening with the cash
than your size.

Than my size?

Well, the only thing I had to go off of was my size.

So the only way to really test this would I would have to basically...

say, think about this, think about this, Mikey.

FutureTech came back.

Everyone likes FutureTech.

How many people out there are out there farming FutureTech caches right now?

or just when that started happening, right?

Yeah.

So it's likely that other people were doing it and getting, essentially just stealing
drops from you.

You were being robbed.

It's fair, yeah.

And that's fair too.

I think that was the more likely outcome than arbitrarily tying the Than having the drop
rate be based off of some random variable.

Now, I would love to know that that is a true thing.

they were just like, fuck short people.

Well, that's like my theory of, how do I test this?

How do we test this?

You have to make a tall character.

I would have to have an extra tall character, you'd have to farm zombies at the same time.

Make a new character and make it male, because males in Seagrille are taller by default
anyways.

So make a new male character and make the slider all the way up, and then go...

But the thing is, I think when you...

So you have to get to a certain level like what 15 for cash is to even drop for you.

And like when you first get a cash, it does seem like you get a bunch just in general,
like the game sort of knows that you've never gotten any or something.

Right.

It seems like anyways, that could just be like confirmation bias, honestly.

Right.

But even as you said, if it's like a time based thing and other people are stealing them
at the same time, then the only thing that would really make sense is that if someone else

was there.

at the same time, very tall, and we both farmed stuff simultaneously, because if the time-
You have to do it at a time that you assume is dead.

as well because otherwise you have no idea what other people are screwing both them.

True.

Potentially.

True, but if they're screwing both participants over at the same time.

Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's equal, right?

I'm just saying you need to lower the amount of variables so you would want it if you're
trying to do your scientific test of this You'd want to do it at like I don't know 10 p.m.

EST or something like or even a even 11 you want like the end of East Coast but before but
like really you Okay, or or late West Coast gets on like There's there is a dead zone kind

of between

Right, and so then I would have to, but even doing it on different days, even that itself
is a different...

Yeah, even a different day could matter potentially.

Could matter potentially as well.

So I'd have to have, that's why I feel like having someone else there simultaneously,
doing it at the same time that would be of a normal or taller height, that if we both

basically kill, try to kill the same amount of zombies like in New England, say, jumping
on a car and killing the same amount of zombies in the same amount of time,

that we should, in theory, end up with the same amount, right?

I mean, not necessarily, but I mean, within a margin, you know, within like within a what
is what is the general margin for randomization like 5 % I think it's within 5 % Yeah.

That it's like within...

I'm soup, soup baby.

Soup with a floating head.

Electric soup, it's very I'm on the mailbox.

Hold on a sec.

seem to have, yeah, not the easiest time jumping or at least, there you go.

Yeah, well for me I was on it, but it's one of those desync things, right?

yeah, yeah.

So I was just trying to get to where it looks like I'm on it for both me and Waffle.

Understandable.

Understandable.

So I thought, yeah, would I try to remove as many variables as possible?

And I didn't even know about the variable that it's like when during the day and based on
how many have dropped server-wide already.

So it really does make sense to kind of try to do it at the same exact time.

Because otherwise, if it's a set amount, then whoever I would do first would then be

automatically taking drops from whoever I did second, you know?

Yeah.

How do I make this use a scientific method?

scientific method to try to figure out how to test.

Because it just seems stupid low.

And remember, when we were, the last show we did around Halloween, I was going around
while we were listening to the thing, while we listening to the radio broadcast, I was

going around just killing zombies.

Because I was trying to get caches.

And I killed a whole bunch of zombies and got like four.

And you were just like, because we were grouped up, you were just like, there are caches
everywhere.

You got like 30 or something.

Yeah, yeah, I was definitely taking yours for sure.

Yeah.

And so it's like, wait a minute.

How come I got so few and you got so many?

And right then I tried and I was like, that's weird.

And then I just tried to farm some and yeah, I was I was in there just killing for like an
hour and I got like five.

And I was like, how how is my drop rate on this so poor?

I did not think that the drop rate on caches should be that poor, you know?

