Kidnap the Archpriest

Hello and welcome to Between Two Carons. I'm your high. Hi, I'm Brad. Hi, I'm Skullboy. And I'm Daniel? Yes, there it is. There it is. And I'm Daniel. Good. And today, we're going to review Kidnapped the Arch Priest. But first, welcome Daniel Kwan. Thanks for having me. Hello, Daniel Kwan. This is cool. I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah, hi. So for folks who don't know, Daniel is a podcaster and RPG designer from Toronto. He is a co-host of Asian's Represent, but has also consulted and written a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not going to list it all here. I know you because of Ross rifles, actually. That makes me so happy. When I was a dungeon world kind of player, designer, moderator and bunch of forms. I actually played Ross rifles in. I don't know, like five years ago, a long time ago. It was a number of years ago. And thought it was very cool. But you're also presently working on an OSR inspired. Do you say, I have a question for you. Do you say Wusha game or Wukasi? What is your? It's Wusha. You say Wusha every time. Because I keep hearing different things. And despite actually having studied two types of Chinese, I still don't know the right way to say things, especially things that are tonal. So Wusha is good enough. Yeah, it is. It's Wusha. Okay. Good. Good. Like Wushu, but with an A at the end. Yeah. Right. Okay. Thank you. So you're presently preparing to launch. Is it a Kickstarter? What are you guys doing? Yeah, we're going to launch a Kickstarter in May. But yeah, working on an OSR inspired game called Wandering Blades. It's basically a tabletop RPG about chivalrous heroes, martial arts drama, and really violent swordplay. And this is on that. Sweet. Yeah. That's my favorite kind of swordplay. Yeah, I basically, I wanted to make an OSR game that allowed you to emulate the feel of the old school 60s and 70s martial arts movies. Like the violence, the gore, like the character drama of that specific era of martial arts cinematography. Okay, I have to ask, just since you reminded me of this, have any of you seen can dialectics break bricks? Anybody know what that is? Is this unfamiliar? No, it sounds familiar to me, but it's it is a French. It's a French situationist film in which they took a Chinese sword and sandal film and re-dubbed it to have French communist propaganda. But it's also it's also fucking hilarious. It is legitimately funny on purpose, like not in no way is it like booking fun at the content. It's it's a anti capitalist situationist film. So they're, you know, this is the same people who made their books out of sandpaper so they would destroy other books in the shelves. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. Vito, Vito, a concy. Anyhow, I just throw on this out there. I own a copy of it. I actually own a copy of it. If anyone ever wants to borrow it. It is completely insane and very funny. I, sorry, I just was hoping someone would know what that was. So proceed. So you're launching this. Is it through plus one XP? What's that? Yeah, it'll be through plus one XP. Yeah. Yeah. So we have been working on the game for about two years now. Yeah, right. Right. You have a, you have a, what do you call it? Not a startup. What do they call the little quick start? It's like a quick start. A quick start. It is. I'm real good at this. You have a quick start. Keep looking down. Right now, right? Itch page, DanielHquan.itch.io. Yeah, I've been working on it for a while. I, I love OSR games. And, and I know that I kind of came into them. I think relatively late compared to a lot of, a lot of folks. I, I got my start with OSR stuff in 2018 at, at the first time I went to GenCon. A good buddy of mine. I think you folks might know Joe D. Simone. He's, I heard Fargo on socials. Oh, yeah, I know Joe. Yeah. We were, we were like walking the floor. He's like, Daniel, you got to get this fucking game. And it was like early print of, uh, mother ship. I mean, there it is. Sweet. Nice. And I, that was my introduction to the OSR. And I fell in love with it. Um, and I basically just like kept doing deeper and deeper dives. But I wanted to make a game that had the sort of skill based, uh, ingenuity driven sort of gameplay. We have an OSR game. But with an emphasis on hyper violent combat. Um, that was deadly and player forward. Because, you know, like OSR games are, can be very, very dangerous. Um, but I also wanted the players to feel dangerous at the start. Uh, so the idea is that the, the game system, um, the main procedure of the game is, is the combat. And it enables you to do like back and forth combat, like, duels, parry and blocking counter attacking. Um, so the nitty gritty of combat. The nitty gritty of combat all in like, all in something that I, um, based around a philosophy that I, I kind of made up and Tony from plus one exp really liked it. I had this idea of time to violence. Um, it is, I don't know if you've ever heard of his sales term time to value. Like how about you? Yes. I was like, how fast can you get to violence? And so I basically decided that I would make time to violence. Like one of the core sort of like guiding principles of the game. Uh, and so I, I made a tip top RPG that lets you reenact really, really violent martial arts. That's, I think that's really interesting. Um, I love that. I've looked at the, the quick start. And yeah, I think wanting to play it looks just really cool. So it's a very fresh version of an OSR game. It's like really interesting amount of like crunch in specific places while like rules light and others. I think that's like, yeah, I really satisfying makes you have so far. But I think one thing that really interests me is that, you know, one idiom that I hear a lot when people talk about OSR style play is combat is a fail state, which I don't, I don't, I think I personally agree with that. I mean, I think people are kind of lying to themselves if they think like, you know, that's not a main thing in these games. But still it's interesting that this game's focus seems to be about combat. And so it's like a lot of the influences that you cite in the book as well. Like a lot of, you know, Hong Kong action films and, you know, video games that you cite. So yeah, I was just wondering like how, how, where did the design philosophy come from when you were designing the game? Like how much of that like ultra fragile micro transactions of like moving your little guy around between super stylist action. Did you bring in when you were designing the game? Yeah. So like for me, one of the things that I really wanted to do was like, I think a lot of people when they design a game or they release the game, they say it was inspired by this piece of non tabletop media. Yeah. But really it's only an aesthetic, not like in theme or execution. So what I did when I was designing this was I, after I had like my core mechanics down, I would purposefully like watch Wusha cinema and frame by frame. Try to see if my system would emulate how fights work or see how the role playing procedures within the game would like map on to it. There is, there's a movie that came out in 1979 called the last horror for chivalry. It was one of John Wu's early movies. I don't know if most people have heard of John Wu, but they think of like his gangster movies, his heroic bloodshed movies. But before all that, the prototype for his entire style was a Wusha movie. And I was recently rewatching it with a friend. And one of the things that I had tried to really bring into wandering blades was despite all of the combat mechanics, combat shouldn't be the first sort of like choice for players. It's kind of a, a last resort. But that's actually a part of the genre. The characters that you play within Wusha genre are like very principled characters. They might be scoundrels, but they're like principled scoundrels. And so you're encouraged to role play. And through the combat mechanics, you're actually encouraged to think very strategically about whether or not you want to engage in combat. Because you start off the game quite strong. You have all of your HP, you have no wounds, you have a full pool of Chi, like the internal energy that you use for your martial arts abilities, but also to bypass certain things, like take extra actions and stuff like that. But they don't regenerate instantly. Like in Dungeons & Dragons, you can't just say I need a rest. You have to engage in downtime. And so you have to think very carefully about how you want to actually approach combat. Because if you engage in combat, just however you'd like, you're carrying all of these detriments and depleted systems into your next encounter. And so while there are like lots of rules for combat, and I mean lots, I mean comparative to the rest of the procedures of the game, they actually, the system and the genre itself encourages people to not fight first. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. Let me just interject. Please. What I'm thinking of is you did something similar, at least in my revocation with with raw shrythals, which is for those who don't know, it's a powered by the apocalypse game set during World War One, where you play Canadians with guns. And yeah, I mean, it's just that's a way better title. Canadians with guns. Look out. Um, but. (laughs) I recall thinking it was very procedure heavy in some ways and much more so than most PBTA games. Well it's not totally true but you are certain expectation in PBTA games where it's super lucy goosey with these kind of like hard moves to ensure that it creates experience but that really wasn't what you did it was more. I like that needy greedy again there is more of a hyper focus procedure there to and I guess I. Assuming you agree with me do you feel like that's the kind of designer you are you create things that are. You will work within a common framework and then you hyper focus on a specific aspect of play that you want to talk about I mean or am I totally off base there. Yeah I think that's a fair assessment I mean that's like me as a person like I like hyper fixate on things. Right I think a lot of people can probably relate to that. But yeah I personally with PBTA games I find that like the best PBTA games are games that try to emulate a specific experience. So I think of the sprawl is like a really cool cyberpunk PBTA game. The good example and it's all about doing missions you just do missions or I think of night witches it is not a game about dog fighting it is a game about the drama of being a Soviet air woman with no resources indeed indeed and one of the best titles of any. Oh yeah fantastic and best covers best covers to incredible cover really good cover but so like those two early it's braces for Ross rifles because we didn't want to make a game about like. Digging through trenches or just like doing world war one we just wanted to be about the drama of your section in the trench. And so that allowed us to be like really hyper focused with what we were designing and it's the same with wandering blades right when you think of Wusha you could a lot of people think of like. Modern dramas people think of like the untamed and like the romance. I personally don't like to design romance mechanics because I don't want to tell people how to romance. I like that sort of part of the gameplay to be in that fruitful void but what I really liked and what I didn't see in like the market was a game that enabled you to have that sort of beautiful violence blow by blow blow by blow. But in a way in a system that was like really easy to learn like I was playing a session with some friends last week and we literally. Had started the encounter with one of the players throwing needles through these spy holes in the wall and we had like the big bad sort of like deflecting them and like they were tearing up the like the top of this in and. They were going blow by blow and they were actually stacking their turns and comboing off of one another. Because I really like games not just combat where you're constantly engaged like you feel like you have a role to play or you're a part of a team or you're just part of a table because I think as somebody who's been played to you to produce for like over two decades. My worst experiences have come from when I'm just waiting for my turn to do something. So you're saying that like the number one I think complete people have about combat in let's say more traditional systems is that it just takes up most of the most of play and that gets boring because it's turn based usually right. Or you're waiting for your turn to do something and your action is is relatively inconsequential so let's say take a try again like the indie on the barbarian I know I'm just going to swing my acts on my turn so when it's not my turn I'm just kind of sitting there. Yeah and so you're saying the experience here is combat is it or can be a very big part of the session but more if there's more participation overall correct. I in every single place I've done combat has not gone longer than three rounds and when it's gone more than one round. It becomes very dangerous for the players interesting. So players use their understanding of their characters abilities and like the environment and they can actually go through an entire combat encounter unscathed. They can wipe out waves of enemies but then they use up all the resources like I said earlier because you can basically. A big thing for me was empowering people to take tempo and gain momentum in combat and put the GM on the back foot or vice versa. So yeah I wanted to encourage player interaction which is why you know I adopted like a player first sort of like initiative order so players always go first okay but I really loved the fast and slow turns of shadow the demon lord. So I adopted that but then with a player first mentality so that players got to basically stack. Their turn orders and combo off of one another like organically which meant that people were just waiting for their turn they were actively thinking about what they were going to do and adapting to like people successes or failures. It's really cool interesting interesting a lot of what you say. Fills story game me don't even see like I'm seeing also some influence from like I guess a clock so you know which I recognize from blades in the dark I'm sure there's other systems that maybe pretty I'm not sure. That was a year but yes it's interesting to me because all of these despite all of these kind of story game influences it still reads to me very much like an OSR game somehow which is weird and my my you know masters thesis which I'm still crafting here is that OSR and story games you know. Part by the apocalypse tile games have way more overlap than anyone is wants to admit than either of these like fans want to admit here completely completely agree with you yeah like I think that is a compliment because like. I personally like I love elements of story games and I love elements of OSR games yeah I think I like bringing them all together like I love like open ended and like challenging gameplay I love emergent narrative but I also love like the toolbox experience yeah. Which you don't get out of story games you get that out of OSR games. I agree with that assessment in general like story games aren't as much about what's the thing in my inventory that will help solve this problem or what what's how can I cobble together a list of. Are various resources to mechanic to a fictionally break down this challenge I think that is that is one to me what you described there is the sort of dividing line is that. toolbox versus obstacle based play i'm not saying you can't have those experiences in story games but that is a strong differentiating line line so I agree that's of course I think the story games like. Character mortality is just not a thing unless it's like explicitly part of the game like yeah ten candles yeah like or like dread well ever we may wear everyone dies is that everyone dies but like you know in like a ppt game like death isn't really a thing. Or if death is a thing they make it very difficult well it can be it'll happen at the right time it's like oh dungeon world you're got your your a goner but you know you have time to make. The man's or whatever you know roll your last breath move and then maybe if you succeed you come back. So I think yeah and you know the experience of having a character be like in a state where you know they they're like missing an arm. Or something that you like see in story games that's a thing that you have in like those are games yeah yeah right or just the idea that the world doesn't scale with you. Right you see that in more trad games like he is like what i'm playing and the GM puts like something potentially adversarial in front of me there is the expectation that I should be able to overcome it with. Marshall slash magical abilities right but in