And we are back… both to the recap and to TAZ being ass!
Boy, do I hate being right all the time.
Well to be fair, I’ve not started my listen yet, as all of these are blind recaps, but I’ve seen the posts, I know what I’m in for and I take some small pleasure in knowing I’ve not committed myself to being the asshole who writes long winded posts shitting on the new VS. Dracula.
Oh and no transcript so… more dyslexia incoming.
The recap… Starts after this absurdly long intro music- OH NEVER MIND! No recap, we are going in raw! Hope you remember what happened last week! (Or I guess, go back and re-read my last recap.)
Minutiae awakens in the middle of the night, unable to tell the time and with a ‘man who is slightly taller then average’ (he’s 6’7!) standing at the foot of their bed while spooky jazz plays.
So… you know, ‘The owls are not what they seem’, I guess.
God fucking damn it, his first line is, “The Lobsters are exactly what they seem.”
This bit continues with Travis trying to do a ‘That gum you like is coming back in style’ inversion about how, ‘its actually gross AND not coming back’, despite the fact that it was the little person, not the giant who had that line. So he’s just grabbing any old twin peaks bits he can remember and shoving them in here for the sake of… I have no idea what.
Oh and naturally, it’s Travis so all of these bits are, “Actually, NO! It’s the opposite!” Cus he has a brand and he will stick to it.
After serving up these hot and topical Twin Peaks references the giant literally just goes, “That’s all I got, you want to tell me anything?” Causing the whole seen to grind to a halt as Justin has nothing to work with.
When the giant then tries to do the whole, “It’s time to wake up.” Bit, Justin throws back. “Actually, not for another 20 minutes” with the Giant awkwardly saying he’ll just stick around then.
A clearly annoyed Griffin at this point jumps in basically saying, “Me and dad gave you all the time you needed for this set up and you two are pitching 20 full minutes of just sitting here and talking. COMMIT! DO IT! COWARDS!”
After this everyone agrees that, okay, obviously the bits run it’s coarse so now they should just cut to Justin waking-
Giant: So… what now?
I fucking hate it here.
Luckily Justin puts me out of my misery by just declaring it’s now 6 and he wakes up, Travis making sure to get the last word in with some, “GOOD BYE! GOOD BYE NOW!”s before the scene moves on.
Moving onto Minutiae explaining their dream to the others! The ride never ends!
Okay so the take away Justin got out of this scene was apparently that this was Travis’s way of telling his players to stop asking about the lobsters. Just stop thinking he spent 3/4th of the last episode hyper fixated on lobster bits because they have NOTHING to do with the story.
Feels like something that could have happened off mic, but you know, they have busy lives and families so can’t ask that much of them.
Past that, the gods just start talking about the experience of sleeping. It’s cute enough, but the bad Twin Peaks parody has left me sour on this inane bit.
At 6:20 Clint, with no prompting from Travis, organically brings up the stolen candles, along with reminding the players and the audience of why they are important.
Honestly this is the kinda move I’d expect from someone who is themselves an experienced GM, helping their current game master by reminding their fellow players of important events from last session and avoiding the need for, “Hey just as a reminder.” Comments from the GM. Unsurprisingly, Clint remains my GOAT!
Spira discovers their own candle has also been stolen and that Minutiae has their own still, with the gods being fairly, “Eh what can you do? At least we still have one.” About the theft.
The possibility that the giant, sorry, ‘The Slightly Taller Then Average Man’ as Travis insists on calling him, could have stolen the other two candles comes up and Justin begins to play to frustrate by going, “I don’t think he had… hmm… I… oh did he… no I don’t think he did… have… the candles, but… hmmmm… Game Master?”
After confirming the giant did not have the candles on him, Travis quickly cuts off further discussion about the theft by having a bell rung for breakfast, prompting Tintabula to get excited about the bells, being her godly domain.
The gods proceed to have a talk to the inn owner about the theft and for some fucking reason they do this in character by shouting to her down the stairs so the whole conversation is a series of, “HEY RUTH! HAVE YOU SEEN A MAN WITH A BAG?”
