speaker-0: Okay, one thousand four hundred and eighty third time has to be the charm. Good day and welcome to Tabletop Hot Takes. In this show we will examine all aspects of tabletop role-playing games through our particular and peculiar lenses, thoughts, feelings, and of course hot takes. My name is Professor Arya and I am joined for the last thirty years by
speaker-1: Professor Funky.
speaker-0: As mentioned, we have been playing RPGs for over thirty years, which is about how long I've been here in this room, and have thought have a lot of heavily informed opinions about that. With all of that beside us, let's get into this week's topic.
speaker-1: Man, this is a really shitty day to have a time loop. It's Monday. Jesus Christ.
speaker-0: You are telling me. You've said that so many times.
speaker-1: It's not my time loop. It's not my fault that I keep repeating these things. That's the rule.
speaker-0: Pea. ⁓ my god.
speaker-1: Let's talk about time loop episodes, y'all. I think it's really fun. I think it's a really cool thing that a lot of TV shows do. And there's a reason for that. Like, time loop episodes are, in my opinion, one of the best ways to do character growth, right? Because it is deeply personal, it is deeply intimate, and it is intensely usually one person, right? And that's that's the key. is if you have a bunch of people doing a time loop, they like have to be creative or something like that. But if it's one person doing a time loop, they have to grow as a character.
speaker-0: No, no, no. There's a dude on eighty third and like Maine downtown who is absolutely aware that it's a time loop, or they got something else going on. So yeah, it's it doesn't have to be one character. It can be multiple people.
speaker-1: Yeah, but I I do think that like typically when I think of a time loop, a it's it's one person going through character growth. And actually I'm trying to think of an example of a group going through the time loop where where all the members of the group are aware of.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's ⁓ it's usually like a ⁓ bottle episode with more moving parts, right? Because some of the core premises of what makes a time loop interesting to me is about like that structure of what you do within the loop with this limited time that you have, right? Like yeah, at the end it's a crucible that you pour the character into and then they distill down and act in ways that are unexpected and you can really like reduce that down to something something a lot ⁓ more interesting to watch as stuff starts to unravel at the seams. God knows I'm afraid.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah, no, I I I really think like right, it should be a crucible, right? This should be a character growth moment, right? If we're gonna do a time a time loop, especially in an RPG, right? Because in a TV show, you can just write it, you know, and it's kind of you can do time skips, you can like s you know, screw with a lot of things, like, ⁓ it's been, what was that, 1094 days, I think is what you said. You know, like it's been three years now. and ⁓ that I'm sorry, it just really hit me. That's really clever because that means that we're just shy of three years. Anywho,
speaker-0: Yes. I'm pretty damn clever. It comes easy after the first few hundred days.
speaker-1: It this is true. Right, yeah, and see exactly, right? Like w if you're writing a TV show, you can just do that, right? If you're writing the hit Hollywood movie Lived Die Repeat, I'm sorry, ⁓ god damn it, I actually forgot what the actual
speaker-0: Edge of tomorrow. Yes. It's edge of tomorrow. Yes.
speaker-1: I forgot what the real name of that movie was and remembered what the in progress name of that movie was, because I'm that kind of nerd. Okay.
speaker-0: Well the D V D case does say live, die, repeat on the front. That's a little funny.
speaker-1: It became the tagline, which is hilarious. But like even there, right? Like it's it's one person undergoing it, right? But again, they were able to write it, right? They were able to say, okay, let's just like skip 400 of these. And not to say that you couldn't do that in an RPG, but it kind of doesn't hit the same because it feels like you're just playing to the medium. And I think the key in an RPG, if you're gonna do a time loop, is play to the medium, right? The medium of RPGs are played in real time, but they're also not. You know, we sitting around a table experience time very differently than our characters do, right? We will play a four-hour session and two minutes could happen. We could also play a four hour session and two weeks happen.
speaker-0: Right. And that's just one of the affordances that we are granted whenever we willingly suspend our disbelief to play these games, right? ⁓ my other favorite example of this is how we deal with movement, right? Where there's like a downtime time where you're moving around and nothing really is happening. You're just traveling, right? ⁓
speaker-1: Right.
speaker-0: And then there is like a maybe like a cinematic time when you're in a scene and time is flowing normally, and then a combat happens and you have to slow everything down to a crawl. Because in an actual fight, you're f throwing punches and dodging stuff and yeah, slicing that down very, very t granularly ⁓ gives the players a lot more control about what's actually happening. But it does end up with stuff like ⁓ You know, like, ⁓ man, that was an epic fight. We went a full ten rounds with that dude and it's like okay, cool, you fought with the for a minute like
speaker-1: Right, right. That was literally 60 seconds. And as a person who's been in ⁓ like I've I've fenced, you know, in a number of historical societies, I've also done a number of different martial arts, and like a minute's pretty solid. You know, I'm not saying I haven't had bouts that went longer than that, but by the end, you're rough, man.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, yeah, no. You're panting, you're you're you're you're lying on the floor, your muscles have ached. You're you're you're full of lactic acid and like pent up rage.
speaker-1: Yeah, kinda. Yeah, no, everything hurts. ⁓ like including your brain, your brain hurts. It's bad. But yeah, so like that's that's kind of the thing is we're in a medium that inherently plays with time, but it's very different from a TV show or a movie, right? Because everyone is involved in that time dilation kind of live. So what started this whole thing, right? I I s I actually ran a time move recently in a Starfinder campaign that I'm running. And I only sort of planned it. I knew the players were coming up on traveling for 49 days, right? They were in a hyperspace lane for 49 days of in-game time. And this is a game that tracks days very literally. ⁓ the characters literally have 10 years for the entirety of the campaign. ⁓ and like right now, they're three years in. And so, you know, days literally matter. ⁓ and I said, Well, you know, if they're gonna have this 49-day travel, like there should be something interesting that happens during those days that maybe it matters in a broader scheme, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just is like a fun thing that like this session is because I wanna do something, you know, for for that huge travel time. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're channeling like the the Star Trek, something's happening while you're flying from place to place. The teleporter has ghost in it or something, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah, as a person who just watched ⁓ Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode, ⁓ about a ⁓ pleasure planet where they get inebriated from the atmosphere and the entire time my wife and I were just going, like, So this is this is all her trip, right? And it wasn't, which is wild. Not the point. ⁓ anybody who's caught up on Strange New Worlds, yeah, email me about season four, episode three. I wanna know if anybody else thought that That was just Ortega's trip the whole time, because that would make sense. This the actual answer kind of didn't, whatever. It was silly. It's Star Trek. Anywho, all this to say, I wanted to do something cool and interesting. And I had a kind of new player, right? We've got this player, ⁓ George, who's great. He plays a character called Tonko. Tonko is a soldier with a rocket launcher and a katana. And dresses like a space samurai, and he's very happy about it, and it's great. And I said, Well, you know, he hasn't really had a spotlight episode yet, right? Like he, you know, their captain, Zap, has spotlights every other episode. He's the captain, of course he has. ⁓ Orion, the ⁓ Solarian android, get has had a number of spotlight episodes as they are the curious type who kind of like throws themselves headlong in the danger. And ⁓ Scrockpo, their ⁓ what are they called? The little weird little bug people in Starfinder, not the point, engineer slash pilot. you know, he's had a few spotlight episodes just because ⁓ his species ⁓ is from the swarm, and the swarm have shown up as antagonists a couple times, and he's also kind of like a mutineer against the captain. So again, had some spotlight episodes as well. But George is newer, Tonko is newer to the group. And so we needed to do something to make him feel like, hey, this is your moment, you know? and so I said, you know what? Fuck it. We've got these weird interdimensional like Shaboloff thingamajiggers that I call Lodora Key. and they've got the ability to like fuck with a lot of different things, including time and reality. Let's give this guy a time whoop episode.