OSR games the world doesn't adjust to the players true and the players have to assess threats and assess problems they might have to run away you know they might have to run away and that's. 100% a part of like wandering blades and it's reinforced by how dangerous the combat is. i'm curious about the role of the dungeon in your game there's a starter adventure here called heavenly treasure which interest it's kind of like an interesting. It's kind of social negotiation and then you know lots of opportunities for combat but i'm wondering like. Well you know given the emphasis on combat what what is like a dungeon look like in wandering blades and also additionally like what would what a support look like for this game do you have any like additional like adventures or modules or anything like that plan for after the release. Yeah so like. Dungeon crawling is not necessarily like part of this game right because within the Wusha genre you're not in dungeons you may wander into like subterranean like temples and stuff like that but for me. The approach I kind of took what any inspiration I took was from like trilema adventures i love trilema yeah and michael is also a local. I don't know but I really like the single location bottle episode type adventures yeah that's why recommended the you know the topic for this episode because it's the kind of content I really like. The heavenly treasure features you know a couple of small locations but is predominantly a compound yeah. The core rule book is actually going to have an event i'm calling them adventure locations which is essentially what they are because they're tool kits. or telling stories over and over again in a single adventure location. Like I could run multiple one shots and they won't all be the same. I really like that. - Who off hand and not to put you in the spot, do you have a favorite trail in my adventure? - Yes, there is, I forget what it's called, but it's the first OSR adventure I ever ran for my family, my parents. - Oh, wow. - Okay. - And there is one where, oh my God, I fucking forget it. But there was like a temple, there's just like gruel that they have to eat for this God. - Oh, I remember that one. - I mean, there's the coming of sorg, but I remember there being gruel in that one. There is a God. - There was, forget what it was, but it was the first time like during the pandemic, I was running like D&D for my family and I was like, I wanna like switch this up. And for the, when we played in person for the first time, I ran like a trilema adventure with something like super stripped down. And it was a lot of fun. - Oh, is it three for the grave? The one with the disgusting wolf picture? - I have to look at the book. I would have to go find it. - Oh, you have the long book, yeah, okay. - I have like the long blue book. I love it. - I see. - So there, okay, 'cause that one does have gruel in it, but, (laughing) I don't know what it does. - This was years ago, I have to go check, but I love the four men of trilema. I love that you have like a single location. And then itself is a toolkit for telling stories. And so, adventures in the choral for wandering blades, you know what, I'll send you an image right now. This is like a draft of one of the adventure locations. And I said to you and, are discord. - Oh, dear, okay, I got it. - But it's like a, it's a border in, you could set it to everyone else is fine. But it's basically a border in, it's like an isolated location. And the adventure is gonna be presented with like a bunch of hooks, day time and nighttime events, and then factions and NPCs within this inn that you could tell stories around. - That's cool. - The inn, there's also a subterranean component as well, because the inn was basically built over an ancient martial arts temple. - Yeah, there's like a, I mean, it looks like like a temple. - Oh, this is a, this is a great drawing. - But yeah, so like the idea of dungeons are really around like self-contained adventure locations. - Yes. - And then I have exploration mechanics about like exploring like the martial world. Well, the great thing about it is that like, interestingly in like Wusha media, like the world itself is never really important. Like the world building of Wusha is mostly around character interactions. - Yeah. - Which is why for wandering blades like reputation, mechanics and downtime rules, which are gonna be in like the core rule book are like immensely important. Because if you ever watch a martial arts movie, it's like it's set in China, and that's all you really need to know. And then it's just about these characters. - Yeah. Right, that's cool. - In spite of what you said, I'm still excited about the idea of wandering blades, Wusha, keep on the borderlands, just walking into that canyon and like calling out the Kobal tribe and like 100%. 100%. - That actually makes me wanna run, keep on the borderlands. (laughing) - That's a compliment. I'll take that. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, some of the, you know, I haven't seen that many Wusha films, but like the one with the woman that they have to break out of jail, it's made like, it was pretty, - There was one that if people are interested in the Wusha movie set in like a single location, there's two I would recommend. One actually is very accessible. It came out last year and it's called Twilight of the Warriors walled in. And it's set in the 80s in the Calune walled city in Hong Kong. - Oh, that's cool. - Imagine the close court in the 1980s. - Yeah. - Imagine like that close quarters, like a vertical slum of the walled city with wirework and martial arts techniques. - That sounds awesome. - But also guns. - Okay, the one I was thinking of is house of flying dragons. - Flying daggers. - Flying daggers. - Flying daggers, I'm sorry. - Yes. - House of flying daggers. And it's that one they have to kill a guy. - Crazy. - And the reason I'm bringing it up, well they have to, they have to like kill the leader of this group. The reason I'm bringing it up is it's a little bit like the kidnought the arch frees. 'Cause they have to like, you know, they have to, and to do it they have to break this woman. That's what I think of. They have to break this woman out of prison 'cause she's the only one who can help them or something. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Anyways, whatever. It's just what reminded me of. Trying to bring it forward to our main review. - Nice transition. - Thank you. - Super valid. - Wait, before we go, I just wanna say after reading through the wandering blade stuff today, I really just wanna, I really love that you've given, you've got a system here that gives fighters an identity through, like there's stuff, 'cause I think something in the OSR that happens frequently is like, the base classes in most OSR games are like, you've got fighters, but they're sort of the default, just like whatever guy. And then you know, Wizards have the identity of like their spellcasting. Deves have, you know, the whatever abilities, their best at, you know, clerics have the God that they worship. And I think fighters sometimes sort of fall to the wayside. And I think just having like the different schools of martial arts as like a part of like, the fighting identity is just like, it brings so much to the character right out of the gate that I always think about like when I see a new OSR games, like what is this bringing to the table, like for the culture as a whole? And I think more things that give us a like, okay, but who is my fighter? And like how do they distinguish themselves? Just like a little bit like out the gate is really strong. And I really like it. - The game itself is only gonna have three classes. So it was really important for me to empower players to use the same class, to create very mechanically and narratively distinct characters. Because everybody could play the Yosha, which is like the Knight Herent. But if everybody picked a different sect to their martial arts school, they will all play differently. - Yeah. - Yeah. - There's another class, the third one is called the scholar. And it lets you pick a vocation. And so you could either be a detective or a physician. So you can like pressure point people to death. Or you can have a character who's entirely support. And you can call out weaknesses and give people buffs in combat or, you know, play a game. - Is that a martial arts doctor? Dr. D, was that it? - Detective