What Is There to Eat in Duskwall (Blades in the Dark) with Jeeyon Shim

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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to another episode of DICE Exploder.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and check if we saved any of it in the fridge for a late night snack.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Sam Donald Walden and my co-host today is Geon's ship.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Geon's back, Geon is the co-designer of Field Guide to Memory, the game that coined the term KeepSafe game, as well as a bunch of other stuff on each and their Patreon.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I recommend that their Patreon especially right now for a bunch of upcoming previews of hot blood and adult high fantasy stories set in a world of dragon riders and competing orders of knights, and also a game based on the same.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And G-On's back today because they recently read Flades in the Dark, and we got to talking about it, and they simply could not get enough of talking about one particular spread in the book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A piece of flash fiction near the beginning of the flavor section of the book called What Is There To Eat In Dusque Wall.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a short two-page travel guide to the city, and when G-On first mentioned it, I remembered it quite well, despite not having read it for years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's remarkably evocative and sticky.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Jim was excited to talk about why she thinks food in particular is a remarkably evocative topic for setting building and how you can use it at the gaming table, or as an author in many mediums, to make the world see and have it feel more alive.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That sounded like a great episode to me, and another specific example to put in conversation with the light in barriers and draw maps lead blanks episodes I did earlier this year with idle cartoolery and Tim Denei respectively.
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[SPEAKER_01]: 2026, the spring of accidental mini-series and dice explorer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's do it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Before we get into the show, I want to mention there are audio issues in this episode, I know, but it's not that bad, you'll be fine, special shout out that at M, a co-stuff or editing this one, despite it all, shout out to you for listening and powering through.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I also want to mention it a couple of times in this episode, G1 refers to John Harper, designer of blades in the dark as the author of this spread, and it's actually one of the additional material authors listed at the front of the book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: John is still a great writer, even though they didn't write this in particular.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, with that business out of the way, let's get into it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to everyone in sports dice, Exploiter on Patreon, and here is Gianshim, with what there is to eat in dusk wool, from blades in the dark.
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[SPEAKER_01]: G-Unshim, welcome back to the dice, Exploiter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so happy to be back.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's nine o'clock at night.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is usually about when we start hanging out for four hours.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad to do it on Mike this time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this will be a treat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No pun intended.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe pun intended, actually.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: pun absolutely intended.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What are we talking about today?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Food, we're talking about food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited because I really love, I mean, I'm a very food motivated person to begin with but also like food as a lens with which to view culture and narrative and storytelling.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like one of my favorite things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just a really primal thing for people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah and you brought this topic to me
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[SPEAKER_01]: blades in the dark has a two-page situation in its core rulebook called what is there to eat in duskwall, excerpts from ports of the ink sea, Evan Shandley's travel guide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's two pages of in-fiction writing, describing what people eat in this fictional city.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a particularly interesting topic.
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[SPEAKER_01]: topic I think for duskwall as a city because as people may know there is no sun in this world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so what do you grow?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What can live when there isn't sun?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in the real world, everyone would simply die because it would be too cold.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so like, what are we making up?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do we say can grow in the dark of duskwall and then what do you eat?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like an interesting thought experiment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's really interesting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think in the way it's broken up by class really also emphasizes like the themes of dust wall here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I wanted to make it just starting at that level like what made this stand out to you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like what's your relationship to this?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Why were you so excited about it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I really, just, I guess before I go into anything, I, I assume that your listenership probably knows what the term diagetic means, but because I'm going to be using it a lot, I just want to briefly find it, diagesis or diagetic means something that is happening in the fiction of any fictional work for the character.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, a go-to example to sort of set and contrast it with something that is not diagetic is if you're watching a movie and there's a song playing, um,
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[SPEAKER_00]: let's say I don't know my girl and it's just part of the soundtrack, that's not diagetic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You and I are listening to it as the audience and the viewer, but like the characters in the movie are not hearing it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: However, if it is part of the soundtrack because it is playing on a radio that one of the characters has turned up and the other one's going to turn up the volume or whatever, that is diagetic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're listening to that song in the story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I say
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, diagetic work, for example, in reference to this travel guide excerpt, what that means is ostensibly, this is a piece of non-fiction work written for people traveling to Duskwall, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is for your characters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's an important thing to keep in mind because the ways that I'm going to be talking about how to approach food as a lens for storytelling, there's some, you know, roughly divided and half between like, what are you doing in character, you know,
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[SPEAKER_00]: uh the reason I came to you is the only thing I have retained from the book is this essay because I found it so immediately fascinating and compelling the first time I read that game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And also notably, I've never played Plades in the Dark.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I played a few forged in the dark like descendants of it, band of blades, and a bunch of stuff in playtest, but like I playing the OG blades as on my resolutions list for this year.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So in a weird way like this essay is my one and only
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I'll have you come up with a story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is nice to get the disclaimer out of top, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: But like I think that speaks to its strengths.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's, you know, in a timely way, a great case study for like the strength of actually reading a game text cover to cover, which sometimes can be a little onerist depending on the game text, but a lot of games that have been written in the last several years are written for the designer's pleasure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They want to enjoy writing it, which means they want to have fun and like more than anything else like you can tell John is just having a fucking ball writing this right like you can see how deeply he's imagined this world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And these little pieces of diagetic fiction, it's a transfer designer to take the lid off of the Tupperware of all the world building they've done that is not necessary to show you in terms of how to play the game, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's a ton of stuff that like, if they frontloaded that information for you, it would not necessarily help you understand the procedures, or cycle of play, or how the mechanics work.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, a lot of it tends to hit the cutting room floor first, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're looking when you read this essay at like what a play ground is to the writer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you read a game text and you only get the essentials, like totally legit, but also you're missing out on like what makes it fun for the creator, which means you are in some capacity missing out on like the spirit and heart of that game, like the voice of that game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's cool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I read this when I first sat down to play Boyd's in the dark and to sort of prepare to GM Boyd's in the dark.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I read the book cover to cover and I certainly read this section at the time and this was very evocative for me and it, you know, it definitely added to the vibes and also.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was really worried about how the game works, you know, how the rules worked and I internalized a lot more of that and I internalized a lot more of the like the the games, the factions, the NPCs like the pieces that felt like they were going to be more immediately important in session zero of the campaign and I think as I then played like several years of weekly blades in the dark games, I I never like
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[SPEAKER_01]: thought back much to the specifics of this essay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I came back and read it for this recording again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, yeah, they're like, I love this bit in here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're like the common folk are making like bath tub beer out of mushrooms, basically.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then it gets to the well off section.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it essentially says that they're doing the same thing, but it uses fancier language for it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that's so funny.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And like like that just never came up in my game so you know there's another detail in here about two about how like 20 years ago They passed a law that there couldn't be more mushroom farming tunnels because they were too good of a place for fugitives to hide and like
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[SPEAKER_01]: Boy, I wish I'd remembered that when I was playing some of my games, but also like, it's so rich with detail, it's so great and it's certainly influenced the version of Desqual that lives in my head and also, I didn't need it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like I never came back to it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I never felt like, yeah, and that's what I mean.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like you don't need it, but like think about everything you missed out by not having it in mind.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm like, look, this is what I'm trying to say is like, I, on the one hand, I missed out by like not having those cool mushroom tunnels to like hide in, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't feel like I was super missing out because I do feel like all of those details like build up a vibe that absolutely carried through.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Right, like I can't point to the specific sentences from this essay that I've then pulled into my game, but I can tell you that like this essay really informed the feeling of the noodle shop that one of my crews had a layer above.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And like, while like this says noodles are not served by the common folk because like they're too tough to get basically, like flour isn't up until you get to the well off.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The vibes were there, you know?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Also, if you examine this piece structurally, one of the things that I noticed when I was reviewing it for tonight is that the word counts really low, which means that I certainly read it from a critical point of view, like it's really interesting that it is so obviously a piece of attrition.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, you know, the first section you read is about like what the common folk eat, when it goes into detail, all that detail you're talking about like with mushrooms, that's the longest section.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then it goes into the well off, which is the second longest