“NOOO! I DON’T THINK SO? WHY?”
Griffin and Clint begin asking about looking for clues and Travis get’s… I don’t know how else to put this, but like, HORNY about the idea of them looking for clues. Just ‘yaaaa! YAAAA! Oh ya do it!’ Before asking them to roll… a D20?
This is a 2D6 system with a ‘try and roll low’ mechanic, but I guess now we are ALSO doing D&D roll a D20 and beat a DC of 15 because Griffin rolls a 19 and Travis goes, “Great roll, okay so you find a circle cut out of the glass and a little bit of sea water on the ground.”
Clint rolls a 17 to look for lobster tracks, since this town seems to use lobsters for everything and Travis, the tit that he is, goes, “Well… lobsters don’t really have foot prints, just little dots since they don’t really have feet, right?”
When Clint asks to clarify if their are ‘insect like skitter marks a lobster might make’ in his room Travis says no, before casually adding that oh ya, their is also a big hole cut in your window and sea water on the ground.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think you need to have your players roll to find a HUGE HOLE CUT IN THEIR WINDOW! Especially on a small island where the wind would for sure be noticeable if you had a big fuck off hole in your room.
Weirdly Minutiae did NOT have a hole cut in their window and Travis credits this with them NOT sleeping as deeply as the others… despite him being the only one to dream and also, presumably, the reason they wouldn’t have been robbed is that they’d have woken up when someone was cutting the glass, rather then that no one would have bothered robbing him at all.
No time to get hung up on that though as the players go down to breakfast and instantly start fighting with Travis again as the inn serves up lobster bisque and lobster cinnamon rolls. When the players point out lobster cinnamon rolls make no sense, Travis clarifies that they are just SHAPED like lobsters, at which point Griffin get’s annoyed and points out they ASKED about non lobster food last night and got denied.
Travis, with the biggest shit eating grin AUDIBLE in his voice declares, “AH! Actually you just asked about non-lobster DRINKS!” And that is followed by several seconds of silence before multiple players, INCLUDING CLINT who is normally the most patient with Travis’s bullshit, start taking deep breaths and letting out annoyed huffs.
Griffin, sounding like a parent who’s trying not to raise his voice with a misbehaving child begins to express how silly this all is before Travis chimes in by offering lobster coffee, prompting Griffin to deflate like a balloon.
Finally Griffin shifts the conversation back to the break in, asking Ruth about who might have entered the inn, with Ruth declaring she left for the night (implying she… doesn’t live in her own inn, which is fucking crazy for someone living in a small village on a god damn island where space would be at a premium, but okay fine, whatever), but left her lobster on guard duty.
None of which matters because, as Griffin was JUST told, the thief got in through the outside window, NOT by entering the inn.
Despite this Griffin persists trying to get information from Ruth, asking very directly if she has ANYWAY of communicating with the lobster, in a way that it being on look out over night might actually, meaningfully help them, being VERY clear he wants to know if she can talk to it in anyway that matters.
Travis, naturally, takes this as an opportunity to have Ruth pull the, “Well, it’s a smart lobster so like, I can tell him to shake or come or stay… so if you want to ask him, he MIGHT be able to answer one claw shake for yes, two for no.”
Griffin, sounding like he’s starting to get genuinely angry. “So will he ACTUALLY understand what we are saying and be able to ACTUALLY answerer us?”
Travis, sounding like he is just looooving this, “Well… maybe, if he decides to pay attention today!”
Hey everybody, for real, playing to frustrate each other is not a fun way to play because we're all on the same team and that team is to have fun together and to make it fun for all our audiences. And so when people make plays just to frustrate each other and just to troll each other, there's enough of that in the world today, of people trolling each other just to be mean and to be hurtful, and if we're gonna play in this space together we need to do it because we want each other to have fun and not because we're trying to frustrate each other, cause there's enough frustrating things in the world right now and there's enough we can't control, and one of the things we can control is that everyone is here to have fun and not waste each others' time and so when we make decisions that are meant to troll each other, that's something that bad people do.