D. - Detective D. - That's it, yeah. (laughing) - Well, okay. - Yeah, that was kind of like the third piece of the puzzle. But I only wanted to have three classes because they essentially allow you to create any sort of like classical archetype within the Yosha genre. - Sweet. Yeah. Give the fighters some juice, you know? Yeah, you're right. OSR fighters usually is like the absence. You know, it's like naked Barbie and then all the other classes are Barbie with clothes on. Wait, I'm sorry, it's like absinthe. - Absinthe. - Absinthe. - There's just like, - Oh, it's an absence. - It's like an absense. It's almost like the fighter characters like an afterthought. - Okay, yeah. - It's like, what's the default? Like, you know, you're just a guy with a stick. - Or the starter to thought. It's like, we got guy. And then we'll have guy with stuff. And that's like the other classes, you know? - When I first started playing D&D, it was like after four, when I got into three five, it was like, I made a character using the book of Nine Swords. - Awesome, good book. - It was, it right? So cool. Like, I had this character with like hook swords and it was like a whole thing. - Brief five was, is my most played TTRBG. I love three five. - I'm probably there too. - We check our steam hours played stats, you know, I think I'm probably there with you. - I think that says a lot about me though. - Gonna make Brad so happy. (laughing) - We did, before the show we were comparing video game out with some stats. - Yeah. - They weren't, they weren't good. - Yeah, they weren't, yeah, they're not as cool as we think they are. (laughing) All right, let's move on to the main review. For today's review, we're going to be talking about Kidnap the Arch Priest. This was written by Skurples, with layout by Die Sugars, as well as editing by Die as well. The art is all by Lucoré et, and the cartography is, do you guys, I don't know if this is Hanon or Janon? I don't know how this person likes to pronounce their name, but, there it is. And this is a little interesting. So it was originally published in 2018, which is when I got it sometime around then, but there's apparently a revised 2022 edition because I literally, for this episode, I went into Drive Through RPG, and you know how you can sort your library by updated only? Never do that because it will stress you out. (laughing) I know there's like an app, and it can do that automatically, but I'm not using it. And I did notice that there's a 2022 update to it. - And it's really, the names are really annoying too, because the old version is called kta.pdf, and the new version is called KidnapTheArchPrice.pdf. So there's no way to know which one's the new one, unless you open it and look at the copyright. - Yeah, well, so I'm talking about, so I have the, you know, POD version here that I've had for years, and it is the old version, but the PDF, the PDF I have here is the new version, which you can tell, 'cause it says so in there, but it's not like this one even has a copyright. The printed version does not even have a date anywhere that I could find in it. So I'm just, you know, regardless, I read for this, the purposes of this review, I read the 2018 version, but if you guys read 2020 too. - Let's talk about that one, 'cause that's the one that I got introduced to as well. - Okay, good. - No version, so I refuse. - I say I read the new version, but it's fine. I don't know what the difference is. - I was trying to find differences by looking at it. There's a couple layout differences, and there's like some font changes, and then there's a little, an overview that looks a little different, but I don't actually know. The art all seems the same. - Functionally, I think it's all the same. - Yes, yes. Anyhow, just to confuse things, it is, a letter sized print with like 54 pages or well actually it's yeah I think with the cover it's like 54 pages or 52 pages maybe on the print but the PDF is 58 pages so there you go okay that's how you know he had the wrong one because my PDF is 52. Well, excellent. Mine's 57. Yeah, man too. Well all right so I'm very familiar with this. I think we're all very familiar with this from before we reviewed it but it's been our list for a long time. We bumped it way up because well Daniel you wanted to review it so why don't you give us your pitch for it and normally what we do is Brad tells us what this is all about but I think it might be funny to have you do it. So try to describe what this is about you know nothing super spoilery and then why you think it's awesome and we should totally why you wanted us to review it. Yeah so okay so I'll do my pitch before I say why I love it. So this is essentially like an adventure toolkit that tasks a group of players with a mission of infiltrating a religious city kind of like the Vatican and kidnapping a an art the arch priest who has aligned himself with like demons and getting out in two days. Well allegedly aligned himself with demons. Allegedly but it is yeah it's a classic almost like a heist except the thing you're stealing as a person. Yeah I really love this adventure and it's actually when I have friends who are coming from more trad games and they want to try like an OSR game or an OSR piece of OSR media it's actually the thing that I used to introduce people to to the genre because I think that it a is has really good guidelines for adapting it to any genre because you can there are guidelines for using it for like high fantasy low fantasy sci fi which I think is really good makes it accessible it's system agnostic but I think that there is an immense amount of detail that is very functional for GM's. So I love this because it introduces players to this sort of like open ended play style that like hey we have an objective accomplish it as you see fit and every time I've run it it's been fun and different each time. If sub players who are like we're just gonna bomb the castle or there are some people who are like we're gonna charge in and fight our way through or we're gonna take the stealth approach and there's there's always something I think it's highly replayable which is something I look for in like a really good piece of OSR media it's something I want to reuse over and over again it's something that I want to take and port into another system or my own design work like personally cannot be archery I really love the way they present NPCs and that's a part of what I'm kind of porting into wandering blades. Okay all right all right so you like it which is obvious since you suggested it yeah I like it. One day we're gonna have a guest say I hate this thing but I chose this adventure because I hate it and I'm ready to let the world know yeah be a bold start. I mean I think I think that that would that's gonna happen well anyhow. I know there's stuff that I want to talk about that I don't like. You can't love everything you can't love everything you can't but you can definitely find someone who does and you can always find someone who hates something. All right so before we get into the review and talking more about this what did you guys think of the art? I don't know Sam you're an artist let's start with you what did you think of a Lucas heart. I mean here's the thing. Luca Luca's great. This is great I mean I set that up in a weird way I was gonna say like Luca's a colleague I'm not gonna say anything back I wouldn't have anything bad to say. The art in this is awesome I think when you're making something like this one of the big things that the art needs to accomplish is the portraiture needs to give you a piece of these characters like right off the bat and I think it's so strong in doing that like you know exactly who all these people are immediately. It's said John the cook on I'm looking at John the cook literally right now that's the first one I'm just like I can see I can see like the actor that would be portraying him like I can see Fred Armason playing this role. Yeah so effectively. I was gonna say Jerry Seinfeld but sure yeah you know you could I can get into a Seinfeld for this yeah yeah there's just so much there's I think my favorite piece though by far is part part was it five the escape 49 page 49 page 49 yeah it's just the the party running away being chased by the the scary guards and I just I really like when Luca lets himself be like really loose and cartoony and I think this is a really great example of that it's it's interesting because this period for him