speaker-0: Yeeha. No, I mean like that makes sense though. Like, yeah. ⁓ because you do get that like great character exploration bit where you can one of the best things that I was alluding to is that you can really play in the space. And it might matter, but it probably doesn't. So you can just do what the fuck ever without the consequences, right? ⁓ unless that is to like plug the crystal that you found into a parking lot into a twelve volt power supply, because that apparently will start a time loop, pro tip.
speaker-1: The way of starting the time loop is something that painkiller Jane would do.
speaker-0: Yes, in very many ways I do channel my characters and in this particular instance, ⁓ curiosity time loop the cat. They people say that now. I say that now. I say a lot of things now.
speaker-1: Yeah. And if you say them often enough, other people start saying them too.
speaker-0: ⁓ hasn't happened yet, but here we are. Fair.
speaker-1: ⁓ so the one word of advice before I get into kind of more details about the session and how it went and what I thought was interesting and what I thought wasn't. ⁓ your characters are likely genre savvy. Embrace that, right? Don't I'm gonna say straight out, don't try to play that it's not a time loop. I considered it for about 0.5 seconds, and I just immediately threw him into it. You know, because the minute once he figured out what it was, it almost made it more fun because everybody at the table all went, ⁓ we get to have fun with this, right? We get to have a time loop episode. You know? And they were all very excited by that prospect. And if I kind of slow played that it was a time loop, it would have just felt like, well, that was 30 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever, you know, of just kind of like tedium. Don't make the tedium tedious. ⁓ un unless you really intend for this to take a long while, right? But that's, in my opinion, kind of a weird choice, right? Like, this is a bottle episode. It doesn't actually matter in any grand scheme of things, except for your character who remembers that it occurred. Everybody else doesn't, and that kind of means that, like, it I don't know. I I've gotta really like Yeah.
speaker-0: I got a perfect example of for this. ⁓ Haroho Suzumaya's ⁓ Endless Eight Arc ⁓ is controversial for a reason. I personally could not get all the way through it. I watched about four episodes and I'm like, alright, cool, I'm switch I'm going to the last one. Here I can't handle this. Ugh But point being, like, yeah, these these play on like you essentially have the same day with minor differences. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's the most interesting or best way to do that, especially because so many time loops revolve around some kind of impending crisis. Like the reactor core is melting down and it's causing something to happen. Or in ed ⁓ what was the name? Edge of Tomorrow that you had mentioned, there is a threat of an alien invasion and only the one dude in the time loop can stop it, you know?
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I mean, even if we go to like one of Legend of Tomorrow's many, many, many time loop episodes, in every single one that I can remember right now, the the way that the day ends is something catastrophic. Usually the character dies. right, and then they just suddenly wake up, you know? And that like, yeah, that that's providing like, ⁓ something bad is gonna happen at the end of the day. I need to figure out how we get through this, right? I'm thinking to ⁓ The Librarians. very fun show. If anybody hasn't watched it. Absolutely marvelous. They're making a new season. I haven't seen it yet. I don't know anything about it. But the original Librarians, three seasons of absolutely wonderful television. And they do a time whoop episode with the kind of misanthrope character getting him some character development, which was wonderful because it allowed him to still continue to be the misanthrope character, because he's the only one that remembered there was character development.
speaker-0: And just chooses to opt out, which is funny.
speaker-1: Correct. And it was wonderful. the whole thing is that like whenever and it's like a video game, whenever any of them dies, it starts over. And so, you know, it's this constant like kind of Kobayashi Maru type of thing.
speaker-0: But Yeah, a peak example of that is ⁓ the Outer Wilds.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that is ⁓
speaker-0: The time loop game along with in stars in time. So yeah.
speaker-1: Or wait, was Majora's mask a time loop?
speaker-0: ⁓ I could definitely see that. ⁓ you are resetting the same three days over and over, so yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So like, yeah, you get the idea, right? That like, you know, even in video games, right, we see this played over and over again. It's it's a it's a trope for a reason, you know? But that means that because it's a trope that's very common and very well known, your players are gonna know what it's like, and they're probably they're gonna go one of two ways. If you've got players like mine, they're gonna play into it and they're gonna have a great fucking time doing that.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: If you don't have players like mine, they might try to fight against it. And that's kind of something you as a game master should maybe know ahead of time heading into it, right? Like, are my players likely to play with this and have fun with the time loop character? Or are they going to actively fight against it, being genre savvy as they are, and we're just gonna proceed through this in record time?
speaker-0: Yeah, I was about to say that the genre savviness part really does work with this too, because in almost every example that we talked about, the time loop is something is always framed as something to be solved. Right? I want to get out of the loop. I need to get out of the loop. If anyone listening can help me get out of the loop, please.
speaker-1: Go find the crystal in the parking lot.
speaker-0: It disappeared! It vanished I can't reverse engineer a fucking crystal. It went off to the fucking ether.
speaker-1: It's somewhere in the American Southwest.
speaker-0: ⁓ god damn it. Alright. Fine. Fine, fine, fine.
speaker-1: You need to go to Moab, Arya.
speaker-0: ⁓ fuck. I can make it if I did that. Right. Thank you, Spirit Guide. Anyway
speaker-1: Alright. Ha ha ha.
speaker-0: No, it doesn't spawn unless I talk to you.
speaker-1: Right. This is this is your friendly dungeon master up in the sky. You need to go to Moab.
speaker-0: See ⁓ yeah, until you said those words it did not materialize. ⁓ I tried to trust me, I've tried.
speaker-1: I I've also been watching the D cartoon from the eighties, ⁓ nineties, and I need to talk about some of the episodes.
speaker-0: ⁓ that'll be fun.
speaker-1: ⁓ god. So here's what I'm gonna say, right? Because we were in a sci-fi game, this is Starfinder, I set a few rules for myself ahead of time. And I think this is probably one of the most important things that you as a game master can do is I said, first of all, if my players play into it, great. Gonna allow them to. End of story. If my players don't play into it, I'm gonna amp up the difficulty significantly. So this is no longer going to be a kind of solvable situation. Now I'm going to just Kobayashimaru this shit, right? 'Cause if they all band together, this will be over in thirty minutes. And that's not as fun, honestly.
speaker-0: I what I like to do to like add a sense of tension and urgency without like completely destroying the premise is you come back like just a few minutes after when you started. Right? Like Yeah, your window to change whatever is happening, like just gradually closes and closes. So you
speaker-1: ⁓ that's interesting.
speaker-0: Y so you end up with the big climactic thing where you put all the pieces together on the last possible loop 'cause if you don't do it now, you won't have enough time.
speaker-1: Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean
speaker-0: I'm already playing with time, so yeah.
speaker-1: I created some stakes, but they were pretty low level, I'll be totally straight. ⁓ but we'll get into that later. My other rule was the grand forces, the reality altering forces that they know of would not help unless Tonko, the main character in this, accomplished some sort of like standard time loopy thing. Which I knew the player wouldn't want to do because he's a bit of a misanthrope. So When they called up the like kind of like Q from Star Trek equivalent character Ashido and asked him to fix it, he said, Have you learned to play the violin yet? No. Have you written a novel yet? No. Then I can't fix this for you yet. And disappeared. Now, could the character like could the player have just then said, Okay, I'm gonna spend a thousand days writing a novel and learning to play the violin? I probably would have said yes, right? And we would have moved on. But I knew my player enough to know that's not gonna work. If your player is that type to just say, okay, I'm gonna spend a thousand days doing those things that Ashido wanted me to do, and then we're gonna ask him to fix it for us, I would have had Ashido's requests be like either A, he would have pulled the Knights of Knee and gone, Nope, we're I'm no longer Ashido, I'm now this other thing, and I want you to do this other thing, right? Like basically setting forth endless quests. Or I would have given the original task B something like, Have you grown personally as a person? ⁓ and if the answer was no, you know, that sort of thing. So I wanted to kind of like
speaker-0: I would I would fight a I would fight an army of dudes. I would move mountains for you bro brick by brick brick by brick butt and ⁓ stone by stone. But if you ask me to like grow and change as a person, it's like you asked me to like kill God. What are you d what are you talking about, man?