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[SPEAKER_00]: tied with radiant energy which I'll get to in a second and then the section on the wealthy is two short paragraphs compared to everything else immediately what you have is like another emphasis of the class structure which I'll be real even though like that's like written into the literal premise of the game nothing emphasize that for me like this to pager like the fact that
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[SPEAKER_00]: there is so much more information available on what the lower class does to me tells you that there's just way more of the lower class.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So like immediately you're kind of looking at what the class strata of this society kind of looks like because at the end in that radiant section of energy section there's a line that says many wealthy families have their own secrets for radiant integration and so there's a wide variety of techniques.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and appearances among ready and plants and animals, et cetera, but that's the key word secrets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why, one of the reasons why that section on the wealthy is so fucking short is because this is yet another thing that they hoard is how to make food palatable, how to gain pleasure from life, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like this is one, I think one of the first things were people to let go of if they wanna think about food as like a lens for.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Storytelling or comprehension of a world or world building, if they're doing that, is to stop thinking of it as optional, because it's not, it's like one of the least optional things in our lives, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we need through to eat, and it is beyond just sustenance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, one of to me personally, one of the most bummer things about current data society in the real world is like, various, let's call them subcultures of society, that like really treat food as fuel and nothing else.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: There might be some legitimate reasons for that, but like certainly as someone who has to like restrict the foods I eat for my own health and safety Like nothing has made me more aware of how wonderful it is to like appreciate food and enjoy it, and I think like Yes, if you think of any aspect of what it takes for you and the real world to like live at a basic level
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[SPEAKER_00]: as something that is a fun optional thing in your world building, it's going to be a hollow world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're not going to be able to ground the characters in it nearly as well and it's going to take a lot more effort to do it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And like it doesn't have to be food, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It could be fashion, it could be like whatever your area of emphasis is, but you do have to have all of these things to some degree because like
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[SPEAKER_00]: We need them to live, and if your world involves people, you are going to have to do it through the lens of those people and they need the same things to live.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, McGee Baker has long essay series about, it's called like following the thread or something and it's about using where does textiles come from in your world to build out what the world is like.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was so torn between pitching other food or or some sugary laws to you and it turns out like I think I'm just gonna do stuff but like some sugary laws are another lens through which I think are like, you can just immediately set up a complete story just through a set of some sugary laws.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a little biased because I just worked on a set of some jewelry laws for hot blood, but like when you get a set of laws about something that feels quote-unquote trivial, and they are like very detailed and very stringent, that tells you something about that society, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he might not have some jewelry laws in the modern world, but just in terms of sheer access and availability, we absolutely still do in everything but name, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And like what is restricted?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What?
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[SPEAKER_00]: can people get also what do people flout right like one of the um sanctuary laws in Japan and I want to say the leader Ato period was like
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[SPEAKER_00]: you couldn't wear certain colors or certain patterns in your kimono unless you are one of the original like choginate families.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I believe and people, if you looked at them at a glance and a crowd were absolutely following the letter of the law, but if you got a close, you could see that those patterns were like woven into the warp and wet of the cloth that they were wearing in the kimono, like people break the rules all the time too.
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[SPEAKER_00]: how they break the rules and why they break the rules is another really important way of seeing our world and understanding like how people call out their own agency, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like this little essay about Duskwall talking about,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just the way it's phrased to right in the section that goes from like talking about how most people are eating mushrooms, it's not that palatable like even the intro to this like it says excerpt from this travel guide, which is surprising it's own right, but I'm going to put a pin in that, but like the first sentence is unsurprisingly the bulk of cheap food in the port city of Desqual is eel and mushroom pie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then when it explains why it says that you are famously resistant to taking on some of the foul accretions of the canals and the sea and then describes their consistency as not fabulous.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then it ends with say, but they have a lot of meat on them and there are many ways to prepare it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that tells you immediately before you even get into reading what people are actually eating.
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[SPEAKER_00]: that people are not treating food as pleasure and the assumption is that they won't be.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that really throws into contrast the sections about the classes of people who still can.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that pleasure and taking enjoyment in something as basic as food is class restricted tells you a lot about this world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that the eels example you just gave, like you can see both like the common folk as they are referred to here, don't have a lot of access to food that is not, not the most delicious.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What is it again that they say?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not fabulous.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: what they have access to is not fabulous, but that line about if they're being many different ways to prepare it still tells you that like people are trying to make the best of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also tells you about like who is going to display the most ingenuity?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's the lower class because they have the least and have to make the most of what they have, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And like that also
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[SPEAKER_00]: talk about like a perfect underscoring theme for a heist, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like a corp aspect of playing with game, I think that's a really good way to set it up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Which is not literal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean like your heist is going to revolve around food, but like again, just that thematic underscoring of like chances are the character of playing is not going to be one of like the wealthy class.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Which means chances are what you're going to playing up is their resourcefulness, their improvisation skills, their ingenuity
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think like, if you're jamming this game, that is a really great starting question at sessions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, what is a thing that your characters have to do to like, my guide or part of their life together in like a day-to-day thing?
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[SPEAKER_00]: How do they do their laundry?
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[SPEAKER_00]: How do they, you know, keep the roof from leaking or like whatever, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this like two-pager immediately makes me think about like that kind of adaptive behavior, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is not as obvious through the rules that you have to internalize in order to like actually play around the game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so I know you have like a little taxonomy of how to use food in games that I want to get to but before we get to that I want to do my pet topic here of flash fiction like this in games at large right like I remember picking up fucking shadow runs second edition out of a used bookstore as like the first one of the first role playing games that I ever owned right my dad got me this book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, you should laugh at that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why you would.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing wrong with shatter and second edition.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's just of all the games where you have pulled out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's an example.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a funny.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, and I've all the games for me to pull off the, uh, for my dad to pull off the shelf for me at the age of 12.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, it was sort of an interesting one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, I remember sitting down with that book.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's a whole bunch of like,
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[SPEAKER_01]: fiction in short stories and stuff at the beginning and throughout that book and stuff like this what is there to eat in dusk wall about like what is the history of the world been like for the past 60 years since the from where you are in 2002 to when we are playing in 2006-9 or whatever
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[SPEAKER_01]: And all that stuff was a varying levels of quality and use.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that's very common to flash-fiction in games at large like this, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like some of it does feel perfect.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like what is there to eat in a dust wall?
18:30.576 --> 18:42.526
[SPEAKER_01]: But like I'm curious to hear you talk about like, in your mind, what makes quality fictional diversions like this in a game and what makes a necessary,
18:42.926 --> 18:43.647
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.
18:43.927 --> 18:47.509
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, let's, let's, let's address what you just said about the varying quality.
18:47.529 --> 19:00.457
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, at baseline, one of the reasons why the what is there to eat and desk wall excerpt works on all those structural and narrative and like world building levels is that John is a good writer and if you weren't a good writer, it would not work.
19:00.778 --> 19:11.024
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I think like part of why I came in hot on this topic is that just setting games aside entirely as a medium, one of the things that I've encountered in fiction as like an ever
19:12.305 --> 19:22.046
[SPEAKER_00]: Criticism dating all the way back to the classical period actually, which is like really fucking funny, is like people complaining about descriptions of food and art, and in particular literature.
