Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:00.089 --> 00:00:05.250
I think characters really come alive with context.
00:00:06.419 --> 00:00:13.019
Just imagine, , a whole office just filled with some weirdo's collection of traffic cones.
00:00:13.240 --> 00:00:14.989
, what does that say about them?
00:00:16.149 --> 00:00:21.730
Everyone comes and tells you when you're sick, oh, you're so brave for getting through this, you're doing such a good job.
00:00:21.949 --> 00:00:23.048
At least that's what they told me.
00:00:23.399 --> 00:00:25.010
And I was always , yeah?
00:00:25.010 --> 00:00:26.660
What would you do?
00:00:27.539 --> 00:00:32.104
, I, I don't know, , I could be scared, This is just what's happening in my life right now.
00:00:32.195 --> 00:00:33.375
I want to keep living.
00:00:33.405 --> 00:00:34.554
So I'm going to do it.
00:01:07.055 --> 00:01:07.984
Hello friends.
00:01:08.034 --> 00:01:13.834
Welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled.
00:01:14.114 --> 00:01:14.784
I'm Star.
00:01:14.924 --> 00:01:17.554
This episode, I'm joined by Sam Dunnewold.
00:01:17.864 --> 00:01:23.305
Sam is a Minnesotan game designer, screenwriter, and podcaster living in Hollywood, a chump.
00:01:23.560 --> 00:01:27.890
His podcast, Dice Exploder, breaks down a game mechanic every week with a friend.
00:01:27.930 --> 00:01:34.849
He's the designer of Doskvol Breathes and Space Train Space Heist, and he was a judge for the 2022 The Awards.
00:01:35.325 --> 00:01:39.364
Sam used to work for The Onion as a video editor, and he has no colon.
00:01:40.015 --> 00:01:43.024
Sam, why don't you have a colon, if it's not too much to ask?
00:01:43.024 --> 00:01:50.965
Oh, yeah, because I've got horrible debilitating Crohn's disease, and, or I did at one point, and now I don't because I had the offending organ removed.
00:01:51.515 --> 00:01:52.194
All right.
00:01:52.254 --> 00:01:56.265
I imagine that it feels better not to have Crohn's disease.
00:01:56.495 --> 00:01:56.805
Yeah.
00:01:56.935 --> 00:02:04.024
I mean, it, it, yeah, I eating stuff again, you know, it's a, it's a wonderful time, but that, that was over a decade ago at this point.
00:02:04.034 --> 00:02:05.334
So, very much in the past.
00:02:05.435 --> 00:02:05.995
Yeah.
00:02:06.015 --> 00:02:08.675
So is there anything else you want to tell listeners about yourself?
00:02:08.805 --> 00:02:09.163
I don't know.
00:02:09.175 --> 00:02:10.254
I'm just excited to be here.
00:02:10.254 --> 00:02:11.104
Thanks so much for having me.
00:02:11.175 --> 00:02:11.574
Yeah.
00:02:11.574 --> 00:02:16.884
I want to say I have listened to a couple episodes of your podcast and I'm really enjoying it.
00:02:16.884 --> 00:02:18.955
I highly recommend that people check it out.
00:02:19.025 --> 00:02:19.194
Yeah.
00:02:19.194 --> 00:02:19.455
Thanks.
00:02:19.814 --> 00:02:23.194
So, Sam, who are you bringing to the table today?
00:02:23.405 --> 00:02:31.675
So, I am bringing in a weird little guy named Exit, who is I don't know, where do I start?
00:02:31.705 --> 00:02:34.365
You want me to start with the origin of who this person is?
00:02:34.534 --> 00:02:37.544
What was the situation you made the character for?
00:02:37.745 --> 00:02:46.935
I have a really hard time, un most people I think you have on this show, seeing characters outside of context that they're in, relationships to other people and the world they live in.
00:02:46.985 --> 00:02:52.594
And this character very much comes from an Apocalypse World campaign that I was emceeing.
00:02:52.634 --> 00:02:58.604
And we created this world, we were all really excited about this campaign, we were playing Apocalypse World for the first time.