speaker-1: Exactly. Yeah. So like you gotta know your players a little bit.
speaker-0: My personal quest is to go to bed on time. ⁓ that's a harder quest. ⁓
speaker-1: I was literally just watching a YouTube video about a guy who had his wife record audio messages for him on his computer that yell at him as he gets closer and closer to bedtime. Okay, so don't let the grand forces of your world don't right, don't let them just call a god and God fix it for you. That doesn't work. You know, the gods respect the rules of time loops, right? And the rules of time loops are you either have to grow as a character or you have to solve the problem.
speaker-0: That's funny.
speaker-1: End of story. Boom. Done. You know.
speaker-0: ⁓ side hot take on there. If your characters are regularly talking to the gods, DM, like try to like either like make it really contrived or write around that. Like D especially has so many gods that they're like that they might as well have no gods, which is always funny to me.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, don't basically don't give them an exit switch, right? Unless the players hate it, which is obviously different, right? If your players aren't having fun with this, that's a different problem. Have fun with your friends. What's rule number fucking one, right? But outside of that, don't just give them a ripcord. That's too easy. And it's just not gonna feel satisfying, right? The satisfaction of a time loop is the tedium, and then Finally getting it, whatever that means, right? But that doesn't mean don't make the tedium tedious, right? Tedious is not fun. TDM can be. So, with all that in mind, right, we've got our rules. We allow our players to play into it. If they don't play into it, we're gonna make it harder. And we're not gonna let them have a just ripcord that they know exists, which they did almost immediately reach for. So, how did this play out, you ask? First things first, I asked Tonko, what's a normal day for you? Right. You're on this 49 day trip. You have literally nothing but 49 days, and you and the crew of this like 200 manned starship, right? What do you do on a normal Monday? ⁓ and I actually went around the table and asked like people this so that he didn't know that this was coming. You know, so kind of asked everybody like, what's your normal Monday? What's your normal Monday? What's your normal Monday? What this also allowed was for me to know ahead of time what is the normal thing that each of your characters would be doing on the given Monday that's about to be the time, right? So sneaky, right? Be sneaky about this sort of stuff. Yep. Then we started that day. Except he didn't get his pancakes. He ordered pancakes, but he got hash browns. And that was breakfast yesterday. Wait a minute. This isn't right. Immediately clicked into it. Right? Genre savvy. Okay. I told him literally this was the breakfast you ordered yesterday. And for about half a second he went, is the food manufacturer bad? ⁓ you check it and everything's to be seems to be working. Well, this is a time loop. All right, let's figure this out.
speaker-0: I yeah, just not like, ⁓ yeah, no, there's a programming error or something. Like it wo i it would be funny if they were having something on the fritz, like to just suspend the disbelief. But I understand how you wanted to shy away from that. Please continue.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah, because if that had gone like if I'd wasted wasted, you get the idea, right? If I'd played for twenty, thirty minutes of him trying to figure out what's wrong with the food manufacturer, I don't know that that would be as fun as the story that I would get out of it. The story that I get out of it would be hilarious. But I don't think it would be fun in the moment or it would be I don't know that it would be fun afterward when you realized what just happened, you know? ⁓ In a movie, this would be great. That would be wonderful. But this isn't a movie, right? This is a this is a game that you're playing live with people. Right. So breakfast from the day before is already made. he got outside, he he like ran outside and a ⁓ logistics officer that he knew ⁓ walked by and gave him like a different hello than he normally does. But he remembered vaguely that actually that was the hello that he gave him yesterday, right? Again, further reinforcing, okay, yeah, this is a time loop. We gotta figure out what's going on here, right? ⁓ but also giving him more reasons that today was kind of unique. And thereby kind of giving him ammunition for the later convincing people this is real thing, you know? Right. ⁓ he immediately went to one of his crew members, one of his fellow players, and was like, hey. I think I'm in a time loop. and the other player was the other character, which I love, ⁓ Aspen is wonderful, immediately played into it and was like, That's crazy. What are you talking about? You know, it's Sunday, what are you doing? and, you know, it kind of went from there, right? So now we're getting into kind of the like meat and potatoes of a time loop episode, right? You've got to talk to the other people at the table. And again, if they're good, if they're really good, they'll play into it, right? And they will not necessarily engage immediately with the idea. but they're they were also smart enough. God, I love I I fucking love this group. I just want to say that straight out. ⁓ so Aspen or Orion is the character, ⁓ the android, you know, kind of was like, Okay, ⁓ if you think that's true, what day is this? And he's like, It's day one. And he's like, okay, how do you know it's a time loop then? Why you know, what if time just reset to today and ⁓ you know, all that kind of happened. And that continued on for a little bit until a different player came over on comms and was like, I fucking lost it. and he came up with this ⁓ quee, our our darling friend, playing Scrockpo, the engineer slash pilot, ⁓ lost his stealth drone is what he made up. ⁓
speaker-0: I mean, yeah, that's the the I working as intended.
speaker-1: Right, exactly. Yes. And this character routinely goes through drones. ⁓ this character also routinely sends his drone out instead of himself on missions because he's a coward. And so he breaks probably one to two drones every other session. ⁓ and so he's building this brand new stealth drone. He's just upgraded it and he lost it. It's somewhere in his in his quarters, but it's on like super stealth and he can't fucking find it. So Orion and Tonko go to fix that problem, right? Which provides another opportunity for him to do something later on extraordinarily well, and for him to kind of like figure it out from there, right? And so so he went to f you know he went to find the drone, and they figured out a way to to figure it out to to get there. ⁓ and then, you know, at that point he said, okay, what time is it? I said, it's, you know. That probably took like this many hours. ⁓ it's probably like mid-afternoon. He's like, All right, what did I do yesterday at this point? And I was like, Well, knowing you and how you discussed your normal day, you probably went to the bar. And he's like, All right, I'm going to the bar. And so he went to the bar and he had a drink, and he fell asleep and woke up the next day. Except the same day, right? Again. And so here's Where I kind of introduced the RPG of it all and made it a little bit more interesting, right? Because I could have just then, you know, kind of contrived and, you know, he'd go through the day and kind of figure out, like, you know, however he wants to process through it, you know? Yeah. I asked him to make an intelligence check. Because during that day, he'd written down details, little things that he'd noticed, you know, that he would be able to tell people to convince them that it was a time loop, because he was convinced he was going on a time loop episode. Smart savvy player, right? And the intelligence check was how many of those he didn't have to erase. ⁓
speaker-0: That's mean. I like that.
speaker-1: And this was not an interribly intelligent character. And so he had to release all but one of them. And over the next few days, right, this process for about four or five days. And, you know, we repeated back through it. And he slowly started to remember more and more details as he's woking up in the morning. Waking up in the morning. and finally figured out there is this thing inside my body. There are these creatures called the Lidoriki that we've interacted with. They are from like a different dimension. They're from a different like level of energy of the galaxy. They're able to manipulate reality and time and stuff like that.
speaker-0: Yeah, they're ⁓ they're like seventh dimensional beings. Their eggs look just like crystals, they lay them in parking lots. Yeah. Yeah I'm familiar.