19:22.553 --> 19:23.414
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a classic thing.
19:23.434 --> 19:26.096
[SPEAKER_01]: People are shit talking about Game of Thrones, you know?
19:26.156 --> 19:29.419
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, I don't know that he's doing a great job of it there.
19:29.439 --> 19:30.460
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:30.480 --> 19:36.686
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like the thing is, what he does is like, you know, he obviously is a guy who loves eating and loves to write about food.
19:36.706 --> 19:43.292
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's a lot of like the feasts and red wall vibes going on, but also like, for example, there's a book, I think Feast of Cros, which
19:43.752 --> 19:51.318
[SPEAKER_00]: deals very heavily with like the aftermath of war and what happens to people in like a war ravaged place.
19:51.418 --> 19:53.280
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens when your agriculture breaks down?
19:53.300 --> 19:56.402
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens when everyone's been killed so they can't work the land?
19:57.977 --> 20:01.418
[SPEAKER_00]: just getting food to one from one place to the other doesn't work anymore.
20:01.879 --> 20:10.562
[SPEAKER_00]: People boiling their shoe letter or resort into cannibalism or like finding a dead crow on the side of the road and like roasting it because there's nothing else to eat.
20:10.662 --> 20:14.384
[SPEAKER_00]: Like food scenes aren't just about a good meal.
20:14.564 --> 20:18.626
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they say a lot about what is happening in the world at that moment in time.
20:19.186 --> 20:19.326
[SPEAKER_00]: And
20:19.922 --> 20:35.528
[SPEAKER_00]: in a song of ice and fire specifically because the point of view chapters like jump all around the geography of that world, you'll have like one chapter where a character's like destitute and like dying of starvation almost and then like jump right to like a lavish feast scene and like some lore taught.
20:35.628 --> 20:39.530
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, like it's a really useful tool in that way to bring it back to games.
20:39.550 --> 20:43.292
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you're a play group is not into it, that's one thing.
20:43.472 --> 20:46.753
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, like if you're subjective taste, no pun intended.
20:47.103 --> 20:49.885
[SPEAKER_00]: is like, just not interested in this as a particular lens.
20:50.386 --> 21:00.154
[SPEAKER_00]: Fine, but like, I would be pretty shocked, honestly, if any given group of like three to five random people were not interested in it.
21:00.334 --> 21:09.221
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like pretty rare in my experience that people are not interested in thinking about this or using it as a narrative lens or like even like a speculative world building lens, right?
21:09.481 --> 21:11.223
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also familiar to everybody.
21:11.700 --> 21:12.801
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a good introduction.
21:12.821 --> 21:21.009
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you're running a game for a group that you don't know that well, asking questions about like the food in the world or what your characters are eating or like what they like to eat like whatever.
21:21.329 --> 21:24.052
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great kind of meta narrative icebreaker, too.
21:24.452 --> 21:33.941
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not getting it, you know, like they're driving tensions or whatever, but it does tell you what they enjoy which I think is like really, really important to characterize it and play.
21:34.724 --> 21:40.007
[SPEAKER_01]: So I asked you what makes FlashFiction good in games and bad in games, and you were starting to answer that.
21:40.347 --> 21:45.369
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, there's like a lot of ways you can answer that question, and they're all probably correct.
21:45.509 --> 21:55.614
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think there's like different vantage points of consideration, there's like what this FlashFiction in a game or a diabetic piece in a game of any kind because it might be a visual versus text.
21:55.674 --> 21:57.355
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that do for the creator?
21:57.535 --> 22:01.537
[SPEAKER_00]: And then overlapping, but it's own categories, like what does it do for the reader?
22:04.350 --> 22:06.651
[SPEAKER_00]: and also its own categories, like, what does it do for the player?
22:06.911 --> 22:14.993
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is kind of like the triad of considerations of any aspect of a tabletop role playing game as a text or piece of work, right?
22:15.073 --> 22:26.155
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, there's the designer and their considerations, the person just reading the text as a text, and then there's like the actual experience and process and consideration of, like, getting it to a table to play it.
22:26.335 --> 22:29.196
[SPEAKER_00]: All three of those things are connected, but they are different things.
22:29.717 --> 22:36.498
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's good to identify what aspect you're looking at when you talk about the utility or benefit that you get.
22:36.739 --> 22:46.161
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious to know, like, what particular arena you want to start with or focus on, I mean, I think like in my mind, that's a really great framework for thinking about this, right?
22:46.181 --> 22:52.022
[SPEAKER_01]: And then like, I can imagine different pieces of flash fiction that are useful for all of those different reasons, right?
22:52.422 --> 22:56.783
[SPEAKER_01]: In bandits and bullet holes, my upcoming John Wick kind of game, I kick off with
22:57.203 --> 23:07.708
[SPEAKER_01]: First, like a personal essay about myself and my childhood, and then I do like two pages of, hey, welcome to the city.
23:07.948 --> 23:20.134
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me describe to you the kind of mythological version of New York that John Wick takes place in from the first person point of view of some guy who lives there and he is a professional assassin, right?
23:20.655 --> 23:20.775
[SPEAKER_01]: And,
23:21.555 --> 23:32.742
[SPEAKER_01]: In that situation, it's flash fiction, but it is also like the purpose is to ground you the reader and hopefully eventual player in the setting of what the thing is going to be.
23:32.963 --> 23:38.566
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is, it's doing that on a big picture scale, not on the what is there to eat in.
23:39.807 --> 23:40.907
[SPEAKER_01]: mythical New York, right?
23:41.248 --> 23:51.271
[SPEAKER_01]: And to that sense, I think like it being brief and it being very evocative and it being very clear that that is the purpose it is driving towards.
23:51.752 --> 23:53.672
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes it an effective piece.
23:54.533 --> 23:58.434
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think in the same way, what is there to eat in dusk?
23:58.454 --> 24:03.896
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's like operating at a really different scale at a really different part of the book, et cetera, et cetera, but it's
24:08.718 --> 24:17.228
[SPEAKER_01]: I think if you took what is there to eat and dust wall and open to the book with it, and then otherwise didn't change anything, people would be like, what the fuck is this doing here?
24:17.369 --> 24:25.338
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'd like, I mean, you would love it, but you would also like read those first two pages and be like, oh, I can't wait to play this game about food, you know?
24:26.319 --> 24:34.282
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, or, you know, to use like a literary example would be like instead of opening movie deck with like, call me Ishmael, it'd be like opening it with one of the whale chapters.
24:34.502 --> 24:35.702
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
24:35.762 --> 24:35.983
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:36.423 --> 24:38.864
[SPEAKER_00]: And also rip, but it would be a different, a different vibe.
24:39.124 --> 24:46.326
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think similarly, you know, this is maybe one of my problems with how shatter on second edition was using some of its flash fiction.
24:46.366 --> 24:53.189
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think what is their, and dusk wall could be like longer could be four pages, but I think if it was 60 pages,
24:54.489 --> 25:13.877
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it was all great, it would be like, what are we doing here, you know, like it to me like the what what scale is this stuff good at or what what makes flash fiction good is just a question of like yeah knowing what the reason is for using it and then writing it for that reason.
25:14.481 --> 25:25.898
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a really tidy, discrete ending with an E example of what you're talking about, but think about Deathmatch Island, where the diagetic voice is seamlessly worked into the instructional voice.