00:02:58.819 --> 00:03:12.680
We, did all this world building on Discord, before our first session even, and ended up with this world that is, everyone lives in one skyscraper, basically, and there's horrible mist at the ground that will do psychic damage to you, so you can't go down in the ground.
00:03:12.680 --> 00:03:14.568
Everyone just lives in the one skyscraper.
00:03:14.830 --> 00:03:26.079
And we thought that was a kind of cool way to sort of bound the world into a limited space and also create this cool mythology of what's going down in the mist, what sort of weird psychic monsters are down there.
00:03:26.129 --> 00:03:27.830
And this was a super cool world.
00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:29.278
We came up with all kinds of details.
00:03:29.278 --> 00:03:42.479
You know, I was running this game and there was a character, a hard holder who made all of his underlings dress in old marching band uniforms that they had stockpiled around for some reason.
00:03:42.750 --> 00:03:45.189
And they didn't understand what a marching band was.
00:03:45.210 --> 00:03:49.300
They just had old photos of band kids in the middle of marching.
00:03:49.438 --> 00:03:57.579
So they thought that posing their body like they were mid march was essentially a salute because the photos were, yeah, they didn't realize the photos were in the middle of motion.
00:03:57.919 --> 00:04:02.549
It was just weird character and world building details throughout this thing.
00:04:02.579 --> 00:04:22.144
And there was one character in particular named Trout that one of my players was playing, who was essentially a weird little cult leader who lived on the floor of this skyscraper that was too far down for everyone else's comfort, but not so far down that Trout would die.
00:04:22.173 --> 00:04:27.444
But they and their followers were a bunch of weirdos down there.
00:04:27.694 --> 00:04:34.514
And we only got to play this campaign for a few sessions, but I really loved the whole world.
00:04:34.574 --> 00:04:36.184
I loved Trout especially.
00:04:36.223 --> 00:04:55.194
I just loved this weirdo on the outskirts of society who was sort of straddling the line between living in the real world and living in this sort of dream psychedelic world of whatever the mist was below these skyscrapers.
00:04:55.413 --> 00:05:02.293
And I had my vision for who I wanted that person to be that was very different from the player who was playing as Trout.
00:05:02.345 --> 00:05:08.394
I wanted a loner who lived down there, who did not have a cult following them around.
00:05:08.475 --> 00:05:11.913
I wanted just the one weird of the hermit down there.
00:05:12.254 --> 00:05:29.254
And I also, at some point, this image popped into my head of someone in a gas mask and with a shopping cart joyfully walking through these mists looking for salvage and listening to music and jamming out.
00:05:29.254 --> 00:05:32.733
I was listening to Channel Orange, the album a lot at the time.
00:05:32.903 --> 00:05:38.394
And it's just this kind of poppy but kind of sad Frank Ocean album that I think is really lovely.
00:05:38.613 --> 00:05:57.624
And I had this image of this gas masked person in these horrible circumstances, jamming out to my favorite album, and walking around with a fire extinguisher that's been converted into an oxygen canister on their back a shopping cart full of you know, rebar and copper wire and stuff.
00:05:58.024 --> 00:06:01.454
And I was, I want to play that character.
00:06:01.863 --> 00:06:06.944
Another piece of apocalypse world for me is I'm obsessed with the savvy head playbook.
00:06:06.963 --> 00:06:21.163
I really love this playbook that is all about talking to machines and not really understanding other people very well, but really understanding things and being able to do almost magical things with machines and workshops and devices.
00:06:21.564 --> 00:06:29.733
And I knew I wasn't really going to get a chance to be that person because no one was out here interested in running Apocalypse World for me.
00:06:29.793 --> 00:06:33.923
So I had this whole vision for this, my version of this Trout character.
00:06:34.189 --> 00:06:38.718
And because I'm a screenwriter, I was, great, well, I'll just go write it.
00:06:38.858 --> 00:06:45.288
I can't play this game with anyone, or it would be hard to put together the game that allowed me to do this.
00:06:45.488 --> 00:06:49.728
But I'm gonna just go write my screenplay about this little guy.
00:06:49.949 --> 00:06:51.129
And that's what I did.
00:06:51.129 --> 00:06:52.478
I just started writing about it.