So I don't know, that's my hypothesis.

My hypothesis is that something affected, something I'm doing specifically is affecting,
or something about my character personally is affecting a drop rate.

the, obviously the thing that changed has been my height.

And I don't know.

I don't think it's completely unheard of to say that they tied whatever the drop rate was
to some random variable.

that it would not change per character too much.

And, you know, general changes in height, you're not going to get giant differences in
height.

And just tie that to drop rate.

Yes.

For testing purposes.

Let's go.

Yeah, just, like, I know what you're saying.

just don't.

Yeah.

that's the thing is like, it doesn't make much sense.

really, but really what does, what does make sense?

Are we doing this?

we're doing this.

I know stuff can be jank.

I'm just saying like, I feel like that's super unlikely.

Yes, it is.

It's absolutely unlikely.

You would be like now that said I could somehow see it still being tied to a variable
that's impacted by your height I'm so tall I still can't jump over the fence like What

doesn't change your jump height?

I know No, don't know go the other way you doing yeah that way there's a jump right there
No, right there you go.

There you go

Wait, we're not in the same instance.

Cause I saw, I've already seen like two or three other people running around in this dead
game.

Yeah, the game is so dead.

Well, are you in the same spot he is?

He's over here.

don't know why.

Why are you hunting zombies over here?

By the Sheriff's office.

Yeah, you're not there.

I see where you're supposed to be.

You want to go in the front, the first strip from like the first well.

You know, the, the...

From Boone?

The roadway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

you go to the roadway leading up to like packs of four zombies like on both sides all the
way down I see I'm just thinking

Yeah, well, I should be in the same instance as you now.

There you are.

There's my giant boy.

There you go.

I was supposed to step on you.

I literally come up to your foot.

You are an ankle biter.

you have all?

No, wait, you have flash freeze.

I was going to say, you have like almost all single target abilities.

I would say so the best way to do this is we find a car.

that has the alarm on it, right?

Yeah, you can just keep jumping and spawning.

And then I'll keep jumping, right, and then they'll just pull more.

So if I do this red car and you go do this car over here.

are you the director of the s that works out of this car it will kill a whole bunch and
will count how many cash is yet just jump

You desperately need an AOE.

So I got the right 12 so far.

That's 16 down.

I think if you just swapped your Chaos ability on your right click for Schism, I think you
kill them in one click, I think.

Yeah, if I went to hammer I would have been a lot or sword or something.

24.

No, but I mean, I mean, these things are like level one, they'll die instantly.

You just you just need an AOE.

That's all.

Yeah, you just need something just to tap them.

Yeah.

Okay, I got one.

I mean, so far...

So, so far I got 36...

40 zombies.

I got two.

44 zombies.

So far I have none.

48.

none.

Okay.

Yeah, he doesn't have any cash.

That's what I said.

52.

You don't have 52 caches, stop that.

No, 56 zombies I've killed.

60.

That's what you're counting.

It's like, are you counting?

I'm not counting.

I'm not counting caches.

I thought this, but isn't that, well, isn't that what you're going to be doing?

Right?

I'm trying to see like if I kill like a hundred like how many out of a hundred.

I see what you mean.

So far nothing.

I know, I haven't been Waffle doesn't believe in, much like the daily logins, Waffle does
not believe in AOE abilities.

That's what I mean, like I don't they exist.

He is a monogamous spider, okay?

Yeah.

I give each one my personal attention.

It's so kind of you.

I really like monogamous spider, that thing.

Okay, there.

I've killed a hundred.

I'll say the point is that I am killing them a lot faster than he is.

I don't think we've been keeping track of how many he's killed.

I haven't been.

keep track.

It kind of doesn't help the scientific part of it.

does not.

But the fact that you haven't gotten one, I do think is probably indicative because out of
those out of those hundred, I did only get three.

so you got you got I thought you only had one.

You got three.

OK, I got three.

Which is actually pretty a lot more than I was expecting it yet.

especially if think about it in terms of packs right because they come in four you know
what mean

So what is, how many packs is that?

25, 25 packs is 100.