25:27.717 --> 25:33.960
[SPEAKER_00]: when that game tells you what is a role-playing game, which is the funniest fucking what is a role-playing game section.
25:34.100 --> 25:36.881
[SPEAKER_00]: I've read in any game and maybe my favorite ever.
25:37.181 --> 25:52.606
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still communicating usable information to you as a player at the table, as a GM, and it is unquestionably in that like, tongue-in- not even tongue-in-cheek, like, diagetically sincere, like corporate, funky voice, right?
25:52.766 --> 25:54.046
[SPEAKER_00]: And the rest of the game is written that way, too.
25:56.799 --> 26:04.882
[SPEAKER_01]: God, like, two weeks ago, when this airs, I will have done a two hour long episode on triangle agency about the voice of the text.
26:05.082 --> 26:08.403
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like, maybe we could just shove people over to that episode too.
26:08.724 --> 26:20.208
[SPEAKER_01]: But, like, I do think we've maybe, like, flagged the kinds of stuff that I would be thinking about if I were asking the question, is the flash fiction I'm considering in my game going to be worthwhile?
26:20.685 --> 26:41.763
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I feel like the lens that you're taking right now is that of the creator, like you're you're not talking about like the reader you're not talking about like what does this flash fiction do for you once you're at the table at this point like we are talking about like the designer the writing team the whatever and I think like what that does for you as the creator of your game is like it helps you understand your own world.
26:42.247 --> 26:44.248
[SPEAKER_00]: and it helps you hear the voice of your game.
26:44.709 --> 26:48.631
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you use the word, the voice of the text, which is from a reader and player perspective.
26:48.912 --> 27:00.760
[SPEAKER_00]: When I'm talking about the voice of the game, I'm talking about like, honestly something that's like extremely hard to put words to, or talk about it all, but like just that kind of undefinedable experience of like sitting down to write something.
27:01.220 --> 27:08.125
[SPEAKER_00]: and understanding when it is aligned with the core integrity of what you're trying to make, which it almost is independent of you.
27:08.445 --> 27:24.375
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, anyway, this is like how I feel when I'm writing or working on a game or my novels or whatever, like there is a voice that that story has that I have to shut the fuck up and listen to in order to make something that I feel has the integrity that I want and the quality that I want.
27:25.125 --> 27:36.389
[SPEAKER_00]: and the places where I wobble on that are where I wasn't listening because I had to do, you know, I thought like I had to do something that overrooted or like I was just, I don't know, tired or arrogant or whatever.
27:36.629 --> 27:50.653
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the way that you use, whether it's like very obvious black fiction like this or a, you know, integration of diagetic voice into the instructional voice like whatever suits your taste and style because that's the other thing that this accomplishes is like it communicates
27:51.093 --> 27:54.955
[SPEAKER_00]: the style of that particular work and of you as a creator.
27:55.435 --> 28:05.141
[SPEAKER_00]: That is how you hear the voice more clearly and it's also how you understand your own world's internal consistencies at the same time, more clearly as well.
28:05.601 --> 28:13.205
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the fact that this excerpt is supposedly from a travel guide is one of the things that I find really delightful because like obviously that implies that people are
28:13.693 --> 28:17.498
[SPEAKER_00]: chorus and dusk wall, which is like you can kind of an insane idea.
28:18.339 --> 28:19.941
[SPEAKER_00]: It explicitly is that, right?
28:20.041 --> 28:21.042
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a travel guide.
28:21.403 --> 28:23.345
[SPEAKER_00]: You wouldn't need this if you weren't going there.
28:23.886 --> 28:26.489
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a guide for someone from outside of dusk wall.
28:27.149 --> 28:31.674
[SPEAKER_00]: to acclimate themselves while they're there, which means there isn't outside of dustcwall.
28:32.214 --> 28:36.198
[SPEAKER_00]: And that being you said about this world has no sun, it's like, does it?
28:36.499 --> 28:45.628
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, I mean, again, I have not retained anything else in this text, so maybe there is a section that's like, no, the entire planet that dustcwall is on, like has no sun, I don't fucking know.
28:45.928 --> 28:48.931
[SPEAKER_00]: But just from this text, it's like, this is all you gave to somebody.
28:49.532 --> 28:57.977
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that in the section about the wealthy, it talks about how they can eat dolphin, muscles, squid, those little fucking needs sunlight actually to live.
28:58.097 --> 29:01.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you cannot have a dolphin that is entirely in the dark.
29:01.679 --> 29:02.479
[SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't have eyes.
29:02.619 --> 29:03.600
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be horrifying.
29:04.001 --> 29:08.742
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is kind of what I was saying on top is like, yeah, actually very early on in the text.
29:08.782 --> 29:10.663
[SPEAKER_01]: It does say this sun has been shattered.
29:10.683 --> 29:12.223
[SPEAKER_01]: They're at dawn and dusk.
29:12.243 --> 29:18.884
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a light glow from the horizon from the fragments of the sun, but it lasts very briefly.
29:18.924 --> 29:20.885
[SPEAKER_01]: It otherwise it is dark all the time.
29:20.985 --> 29:25.466
[SPEAKER_01]: And the thing that that does to the game is it makes it a great place to do crime.
29:25.546 --> 29:27.166
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's always dark out, you know?
29:27.426 --> 29:31.287
[SPEAKER_01]: But also like, you do just have to kind of hand with it's listen, it's a fantasy world.
29:31.327 --> 29:31.888
[SPEAKER_01]: It's magic.
29:34.168 --> 29:35.970
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
29:36.270 --> 29:49.423
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure for for fantasy and for speculative fiction and genre fiction like at the end of the day, I do think it actually becomes increasingly you get like diminishing awards the more you try to apply this to like,
29:49.643 --> 29:52.104
[SPEAKER_00]: really stringent external standard of reality.
29:52.224 --> 30:06.411
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a question that a friend asks us, not semi-regularily, but it has come up more than once that like really kind of like rearrange my molecules in terms of how I think about fiction, which is are there atoms and Jane Austen novels?
30:06.991 --> 30:29.176
[SPEAKER_00]: like does Pride and Prejudice have like atomic molecular science in it and the and like in as much as there is a simple answer the answer is kind of no because it's not within the historical scope or interest of that book that book doesn't care if there are atoms the story it does not concern them right so if you try to apply that on to Pride and Prejudice or whatever like you're not what are you doing to enrich you're not doing anything that like
30:29.536 --> 30:32.557
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's you or the story and you're not listening to it, right?
30:32.617 --> 30:36.998
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, again, it just comes back to that that artist, the voice of the work itself.
30:37.218 --> 30:48.021
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like one of the ways that tabletop games are weird about that is they are actively inviting you to some degree to like apply your external understanding to a work that someone else has made.
30:48.341 --> 30:52.585
[SPEAKER_00]: but also at the same time to respect the parameters of the fiction of that work, right?
30:52.605 --> 30:57.510
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, if the game says like the sun is shattered, I think you're absolutely just going with that in hand-wave it.
30:57.991 --> 31:06.098
[SPEAKER_00]: You also could like talk about it as a table to be like, do we want to play a story where like there is an external to dusk wall world where the sun is fucking fine?
31:06.379 --> 31:10.983
[SPEAKER_00]: And for whatever reason it's just people who are stuck here who can't access that light and don't have that light.
31:11.063 --> 31:12.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Like is that something that we're interested in?
31:13.047 --> 31:17.488
[SPEAKER_00]: It goes outside of the parameters of the game, but it still respects what is happening in Duskwall and in the game.
31:17.668 --> 31:21.790
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just creates like another secondary playground that all of you are inventing together.