00:06:52.528 --> 00:06:59.769
And so the character very much came out of, you know, all that background influence, but then Exit became this weirdo.
00:07:00.163 --> 00:07:17.004
Who, you know, is in conversation with a leader in the skyscraper and is in conversation with the strange creatures that live down in the mist and who has a collection of traffic cones because traffic cones are neat and no one else wants them and they make a nice little hat.
00:07:17.579 --> 00:07:20.468
And I, I just wanted to go explore all of that.
00:07:20.478 --> 00:07:21.488
And so I did on my own.
00:07:21.778 --> 00:07:33.879
Is that something that you do a lot where you take a character that maybe you want to explore, but don't get the chance to within play and then write them into a screenplay or some, some sort of writing that you're doing?
00:07:34.059 --> 00:07:36.869
You know, I don't think it is that common for me.
00:07:36.939 --> 00:07:46.709
I think it is not uncommon in my screenwriting that I'm starting with a character, but it's usually that I'm starting with a character relationship.
00:07:46.838 --> 00:07:52.288
I think a character in isolation, I kind of said this before, it's just hard for me to conceptualize.
00:07:52.288 --> 00:07:56.528
I think characters really come alive with context.
00:07:56.838 --> 00:08:07.439
And so in a lot of ways, actually, the screenplay I started writing, about Exit came from me having this sort of vision for this person and then imagining a mentor figure for them.
00:08:07.559 --> 00:08:23.809
Someone who lived up in civilization, who was not afraid of them everyone else, did not find them unnerving and who cared for them, who wanted to see what was best for them and thought that they were sort of being self destructive and destroying their life by living away by themselves.
00:08:23.858 --> 00:08:33.308
And that mentor mentee kind of relationship, the sort of old person who thinks they know a little bit better, and the young person who's being a little self destructive, but, you gotta let them do their thing.
00:08:33.479 --> 00:08:35.089
That relationship was really interesting.
00:08:35.379 --> 00:08:44.969
And I've written a lot of other screenplays that sort of start with a relationship like that, but it's rare that that comes from an RPG moment.
00:08:45.188 --> 00:08:50.139
Although, there are other things that come from RPGs and make it into my writing a lot.
00:08:50.139 --> 00:08:53.849
I think big character decisions sometimes do.
00:08:53.889 --> 00:09:08.629
I have an idea for a sort of Star Wars-y sci fi action movie that would be based on one character decision that someone made in a Scum and Villainy game that I was running that I thought was really powerful.
00:09:08.859 --> 00:09:15.288
And also had this big action set piece attached to it that set up the moment of decision making.
00:09:15.328 --> 00:09:26.739
And in some ways that's kind of bringing in the character, but I think it is more about, well, and what is a character, but the actions that they take in a lot of ways, at least when it comes to screenplays, that's something that we talk about a lot.
00:09:27.028 --> 00:09:42.028
And so that, that is sort of a character coming in, but it is a lot less bringing in the accoutrement around a character in the way that I did with Exit and that I think, you know, on this show, I've heard a lot of people talk about as being the sort of defining things for the character.
00:09:42.349 --> 00:09:45.979
Yeah, I think there's lots of different ways that that spark comes to people.
00:09:46.099 --> 00:09:46.509
Yeah.
00:09:46.928 --> 00:09:52.828
I wanted to go back, you said something about Exit being scary or unnerving.
00:09:53.219 --> 00:09:53.619
Yeah.
00:09:53.658 --> 00:09:55.188
What makes them unnerving?
00:09:55.219 --> 00:10:04.163
Yeah, I think In this world that my friends and I created, the mist down below these skyscrapers is this scary place to go.
00:10:04.173 --> 00:10:08.854
If you go down there, you don't have a gas mask on, you come back sick.
00:10:08.874 --> 00:10:10.374
You come back different.
00:10:10.413 --> 00:10:11.683
You come back weird.
00:10:12.004 --> 00:10:19.203
And, that's off putting especially in a world that's gonna feel so unstable to begin with.
00:10:19.374 --> 00:10:28.903
I think most post apocalyptic kinds of settings tell stories about people trying to find safety and stability in a very uncertain world.