Yeah, so out of 25 packs, you got three caches.

Yeah.

Which if that was like how it was getting before, that would have been fine.

Yeah.

it had something to do closer with the FutureTech cache, you know, maybe being changed out
or something.

That it was just...

I got one.

as Darkgartha.

That's fine.

I don't think it mattered necessarily which cash you get just that a cash dropped

Looted for science.

So we got one.

For science!

Okay, alright.

So I'm gonna say yes, potentially busted.

That's not actual.

Cause if you were getting like...

Well how many are over here?

From the ones that I was killing.

we're not grouped up.

You wouldn't see them.

No.

That's fair.

Okay, that makes me feel at least a little bit better.

Well, not better.

Validated.

No?

Because the other alternative is just my luck was just really shitty.

That's the other real explanation is just terrible luck.

See, I see how fun it is to be tall.

I was tall for a good couple months.

Okay, I 25 packs.

I got six cash drops.

One was a belt and the other five were caches.

Okay.

So...

Yeah, it just doesn't like you.

In fact, just killed another pack and could just be that my luck is just terrible, which,
I mean, that would track.

Seven drops, six of which were caches out of 104 zombies.

My ratio is way better than yours at this point.

Yeah.

As an even most scientific things, believe generally when it comes to even a sense of
randomness, they're like anything above like with enough instances, like a hundred is not

a whole metric ton of instances.

If we were trying to really get this down, we'd be like, all right, how many can we do out
of like a thousand zombie kills?

10 times the amount that we did.

but

But generally when you start getting more more instances like that, that I believe it's
generally about 5%.

It's like 5 to 10%.

That they would account for just straight up randomness.

And that if their results come within like 5 to 10 % of each other, they can just be like,
well, yeah, that is within like pure randomness range.

It doesn't prove anything.

Right.

Alright, so I did 35 so far and I got 1.

Okay.

I mean it could also be- it could also go the other way around.

It could also be that because you're tall.

Now I'm just getting silly.

The silliest of billiest.

40.

But at least you're making me feel better because you're showing me that you have times
you're having worse luck than I am.

Alright so 50 I got another one now.

Okay.

Dude, do it our loose experimentation.

That's what she said.

I just, I just like watching you through the forest because

You're giant, so just like, dum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum, just walking through the forest.

causing chaos.

here's some zombies.

Let me give them individual attention.

Yeah.

Well, it's because people, everybody else like you guys just go through and take them out
in groups.

I'm like, I'm going to sit with each one of you.

No one thinks of the zombies feelings.

Yeah.

definition of a serial monogamous.

Won't anyone think of the zombies?

Alright, so I'm getting like...

roughly about 40...

zombies, I get a cash.

There's another one here.

Okay.

40 zombies is the 40 to 50 The the metric that we're going with is ZPC zombies per cash.

Yeah What's your ZPC?

Rating what did I say?

I got a hundred and I got My name is a four.

No three three Yeah, I've got three in my inventory So that's a thirty three point three

ZPC.

I just did a bunch.

had my challenges, my bonus ones kicked in.

I had a hundred monster kill thing to do.

And in all of that, think I got one cash.

OK, all right.

Even though I just had a shit ton of my other, you know, the first hundred or so I did.

So see, that's why I said, you know, generally it's the and I'm and I'm soup.

So yes.

Just saying we're keeping we're keeping strict variables here.

Yes soup and Yeah, you don't know how tall soup is right soup is

I mean, soup is pretty...

The soup itself is pretty small.

It's pretty small.

Right.

got 30 and I got another one.

You're taller than the soup bowl is.

It's true, I am.

I think your luck is just bad.

Roughly like you said, anywhere from 30 to 50 zombies, get one.

Okay.

I could try doing another 100.

See if I get any more.

actually, this is 10.

I got another one.

And another one.

And another one.

So my- Let me do another 100.

Let's see what My ZPC is good.

in the green.

Also, you have to do it one at a time.

Is that big?

You can't just do them all at the same time, Yeah.

that's There's no shortcuts in life.

There's like a billion shortcuts in life.