he did a lot of you know this is around the same period he was doing stuff for like Hill Cantons and he was doing these sort of a lot of people and a lot of like black and white and it's so interesting because if you looked at this and didn't know him and then later went and looked at UVG you'd be it's so different in terms of composition and color it's really different this is he's he's doing this great sort of emulation of like Mobius style work here and like the really crowded scene on page 32 I think is a really great example of that it reminds me of there's some collaborative pieces that Mobius did with Paul Pope that it really reminds me of this like he's really dense like lots of people everybody's doing something and it's this great mixture of like really like really grounded like architecture and like really like loose character movement stuff and it's it's just all it's all really really strong it's really great yeah I like the donkey I think you can tell this is look Arise he's got such a it's hatching it's got this like fine liner but like kind of thick weight hatching that he always does like on the building there yeah that's always you can always always tell looks fantastic my favorite piece is actually the the piece from the sober monk in because I think with the little guy listening in the little guy listening because you also get you also get the character dynamics yeah from that piece of art a hundred percent agree with you that's what I was going to say when it was my turn excellent it's just it's great no it's great because you can see the little like like the like the lover you don't need to read anything to know exactly what's happening in that city yeah yeah you have this like idiot listening at the window he's so worried is he so perfectly worried yeah and even says his intelligence dumb as a sack of rocks yeah I always love Luke Arise's clouds too like a city of thul on page 11 from me man yeah the the loop of clouds are always oh my god I think that's I think that's the mobius that I'm detecting a lot of the times that's I think it's very it's a very it's a French it's an 80s French class hero very euro comics yeah it's really really stylish I just think his architecture stuff is just I'm always envious of that like he knows perspective he knows these like angles it's just great yeah I mean he's a great talent all right so let's let's let's move on to the main review all right so Brad tell me what did you think of kidnapped the arch priest oh yeah man we didn't mention this is system neutral I totally skipped that I mentioned it thank you good all right so Brad what did you think of kidnapped this is a classic for easy man this is killer this is just it's just a powder keg full of potential action and interactivity but it's very it's like digital it's like these little nodes of of of interactive stuff you know there's no right path to kidnapped the arch priest arch priest you just head down something that interests you and then all of a sudden things start firing and you've got a plot and I just love that about this this is also one that I always think of when I I sometimes sit here when people talk about the strength of OSR modules some people say something is good if it's easy to run people say oh I can just open the book and run it and in my mind that that can be good but I think there is real value in something that is difficult to run and this in my mind is kind of a challenging module just because there are so much happening here you have to understand these NPCs you have to there's like a timetable where everyone is throughout the day you have to track time in this one right like there's a lot of moving parts a lot of things to think about there's a lot of prep you need to run this but that is not a bad thing here this is a rich just like inviting satisfying powder keg of an adventure that rewards that kind of investment so I always think like when people are like no good equals easy to run I don't want to read open the book and run it I'm like no that can be good but that in and of itself is not good because this is in my mind the prime example of hard but good this is worth the investment yeah like you said Daniel I love that you don't know how this is going to go if you ran this five times it's going to you're going to have five different plots and I like that skirpals has a lot of guidance this is kind of a teaching module and even there's like information brokers that'll sell you a plot to like if you have no idea what to do they're like well these guys can just sell you an idea what to try like that's just it's just killer it's very thoughtful and I think the dungeon design is quite nice too there's a lot of little gotchas and stuff we want to get into the facility even though this is not a traditional dungeon delve I think the act of delving in and of itself has a lot of little pleasures and bits of danger tucked away So I don't have much bad to say I don't really like the header fonts this kind of old world kind of like Carvings. I don't know what you call that. I don't like that. I think it makes this feeling feel Stuffy almost when I don't think it's that kind of a it's not kind of a module But aside from that I very little to say that Would detract so I'll pass it on Sam. Yeah, your term. What do you what do you think Sam? I think Skurples has the He has the market cornered on teaching modules and I love that. I think it's really really important and I think He's really good at writing them You know this this starts out with the same introduction as Tomb of the Serpent King more or less at least the first sort of paragraph and I really love Yeah, that he's just he's laid out such a great Framework not only for like the adventure that he wrote but also for making you know heists of your own I think that's really really cool and Yeah, I think overall there's just a There's a weight to this whole thing with the way that time really matters which is like I mean if we if we really draw the curtain back into like the You know the the earliest days of the hobby the most you know the largest all caps text is you know Gary guy Get screaming that time matters and I think that there's something here that you know we talked about when we reviewed The village of homelot you know we also we talked about the idea that like this is a You almost can't review it because it's about what happens at the table and we're really it's more like reviewing like blocks or something like that This is like if that's a caveman. This is like us. This is a space man like this is like this is What I want to take something like that? That's like old and like I see all the potential like this is the fully realized version of something like that the schedule in here We got this whole Majora's mask timeline laid out for us where we can just like What's going on that's I've never thought about that to me. It's a harvest moon timeline, but okay Yeah, okay, no worse mine was I just went breath of the wild because each you know Care to the game has a track they have a schedule and you know it's like starting Valley Yeah, any game, but totally video game like okay at this hour this guy's gonna be sleeping Got it, you know, right? And you've got this hard time limit It's like it has to happen within this time frame. I mean Just I mean if you want to if you want to port this into like a like a science fiction setting like imagine doing this with like a time loop or something like that Like every time you get like a new chance That actually would be very cool. That'd be cool. That'd be really really fun. There is that There's a video game. I forgot the name, but you it's a time loop game where a murder keeps happening over and over again You have to solve it and you were like it's that oh, it's at a it's at one of those masquerade balls where you can't see anyone's face So you have to oh, that's cool. I can't remember it's called now. Oh, it's a sexy Something sexy next I was like time loop. I was like is it like death loops again, but no, this is not death loop. No, it is not death right It's sexy death loop. I think it's called it is called sexy brutal That's the name of the game that the sexy brutals what it's called and it's available on steam right now for $20 I don't think you should put the words sexy in your video game title. I think as a rule Yeah, you know, it kept me away from it for a while, but this is like it came out in 2017. Geez. The ease It's okay. It's