00:10:28.964 --> 00:10:32.403
I think that's part of the reason they're so popular right now, you know?
00:10:32.484 --> 00:10:49.124
And people living in a world that, who see someone living on the edge, living outside of that safety deliberately, I think would be a very unnerving, unsettling kind of thing.
00:10:49.514 --> 00:10:56.854
There was also a, an element, I created this job for Exit of, alright, let's get into my weird world building.
00:10:56.854 --> 00:11:02.053
So at the bottom of the skyscraper, there's sort of two classes of people.
00:11:02.083 --> 00:11:08.293
There's a hard holder who kind of runs a marketplace for anyone in the skyscraper to come to.
00:11:08.614 --> 00:11:21.903
And he and his people rent out shopping carts to scavengers who then go down the elevators out into the mist and come back with stuff to sell at the market.
00:11:21.933 --> 00:11:25.364
And then the hard holder takes a cut of whatever they bring back.
00:11:25.734 --> 00:11:28.619
And so the scavengers all resent him because he's exploiting them.
00:11:28.899 --> 00:11:38.288
And Exit is the best of these scavengers, the most reliably good at bringing back a good haul of salvage.
00:11:38.328 --> 00:11:44.839
So there's a lot of resentment towards them for being better than anyone else at this and refusing to share.
00:11:45.948 --> 00:11:53.048
They have found that they don't fit in well with the scavengers, they don't fit well with the hard hold or any of those people.
00:11:53.068 --> 00:11:58.139
They just doing their own thing on their own and being extraordinarily good at their job.
00:11:58.448 --> 00:12:06.188
And I think all of those things put together lead to a very outsider-y status and a lack of understanding from everyone else.
00:12:06.438 --> 00:12:12.599
This scavenger society is so built around all supporting each other because there's so little to go around.
00:12:12.808 --> 00:12:23.303
And someone who has told that sentiment to fuck off because they're not treating Exit well is not a person that anyone understands or wants to have around.
00:12:23.354 --> 00:12:23.933
Hmm.
00:12:24.193 --> 00:12:34.193
What's interesting to me about post apocalyptic stories is often this kind of push pull between individualism and being selfish.
00:12:34.344 --> 00:12:34.907
Hmm.
00:12:34.907 --> 00:12:48.817
And contributing to any sort of collective, whatever kind of outpost people have been able to form in, in this troubled world, which also makes me think God, I can't remember the name of the movie is.
00:12:49.067 --> 00:12:50.197
High Rise?
00:12:50.386 --> 00:12:53.206
That takes place in a single apartment building.
00:12:53.647 --> 00:12:56.876
Been on my to watch list for a long time.
00:12:56.917 --> 00:12:59.147
I'm intending to watch it next week, actually.
00:12:59.216 --> 00:13:03.726
Yeah, I think it's interesting because that movie is very much about class.
00:13:03.756 --> 00:13:11.797
And I think when you're talking about this apartment building and the relationship, the proximity to this dangerous mist.
00:13:12.047 --> 00:13:15.567
Is there sort of a, that kind of stratification within this building?
00:13:15.616 --> 00:13:16.876
Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:16.876 --> 00:13:26.986
I had a friend describe this world as vertical Snowpiercer, which having not seen High Rise, we were not thinking about Snowpiercer specifically as we were building this world out.
00:13:26.986 --> 00:13:31.706
But I, yeah in retrospect was, oh yeah, that is absolutely the vibe.
00:13:31.927 --> 00:13:43.626
There's this kind of silliness that Snowpiercer has definitely kind of influenced this world, even though a lot of that silliness is sort of underneath horrible darkness in Snowpiercer.
00:13:43.866 --> 00:13:54.277
But it has that same thing of major class stratification, impending revolt, and just outside the walls of the train, life cannot exist anymore.
00:13:54.456 --> 00:13:57.366
You're all really trapped in a box together.
00:13:57.427 --> 00:14:01.652
And that's very much the kind of powder keg that I wanted to create with this world.
00:14:02.101 --> 00:14:15.052
Let's back up a little bit to Apocalypse World, which is the originator for the Powered by the Apocalypse system, which is now incredibly ubiquitous as a mechanical system.