I was gonna say, life is nothing but short.

so wrong.

Give one.

See, look, I just got another one.

One on one attention.

You get rewarded.

ridiculous.

We

Hello, fresh zombie.

related to patient zero maybe yeah

I'm up to 52.

yes and you guys.

That was some horseshit.

Sorry, I was squirting my cat.

I had go to all the trouble of setting up...

That's what she said.

...Patient and Lee.

And he's just like, meh.

Meh.

Sorry.

Sorry, I didn't hear it as well.

Mike had decided to come over here and start chewing on papers.

Okay, but I'm currently at,

I think 72 zombies?

76 zombies.

And no, I'm not giving them individual attention.

80.

84.

88.

30.

I'm getting all your your caches.

and 100 okay so out of that second hundred guess how many I got.

Zero.

I got zero, not a single one dropped.

Because I'm getting them all.

I'm not sure that was happening before, because you were farming and I was getting them.

Because it's personal loot, so when things die, it's something they drop, right?

So you actually don't want to be farming around other people.

That's actually bad.

Well, I'm...

Remember how you were in the separate instance when we started?

just stayed in the separate instance.

Yeah.

Because...

I'm farming, but who's over on the car?

Is that you, Mikey?

That's me.

Okay, so I'm going around near you, and I'm still getting caches.

Like, I had this one that's right here.

Right, what I'm saying is you'll see, if he kills something, it's possible that he kills
something and drops a cache that you see and he doesn't.

it's, caches are individual loot.

If you're like in the vicinity and it dies, right?

Like, I can get caches from you.

So, I'm just saying, like, eh.

It could also be a distracting variable is basically what you're saying.

An interrupting variable.

massively so.

I just got another one.

Yeah, and see, I'm banking almost to another hundred and haven't seen haven't seen another
one yet.

Like this group's just spawned in back in and I just got another one.

I wonder how much we could get...

we could like...

Get one of the Funcom employees to really dig into the code and see what variable it's
attached to.

We'd like a report, please.

We are the Zero Point Report.

We're Investigative Journalists.

We're just doing a, considering this a bug report, maybe?

We're requesting paperwork on how your cash drops work.

There's a secret science.

Maybe I'll report it.

I'll report it as a bug.

They'll give it to their QA team and the QA team will be like, what the hell is this
nonsense?

We're not putting Sir, I believe that your cash drops is tied to height and we find that
to be patently offensive for the short community.

That is discriminatory, sir.

We ask that you cease this discrimination against our short brethren.

That's right.

The minifigs and supes of the world.

And so was just, you know what will happen is someone just turn around and they'll be
like, well, how do we fix this?

And they'll just be like, just put them back to regular height and I'll be like, no, wait,
no.

Okay.

I got one.

Obviously you fixed it by making everyone in the entire server the same height as you.

That's right.

Everyone just comes to the next stage and like, the shit?

Wouldn't make it even.

Everyone's tiny.

yeah.

You didn't know that.

And bees are, we're canonically bee size now.

That's that's I got one I another 200 zombies and I got one more one more that would be a
really crazy like April Fool's That is that basically sounds like a great April Fool's

thing Yeah, like everyone logs in and everyone's the size of a like a large physical be
What is happening right now

It has precedence though, I have seen other games basically do stuff like that on...

on April Fool's Day.

I'm specifically thinking of like, Guild Wars 1, Guild Wars 2.

They do some weird stuff on April Fool's Day.

One of which was, I think it was Guild Wars 2 that did this, is everyone logged in on
April Fool's Day and the game world was like, had a sepia filter over it.

So everything was like brown.

And then whenever your character moved around, they spread their arms out like in a T
position and then made airplane noises.

Awesome.

So was just, your character just go around like,

the entire time you're playing.

And it's like, all right, that's pretty brilliant.

I do love that one.

What's another good one?

Star Trek Online for April Fool's Day.

Yeah, you remember that.

Yeah, no, I'm not just, yeah, I didn't just make that up, obviously, yeah.

Another one was Star Trek Online.

Now I believe you.

I'm corroborated by Dan Van Dam.