a stink. Since you're talking about that the you know where he will are there is a useful Used to be it's a it was it was originally a PowerPoint slide, but now it's like a downloaded downloadable PDF On the things we do for XP blog, which is still updated once in a while the guy there put together a He refers to it as an animated slide. It's it's basically a PDF that has a map of the castle and Who is I for and the map is a map of the castle for every hour of the Adventure and it shows you where everyone is in the castle at any given time that's a little hard to explain But like if you go there, it's like yeah an animated map. That's what he calls it. So it'll it yeah I'll just send it to you guys so you see what it's like, but That's really it's I think you would probably help for people who haven't you know done the sort of thing before I Send a link to it. Okay. Oh, yeah, that's that's what I thought it was that's super neat It would be cool if it was actually unamitted and had like a slider someone should do that but oh, yeah All right, I'll talk now Yeah, I really like this. This is my second time reading it I read it when I first got it and like loved it. It was definitely one of the bigger Things that brought me into the OSR despite it not having any system attached which that should be a lesson to us all I Really really like it a couple minor minor like typos that I found in the version I have but I'm sure I've been fixed in the PDF So I'm not really gonna talk about that right now. I really appreciate how much support there is for running this kind of adventure And I like that there's a section on how to write your own kind of adventure for this sort of thing I love the tables. I think we don't talk about tables enough the yeah The tables of what people might be doing at any given moment not the NPC tracks but the the tables of like when you're Escaping things you might run into while you're rushing through the city with a stolen Pope Kind of person and also the table of reasons people are meeting each other like one is they're in love The other is their rivals for another love the other is that they're just speculating on the intimate details of someone else's life like They're having liaisons to be like did you know what he said earlier and what he's doing I just thought that was great. It feels very lived in this is the first time in a while that we've actually read something for the show That I really just wanted to get out and play right away. Yeah, and I do have a Um Summer time I'm gonna be alone in my house without my wife and child That I'm gonna have like people come and play games and I'm thinking I'm thinking of breaking this out of just being like okay Folks I'm gonna do like an all day thing, you know, maybe it'll take four or five hours and I'm gonna make everyone play it It's gonna be great. I've been slowly reading through swivers and like looking at this and then back at swivers and then better Yeah, oh my god Slowly making them kids like the two pigeons and my dice Hey, hey Brad hey, Brad Make us whivers game out of the kind of the art trees that I'll play with you that's yeah hell yeah That's one nice thing about this you could know everything about it and still be able to play it because right how It I think the challenge would still be there even if you yeah knew a bunch about oh a hundred percent I think so too unless you intimately know the dungeon. I think that's a major challenge that people don't take in is that right the layout of thing I think is best about this. Yeah is how it Removes that if you especially notively playing it over and over again I think Skirmals has a really good understanding of like the differences between randomness and uncertainty Yeah, right. Yeah, like if you have played this like I've played this adventure Like over 10 times like I've run it over 10 times. I've never played sad Yeah The element of randomness is gone for me if I was gonna be a player But the element of uncertainty is still there right which means that this is like infinitely consumable for me because the uncertainty lies in like what happens if we succeed at this particular role or Our suite of characters or the mistakes we make so like there is no randomness if you play this over and over again But there is always uncertainty which I think is like a very very good thing Yeah, yeah, I think there's a level of like almost setting mastery that you can acquire through playing this more than one time that I think could Be sort of chalked up to like oh this character that I'm playing is just a very experienced thief and so you know There's a lot of stuff that you sort of know like this isn't my first rodeo kind of stuff that like yeah You're still gonna run into like so many hiccups and like weird stuff that it's like gonna be you know It's gonna be a fun time. Well Sam are you saying you literally could play those with the same PC more than once by simply changing the Changing the situation like like oh, it's or you could do it in a time loop you're stuck in a time loop But so you actually accomplished the goal. Oh, yeah, sure that would be good too. I'm a fan Yeah, you could you could groundhog day, but I think I think you could you could do a thing where you had like you know Yeah, maybe maybe it's like you know you try to maybe they try to kidnap the arch priest every three years or something It's like maybe it's a holiday maybe it's a holiday. Yeah, this time you're trying to kidnap the dreadmaster or whatever Yeah, what if it you know you know what if it was like a rasp of sand, you know that like yeah Great, great, module. Yeah, what if it was like there's just like really incredible zombie movie called verses I don't know if you folks have seen it It's the world where there's like yakka's in the woods. Yeah, I was gonna ask if I was gonna ask if it's a Japanese movie I think so but but the core element of it is like this cyclical nature of this like struggle between good and evil and what if you were playing a Rasp of sand and Every generation has to attempt to kidnap the arch priest. Yes So cool to break this cycle And if you and you make it and maybe you make it just hyper lethal. Yeah, but then that's where you get that like In game knowledge he's right answer to generations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How sick would that be that would be sweet? Doesn't he destroy the world at the end of that movie or something it like goes to the future and he sort of destroys the world at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, okay. So all right, I think we all like it. Obviously, you know, this is one of the one of the better known, I think, OSR modules, despite it, I don't actually know as many people have played it as something like, you know, zoom in the super king, but I do think it's worth its popularity. Let's go into deep dive. So we can talk a little bit about spoilers if you guys think that's valuable. So all right, deep dive or kidnapped, the arch breeze. No. All right, let's do deep dive. Deep dive. Deep dive. Deep dive. Okay. Yeah. Deep dive. What's the deal with the deep dive? Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. Yeah. Forget all the stuff we just said. Here's the deep dive. Ready? Here it is right now. Okay. Brad, what's really going on here? I mean, I don't, you know, there's a lot. I don't know what to say. Arch beast is up in his fort. And it's really hard to get in. He's got like a, a legion of like super scary, like Robocop, like demon paladins. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Call the camera. They're name. It's a cool name. It's a act of art. Yeah, they have a weird name. The black endo guard. Endo guard. Yeah. And there's much cardinals that have little dramas going on. There's just so much little stuff. It's just like, it's hard to spoil the whole thing because there, yeah, it would take hours to go through every little detail. But there's so many like, like, okay, there's one in this detail. This is just an example of the kind of like interactivity built it one in. And when you go to the end, you meet the inkeeper who's all stressed out because he thinks his wife is cheating on him. And it turns out she is cheating on him with this guy who looks exactly like one of the cardinals because he's the illegitimate son of one of the cardinals. And if that comes out, it's going to blow things up. He looks exactly like his dad and it's like all of this stuff that you start like picking at something and you get little thread. I can build a high stuff of that. And I think that's the cool strength of this module. It's stuff like that is because there's a lot of stuff like that. So yeah, I don't know if I think as far as spoilers go, that's like there, you get that's a big one, I guess, but there's a bunch of stuff like that. It's a huge one. But it's it's it's interesting because it's it's a spoiler, but it's also something that the players may not actually interact with or discover. Yeah, totally. It could be something that the GM misses, right? But it doesn't take away from the overall experience. Yeah. I've had people who have never discovered that. And then I've had players who have discovered it. And they staged a fake kidnapping of the cardinal to draw guards away. Yeah. That's awesome. Nice. Yeah, it makes complete sense. That's one of the like there's a list of plots like you could buy or like give players ideas or whatever. And there's one like that. It's like make a fake arch priest that lures party way. My favorite one is just like get to the arch priest, stick him in a wheelbarrow and run out as fast as you can. And I think that's the illustration that Luke really is. He's in a wheelbarrow. Yeah. That one that one that they said, like what's the potential? They they listed like ideas and potential problems. The potential problem was if you if literally anyone stands in your way, it won't work. There was one I think that they said you could put him in a barrel and then throw him in the river. Yeah, but then he can't swim. He can't swim. Yeah, there's well, that's the thing is that you know, there's these different stages, right? There's the planning stage. Like what I was thinking about is there's this part where it says you can spend four hours doing a sketch of the castle just like walking around the castle. And I really like that one because my players would never do it. No, they would never do it. They would just never despite it probably being really helpful. They would never make that effort. But I love that there's these different angles for different kinds of players. And I'm curious actually, Daniel, your players do anything that was just completely not accounted for in like out of all the times you've run this. Was there something that the players came up with that you really just didn't find within the auspices of this book? Like what was the craziest way they got the card and allowed us or didn't you know, is there anything particularly remember? Oh, my God. Yeah, I do. So I've run this using OSR systems and like, trans systems like D&D. And D&D kind of breaks it in a really funny way. And I had a party take out one of the like the heavily armored nights, save the armor and then stick the arch priest in the armor and then animate the armor and walk him out. Oh, that's good. And they silently gagged him and then just like, you can't move because his arms are in the armor and then they just forced him to walk out as if you were on patrol and then they studied the patrols. What movie was it where someone gets tied down to a gun to make it look like they're holding a gun at a door and then the cops come in the door and they because it looks like he's holding a gun at them, they all shoot at them and then only afterwards they find out he was he was duct taped through this. Is this like a guy richy movie? Maybe that was a mission of possible two. They did that a mission of possible two. Okay. Wait a minute. Did John Woo directed by John Woo? Oh my god. Full circle. I totally don't have a favorite director. It's fun. You like Daniel, your story about how you know, I guess presume 5E broke the game but in a very funny way. Yeah, 5E just seems to do that. The podcast GG No Ari ran one of my modules, Hidious Daylight with 5E and they were breaking it in all kinds of crazy ways that was actually really entertaining but it's the fact that a druid can turn into like a bee or something. Yeah, would completely break this. That's just gonna break stuff man but it was kept breaking it in really fun ways. So I don't know, say what you will. There's a it's still fun all the all the all the stuff that goes on there. I don't know what I'm saying. Oh 100% because you still have to get the intel like oh, we need to know where this guard's gonna walk. So like what if you do a poor job and then you and then oh no, you've got the wrong route and then it's just a guard walking it down the street. There's nothing to be there. Right. So that's the that's actually the only potential criticism I have as a counter to what Brad was saying earlier about how you know, OSR heads always talk about how easy this stuff is. This does require work and I think it's approachable but I'm imagining myself thinking like okay, I'm going through all my cards like where is this guard at this hour? Oh, you know, I'm sure it's not that difficult but the way I I am a little you know, if I were to run this in a couple months, I would feel trepidacious about it. You know, a little hesitant only because there's there it's not so much that there's a lot of information. It's that there's information to pull from and then you get rid of all the extraneous stuff and then you're you're left with this pile of relevant facts, you know, right? I'm sure it's easier than I'm expecting but I was a little kind of nervous about that. Yeah, I thought about running this and I got hives. My whole body was itchy. Yeah, I do see the potential for some players experience analysis paralysis here because there's so much information you can learn. I know like time is a factor here that makes it so at some point you have to act. There is a hard time in two days, right? Or on day three, the archbreeze is going to be taken to is leaving. Yeah, it's such a great name, too. It's like the impenetrable fortress of bonk or something like yes, it is in fact the impenetrable fortress of bonk. There's a dude from bonk that could be a replacement PC. Yeah, you can get. Yeah, right. One of the guards. I love that name. Anyway, so that's going to offset that to some degree, but I can imagine a lot of my players being like, um, and just looking at their pile of notes and being like, um, like looking for the meaning in them and just be like, no, just go in a window, get a wheelbarrow, run them out like any plot is as good as any other plot as long as you commit, you know, I think that's hard to convey, like just go for it. I think it's also the GM to basically moderate the amount of exposure they have to these sort of like NPC systems within here, right? It's like, hey, if they catch on that, you know, dormant is like the illegitimate son of one of the cardinals, cool. I know that I have to focus on NPCs that are associated with this. Right. Yeah, and it tells you that it says only, it says get about four NPCs. Don't, yeah, don't do more. That should be enough. And it lets you steer it lets you steer using those NPCs. Yeah, which is a little, I will say like it's a it's a it's sort of showing the OSR really pushes this idea that the GM is just letting the dice fall where they may, which is bullshit. Like yes, I respect dice falling, but I totally will say this doesn't make sense. I'll have a, you know, in a caring game, I'll have a result that doesn't make sense in a dungeon, encounters table. I just under dungeon events table. It just doesn't make sense for the situation. So I'll just ignore it. You know, and I feel like that's that is a thing that happens in OSR games too. And this game says no, no, no, you hone in on the stuff that makes that the PCs care about, which is in some ways counter to a lot of what the OSR supposed philosophy espouses. But I have a quick question for you here, Daniel. You played, you played a lot of story game kind of games and PPA games. Do you think this would work with plates in the dark as it is 100% if you okay, you don't feel like the whole like what do they call the memory flashback thingies? I okay. So I think if you took away some elements of it, but like I actually think the best the best story game. for this one would be the sprawl. - sprawl would be great too. Yeah, sprawl is it. Yeah, you do have a cyberpunk version of this? - Yeah. Yeah. And it actually has guidelines for how to do cyberpunk. - Right, it does. - Because it actually says if you did cyberpunk, there's like a techno Pope. - Yeah, yeah, good, yeah. - I believe it's, I believe it's, are you