00:14:15.081 --> 00:14:16.522
What is Apocalypse World?
00:14:17.187 --> 00:14:33.807
Apocalypse World is a game by Vincent Baker and Maguey Baker, published in 2010, and everything you said about it is true, it is the first powered by the Apocalypse game, it is the Apocalypse that other games are powered by, and it is explicitly a post apocalyptic game.
00:14:34.057 --> 00:14:39.246
but it doesn't do a lot more to decide what the apocalypse looks like.
00:14:39.246 --> 00:14:41.287
It leaves that up to your table.
00:14:41.326 --> 00:14:47.437
But it does indicate that in your world is a psychic maelstrom.
00:14:47.476 --> 00:14:48.937
It doesn't tell you what that is.
00:14:48.947 --> 00:14:52.636
It gives you some tools for sort of interrogating what your psychic maelstrom might be.
00:14:52.976 --> 00:15:04.782
But it is explicitly a sort of social and emotional apocalypse that you are living through, not just a external world apocalypse.
00:15:04.892 --> 00:15:09.662
And I find that this game is really interesting for a lot of reasons.
00:15:09.672 --> 00:15:30.211
The voice of the book is incredible, it has some of the best sort of generic GM advice I've ever read, but it is also notable, I think, for the way it centers the kinds of characters, it makes you as players take on the roles of characters who in many older RPGs would have been NPCs.
00:15:30.211 --> 00:15:58.866
One of the main playbooks is The maestro D who owns a bar or the hard holder who I mentioned earlier who just is the local mayor, basically the person who's running the local community you're a part of and you can be a cult leader right and have a bunch of followers you can be a gang leader and have a bunch of followers and all of those kinds of people would typically be the people back in town while you are out adventuring.
00:15:58.907 --> 00:16:14.417
And instead, in this game, you are playing as those people and making hard decisions about scarcity and relationships, and how you are going to make a place for yourself in the world, and what you are going to choose to prioritize.
00:16:14.866 --> 00:16:25.366
So, in this game, you're less of a roving band of adventurers and more part of a community that then would kind of venture into.
00:16:25.527 --> 00:16:31.366
I imagine you want to, in this game, venture into this psychic maelstrom, because otherwise, why is it there, right?
00:16:31.797 --> 00:16:34.956
Yeah, but the psychic maelstrom, maybe it's everywhere.
00:16:35.447 --> 00:16:38.256
Maybe it only exists in the hard holder's basement.
00:16:39.506 --> 00:16:43.317
But also maybe it exists all around you and it's truly psychic.
00:16:43.336 --> 00:16:45.976
Or maybe it's the leftovers of the internet.
00:16:46.027 --> 00:16:47.047
It's the matrix.
00:16:47.076 --> 00:16:49.866
Or maybe it's an alien technology.
00:16:49.866 --> 00:16:52.397
It can be really whatever you want it to be.
00:16:52.537 --> 00:16:55.947
In our case it was whatever is down there in the mist, right?
00:16:55.986 --> 00:17:07.721
But yeah, it is a game in which, yes, Probably the story is going to take you away from town, but probably you are leaving town because you have to in order to save town.
00:17:07.721 --> 00:17:10.481
You're not going to the next place for loot.
00:17:10.701 --> 00:17:14.211
You're not going to the next place to travel or see what's out there.
00:17:14.412 --> 00:17:24.751
You're going one town over, because there's a cold war brewing between your two towns and you want to make peace and then you want to go home and have it be peaceful.
00:17:25.011 --> 00:17:34.271
Or you're venturing out to the solar panel fields out in the wastes that have started malfunctioning and someone needs to check on them.
00:17:34.311 --> 00:17:37.382
It's much more community centered, I think.
00:17:37.501 --> 00:17:47.442
You are going to spend a lot more time talking with people around town and dealing with their various wants and needs then you are going to be dealing with practical problems.
00:17:48.152 --> 00:18:00.001
So it sounds there's an element of world building that's built into the game where collectively the players and the game runner are working together to build the world that their characters are placed in.
00:18:00.011 --> 00:18:01.251
Very much so.