speaker-1: It's the Mr. Mixy Spiddleck type characters, except not quite so impy, right? That's more Oshido and
speaker-0: Yeah, and let me tell you, those eggs do not respond well to electricity. So
speaker-1: Yeah. These guys are just kind of little shits more than anything. ⁓ they actually kind of hate them. They're amoral. ⁓ they've been caused for a number of different problems in this campaign that I actually want to talk about a different one of them where I made an Android character reboot ⁓ from like base code. ⁓ and that was a really interesting way to kind of fuck with them for a few sessions. ⁓ But yeah, so like they figured out, ⁓ there's this Lidorky inside of you, and he's making this time loop happen. ⁓ and also every day you finish by going to the bar and drinking another instance of him. and so there's slowly like there's more and more and more of them inside of you. Now, luckily they're microscopic. ⁓ they can technically grow in size, but yeah, so like there's, you know, you you could repeat this billions of times before it's like a problem. Right. ⁓ and during this whole time I'm kind of like contemplating through I'd already thought of, okay, right, it's because there's these Lidoriki in them. ⁓ they know that there's some Lidoriki on the ship. They know that some of them escaped when there was a different crisis with some water, and they know that they fucking hate these guys. Right. So it's it's a perfect little kind of like work through. But I also know that the Lidoroki are amoral. They just don't give a shit, right? If they want to do something, they're going to do it because it advances their cause, which is studying this third-dimensional space ⁓ that makes very little sense to them. And so now we need to spend another few days figuring out how to actually solve this problem, right? ⁓ eventually coming to their personal solution, which I didn't have. I didn't come into this with a solution. I just said, hey, there's these Lodoriki inside of them. The Lidorky are amoral. ⁓ they want to do this for I don't know reason. I'll figure that out in a moment, because I trusted myself to be able to do that. Right. And they're going to struggle with that and eventually come to some sort of solution. And the solution, the the the the reason that I came up with for this plot was the Lidorky wanted to test. If beings from this universe were able to repeat the same day over and over and over again and learn from it, could they become a super soldier? Luckily, I knew my characters, and they would say, fuck you to that, just because Lidorky was involved.
speaker-0: It's just like, yeah, I'm giving you infinite trading potential. All you have to do is like take a shot and nope. Yep.
speaker-1: Nope, because I I was perfectly willing. In that moment, I basically gave my players the opportunity to eternally fuck with me and say, okay, I'm gonna train for 2,000 days. What level do I get up to? Right? Mm-hmm. And I think I probably would have given them quite a few levels, right? In a game that is as level qualifying as Starfinder, I think I probably would have given him like five or six, maybe more even, you know? And if he'd said, nope, I'm going till I hit level 20, I might have given it to him. But I knew my players. And this is really the lesson for this. If you're gonna do this, you have to know your players and you have to know to what power gaming level will they go. Cause I think a time loop is rife for abuse in a power gaming perspective, right? in the future they go, ⁓ you know, ⁓ I know how to drive a Zamboni. I did that in my time loop. Right. And you kinda can't, you know, refute that.
speaker-0: Yeah, but I I do think that there's like so I think that what that does is that gives you different level levers to explore. ⁓ I do also agree that like yeah, it's like having the backstory of Doom that's three hundred pages long that contains literally everything, right? Like, ⁓ yeah, it's
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. ⁓ mast Mr. Jenkins.
speaker-0: Old Man Henderson. Anyway.
speaker-1: Man Henderson. Why do think it's Jenkins? Anywho.
speaker-0: ⁓ but yeah, like that but that idea of like you have to trust your players, I would say is even secondary to you have to be willing to accept the consequences of what your players choose.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
speaker-0: But that said, if you are a particularly prone to this group, maybe don't put this particular option in front of them in as night and day terms. So
speaker-1: Right, right. Yeah, I mean literally in this case I told him. I told him straight out this is what the Lodoriki wants to do. The Lodoriki said to him, Isn't this wonderful? I've given you ultimate power. And the character said, Fuck you, get out of me because I knew this group and they would trust nothing the Lodoriki said, even if it was completely true.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that the other part of that, right, is that like ⁓ so here's what here's what I would actually consider if they did take the devil's bargain there, right? Like you trained for like, I don't know, fifteen years, right? How did you not go crazy with that? Like how did you get so into a thing where that you that you didn't do anything else, right? Like ⁓ what is your What is this new change psychology that you have? You're also, like, probably aging normally in the loop or something similar to that. You're playing with time. Play with it further like that. Like, yeah, there could be like accelerated aging effects or other weirdness when you get out of the loop and stuff like that.
speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah. And and there's a world in which I monkeys paw it, you know? because I I do think there's a world in which you do that.
speaker-0: I also just I'm thinking of these tropes where, you know, a person gets thrown into some kind of portal and then comes back and three years have passed for them and they're all grizzled and badass now. Like
speaker-1: Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, no, absolutely right. In the future everyone is jacked, as ⁓ Kim Possible ⁓ told us.
speaker-0: Excellent. I was not a Disney XD kid. And Clifford did not have a ⁓ episode where he got jacked. So
speaker-1: ⁓ it's actually a movie. It was they find this monkey that can move people through time and the villains use it to conquer the world. ⁓ but in the future where that has occurred, everyone is jacked. and there's a whole line about why is in the future, why is everyone jacked? ⁓ because it it was wonderful. God, that was a great show. In any case, man, I'm all over the place today.
speaker-0: Yeah. It's the most frustrating part of this loop. Yes. And I have a drive to Boab after this. Anyway. Keep it going.
speaker-1: You're not gonna arrive there today. You're gonna have to do it tomorrow. It has to be done in your arm.
speaker-0: It has to be today, funky.
speaker-1: I I think to there's this there's this quote. ⁓ there was a there was a mu ⁓ a musician who played with John Coltrane. and ⁓ if you know John Coltrane, he is a jazz musician. He's incredibly intense and he is one of a series of incredibly talented ⁓ improv jazz performers. And there was some musician with him who said the line, you like he was asked like, how can you play with someone so intense like John Coltrane, gone John Coltrane? And he said, You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker. And when he was asked that in the interview, like along with a whole bunch of the band, everybody kind of like laughed for a second. And he just stared at the interviewer like, no, this isn't a joke. I'm dead fucking serious. You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker, right? And if this performance goes down in flames, that's just what it is. But we are doing it together. And I think in many essences, that's what a time loop is in an RPG setting. Is you trusting your players with the fucking keys to the kingdom and saying, go for it. What are you gonna do with this? Are you gonna live out the genre? Are you going to engage with this? Are you just gonna take it and go, cool, I'm old man Henderson, baby? I know everything, right? Or how are you going to play this? Because I just handed you the the entire scene and said, have at it. Have fun. This is your show now. And that's kind of what you have to do at a certain That's what improv is, and that's in a lot of ways what this medium is, is you and a whole bunch of people around a table all willing to die for a motherfucker.
speaker-0: That's why it's the spotlight episode. Yeah. I we are by default following your lead, whether you want us to or not.
speaker-1: Ha So yeah, all that to say, I think this is a really intriguing way of running some sort of you know character exploration thing. I think this is a really fun way of giving your your player singular, right, a big moment to have, you know, how he chooses to engage with this. ⁓ they, he, they, whatever. And Also give your other players just kind of a fun time, right? Like one of the characters just decided to not engage at all. ⁓ our our friend Mark, who plays Zap, as in literally Zap Branagan from Futurama, who is the captain, ⁓ could not be arsed to wake up because it wasn't like noon yet. and just kind of like went whenever they would call at the door. He just did nothing. He was just entertained. The entire the entire session for like four epis four
speaker-0: Which was ⁓ completely in character.