Griffin lets out a deep sigh and steps away from the mic before faintly saying, “Okay…” And proceeds to begin asking the lobster questions, sounding annoyed, tired and defeated.
AND TRAVIS CALLS FOR ANOTHER FUCKING D20 ROLL TO PERSUADE THE LOBSTER!
WE are straight up not using Super Normal anymore, it’s now JUST D&D!
Griffin gets a 14 and Travis declares the lobster is just NOT playing ball and wants to be bribed before he’s willing to talk. So ya, I was using ‘beat a 15’ before as just the generic D&D/Pathfinder standard difficulty roll for a normal result, but this confirms it’s ACTUALLY just 15 DC, but without skills or attribute bonuses. So a 1/4 chance of passing on any given skill test when not using the ACTUAL GAME THEY ARE PLAYING’S RULES!
A game where they are playing GODS where their chance of passing on rolls is MUCH LOWER then even level 1 adventurers in a normal D20 system!
Spira asks what lobsters eat as a way of bribing the watch-lobster and Travis declares, “Lobster biscuits!” Which naturally Griffin becomes instantly worried about since… well given pretty much everything Travis has presented up to this point, really does make it seem like they just feed lobsters to their pet lobsters as a treat.
Justin gleefully jumps on this by declaring it’s frozen lobster bisque, leaning all the way into this being a surreal horror game, which… you know what? Why not at this point.
Travis notably does NOT contradict Justin’s declaration and just hands Griffin four lobster biscuits and Griff offers three of them to the guard crustacean.
After ALL OF THIS Spira is finally able to ask about if the lobster saw anything and Travis quickly confirms, no. Since, you know, THEY OBVIOUSLY CAME IN THROUGH THE WINDOW, GRIFFIN YOU IDIOT!
For fuck sake, Travis could have just pointed that out out of character OR had Ruth or even the fucking lobster confirm that right off the bad, but no. We are 14 minutes into the episode and outside of finding the evidence of the break in WHICH THE PLAYERS APPARENTLY IGNORED, this whole time they’ve done nothing, but bullshit around dead ends.
Griffin, annoyed declares he would have given the lobster the 4th biscuit had it given them anything useful and Travis just has the lobster eat it anyway, while Griffin tries to declare that he DIDN’T DO THAT.
Travis: Man… if I had a nickel for every-time Griffin communicated with a crustacean in a season of the Adventure Zone, I’d have-
Griffin, sounding pissed: You’d have two nickels, but it’s weird it happened twice, OKAY!
Ya Travis, it’s not that weird that it happened twice when both times YOU MADE IT HAPPEN! That’s not a wacky situation that’s worth remarking on, that’s you forcing quirkiness to happen and then going, “WOW SO RANDOM! WHAT WILL I DO NEXT!? HA HA! I’M SO WHIMSICAL!”
Griffin starts to irritably remark on the fact that they are not going to make any progress here in the inn, but is cut off by Travis very loudly talking over him as Ruth, asking the gods about their plans for the day.
I hate to admit it, especially after all the crap I’ve said about him him Amnesty, but I’ve never felt more spiritually and emotionally aligned with Griffin McElroy right now as he white knuckles his grip on the last threads of his patience.
Justin suggests looking into the Martel family, the ultra suspicious family the players where told about last session and Clint actually surprises me a little by asking to go inspect the grounds, clearly ACTUALLY planning on following up with the break in FROM THE WINDOW, by examining the area outside of the inn.
Naturally, Travis can’t stop himself turning this into a bit by having Ruth as if Tintabula is asking to look at the dirt, despite this being a turn of the century setting where ‘the grounds’ would still be a pretty commonly used and understood term for the LAND OUTSIDE OF A BUILDING.
I’m going insane…
Travis, genuinely seeming to not understand that Minutiae is trying to investigate the break in has Ruth suggest going to watch ‘Kurt and Dale’ the blacksmith and carpenters’s show, if she’s so lost for anything to do that she wants to look at the building from the outside.