00:18:01.311 --> 00:18:14.672
Yeah, the game is very explicit that no one, not even the GM Master of Ceremonies or MC in Apocalypse World, not even the MC should show up with any kind of idea about what the world looks or what they want to do.
00:18:14.922 --> 00:18:30.676
It just tells you before your first session to daydream, to just, imagine cool apocalyptic ideas and images, and then bring a few, don't lock anything in, but workshop with your table to find what you think is cool.
00:18:30.717 --> 00:18:40.106
And every time I have gotten to play this game, we have ended up in a unique, really compelling post apocalyptic world.
00:18:40.686 --> 00:18:49.826
To me, it seems building a character for Apocalypse World, or probably a lot of Powered by the Apocalypse games, is really contextual.
00:18:49.866 --> 00:18:54.777
It's not something that you would often do as a solo player.
00:18:54.987 --> 00:18:57.227
You're not bringing in something fully realized.
00:18:57.237 --> 00:18:59.957
You're coming to the table with something sketchy.
00:18:59.977 --> 00:19:17.317
Yeah, it's definitely a game that encourages you to do that, to come in with ideas, but to be really open to whatever ideas everyone else is coming in with and whatever riffs on your ideas other people take and run with.
00:19:17.426 --> 00:19:23.076
I will say the playbooks are fairly strong character archetypes in their own right.
00:19:23.461 --> 00:19:36.461
I think I've made it clear at this point that I think building out a world really helps you flesh out your Apocalypse World character and it really helps you flesh out whatever game character you're coming up with, or story character you're thinking about.
00:19:36.491 --> 00:19:50.477
But it is also true that if you just sat down and filled out the Hardholder playbook without a world, First of all, you would start making some decisions about the world as you filled out the playbook because you would have to, and the playbook prompts you to do so.
00:19:50.777 --> 00:19:57.446
But you would also make some character choices that give you a cool person that you might be able to drop into any campaign.
00:19:58.071 --> 00:19:58.852
We're talking about playbooks.
00:19:58.852 --> 00:20:05.801
Playbooks are kind of a collection of tropes that are genre specific, usually.
00:20:05.842 --> 00:20:08.281
What is the playbook that you're using for this character?
00:20:08.521 --> 00:20:15.267
So, Exit never got a playbook really explicitly because they started as Trout.
00:20:15.307 --> 00:20:22.686
The character that Exit is based on started as the Hocus, who is basically a cult leader from Apocalypse World 2nd edition.
00:20:22.696 --> 00:20:29.977
But the playbook that I was always really excited about, that I mentioned earlier, was the Savvy Head, who is more of a tech person.
00:20:30.067 --> 00:20:36.457
I don't have an actual character sheet for Exit, but I conceive of them as a Savvy Head in the world.
00:20:36.977 --> 00:20:41.866
What are the choices that the game asks you to make when building a character?
00:20:42.267 --> 00:20:45.086
That is a great question that I am so glad you asked.
00:20:45.356 --> 00:20:49.317
So each of these playbooks is kind of double sided.
00:20:49.832 --> 00:20:54.281
And the front side has stats and moves.
00:20:54.301 --> 00:21:05.561
If you're not familiar with Apocalypse World and Powered by the Apocalypse Games, each move is a special ability, essentially, that triggers under some sort of specific circumstances in this story.
00:21:05.771 --> 00:21:09.582
So one of the Savvy Head moves is Oftener Right.
00:21:09.781 --> 00:21:14.162
When a character comes to you for advice, tell them what you honestly think the best course is.
00:21:14.281 --> 00:21:19.102
If they do it, they take plus one to any rules they make in the doing, and you mark an experience circle.
00:21:19.132 --> 00:21:19.412
Cool.
00:21:19.592 --> 00:21:20.571
Pretty self explanatory.
00:21:20.781 --> 00:21:21.991
Some of them are a lot longer than that.
00:21:21.991 --> 00:21:22.991
Some of them are a little shorter.
00:21:23.041 --> 00:21:23.352
Whatever.
00:21:23.382 --> 00:21:48.477
When you're making a Savvy Head, you are choosing your moves, you're choosing your stats, and you're doing all the sort of normal stuff of choosing a name, choosing some gear, choosing, in a Savvy Head's case, projects that you're working on and your look, of course, as with basically any character the thing that I love about Apocalypse World and many powered by the Apocalypse games is how it gives you pick lists for all these things.