speaker-1: Yes, absolutely, right? Because everybody had been playing very in character, right? Like Tonko is pretty no nonsense, but also just wants to have a drink at the bar after having like gotten like shit faced, blowing a whole bunch of, you know, things to hell and back. you know, Scrockpo breaks things on the regular and has like misadventures. ⁓ Orion just wants to solve mysteries, and Zap frankly is in this for the awards that he's not going to get. You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker. Exactly. You gotta just give it to ⁓ and see what happens.
speaker-0: And I mean like I guess that's really the hottest take of all. Just like fucking go for it. Like
speaker-1: Fucking go for it, man! What's the worst that happens?
speaker-0: It it sucks and then you break ⁓ out of the loop early. Like yeah, it's fine.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, that was a mistake, guys. Sorry. I only kinda planned it, you know. I I thought it'd be a fun little distraction, but anyway
speaker-0: Let's go back. Second time loop.
speaker-1: I I have actually considered doing a series of these now in this game whenever they do like a long travel time. Everybody gets a time loop. You get a time loop, you get a time
speaker-0: That would be funny. ⁓
speaker-1: we're Legends of the Tomorrowing this shit. There's one time loop every season, at minimum.
speaker-0: You know, something I also find really interesting about these time loop episodes is how it can like really beat down a character as the repetition happens, right? So say like they did take that deal and they're just sitting there and they're stuck in that loop over and over and over again, right? And then like you've spent more time in the loop than outside of it. You forgot the names of your family, friends and the dog you left back on earth. Like yeah, there's there's something about this that like really does call to me from like that character acting perspective.
speaker-1: I think that's absolutely the monkey's paw to do a lot of the time, right? If somebody decides to fuck with this, is like, okay, what do you lose, right? What what you're you're obviously gaining something here, right? But what do you lose as a result of that? You know? ⁓ because I I think that there should be a loss associated with, yeah, I just spent three, four, forty years. Living the same day, you know, and learning from it, but inevitably still living the same day.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that ⁓ like unless you have a specific species or culture or something that like deals with time a lot, you're not adapted to that. You're not adapted to the repetition of being in the exact same circumstances. What do you do to make something new? Where is the novelty? Like, what do you do after you've finish your backlog of movies and video games and TV shows and everything, right? What do you do after after all of that? Like what's left?
speaker-1: You have watched all of YouTube. What do you do?
speaker-0: Yeah, but like i hypothetically, right? With infinite time, unlimited time, you can finish the internet. Right? And then it's kind of like, Okay, cool. I did that. I can't find anything else new about the situation.
speaker-1: Right? Yeah, now what? Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. And that's also goes into that like character crucible thing I was talking about, where some of the fun of that is seeing this character radically change from where their starting point was, and the other characters are having to react to this new focused, hardened version of this character who's acting completely rationally from their perspective in the time loop. But absolutely bonkers from somebody who they saw yesterday.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And yesterday was just having some eggs.
speaker-0: Right, exactly. And then all of a sudden they're like ⁓ yeah, they're they're like so I've been really into like skillian poetry recently. Like I've I've been I've been watching some experimental black box theater
speaker-1: Okay. Hell yeah.
speaker-0: Nothing else is new to me now. I don't know what to do. I've I've pa I've maxed out learning the sword. So yeah, what's in the left? ⁓ that's but yeah, I feel like that's also a really underappreciated facet of this exploration that can take place provided your characters and your players are willing to play in that space and Take up that mantle, which is honestly expecting quite a lot from a RPG group. But if you have ⁓ some thespians in your group, they're gonna dig into this and not let go.
speaker-1: Yep, that's exactly what they did. It was perfect. Really, really, really, really perfect.
speaker-0: Excellent. Okay. Well were there any other hot takes we needed to dish out?
speaker-1: Arya, I think for the one thousand ninety fifth time, it's time for outro music.
speaker-0: ⁓ god, I ⁓ true music, sure. look, I'm sorry, I gotta cut the short. I gotta drive. There's a there's a crystal at the dumpster at the back of the pasta jays in Boab. I have to haul ass to get there.
speaker-1: Thank you so much for listening to Tabletop Hot Takes. Please tune in in two weeks for our next episode.
speaker-0: And yeah, if you've really, really liked what you heard and feel the need to support us, we deeply appreciate it. Just go to tabletop dash hot dash takes ⁓ and you can find us on patreon dot com there.
speaker-1: We just want to take a moment here to thank the patrons that we do have, who aren't not many, but we can't say enough how much these people have taken a chance on us, and we can't thank them enough for that trust.
speaker-0: ⁓ absolutely. So Stanley Gore, thank you.
speaker-1: Jake Burden, thank you.
speaker-0: Pioch D Belile Thank you.
speaker-1: But now, time for some bloopers.
speaker-0: Okay, 1483rd time has to be the charm. Good day and welcome to Tabletop Hot Takes. In this show we will examine all aspects of tabletop role-playing games through our particular and peculiar lenses, thoughts, feelings, and of course hot takes. My name is Professor Arya, and I am joined for the last thirty years by
speaker-1: Professor Funky.
speaker-0: As mentioned, we have been playing RPGs for over thirty years, which is about how long I've been here in this room, and have thought have a lot of heavily informed opinions about that. With all of that beside us, let's get into this week's topic.
speaker-1: Man, this is a really shitty day to have a time loop. It's Monday.
speaker-1: Professor Funky.
speaker-0: As mentioned, we have been playing RPGs for over thirty years, which is about how long I've been here in this room, and have thought have a lot of heavily informed opinions about that. With all of that beside us, let's get into this week's topic.
speaker-1: Man, this is a really shitty day to have a time loop. It's Monday. Jesus Christ.
speaker-0: You are telling me. You've said that so many times.
speaker-1: It's not my time loop. It's not my fault that I keep repeating these things. That's the rule.
speaker-0: Pea. ⁓ my god.
speaker-1: Let's talk about time loop episodes, y'all. I think it's really fun. I think it's a really cool thing that a lot of TV shows do. And there's a reason for that. Like, time loop episodes are, in my opinion, one of the best ways to do character growth, right? Because it is deeply personal, it is deeply intimate, and it is intensely usually one person, right? And that's that's the key. is if you have a bunch of people doing a time loop, they like have to be creative or something like that. But if it's one person doing a time loop, they have to grow as a character.
speaker-0: No, no, no. There's a dude on eighty third and like Maine downtown who is absolutely aware that it's a time loop, or they got something else going on. So yeah, it's it doesn't have to be one character. It can be multiple people.
speaker-1: Yeah, but I I do think that like typically when I think of a time loop, a it's it's one person going through character growth. And actually I'm trying to think of an example of a group going through the time loop where where all the members of the group are aware of.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's ⁓ it's usually like a ⁓ bottle episode with more moving parts, right? Because some of the core premises of what makes a time loop interesting to me is about like that structure of what you do within the loop with this limited time that you have, right? Like yeah, at the end it's a crucible that you pour the character into and then they distill down and act in ways that are unexpected and you can really like reduce that down to something something a lot ⁓ more interesting to watch as stuff starts to unravel at the seams. God knows I'm afraid.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah, no, I I I really think like right, it should be a crucible, right? This should be a character growth moment, right? If we're gonna do a time a time loop, especially in an RPG, right? Because in a TV show, you can just write it, you know, and it's kind of you can do time skips, you can like s you know, screw with a lot of things, like, ⁓ it's been, what was that, 1094 days, I think is what you said. You know, like it's been three years now. and ⁓ that I'm sorry, it just really hit me. That's really clever because that means that we're just shy of three years. Anywho,
speaker-0: Yes. I'm pretty damn clever. It comes easy after the first few hundred days.