The players mishear the name as ‘Curtain Dale’ and make jokes about him being the god of Curtains before Travis has to correct them that it’s two people who apparently do wood working AND metal smithing with huge open flames in the same building… cus everyone in Travis’s world is a fucking idiot.
Ruth also offers up Norma the apothecary for the players potion needs.
Griffin eventually points out that the PLAYERS are trying to make plans, but Ruth just keeps tossing out alternative suggestions, as if she (or the GM) is trying to get them to do something else and basically asks, ‘What do you want us to do here?’
Ruth explains she’s just the town ambassador, as is her role as inn keeper and so providing the players options.
Justin asks about recent rituals, before apologizing since, as Travis established in EP1, rituals are sort of a big deal and something the gods especially hate.
Ruth responds that nah, rituals are fine, they do them AT THE CHURCH all the time… to honor the gods…
I’m going to throw a ‘world building 101 book at Travis’.
Ruth also explains that the last guest the town had was a brush salesman TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO!
So you know, the boat the faeries people to the island and the INN on the island apparently haven’t had any business in 10 fucking years!
The only people who have come to the island are the Martels, who arrived within the last 10 years and when prompted about their ‘vibe’ explains they do magic and like change. They don’t like the way things are. They like great change. They want to make changes.
He mentions the change thing so many times I’m surprised he didn’t stop to out of character go, “Hey, just want to say, as the GM, it’s important you know these guys are big into change. Make a note of that, please.”
I’m not even 20 minutes into the episode and I feel my will to live draining out of my body.
The gods eventually decide to go to the Martel manor and once again Justin just declares, “We are halfway their” to force the players out of the scene, something I normally would call poor player behavior, but in this case I’d call a FUCKING GOD SEND!
I’m going to have to go into lighter summery mode for a bit because if I keep this up I’m going to devolve into a pile of very angry goo.
Travis pulls the players back to the inn for a sec so he can show off his funny twin blacksmith and carpenter, the two hammering on an anvil and chopping a log side by side in perfect synchronicity.
Oh and the brothers are the Pakards… like the Packard mill from Twin Peaks.
They pass by all the ‘iconic’ locations and NPCs set up in the past episode and then make their way over to the mansion.
One small note, both the brothers and a waving shop keeper are described in ways similar to clock work animatronics, having simple, looping motions that are notably stiff. This might be a set up so noting it here.
They stop by the alderman to report the theft and are told to talk to sheriff Leo, but Griffin, being throughly done with NPCs for the moment, just tells the alderman to talk to the sheriff for them…
Fuck I just realized they breezed past Clint wanting to investigate the break in because no one, but him, INCLUDING TRAVIS seems to realize that the break in happening through the window, would mean looking at the outside of the building would be useful for the investigation!
Travis continues to play to frustrate, declaring that, obviously Spira is to stupid to realize that when the cops investigate something, they don’t just ‘take your word for it’, they need to investigate… which is why the gods have to go down to the station themselves and not, I don’t know, have the sheriff come talk to them himself later, as part of the investigation.
You know, cus if a crime is reported, BUT NOT BY THE PERSON ROBBED, the cops can’t do anything about it.
It’s why murder is such a hard crime to stop, once the victim is dead, the cops hands are tied since the victim can’t actually come forward to report their own murder… dang.
Griffin tells the alderman to… well do what I just said and have the alderman tell the sheriff to come by to talk to them at the inn later, to which Clint pipes up that they are kinda over loading the episode with stuff they might not have time for… and then the music comes in and we just… play a really really long musical transition to adds.
That’s it.
I know people don’t like it when you split a recap in two parts and post them with a gap between, but I ACTUALLY need a break and I NEED people to understand the toll this episode is taking on me!
I will be back, probably later today, with part 2, but for now, this is where I am going to put a pin in it and let you all just… BREATH IT IN!
Part 2 -> (coming soon)
Source: r/TAZCirclejerk · by /u/Duhad8