31:22.110 --> 31:23.690
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like fan fictioning it a little bit.
31:23.890 --> 31:35.794
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it speaks to the fact that like every piece of fiction in a game like this is maybe a suggestion, maybe a strong suggestion, but it is, it's up for debate at your table, you know?
31:35.894 --> 31:38.155
[SPEAKER_01]: Like their plenty of things you can go and riff on.
31:38.424 --> 31:57.400
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think like one of the interesting things that does also is like, what do you accept is true not just and character not just like as a table, but like when you read a work that says like the sun has been shattered and there's no light what if someone wrote that to you now right like it's I'm not saying like that's like literally what the game is doing, but just the ways that text crimes you to accept something is true or not true.
31:57.800 --> 32:08.495
[SPEAKER_00]: and the way that you just slide into that really easily, I think is a really interesting way to maintain a certain kind of skepticism that also, like, images or storytelling of, like, why is it that character's just accept this as written?
32:08.615 --> 32:11.759
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because it is, like, the physical laws of this world make it true?
32:12.000 --> 32:13.722
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is there something else that we want to explore?
32:13.922 --> 32:37.611
[SPEAKER_00]: right like which you know there's kind of like in as much as that's a binary option like what do you want to go with because once you choose that fork in the path that leads you to other forts but like you do kind of have to choose one or two in that decision making tree but like in order to even see that decision you have to like question whether or not that statement is true this fictional statement about your world right and like what we're seeing right now at this point in our art form is a lot of writers like deliberately playing
32:38.171 --> 32:39.652
[SPEAKER_00]: there's that solo game.
32:39.812 --> 32:41.172
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it you will die in this place?
32:41.392 --> 32:42.893
[SPEAKER_00]: It's modeled very heavy.
32:42.913 --> 32:46.434
[SPEAKER_00]: I just started eating it a few months ago and it's like...
32:46.554 --> 32:47.854
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a solo game.
32:47.874 --> 32:49.355
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a dungeon crawler.
32:49.655 --> 32:50.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, interesting.
32:50.415 --> 32:51.236
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually didn't know.
32:51.376 --> 32:54.417
[SPEAKER_00]: So I assumed it was a solo game and also a dungeon crawler.
32:54.577 --> 32:55.217
[SPEAKER_01]: God, are you?
32:55.437 --> 32:55.857
[SPEAKER_01]: you know what?
32:56.258 --> 33:03.824
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't actually read the game carefully enough because like the whole point of the fucking game is like it's kind of written in the vibe of House of Leaves, right?
33:03.844 --> 33:10.770
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a whole episode that Merrily Buffkin and Jay Dragon did on this back in the feed that people can go check out, but like
33:11.430 --> 33:19.972
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the point is so much more like the text and the engaging with the game as a text than it is actually going and playing it.
33:20.112 --> 33:23.633
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, whether or not it's a dungeon crawler almost doesn't matter, right?
33:23.773 --> 33:27.054
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that text is so of itself, right?
33:27.194 --> 33:29.574
[SPEAKER_00]: And like those are the terms on which you have to accept it.
33:29.774 --> 33:34.895
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, that is a text where the writer, and I think she said this explicitly in interviews, if I remember,
33:37.629 --> 33:53.101
[SPEAKER_00]: with your perception of what is true and not true, like as the reader and the player, through dividing the voice and perspectives, through all of the weird shit that she's borrowing from house of leaves and then adapting and turning into her own artistic intentions and execution.
33:53.681 --> 33:58.765
[SPEAKER_00]: We are seeing this, I hesitate to call it a new wave because that makes me feel like I'm
33:59.085 --> 34:15.977
[SPEAKER_00]: saying something very intentional about different movements in the form and like I'm not I don't know if that's something I want to commit to but it does feel like there is a heightened and growing interest in playing with assumed truth in a game text happening in our art form right now that I personally find very exciting.
34:16.277 --> 34:23.703
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree people can go check out Patreon episodes I did with Seraphina about this triangle agency episode just did a huge amount of about this
34:35.415 --> 34:39.938
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get to your taxonomy that I alluded to earlier.
34:39.978 --> 34:47.544
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have this little taxonomy of maybe how to use food in games, in scenes, tell me about your taxonomy.
34:47.724 --> 34:48.184
[SPEAKER_00]: I do.
34:48.404 --> 34:49.145
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
34:49.165 --> 34:50.206
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's four points.
34:50.526 --> 34:52.707
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is food is history and culture.
34:52.807 --> 34:59.732
[SPEAKER_00]: The second is like food as personal or character driven storytelling, and then food is metaphor and then food is framing device.
35:00.193 --> 35:03.315
[SPEAKER_00]: So just to break them down a little bit before I even get into
35:03.859 --> 35:10.098
[SPEAKER_00]: met a narration tools versus like in character for a telling a narration tools like when I say food is history and culture what I'm talking about is like.
35:10.546 --> 35:12.728
[SPEAKER_00]: let's say using Dusklo as an example.
35:12.928 --> 35:14.930
[SPEAKER_00]: It says mushroom gardens are everywhere.
35:15.651 --> 35:16.952
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like?
35:17.232 --> 35:20.235
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you getting your mycelium cultures?
35:20.315 --> 35:28.724
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some mushrooms that actually do need a little sunlight in order to fruit or to propagate, who is cultivating those cultures.
35:28.844 --> 35:32.787
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this something that is even a little bit industrialized or are you on your fucking own?
35:32.888 --> 35:34.950
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this like agriculture during the feudal period?
35:35.822 --> 35:42.503
[SPEAKER_00]: When I talk about food is history and culture, you can take a single dish and like it doesn't matter what it is.
35:42.843 --> 35:51.185
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single piece of cuisine has like very deep, human history tied into it and you can simulate that in your game.
35:51.525 --> 35:53.246
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to, right?
35:53.626 --> 35:59.867
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're like stuck for how to figure out, say the relevance and significance of like,
36:00.227 --> 36:17.851
[SPEAKER_00]: How trade and economies work in more blades in the dark game like you can think about okay What is like I don't know like you said like that scene with your game like a noodle shop Who is the distributor for that stuff could we use that distributor in our mission like is that something like where we could set up an NPC connection Like it doesn't have to be super detailed.
36:17.991 --> 36:26.894
[SPEAKER_00]: I just love getting into that detail personally But even just thinking about like a meal that you're eating while you're listening to this right now like how did those ingredients get to that meal?
36:27.154 --> 36:27.874
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's cooking it?
36:28.154 --> 36:29.055
[SPEAKER_00]: who's disturbing it?
36:29.235 --> 36:30.256
[SPEAKER_00]: How did it get to you?
36:30.636 --> 36:31.677
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you right?
36:31.997 --> 36:39.103
[SPEAKER_00]: Like in real life there are all these different connections before you even get into like how that touches on a longer history and culture?
36:39.743 --> 36:55.395
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like when you start thinking about those networks of connection for this game in particular, but really any gamer story, I think that is a really strong way to scaffold how people relate to each other and interact with each other in the day to day prosaic reality
36:57.577 --> 36:57.817
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
36:58.057 --> 37:00.919
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, like, food history is an academic field of study.
37:01.059 --> 37:11.446
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a professor named Ken Albalah, and I believe the University of Washington question mark who's been teaching food history for 20 years or something like that.
37:11.846 --> 37:20.052
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a delightful course on it through, I want to see like the great courses website or something where like he starts with classical antiquity and like the ancient
37:20.392 --> 37:25.955
[SPEAKER_00]: Roman period and then goes all the way up to like the 80s and talks about like 80s food culture, which is like very funny.