a bad enough dude to kidnap a techno Pope and avoid his old drum bishops? - Yeah. - Metapres and laser guards, I think you could totally do it with like the sprawl. And I think that's, that's the strength of a game like this sprawl. Shout out to Hamish because it's like a hyper focused experience. - Blades in the dark. - Yeah. - In my experience is not about, a big part of this module is the plan. - But planning, the preparation. Blades in the dark is all about eliminating that because the stuff like flashbacks, those are all flashing back to the prep. You know what I mean? So, I think it's doable, but it's a totally different approach because you start in media rooms. You're in the dungeon. What do you do? - You already plan, you know? - Well, that's why I said, you know, how would this, it would be, I would, I, in fact, I actually think it could be really fun to try to take the elements that are presented in the module and just give them to the PC, to the players when they do those flashbacks and then try to piece together. I don't know. It would be interesting. It would definitely cross a lot of lines though. - Oh, yeah. - But I feel like it would be hard personally. Well, all right. So I feel like it's weird that we haven't mentioned this that the Pope is dead, like in real life. - Oh, yeah. - Just to be clear on real life. - Ripped from the headlines. - It's kind of a random thing. The Pope is dead as we are recording this as of a few days ago. - Yeah. - Met JD Van Sland. - Met JD Van Sland. - Yeah, I understand, I understand. But it's just kind of appropriate timing here. I feel like this is a very unique approach to module design and I want to see more things like this, but I also can appreciate how effing hard this must have been to write. - Oh my gosh. - Yeah. - It was hard. - This is huge. This is like the entirety of the game Hitman. - In like the bull. - Yeah. - Yeah. - But it's Hitman plus the level designer. - Exactly. Exactly. It's so impressive. And just like, I mean, Skurples is just killing it. Always killing it. - Look, indeed. - I was reading this and the way they do stats is like stats as noble or, you know. And I didn't know at the time I was reading those stats are all in the kind of in the back. It's like suggestions for how to adapt those to your different systems because it's system neutral. But in my head, I'm like, oh yeah, noble. That's in like the BX monster list. Like I know what that is. But when I'm reading that, I'm like, oh man, I wonder if the Skurples monster overhaul has more stuff that, you know, like a noble entry that I can use to pull stuff in. So I grabbed my monster overhaul and I looked for that up and there is no noble stat block in monster overhaul. But I've been then reading through my monster overhaul since then. And I've been just impressed at what a beautiful and amazing book that is. And in reading that, I am realizing that there's a bunch of Skurples stuff that's only in POD. So here's my plea of Skurples. Give me another nice book, all right? I want, getting at the Archpriest. I want two of the serpent kings. I want Magical Murder Mansion. Plus I want a fourth new Skurples adventure, which is the definitive Skurples. Hex crawl, come on Skurples. You have left Hex crawls off the table. We want the Hex crawl from Skurples. Finally. I want them all for in a nice hardcover Skurpendium. All right, that's my plea to Skurples. Come on man, sell me a book, write the Hex crawl adventure, slap them all together, put it on Kickstarter. I'm gonna back it man. You've got my, you've got my $60 or whatever it's gonna cost. Come on man, help me out here. That's my plea. I'm looking forward to getting a concise answer on how big a Hex should be from Skurples. I feel like that could finally be the last word in how big the Hex should be. We need the Skurple final word. Yeah. (laughing) Yeah. Skurpendium, please, please Skurples. Anyway, that's a good title. Real good title. Please Skurples or-- Please Skurpendium. Skurpendium. Please Skurples, I feel like is like a stretch goal. Just like all these, like OSR enthusiasts, it's just a table of requests for Skurples. And when Skurples is working, it's like, let me roll on my request table. Uh-huh. Actually, it's so funny. Before I ever heard the name out loud for some reason, I always pronounced it Skurplees in my head. Say I did. So this is me saying Skurplees. Skurplees give this to us. Yeah, now my wife makes fun of me all the time. She actually read the first couple of pages of this to me like while we were just sitting around. And she's just like, yes, "Can that be arch-priced?" By Skurplees. Love that she does that. It's now it's become like a little thing that we do. And it's very fun. Yeah, it's very sweet. It's very sweet. It's very sweet. Yeah, it's a great way to play. It's a great way to play. All right, well, gosh, I guess that's about it. So this has been between two carons. You can find us at between two [email protected] or on our Patreon, a Patreon.com/BetweenTwoCarrons. We are on Discord as well. So hit us up there and send your questions and thoughts and opinions. Thanks to Bobby McKelver for the music and bumpers and thanks to Josh Roberts for editing this episode. Hey, Daniel, where can we find you on the internet? You can find me on pretty much every platform at DanielHQuan. That's DanielHKWAN. I'm mostly on Blue Sky now because it seems to be the least on fire. Indeed. Yeah. And then you can find wandering blades at wanderingblades.com. Cool, cool, cool, cool. And hey, Sam, we always do this. People know it, but people can find you at betterillegions.com. Yeah, you can find me at betterillegions.com and that's actually where you can also find the t-shirts for this podcast. Oh. Look at you. Look at you all the t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs. We got them all. It's all there. Quick reference. So Sam was at my house a few days ago and he drew a chicken with a sword for my son. And then yesterday he was holding the picture. And he said to me, does Brad also have a pretend name like Sam? Because, he was just called what? And I said, no, he just goes by Brad. And then he said, huh? So he isn't famous then. Oh, man. Someday I hope to earn a cool pseudonym. Yeah. We got to give you a cool name, Brad. We got a four-zone deep in the mountains. Don't forget Mr. Hollywood and the Hitman. Come on, that's what-- You know that side. It's me and you kind of-- That's an old, old way. Which one is which again? Am I Hitman? You're the Hitman. I'm Hitman. OK. Mr. Hollywood. Wait, I don't-- I don't-- God, we haven't-- we haven't done an after-show show in so long. It's so ridiculous. We got to. All right. Well, anyhow, thanks for joining us, Daniel. And thanks for seeing us in this module. I really enjoyed reading it. Brad-- folks-- [LAUGHTER] Boys enjoy the good times, the special moments, you know? Because you never know when they could end. You know, this life is a beautiful, ephemeral thing like the surface of a soap bubble, you know, folks. And if there's a message we can learn from passing of the Pope, it's that life's got an end date, you know? We don't all get a conclave to see who replaces us, folks. This, you might be the last Pope of your own self, you know? I think you know what I'm going for. Try the special moments in the happy times, folks, because that's-- there's life-- hey, life is worth living. And I think there's a lot of good stuff out there. There's a lot of good stuff going on. I think, for instance, the sweetness of candy. Ooh. OK. What a thrill. What a rush. Though the warm embrace of a lover or a friend or a companion. Wow. There's nothing like it or maybe just the fuzz of a stray cat. You can pet on the head as you walk. As you take a walk. Ooh. Yes, my friends. Life is a sumptuous treat worth savoring. OK. And I encourage you to savor the flavor to the last drop. Shout out to the Pope, Reston Peece. That is-- this has been between two carons. And have a great day. And we love you. Each and every one of you, follow our hearts and souls. We love you so much. And we treasure you. And we love you so much. And we are thinking of you. And we're writing you a letter. OK. And we'll buy you a ticket. Yeah, Sam is going to have a heart attack. Just stop. OK. All right. Be a conclave unto yourself. Don't encourage him. Farewell. And thank you. And goodbye. OK. Forever. This is the last episode of Life. [LAUGHTER] That's what happens. All right.