speaker-1: It this is true. Right, yeah, and see exactly, right? Like w if you're writing a TV show, you can just do that, right? If you're writing the hit Hollywood movie Lived Die Repeat, I'm sorry, ⁓ god damn it, I actually forgot what the actual
speaker-0: Edge of tomorrow. Yes. It's edge of tomorrow. Yes.
speaker-1: I forgot what the real name of that movie was and remembered what the in progress name of that movie was, because I'm that kind of nerd. Okay.
speaker-0: Well the D V D case does say live, die, repeat on the front. That's a little funny.
speaker-1: It became the tagline, which is hilarious. But like even there, right? Like it's it's one person undergoing it, right? But again, they were able to write it, right? They were able to say, okay, let's just like skip 400 of these. And not to say that you couldn't do that in an RPG, but it kind of doesn't hit the same because it feels like you're just playing to the medium. And I think the key in an RPG, if you're gonna do a time loop, is play to the medium, right? The medium of RPGs are played in real time, but they're also not. You know, we sitting around a table experience time very differently than our characters do, right? We will play a four-hour session and two minutes could happen. We could also play a four hour session and two weeks happen.
speaker-0: Right. And that's just one of the affordances that we are granted whenever we willingly suspend our disbelief to play these games, right? ⁓ my other favorite example of this is how we deal with movement, right? Where there's like a downtime time where you're moving around and nothing really is happening. You're just traveling, right? ⁓
speaker-1: Right.
speaker-0: And then there is like a maybe like a cinematic time when you're in a scene and time is flowing normally, and then a combat happens and you have to slow everything down to a crawl. Because in an actual fight, you're f throwing punches and dodging stuff and yeah, slicing that down very, very t granularly ⁓ gives the players a lot more control about what's actually happening. But it does end up with stuff like ⁓ You know, like, ⁓ man, that was an epic fight. We went a full ten rounds with that dude and it's like okay, cool, you fought with the for a minute like
speaker-1: Right, right. That was literally 60 seconds. And as a person who's been in ⁓ like I've I've fenced, you know, in a number of historical societies, I've also done a number of different martial arts, and like a minute's pretty solid. You know, I'm not saying I haven't had bouts that went longer than that, but by the end, you're rough, man.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, yeah, no. You're panting, you're you're you're you're lying on the floor, your muscles have ached. You're you're you're full of lactic acid and like pent up rage.
speaker-1: Yeah, kinda. Yeah, no, everything hurts. ⁓ like including your brain, your brain hurts. It's bad. But yeah, so like that's that's kind of the thing is we're in a medium that inherently plays with time, but it's very different from a TV show or a movie, right? Because everyone is involved in that time dilation kind of live. So what started this whole thing, right? I I s I actually ran a time move recently in a Starfinder campaign that I'm running. And I only sort of planned it. I knew the players were coming up on traveling for 49 days, right? They were in a hyperspace lane for 49 days of in-game time. And this is a game that tracks days very literally. ⁓ the characters literally have 10 years for the entirety of the campaign. ⁓ and like right now, they're three years in. And so, you know, days literally matter. ⁓ and I said, Well, you know, if they're gonna have this 49-day travel, like there should be something interesting that happens during those days that maybe it matters in a broader scheme, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just is like a fun thing that like this session is because I wanna do something, you know, for for that huge travel time. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're channeling like the the Star Trek, something's happening while you're flying from place to place. The teleporter has ghost in it or something, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah, as a person who just watched ⁓ Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode, ⁓ about a ⁓ pleasure planet where they get inebriated from the atmosphere and the entire time my wife and I were just going, like, So this is this is all her trip, right? And it wasn't, which is wild. Not the point. ⁓ anybody who's caught up on Strange New Worlds, yeah, email me about season four, episode three. I wanna know if anybody else thought that That was just Ortega's trip the whole time, because that would make sense. This the actual answer kind of didn't, whatever. It was silly. It's Star Trek. Anywho, all this to say, I wanted to do something cool and interesting. And I had a kind of new player, right? We've got this player, ⁓ George, who's great. He plays a character called Tonko. Tonko is a soldier with a rocket launcher and a katana. And dresses like a space samurai, and he's very happy about it, and it's great. And I said, Well, you know, he hasn't really had a spotlight episode yet, right? Like he, you know, their captain, Zap, has spotlights every other episode. He's the captain, of course he has. ⁓ Orion, the ⁓ Solarian android, get has had a number of spotlight episodes as they are the curious type who kind of like throws themselves headlong in the danger. And ⁓ Scrockpo, their ⁓ what are they called? The little weird little bug people in Starfinder, not the point, engineer slash pilot. you know, he's had a few spotlight episodes just because ⁓ his species ⁓ is from the swarm, and the swarm have shown up as antagonists a couple times, and he's also kind of like a mutineer against the captain. So again, had some spotlight episodes as well. But George is newer, Tonko is newer to the group. And so we needed to do something to make him feel like, hey, this is your moment, you know? and so I said, you know what? Fuck it. We've got these weird interdimensional like Shaboloff thingamajiggers that I call Lodora Key. and they've got the ability to like fuck with a lot of different things, including time and reality. Let's give this guy a time whoop episode.
speaker-0: Yeeha. No, I mean like that makes sense though. Like, yeah. ⁓ because you do get that like great character exploration bit where you can one of the best things that I was alluding to is that you can really play in the space. And it might matter, but it probably doesn't. So you can just do what the fuck ever without the consequences, right? ⁓ unless that is to like plug the crystal that you found into a parking lot into a twelve volt power supply, because that apparently will start a time loop, pro tip.
speaker-1: The way of starting the time loop is something that painkiller Jane would do.
speaker-0: Yes, in very many ways I do channel my characters and in this particular instance, ⁓ curiosity time loop the cat. They people say that now. I say that now. I say a lot of things now.
speaker-1: Yeah. And if you say them often enough, other people start saying them too.
speaker-0: ⁓ hasn't happened yet, but here we are. Fair.
speaker-1: ⁓ so the one word of advice before I get into kind of more details about the session and how it went and what I thought was interesting and what I thought wasn't. ⁓ your characters are likely genre savvy. Embrace that, right? Don't I'm gonna say straight out, don't try to play that it's not a time loop. I considered it for about 0.5 seconds, and I just immediately threw him into it. You know, because the minute once he figured out what it was, it almost made it more fun because everybody at the table all went, ⁓ we get to have fun with this, right? We get to have a time loop episode. You know? And they were all very excited by that prospect. And if I kind of slow played that it was a time loop, it would have just felt like, well, that was 30 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever, you know, of just kind of like tedium. Don't make the tedium tedious. ⁓ un unless you really intend for this to take a long while, right? But that's, in my opinion, kind of a weird choice, right? Like, this is a bottle episode. It doesn't actually matter in any grand scheme of things, except for your character who remembers that it occurred. Everybody else doesn't, and that kind of means that, like, it I don't know. I I've gotta really like Yeah.
speaker-0: I got a perfect example of for this. ⁓ Haroho Suzumaya's ⁓ Endless Eight Arc ⁓ is controversial for a reason. I personally could not get all the way through it. I watched about four episodes and I'm like, alright, cool, I'm switch I'm going to the last one. Here I can't handle this. Ugh But point being, like, yeah, these these play on like you essentially have the same day with minor differences. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's the most interesting or best way to do that, especially because so many time loops revolve around some kind of impending crisis. Like the reactor core is melting down and it's causing something to happen. Or in ed ⁓ what was the name? Edge of Tomorrow that you had mentioned, there is a threat of an alien invasion and only the one dude in the time loop can stop it, you know?