37:26.076 --> 37:29.257
[SPEAKER_00]: But also like extremely still historically relevant, right?
37:29.357 --> 37:44.146
[SPEAKER_00]: Like think about what was going on in the world in the 80s, the Berlin Wall on falling, the end of the Soviet Union, all of that, you know, living in California, the fact that all of the fucking pistachios that you get in California are grown in California not because they're
37:50.230 --> 38:16.460
[SPEAKER_00]: sanctions against Iran where we used to get our pistachios in order to like monopolize the market so that now we have slightly shittier pistachios so they can make a shitload of money like that's food culture too that's also food history yeah you can think about that kind of lens as you set up your world if you're GMing as you write your world if you're designing and if you're playing you can ask those questions too because those are all collaborative questions right like yeah you can all you can improv all of this
38:19.201 --> 38:21.702
[SPEAKER_00]: Like someone might be listening to this being like, this isn't really my thing.
38:21.762 --> 38:27.645
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you, once you get to a table and people start asking like, why do we only get the second best pistachio?
38:27.905 --> 38:32.948
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like people are gonna have opinions and like make shit up on the fly because it's fun.
38:33.448 --> 38:35.529
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really, really fun to create the stuff together.
38:36.010 --> 38:43.731
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, food is history and culture, getting into all of those facets of touch on it, anthropology, economics, literal history.
38:43.972 --> 38:51.613
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like the umbrella term is history of material culture, if someone is looking for a term to apply to this, is like a good starting place for that.
38:52.413 --> 39:02.215
[SPEAKER_00]: And in particular, if you're writing a game, thinking about the history of material culture in your world, including food, but not limited to food is like a really, really strong way to crown yourself in the flavor of it.
39:02.375 --> 39:07.997
[SPEAKER_00]: And like all of this is life layers man, like it might not enter the literal text of your game at all.
39:08.137 --> 39:11.979
[SPEAKER_00]: But like it will still make itself known because you will have been thinking about it as you write.
39:12.279 --> 39:12.779
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
39:12.799 --> 39:25.064
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I really love that I said, I do want to like put out there that like, I think that the layers life layers you were just saying, I don't know that term, but the idea that like it doesn't have to be food, right?
39:25.164 --> 39:28.705
[SPEAKER_01]: But if whatever the thing is that is compelling to you, right?
39:28.745 --> 39:29.966
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that you were putting in there.
39:30.326 --> 39:34.472
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's what I was saying earlier, but it does have to be material.
39:34.832 --> 39:41.662
[SPEAKER_00]: It does have to be material, it does have to be tactile and tangible, and it has to relate to like everyday life, you know, like prosaic life.
39:41.762 --> 39:47.150
[SPEAKER_01]: Any of that stuff that you layer in there, it's going to do the thing you were talking about, like seeping through the game and making it feel real.
39:47.630 --> 39:51.912
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, to define a term, life layer is a term that comes from a film industry, actually.
39:52.012 --> 39:57.735
[SPEAKER_00]: It's from a props master who's name I forget, but there's a great, yeah, it's a great episode.
39:57.855 --> 40:09.781
[SPEAKER_00]: Where I learned it is now defunct Sally Podcast called Every Little Thing, and the host interviewed this props master who talked about how one of the things that she would do, for example, in everything, everywhere all at once.
40:09.881 --> 40:13.563
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the character that Jamie Lee Curtis plays has like a really messy desk.
40:13.583 --> 40:15.024
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like fucking covered with trash.
40:15.444 --> 40:25.227
[SPEAKER_00]: And she found old stained receipts from her own purse, her friends' purses, like random napkin notes and just like she found like actual crap and like layered it all on there.
40:25.467 --> 40:26.828
[SPEAKER_00]: And she didn't have to, right?
40:26.888 --> 40:29.808
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it could have been just like blank paper underneath the thin layer of stuff.
40:30.249 --> 40:33.029
[SPEAKER_00]: But like it helps the actor and body their character better.
40:33.430 --> 40:38.031
[SPEAKER_00]: And also like it respects the audiences and intelligence to a certain degree because like it's...
40:38.191 --> 40:39.691
[SPEAKER_00]: feels more lived in.
40:39.812 --> 40:48.734
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels more grounded and you don't get shit like my personal pet peed when a character like drinks from a cup of coffee and you can fucking tell it's empty.
40:49.134 --> 40:54.796
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate that so much but like that's because the prop semester has decided that life layers don't matter, right?
40:55.076 --> 41:00.498
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another movie she worked on where I think at one point a character has to like look through a bunch of fucking file boxes with
41:00.942 --> 41:15.409
[SPEAKER_00]: accounting notes dating back to like the fucking early seventies and she actually found accounting notes from like some default office company and put them in there and she was like no one in the audience is even going to see that but the actor will and they will be able to convey that in their performance.
41:15.709 --> 41:25.394
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't like quantify how that helps them but it absolutely does and you can tell because when you watch a movie without late lifelayers like it feels hollow it just does not it's not as good you know.
41:25.794 --> 41:38.571
[SPEAKER_01]: this is truly the thing I was seeing at the top of this of like I read this bit in the place that arc rule book that I went to the table and I never used it but it had layered it had left that impression on me and like it did affect me as a GM.
41:38.832 --> 41:39.372
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
41:39.392 --> 41:43.017
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, when I say like you can be thinking about all of this.
41:43.678 --> 41:47.900
[SPEAKER_00]: as the writer and creator and it might never enter your text, but it'll still be there.
41:48.020 --> 41:49.001
[SPEAKER_00]: I really believe that.
41:49.141 --> 41:59.946
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that in part because I have to constantly restrain myself from putting stuff into text that isn't necessary for a player or GM to know.
42:01.507 --> 42:05.609
[SPEAKER_00]: The games that I'm working on right now, the two new games like Hot Blood and Leviathan have like
42:06.049 --> 42:07.490
[SPEAKER_00]: a huge amount of world.
42:07.570 --> 42:09.650
[SPEAKER_00]: What's that fucking mean term that people use now?
42:09.670 --> 42:11.211
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I spurn or whatever.
42:11.251 --> 42:16.013
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's so much going on that like I am not going to explicitly show you.
42:16.353 --> 42:17.533
[SPEAKER_00]: But I might intimate at it.
42:17.673 --> 42:20.694
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be there through omission, like glaring omission.
42:20.874 --> 42:22.295
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be incomplete.
42:22.635 --> 42:28.397
[SPEAKER_00]: But also I have it in my mind as I'm writing and like that will convey itself in the text as you read.
42:28.677 --> 42:34.203
[SPEAKER_00]: even in like bare instructional texts because it affects everything down to like your word choice, right?
42:34.543 --> 42:36.025
[SPEAKER_00]: And also there is a real pleasure in it.
42:36.185 --> 42:41.831
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like you're talking about it as work and I think the thing I want to push back on, like, is it doesn't, once it's your feeling it work, like, don't fucking do it.
42:42.151 --> 42:42.792
[SPEAKER_00]: This is for fun.
42:43.092 --> 42:43.833
[SPEAKER_00]: I find it fun.
42:43.953 --> 42:49.639
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is something that will open up everyone's little freak brain to be coming this guy about
42:50.059 --> 42:51.100
[SPEAKER_00]: some aspect of the world.
42:51.180 --> 43:10.770
[SPEAKER_00]: It might not be food and also like if you're on the fence about like I don't know if this is work I do push you to try like I think I think it is like really worth it to try and like if you're like Well this aspect wasn't fun, but maybe it's the lens that I'm using that's not fun for me Maybe like sartorial history would be more interesting What if I did that instead instead of food like
43:11.050 --> 43:15.974
[SPEAKER_00]: Just find something to grab onto and like give you, you know, just like treat yourself because it is a treat.