00:21:48.866 --> 00:21:56.625
It's the savvy head has a list of names here Leah, Joshua, Ty, Ethan, Brand, Jeremy and so on and so forth.
00:21:56.625 --> 00:21:59.511
And the look is man, woman, ambiguous or transgressing.
00:21:59.951 --> 00:22:04.622
Utility wear plus tech scrounge wear plus tech vintage wear plus tech tech wear.
00:22:04.781 --> 00:22:05.281
Okay, cool.
00:22:05.281 --> 00:22:10.201
Apparently gonna be a techie, but then it gives you options for your face, your eyes, your body.
00:22:10.251 --> 00:22:17.011
It gives you these little bits of character I might have a hunched body.
00:22:17.461 --> 00:22:22.241
that really let you kind of run with the details in a fun direction.
00:22:22.622 --> 00:22:24.801
Hunched body is such a mood.
00:22:25.162 --> 00:22:41.122
It's not my entire character, but by just circling hunched body on this list of options, along with, let's say, dancing eyes and a pretty face, that person is coming together really quickly after just three choices on how I look.
00:22:41.537 --> 00:22:48.616
So, if you're interested, listeners, in delving deeper into picklists Sam, you did an episode about picklists, right?
00:22:48.666 --> 00:22:50.176
We did do an episode about picklists.
00:22:50.217 --> 00:22:56.547
Me and my friend, Ash Kreider, specifically started by talking about the gender picklists in Apocalypse World.
00:22:56.656 --> 00:22:57.211
And that's it.
00:22:58.511 --> 00:23:00.271
And we had a lot to say.
00:23:00.461 --> 00:23:11.882
By the time this releases, it's likely I'll also have put out an episode about random tables and random lists, which I think are really closely related and also very interesting.
00:23:11.892 --> 00:23:18.461
And of course, you know, if you're looking at your savvy head and you're, I know I want cool eyes, but which of these cool eyes do I want?
00:23:18.481 --> 00:23:22.741
You can always just roll a die and turn the pick list into a random list, right?
00:23:23.257 --> 00:23:25.626
We had a lot to say about picklists and the beauty of them.
00:23:26.086 --> 00:23:30.457
You said that Exit, their job, is essentially salvage.
00:23:30.646 --> 00:23:30.997
Yeah.
00:23:31.237 --> 00:23:34.037
What made them good at their job?
00:23:34.267 --> 00:23:35.307
How did they get good at it?
00:23:35.366 --> 00:23:37.477
I don't know that I've ever thought about that question.
00:23:37.537 --> 00:23:56.636
I always a little bit conceived of them as just sort of naturally good at it, naturally someone who is a little bit less social and a little bit more interested in things, who just has a keen eye for how to take something apart and put it back together and what makes it valuable or useful in the first place.
00:23:56.686 --> 00:24:08.987
And then I also think of them as someone who is just not afraid of these mists in the same way as other people, whose brain has always worked a little bit differently.
00:24:09.416 --> 00:24:20.297
And as a result is maybe less affected by whatever's going on in these mists and maybe just doesn't care as much or maybe has already been affected by the mists.
00:24:20.686 --> 00:24:27.896
And as a result just feels more comfortable out there and has been more willing to just put in the reps to get the practice.
00:24:28.096 --> 00:24:32.767
Whereas for anyone else, putting on a suit and going down there is kind of a scary experience.
00:24:33.221 --> 00:24:37.842
Exit always was someone who was I'll go take a look around, why not?
00:24:38.372 --> 00:24:40.031
That's how I make my money, it's my job.
00:24:40.182 --> 00:24:42.211
It's fun to come back with some prizes.
00:24:42.271 --> 00:24:45.612
And that lack of fear I think is really the thing that puts them up at the top.
00:24:45.892 --> 00:24:47.682
Do you think they were always brave?
00:24:47.892 --> 00:24:48.642
Yeah.
00:24:50.021 --> 00:24:55.662
Now we are digging down into the questions that are actually about me that I didn't realize were about me until I started answering them.