Thank you, thank you, Yeah, neeeewww.

There was another one and it's, my other favorite was Star Trek Online.

And I think Star Trek Online does this every April Fool's ...

Day is they change all of the the laser sounds to just ...

someone going pew pew pew.

I love that one too.

Overwatch does the googly eyes on everybody.

Googly eyes?

Googly eyes is pretty good.

So Guild Wars 1, think they changed everyone's head size and so everyone's like a bobble
head.

They did some like funny voice lines that were complete...

What?

Off the wall funny.

They're like, we need you to record these lines.

For what?

April Fool's Day?

You can literally go pew pew, yes.

Yeah, that was pretty good.

That one's pretty good.

There's another one in Guild Wars 1.

It was one of the first April Fool's Day changes I think I ever saw in a game.

it was Guild Wars 1.

it was they...

If you brought out a pet, they automatically made the pet like 10 times the size it
normally was.

So you'd bring out your pet character and it would just follow you around as this giant.

but for everybody simultaneously.

And then after that, Guild Wars sort of got the...

kind of kept upping their game to do every April Fool's Day.

Nice.

To actually change something in game, so yeah.

But that's the one I remember the most is right.

They turned the game world sepia and then people just went around, meow, meow.

It's so random.

It's beautiful.

So random, it's beautiful.

We're just giving you ideas, secret world is what we're saying.

No, but know what happened is Seeker will do something like that.

They were like, April Fool's Day, everyone logs in and write their pets like 10 times the
size.

And they'll be like, well, they shouldn't be putting resources on that.

They should be making whatever.

Now, you can definitely tell this game is dead because they're these stupid things.

So they've given us content.

Yeah, they just be like...

Look in that gift horse in the mouth.

Yeah, they'll go through and say, hey, we're changing everything out to upgrading the
graphics of the entire game.

the dead game.

Yeah, they got to do this.

I had to switch instances because I saw too many people running around Kingsmith.

I'm just saying.

Worth Pucky.

and breaking news breaking breaking breaking news

we have an account on blue sky now i thought i could put that a lot sooner i kind of
forgot i had a word before we started the streaming zero point report the zero point

report dot dot b sky dot social

i find that i i i i mean i'm enjoying a blue sky quite a bit

But it's also just the describing of trying to describe it.

People are like, it's just like Twitter.

And it's sort of like, it has that feel of Twitter, but the back end is anything but
Twitter.

It's a lot better.

The fact that someone's like, I wonder what the code is for Blue Sky.

And they're like, yeah, that's open source.

Literally, anyone can go get it.

It's totally open source code.

If you wanted to go ahead and use that code to create your own Blue Sky server, you can.

You can do that.

You can go create your own instance.

It's part of the...

It's not on the same instance as Macedon is.

It's not on the same protocol.

It's the AT protocol.

Yes.

It's called the AT protocol.

Whereas Macedon is based off of Activity Pub.

I think that's what I read.

So it's not the same, which is why they have to, there has to be like a bridge between
them in order to, to, to cross post or something.

But, yeah, it's, it's entirely based off of like it's, it's structural point.

And just a little bit of research I did into that and just looking into that on just my
basic knowledge, because I don't know how to build a social network.

It's just interesting.

It's just, and how it's different and how...

You get to basically curate your own algorithm.

And if you don't like the algorithm, that's part of the discovery tab or any of the other
feeds.

If you're like, I don't like all these algorithms, I'm going to make my own.

You can.

You can make your own.

And I feel like that's why most people have come over to it is that it's after going for
years with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and basically going through all of those and

having where you're basically at the control of the algorithm and then everyone's trying
to game the algorithm and, you use whatever tricks to get around that and to

through followers or through using bots or through what have you.

Try to game those algorithms, to whatever the efficiency of it.

Like optimization, like algorithmic optimization.

SEO kind of, basically?

Kind of SEO, yeah.

It kind of directs you to what it thinks you want to see.

And using that to sort of like, you know...

game the system or do whatever that after basically decades of that, because that's all
we've basically known from social media up until this point.

And now we're starting to see these networks that are like, no, you control the algorithm.