43:16.134 --> 43:16.734
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it is.
43:16.754 --> 43:17.435
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it is.
43:17.555 --> 43:18.095
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
43:18.115 --> 43:18.255
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:18.275 --> 43:18.516
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:18.636 --> 43:18.916
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:19.036 --> 43:19.296
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:19.456 --> 43:19.957
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:20.037 --> 43:27.102
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to say before I move on to the next category is like, I think a really low stakes, easy entrance example.
43:27.562 --> 43:31.205
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like specifically related to food for people to check out if they want to.
43:31.525 --> 43:33.566
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there was a YouTube channel called Tasting History?
43:33.907 --> 43:37.369
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like a guy who wants the COVID lockdown happen.
43:40.391 --> 43:58.506
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of the term for them but you know the people at like Disneyland who are like Prince Charming but there's like ten of them and they rotate out through the week like he was one of those guys which meant he had to take for a little like there was no fucking way for him to work during the lockdown and so in boredom like he just started reading about food history and he started making these little videos where he was like
43:58.706 --> 44:11.411
[SPEAKER_00]: I found this weird recipe and I looked into the history and they get increasingly sophisticated but the format is the same and like the thing I was talking about how you can take a single dish and like every dish and human history has like deep connections to human history.
44:11.831 --> 44:19.394
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good illustration of that and then similarly for a non-food example of still using something tactile as a lens there isn't.
44:19.934 --> 44:26.519
[SPEAKER_00]: excellent podcast called Articles of Interest that takes the show so good.
44:26.979 --> 44:28.781
[SPEAKER_00]: That show is what I am talking about.
44:28.821 --> 44:30.762
[SPEAKER_00]: It just uses clothing instead of food.
44:30.942 --> 44:34.885
[SPEAKER_00]: You can use anything But you do have to be curious like
44:35.265 --> 44:38.068
[SPEAKER_00]: all of this is an exercise in cultivating curiosity.
44:38.308 --> 44:46.837
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is so essential to enjoying games, making games, and also just like enjoying art, you know, like period.
44:47.057 --> 44:53.784
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I highly recommend those two pieces of media tasting history on YouTube and articles of interest on whatever podcast feed you have.
44:54.025 --> 44:55.066
[SPEAKER_00]: Highly highly recommend them both.
44:55.470 --> 44:55.850
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.
44:55.870 --> 45:02.076
[SPEAKER_00]: So like food as personal or character driven storytelling, this is more in the player end, maybe the reader end as well.
45:02.256 --> 45:03.957
[SPEAKER_00]: So like we're shifting arenas, right?
45:04.017 --> 45:08.001
[SPEAKER_00]: Like before we were talking a lot about like the designer, the writer, the creator, right now I'm talking about the player.
45:08.181 --> 45:12.205
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're narrating a scene, you have control over that scene, right?
45:12.285 --> 45:14.967
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you can decide how you want to convey it.
45:15.393 --> 45:33.508
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like everyone's had this experience, especially in longer campaigns where you're in a scene and certain conversations might need to happen or like that scene has to happen, but there's not like a very direct point of conflict or point of drama that you know is gonna happen in that scene or that you are ramping up.
45:33.588 --> 45:33.828
[SPEAKER_00]: for.
45:34.008 --> 45:36.490
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a purely emergent scene.
45:36.730 --> 45:47.495
[SPEAKER_00]: My suggestion if you feel kind of like not sure what to do or kind of like, oh, these scenes feel kind of like filler or not as like directly guided as whatever, do it over meal.
45:47.716 --> 45:48.936
[SPEAKER_00]: Have your characters sit down to meal.
45:49.216 --> 45:54.959
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about what your character would actually like want to eat or not want to eat and think about like whether they're getting what they want or not, right?
45:54.999 --> 45:55.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Like so much of
45:56.240 --> 46:10.423
[SPEAKER_00]: The conflict and drama at the heart of these world playing games is like, are you getting what you like what do you want and then are you getting what you want and you can microcosm that in a scene over a like a real shared with another character right are they hogging your portion.
46:10.783 --> 46:19.605
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you sharing something that you know they like, but you fucking hate like there's a lot of ways to set up little echoes of what is happening interpersonally or.
46:20.785 --> 46:23.848
[SPEAKER_00]: going on in the larger story through that lens.
46:23.968 --> 46:26.870
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is something that people will immediately connect to.
46:27.011 --> 46:30.754
[SPEAKER_00]: Because again, they echo, should that we live through all the time, right?
46:30.954 --> 46:35.518
[SPEAKER_00]: Who hasn't had someone steal a fry up their plate and just like envision their death a little bit?
46:35.538 --> 46:36.278
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:36.418 --> 46:46.667
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reason that like the King is dead in mobile suit fire brands, like the default kind of just like have a conversation with another person mini game is a conversation over food.
46:46.951 --> 47:04.065
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know, the conversation you're having last night actually when you were talking about the Americans, how there's like these scenes of seduction where the spies like whoever the spies like have to connect to will be like really enjoying themselves because they think it's like a real
47:04.507 --> 47:11.170
[SPEAKER_00]: flirtation and meanwhile, the spies have like, did I just like not enjoying it.
47:11.390 --> 47:22.495
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a switch between a point of view character to another in the novel that I'm working on right now, the novel version of Hop Blood where like, you go from a character who's very poor has grown up very poor.
47:22.595 --> 47:26.276
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first time she gets a taste of luxury, it's like fucking Willy Wonka.
47:26.356 --> 47:29.878
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's unreal how good this beauty is, how much there
47:33.460 --> 47:37.053
[SPEAKER_00]: spices and seasoning beyond what you can grow in your yard, right?
47:37.093 --> 47:38.357
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's how a lot of people
47:38.902 --> 48:02.068
[SPEAKER_00]: in the period of time that this is based on would get flavor if they didn't have access to like the wealth that you need to have like cinnamon in your kitchen right and you go from that to a character who's grown up with wealth and when he sits down to me all the descriptions become extremely spare like it's just like it's what it would say on a menu right instead of like how you would think of it as you describe how good it was to a friend really short descriptions
48:04.368 --> 48:25.921
[SPEAKER_00]: What it's signifies in terms of how his father has set up trade connections and political and economic advantages did I know pleasure Just like oh now I know you know because this thing was served I know I have to go talk to that guy's daughter which I didn't want to do, but here we are right like there's a way that you can convey a Characters
48:26.988 --> 48:33.452
[SPEAKER_00]: in our life and like emotional and psychological landscape through how they look at their plate, right?
48:33.652 --> 48:36.473
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can also characterize like their personality through it, too.
48:36.914 --> 48:43.617
[SPEAKER_00]: These are like little points of narration that again, are they like load bearing critical things when you're sitting down to play a game?
48:43.697 --> 48:48.140
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe not, but also like, will they make your game fucking rule absolutely?
48:48.300 --> 48:53.323
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, highly recommend thinking about your character as a real person in this particular way.
48:53.803 --> 49:08.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and then from there, even as a player, you can still think like a writer a little bit and think about like and the segway is into food is metaphor Like what am I metaphorically communicating through how my characters interacting with this food or like how I am describing it through their eyes Are they happy?
49:09.157 --> 49:09.978
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they miserable?
49:10.118 --> 49:14.982
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, what if they like eat what if you have two different scenes where they're eating the same dish?