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I mean, even if we go to like one of Legend of Tomorrow's many, many, many time loop episodes, in every single one that I can remember right now, the the way that the day ends is something catastrophic. Usually the character dies. right, and then they just suddenly wake up, you know? And that like, yeah, that that's providing like, ⁓ something bad is gonna happen at the end of the day. I need to figure out how we get through this, right? I'm thinking to ⁓ The Librarians. very fun show. If anybody hasn't watched it. Absolutely marvelous. They're making a new season. I haven't seen it yet. I don't know anything about it. But the original Librarians, three seasons of absolutely wonderful television. And they do a time whoop episode with the kind of misanthrope character getting him some character development, which was wonderful because it allowed him to still continue to be the misanthrope character, because he's the only one that remembered there was character development.
speaker-0: And just chooses to opt out, which is funny.
speaker-1: Correct. And it was wonderful. the whole thing is that like whenever and it's like a video game, whenever any of them dies, it starts over. And so, you know, it's this constant like kind of Kobayashi Maru type of thing.
speaker-0: But Yeah, a peak example of that is ⁓ the Outer Wilds.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that is ⁓
speaker-0: The time loop game along with in stars in time. So yeah.
speaker-1: Or wait, was Majora's mask a time loop?
speaker-0: ⁓ I could definitely see that. ⁓ you are resetting the same three days over and over, so yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So like, yeah, you get the idea, right? That like, you know, even in video games, right, we see this played over and over again. It's it's a it's a trope for a reason, you know? But that means that because it's a trope that's very common and very well known, your players are gonna know what it's like, and they're probably they're gonna go one of two ways. If you've got players like mine, they're gonna play into it and they're gonna have a great fucking time doing that.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: If you don't have players like mine, they might try to fight against it. And that's kind of something you as a game master should maybe know ahead of time heading into it, right? Like, are my players likely to play with this and have fun with the time loop character? Or are they going to actively fight against it, being genre savvy as they are, and we're just gonna proceed through this in record time?
speaker-0: Yeah, I was about to say that the genre savviness part really does work with this too, because in almost every example that we talked about, the time loop is something is always framed as something to be solved. Right? I want to get out of the loop. I need to get out of the loop. If anyone listening can help me get out of the loop, please.
speaker-1: Go find the crystal in the parking lot.
speaker-0: It disappeared! It vanished I can't reverse engineer a fucking crystal. It went off to the fucking ether.
speaker-1: It's somewhere in the American Southwest.
speaker-0: ⁓ god damn it. Alright. Fine. Fine, fine, fine.
speaker-1: You need to go to Moab, Arya.
speaker-0: ⁓ fuck. I can make it if I did that. Right. Thank you, Spirit Guide. Anyway
speaker-1: Alright. Ha ha ha.
speaker-0: No, it doesn't spawn unless I talk to you.
speaker-1: Right. This is this is your friendly dungeon master up in the sky. You need to go to Moab.
speaker-0: See ⁓ yeah, until you said those words it did not materialize. ⁓ I tried to trust me, I've tried.
speaker-1: I I've also been watching the D cartoon from the eighties, ⁓ nineties, and I need to talk about some of the episodes.
speaker-0: ⁓ that'll be fun.
speaker-1: ⁓ god. So here's what I'm gonna say, right? Because we were in a sci-fi game, this is Starfinder, I set a few rules for myself ahead of time. And I think this is probably one of the most important things that you as a game master can do is I said, first of all, if my players play into it, great. Gonna allow them to. End of story. If my players don't play into it, I'm gonna amp up the difficulty significantly. So this is no longer going to be a kind of solvable situation. Now I'm going to just Kobayashimaru this shit, right? 'Cause if they all band together, this will be over in thirty minutes. And that's not as fun, honestly.
speaker-0: I what I like to do to like add a sense of tension and urgency without like completely destroying the premise is you come back like just a few minutes after when you started. Right? Like Yeah, your window to change whatever is happening, like just gradually closes and closes. So you
speaker-1: ⁓ that's interesting.
speaker-0: Y so you end up with the big climactic thing where you put all the pieces together on the last possible loop 'cause if you don't do it now, you won't have enough time.
speaker-1: Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean
speaker-0: I'm already playing with time, so yeah.
speaker-1: I created some stakes, but they were pretty low level, I'll be totally straight. ⁓ but we'll get into that later. My other rule was the grand forces, the reality altering forces that they know of would not help unless Tonko, the main character in this, accomplished some sort of like standard time loopy thing. Which I knew the player wouldn't want to do because he's a bit of a misanthrope. So When they called up the like kind of like Q from Star Trek equivalent character Ashido and asked him to fix it, he said, Have you learned to play the violin yet? No. Have you written a novel yet? No. Then I can't fix this for you yet. And disappeared. Now, could the character like could the player have just then said, Okay, I'm gonna spend a thousand days writing a novel and learning to play the violin? I probably would have said yes, right? And we would have moved on. But I knew my player enough to know that's not gonna work. If your player is that type to just say, okay, I'm gonna spend a thousand days doing those things that Ashido wanted me to do, and then we're gonna ask him to fix it for us, I would have had Ashido's requests be like either A, he would have pulled the Knights of Knee and gone, Nope, we're I'm no longer Ashido, I'm now this other thing, and I want you to do this other thing, right? Like basically setting forth endless quests. Or I would have given the original task B something like, Have you grown personally as a person? ⁓ and if the answer was no, you know, that sort of thing. So I wanted to kind of like
speaker-0: I would I would fight a I would fight an army of dudes. I would move mountains for you bro brick by brick brick by brick butt and ⁓ stone by stone. But if you ask me to like grow and change as a person, it's like you asked me to like kill God. What are you d what are you talking about, man?
speaker-1: Exactly. Yeah. So like you gotta know your players a little bit.
speaker-0: My personal quest is to go to bed on time. ⁓ that's a harder quest. ⁓
speaker-1: I was literally just watching a YouTube video about a guy who had his wife record audio messages for him on his computer that yell at him as he gets closer and closer to bedtime. Okay, so don't let the grand forces of your world don't right, don't let them just call a god and God fix it for you. That doesn't work. You know, the gods respect the rules of time loops, right? And the rules of time loops are you either have to grow as a character or you have to solve the problem.
speaker-0: That's funny.
speaker-1: End of story. Boom. Done. You know.
speaker-0: ⁓ side hot take on there. If your characters are regularly talking to the gods, DM, like try to like either like make it really contrived or write around that. Like D especially has so many gods that they're like that they might as well have no gods, which is always funny to me.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, don't basically don't give them an exit switch, right? Unless the players hate it, which is obviously different, right? If your players aren't having fun with this, that's a different problem. Have fun with your friends. What's rule number fucking one, right? But outside of that, don't just give them a ripcord. That's too easy. And it's just not gonna feel satisfying, right? The satisfaction of a time loop is the tedium, and then Finally getting it, whatever that means, right? But that doesn't mean don't make the tedium tedious, right? Tedious is not fun. TDM can be. So, with all that in mind, right, we've got our rules. We allow our players to play into it. If they don't play into it, we're gonna make it harder. And we're not gonna let them have a just ripcord that they know exists, which they did almost immediately reach for. So, how did this play out, you ask? First things first, I asked Tonko, what's a normal day for you? Right. You're on this 49 day trip. You have literally nothing but 49 days, and you and the crew of this like 200 manned starship, right? What do you do on a normal Monday? ⁓ and I actually went around the table and asked like people this so that he didn't know that this was coming. You know, so kind of asked everybody like, what's your normal Monday? What's your normal Monday? What's your normal Monday? What this also allowed was for me to know ahead of time what is the normal thing that each of your characters would be doing on the given Monday that's about to be the time, right? So sneaky, right? Be sneaky about this sort of stuff. Yep. Then we started that day. Except he didn't get his pancakes. He ordered pancakes, but he got hash browns. And that was breakfast yesterday. Wait a minute. This isn't right. Immediately clicked into it. Right? Genre savvy. Okay. I told him literally this was the breakfast you ordered yesterday. And for about half a second he went, is the food manufacturer bad? ⁓ you check it and everything's to be seems to be working. Well, this is a time loop. All right, let's figure this out.