You control it.

You basically end up with the experience that you want to have.

So it's fun.

It's fun, it's an interesting proposition.

I think there's also just the thing of this is just less...

jackasses on it so far.

Like, I'm sure at some point that will change.

Well, I mean, there are jackasses.

There are absolutely thing is that, know, saying less.

There's less.

Not that there can't be jackasses on it.

That's not the point.

It's just...

Yeah.

The mass...

the mass is still somewhere else.

And so I think it's gotten enough mass where it's like, now...

There's a thing where it's too small and then it's not really an actual like equivalency,
right?

You're like, right, right You're not it's not really competing.

I feel like it's getting to like where it's like competing but it's not The it doesn't
have such a large share that like it's managed to pull every fucking asshole from the

other platform You know what mean?

No, no, I'm a nice sweet spot at the moment at least we're like It's got enough of a base
to be relevant

like actually useful to be on but not so many that it's like the center of where like
every assholes gonna be because that's where they can be an asshole of most people right

so like it's in a decent spot at the moment i think

But I've also read something, or I think someone made this observation that like the way
that people were basically trolling the most, they'd go onto somebody's popular post and

they would post their own replies to it and which would garnish a whole bunch and then,
you know.

their inflammatory posts and then those posts would end up near the top of someone's
popular post.

So then a whole bunch of people would see it and then they'd react to it, which only made
it stronger, you know?

Yeah.

And that's just not how blue sky works.

So, yeah, like it's, takes that whole concept of,

piggybacking off of someone else's much bigger post.

And sure, you could actually do that.

If you go onto someone else's bigger post and you reply, yeah, you're probably going to
get a whole bunch of likes or something that you wouldn't otherwise.

But your reply doesn't end up at the top.

It's not like this is the most whatever it ends up in the order in which it was posted.

So what you're saying is I just need to start posting first a lot.

Yes.

That's what you're really telling me.

And if you're the first...

Well, like the man says, if you're not first, you're last.

Yeah.

But lot of stuff is just done chronologically.

It's just done.

as a the...

was it the Ballad of...

Rookie Bobby or something?

Is that what that one's called?

It's a Will Ferrell movie.

Yes.

Yeah.

He's in NASCAR.

And his dad later on is like, what do mean?

could be second, third, or...

It's like if you're not first, you're last.

Like that's how he his life and then later on he says dad, his dad doesn't remember saying
that at all.

Yes.

What are you talking about?

I was higher shade.

I'll tell you shit when I said that.

There's all kinds of places you can be.

Yeah.

So, Blue Sky is doing good right now and, Yeah, I was sort of on the fence about whether I
would create an account just for the zero point report.

And I said, fuck it.

And I just did You said, fuck it, and did it.

It's like not that big of a deal.

It took me all of like five minutes and that was including like getting wobbled or goddamn
approved to sign in.

Yeah, that's right.

And putting like the logo and shit.

Mastodon, one person keeps following you on there.

Pick a branch of the site and stick to it.

I think I need to change, I think I want to change my, because I'm also on Mastodon too,
but I don't use it as much since I've started using Blue Sky.

But it's alright.

It's okay.

I have nothing against Mastodon.

Isn't the issue with Mastodon that like, if you're, just because you're on Mastodon
doesn't mean we're on the same thing.

No, it is completely separate servers.

Yeah.

Yeah, that I think is the real sort of why I don't think that works.

like, OK, sorry, it not necessarily doesn't work.

It works.

I don't think it works as like a like competitor to something like Twitter, because the
whole point of that is like it's a central space.

Yeah.

Whereas the point of mass thumb would be like, I want my

local neighborhood watch to have a place to swap back and forth.

You just have your own server or something.

It doesn't work as a central hub if it's not a central hub, guess is what I'm saying.

It's sort of if Discord.

to the requirements.

It's sort of like Discord, in a sense.

Yeah, like Discord.

Yeah, like a million different Discord servers.

You on the T-G or or, you know...

Except were tied to one specific Discord server.

Right, that's even worse though.