49:15.483 --> 49:17.805
[SPEAKER_00]: And in one of them, they're like savering to shit out of it.
49:17.885 --> 49:20.107
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so good and another one same dish
49:20.527 --> 49:24.831
[SPEAKER_00]: same occasions in time of day and they can't fucking taste it because of something that's happened earlier.
49:25.471 --> 49:29.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that communicates something even if you're not directly commenting on whatever's happened.
49:29.554 --> 49:36.180
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can get like creates a rich emotional and narrative experience for the entire table when you narrate it that way.
49:36.838 --> 49:39.681
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like that's the beautiful thing about tabletop, right?
49:39.721 --> 49:42.764
[SPEAKER_00]: Is like you get this spotlight, you get to be the director for your scene.
49:43.064 --> 49:44.285
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, how are you directing it?
49:44.385 --> 49:45.627
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you trying to communicate through it?
49:45.927 --> 49:49.250
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like food is like characterization and food is metaphor, like go hand in hand.
49:49.430 --> 49:52.313
[SPEAKER_00]: Very, very tightly, but also food is metaphors, like,
49:52.748 --> 50:18.609
[SPEAKER_00]: be like something you notice right like it doesn't have to be something that your character is directly interacting with either like I think that's where it becomes a little bit more meta narrative like if you're jamming for example you can talk about like a market scene in a way that like you might not be able to narrate as well if you're just one character in that story so like this is when we start getting into what I was talking about is like meta narrative tools where the GM is sort of an meta narrative position more intrinsically than players I think
50:22.272 --> 50:28.533
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, maybe this is just, maybe this is also where I'm assuming that my experience is like a universal one and I don't want to do that.
50:29.033 --> 50:46.476
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll put it in subjective terms, but like when I have GMed games and in the longest ongoing game that I'm in where a friend is GMed, like we use literary devices and like storytelling devices from different mediums a lot in our GMing and that includes things like metaphors.
50:46.516 --> 50:50.217
[SPEAKER_00]: So like visual metaphors, descriptive metaphors,
50:51.944 --> 51:16.634
[SPEAKER_00]: verbal narration and I think like food is a really really rich opportunity for that because again like you don't have to go into great detail describing how something tastes if it's something that you all know what it tastes like intrinsically and you add one detail about it that's just a little off like that immediately sets people a little bit on edge they're like why does it why she describing it that way right like what's going on with it you can tilt the tone of that description
51:20.332 --> 51:22.272
[SPEAKER_00]: this group of people has bonded together.
51:22.372 --> 51:24.513
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this isn't just a meal, it's like a family meal.
51:24.553 --> 51:31.714
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a lot of ways that you can do it that when you're in the GM position, you have a little bit more of a hand on the steering wheel than everybody else.
51:31.834 --> 51:38.635
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if nothing else to like telegraph first and then other people might take your lead, but you're the one setting that up.
51:38.915 --> 51:49.517
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like that also segues right into food is framing device, which I think is kind of for the whole table, but again, if you're in the GM rule, it's just a little bit more intuitive and easy, I think, free to use that.
51:49.962 --> 51:50.462
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
51:50.842 --> 51:56.204
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like whichever player at the table has the ability and responsibility to frame scenes.
51:56.764 --> 52:07.568
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I should specify, you know, weird way I'm thinking of it as like a more tragic, I'm in player structure just because like those are the games I have in reading and playing the most recently, but like there's such a wide range of,
52:07.875 --> 52:35.712
[SPEAKER_00]: distribution of responsibility in those roles now that is so wonderful to think about and also like complicates all of this right like who's behind the camera who's in front of the camera like who fucking knows I don't know your cable I don't know what you're playing and I also don't know your playstyle but like adapt everything I'm saying as needed if you're trying to like apply it directly right like I don't know I'm not in the room with you but like roughly speaking the GM has like a slightly more directorial role I think in a lot of games where there is a GM
52:37.223 --> 52:44.528
[SPEAKER_00]: belonging outside belonging game or everyone has more or less equal, like narrative responsibility and it's like distributed more or less evenly.
52:44.808 --> 52:53.393
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you know, there are also games where like who frames the scene is not the GM or who starts framing the scene in a particular scene is not necessarily the GM anymore.
52:53.553 --> 52:57.355
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think that was kind of a given for a while, but like that's not the case anymore.
52:57.616 --> 52:58.816
[SPEAKER_00]: It really depends on the title now.
52:59.257 --> 53:02.138
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, those are kind of like the four categories that I have is like food
53:03.319 --> 53:06.242
[SPEAKER_00]: food is like characterization, food is metaphor and food is framing device.
53:06.522 --> 53:08.944
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also like substitute the word food with like meals.
53:09.444 --> 53:23.656
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you want it to be more direct to like the characters behavior like what is happening in a scene, I think like sometimes that helps people conceptualize why I find this so compelling as a material lens to enter a story because it's not like food in ISIL.
53:23.696 --> 53:27.699
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like a fake like ramen bowl in a display in front of a restaurant, right?
53:27.719 --> 53:28.780
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're talking about like the actual
53:31.350 --> 53:43.007
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's also worth noting that like in the same way that we've been talking about several times through this episode like you can take the word food out of those categories and replace it with textiles or like something else and like get really similar results.
53:43.527 --> 53:51.114
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually do encourage you to maybe start with food just because it's like, that is going to be a knowledge base that more people share a wider swath of.
53:51.775 --> 53:53.997
[SPEAKER_00]: And also because it is like more directly relatable.
53:54.077 --> 54:04.046
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know how many people know the difference between like commercial plaid and tartan plaid for example, there's a lot of stuff that you get with clothing and fashion and textiles.
54:04.226 --> 54:08.430
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my ongoing campaign games is set in the early to mid 2000s and you better bet.
54:08.670 --> 54:12.075
[SPEAKER_00]: that I remember shit from the 2000s.
54:12.455 --> 54:13.897
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like absolutely terrible.
54:13.937 --> 54:16.040
[SPEAKER_00]: And I bring it in at every opportunity.
54:16.260 --> 54:17.202
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a period piece.
54:17.562 --> 54:19.224
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that makes it more fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But also like in that group, I am the only person who was like in middle school in the 2000s.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So like
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[SPEAKER_00]: My friends at that table have no basis of like actual knowledge and like they take my Q on that often or they just like kind of take it as a given that what I'm saying is true and like if I got something wrong they'd have no idea and I think like that is not necessarily the case for food maybe I'm just writing a dish that they've never had but they probably know what the ingredients taste like right so like I do encourage people specifically around the food
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[SPEAKER_00]: to start there if they're looking for like ways to incorporate more sensory experience and like sensory grounding in their narrative experience as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You got any final words here, I think those were good final words, but do you want to you want to wrap up in any way?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really, I hope that this encourages people to think about like depth of curiosity and play.
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[SPEAKER_01]: GM, thanks for being back on DICE Explorer, great having you again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for letting me talk in great detail.
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[SPEAKER_00]: One little thing, I really love studying it a lot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again to Gionne for being here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can find them on Patreon, on Blue Sky at Gionne or at GionneShim.ich.io.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dysik's Flutter or on the Dysik's Flutter Discord.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And you can find my games at S10WL.ich.io.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you missed the bandits and bullet holes Kickstarter, you could still probably submit a late pledge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Go check it out, there's a link for that down there too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Our logo is designed by SporeGree, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray, and our ad music is Lily Pads, but my boy Travis Tesmer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to Emma Coaster for editing this episode and thanks to you for listening.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I will see you next time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: See you next time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bye!