Imagine you had to pick one and out of like the 100 Discord servers I'm on, I gotta be
like, nope, I can only be on one of them.

So I can't talk to you anymore.

That's sort of worse actually.

I gotta on this one.

But to me, I'm not saying it doesn't have a purpose, it is not a competitor.

not in the same...

Because trying to achieve the same thing.

It is an alternative for people that want a specific non-like...

What is it called?

What is the term people like to use?

It's not marketplace.

It's town, town, town square town square like the people I forget the term gets used a lot
like the media.

Like, you know, when it's out in that center.

OK, yeah, yeah.

But the point is, it's not that it's a private version of that.

Right.

It's just like someone's house.

It's not the town square.

You're all meeting at Bob's house.

Yeah.

that does, it's not, you can't have the same conversation.

You're not, you know, that would be like, instead of watching the news, I'm watching
specifically the news on trains in Pennsylvania.

News about the news channel that's only about trains in Pennsylvania.

Right over here.

That's all I'm watching.

Yeah.

And so it's like, I'm part of one and it's not a bad server.

Yeah.

But like, but you wouldn't expect like you wouldn't go on expecting like I'm going to know
about the news of the day.

No, I'm going to know about it all.

It is extremely topical.

It's like I only have one topic that I really want to talk about.

And there are other people on the same server that just want to talk about this topic.

And that's it.

Yeah, like that's all you get.

But even for that, like, it's not terrible.

You just only meet people that are just part of that same server, usually.

I'm sure it's great for that.

You can, and I think you can still follow people from outside the server.

Yeah, you can.

You can still follow other people, but it's more direct.

It's more a direct follow.

Yeah, that's like on Discord, like being someone's friend.

But again, if Discord, you could only be on one server and everyone outside would be
friends, it wouldn't function.

Like if there was a competitor to Discord that was like, we're going to work this way.

It would not sway the masses.

Because the masses, the whole point is the mass.

But what Blue Sky does the mass thing just differently, so it is a competitor.

Whereas Mastodon is a competitor, but an alternative for people that don't want what those
platforms do.

They want something different.

It's basically the idea of just competition.

It's the more competition.

And in this case, competition really did bring about some...

like differences, like we're gonna make something the same but different, you know?

Yeah.

It's gonna be focused on control and it's gonna be focused on...

you know, protection and it's going to be focused on trust and safety and it's going to be
focused on these other things.

So we're going to make a place where people don't interact in the exact same way.

Midnight.

1am actually, but yeah I'm sure it's midnight in the game.

Midnight in game, yeah.

That's what I meant.

Midnight in game at almost exactly 1am.

Speaking of which, it's 1am.

Yeah, we should probably...

We should get out of here.

Well agents, this has been the Zero Point Report, Stray97-SNA.

You can catch us recording live.

Generally the first and third Thursday nights of the month when we can around 9 p.m.

Eastern time here in the Zero Point Report Twitch channel where you can also join us and
chat with us while we do the show live or download our show wherever podcasts are found so

you can listen to us on the go.

Just to go over what we did, we went over, we talked to Brandon from Star Anvil Studios.

Again, thank you, Brandon, for coming on.

Much appreciated.

I know I will be backing North America because that sounds fascinating.

I will absolutely be doing that.

And then we played around with Jimmy's bingo.

And tested.

And tested it I think get it.

Secret science.

And then right, also tested.

Yeah, my junk theories.

Jimmy, where can we find you online?

jimmytherabbit.com.

Two-ton waffle where we find you two-ton waffle calm and blue sky threads and Macedon

And I'm Ocho and you can find me on Twitch, BlueSky, Mastodon, that's generally where I
hang out.

All my nonsense basically goes to BlueSky.

All links also at Linktree slash BigMikeyOcho.

You can get in touch with us by engaging with the show on X or BlueSky now, checking out
previous shows on our YouTube channel, and joining us on our Discord server, both named

The Zero Point Report.

So from all of us here at The Zero Point Report, we want to thank you for tuning in and
wish you all the best from the Secret World.

Have a great night everybody and we'll see you next time.

Bye!

Hi everybody.

a in my micro-