speaker-0: I yeah, just not like, ⁓ yeah, no, there's a programming error or something. Like it wo i it would be funny if they were having something on the fritz, like to just suspend the disbelief. But I understand how you wanted to shy away from that. Please continue.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah, because if that had gone like if I'd wasted wasted, you get the idea, right? If I'd played for twenty, thirty minutes of him trying to figure out what's wrong with the food manufacturer, I don't know that that would be as fun as the story that I would get out of it. The story that I get out of it would be hilarious. But I don't think it would be fun in the moment or it would be I don't know that it would be fun afterward when you realized what just happened, you know? ⁓ In a movie, this would be great. That would be wonderful. But this isn't a movie, right? This is a this is a game that you're playing live with people. Right. So breakfast from the day before is already made. he got outside, he he like ran outside and a ⁓ logistics officer that he knew ⁓ walked by and gave him like a different hello than he normally does. But he remembered vaguely that actually that was the hello that he gave him yesterday, right? Again, further reinforcing, okay, yeah, this is a time loop. We gotta figure out what's going on here, right? ⁓ but also giving him more reasons that today was kind of unique. And thereby kind of giving him ammunition for the later convincing people this is real thing, you know? Right. ⁓ he immediately went to one of his crew members, one of his fellow players, and was like, hey. I think I'm in a time loop. and the other player was the other character, which I love, ⁓ Aspen is wonderful, immediately played into it and was like, That's crazy. What are you talking about? You know, it's Sunday, what are you doing? and, you know, it kind of went from there, right? So now we're getting into kind of the like meat and potatoes of a time loop episode, right? You've got to talk to the other people at the table. And again, if they're good, if they're really good, they'll play into it, right? And they will not necessarily engage immediately with the idea. but they're they were also smart enough. God, I love I I fucking love this group. I just want to say that straight out. ⁓ so Aspen or Orion is the character, ⁓ the android, you know, kind of was like, Okay, ⁓ if you think that's true, what day is this? And he's like, It's day one. And he's like, okay, how do you know it's a time loop then? Why you know, what if time just reset to today and ⁓ you know, all that kind of happened. And that continued on for a little bit until a different player came over on comms and was like, I fucking lost it. and he came up with this ⁓ quee, our our darling friend, playing Scrockpo, the engineer slash pilot, ⁓ lost his stealth drone is what he made up. ⁓
speaker-0: I mean, yeah, that's the the I working as intended.
speaker-1: Right, exactly. Yes. And this character routinely goes through drones. ⁓ this character also routinely sends his drone out instead of himself on missions because he's a coward. And so he breaks probably one to two drones every other session. ⁓ and so he's building this brand new stealth drone. He's just upgraded it and he lost it. It's somewhere in his in his quarters, but it's on like super stealth and he can't fucking find it. So Orion and Tonko go to fix that problem, right? Which provides another opportunity for him to do something later on extraordinarily well, and for him to kind of like figure it out from there, right? And so so he went to f you know he went to find the drone, and they figured out a way to to figure it out to to get there. ⁓ and then, you know, at that point he said, okay, what time is it? I said, it's, you know. That probably took like this many hours. ⁓ it's probably like mid-afternoon. He's like, All right, what did I do yesterday at this point? And I was like, Well, knowing you and how you discussed your normal day, you probably went to the bar. And he's like, All right, I'm going to the bar. And so he went to the bar and he had a drink, and he fell asleep and woke up the next day. Except the same day, right? Again. And so here's Where I kind of introduced the RPG of it all and made it a little bit more interesting, right? Because I could have just then, you know, kind of contrived and, you know, he'd go through the day and kind of figure out, like, you know, however he wants to process through it, you know? Yeah. I asked him to make an intelligence check. Because during that day, he'd written down details, little things that he'd noticed, you know, that he would be able to tell people to convince them that it was a time loop, because he was convinced he was going on a time loop episode. Smart savvy player, right? And the intelligence check was how many of those he didn't have to erase. ⁓
speaker-0: That's mean. I like that.
speaker-1: And this was not an interribly intelligent character. And so he had to release all but one of them. And over the next few days, right, this process for about four or five days. And, you know, we repeated back through it. And he slowly started to remember more and more details as he's woking up in the morning. Waking up in the morning. and finally figured out there is this thing inside my body. There are these creatures called the Lidoriki that we've interacted with. They are from like a different dimension. They're from a different like level of energy of the galaxy. They're able to manipulate reality and time and stuff like that.
speaker-0: Yeah, they're ⁓ they're like seventh dimensional beings. Their eggs look just like crystals, they lay them in parking lots. Yeah. Yeah I'm familiar.
speaker-1: It's the Mr. Mixy Spiddleck type characters, except not quite so impy, right? That's more Oshido and
speaker-0: Yeah, and let me tell you, those eggs do not respond well to electricity. So
speaker-1: Yeah. These guys are just kind of little shits more than anything. ⁓ they actually kind of hate them. They're amoral. ⁓ they've been caused for a number of different problems in this campaign that I actually want to talk about a different one of them where I made an Android character reboot ⁓ from like base code. ⁓ and that was a really interesting way to kind of fuck with them for a few sessions. ⁓ But yeah, so like they figured out, ⁓ there's this Lidorky inside of you, and he's making this time loop happen. ⁓ and also every day you finish by going to the bar and drinking another instance of him. and so there's slowly like there's more and more and more of them inside of you. Now, luckily they're microscopic. ⁓ they can technically grow in size, but yeah, so like there's, you know, you you could repeat this billions of times before it's like a problem. Right. ⁓ and during this whole time I'm kind of like contemplating through I'd already thought of, okay, right, it's because there's these Lidoriki in them. ⁓ they know that there's some Lidoriki on the ship. They know that some of them escaped when there was a different crisis with some water, and they know that they fucking hate these guys. Right. So it's it's a perfect little kind of like work through. But I also know that the Lidoroki are amoral. They just don't give a shit, right? If they want to do something, they're going to do it because it advances their cause, which is studying this third-dimensional space ⁓ that makes very little sense to them. And so now we need to spend another few days figuring out how to actually solve this problem, right? ⁓ eventually coming to their personal solution, which I didn't have. I didn't come into this with a solution. I just said, hey, there's these Lodoriki inside of them. The Lidorky are amoral. ⁓ they want to do this for I don't know reason. I'll figure that out in a moment, because I trusted myself to be able to do that. Right. And they're going to struggle with that and eventually come to some sort of solution. And the solution, the the the the reason that I came up with for this plot was the Lidorky wanted to test. If beings from this universe were able to repeat the same day over and over and over again and learn from it, could they become a super soldier? Luckily, I knew my characters, and they would say, fuck you to that, just because Lidorky was involved.
speaker-0: It's just like, yeah, I'm giving you infinite trading potential. All you have to do is like take a shot and nope. Yep.
speaker-1: Nope, because I I was perfectly willing. In that moment, I basically gave my players the opportunity to eternally fuck with me and say, okay, I'm gonna train for 2,000 days. What level do I get up to? Right? Mm-hmm. And I think I probably would have given them quite a few levels, right? In a game that is as level qualifying as Starfinder, I think I probably would have given him like five or six, maybe more even, you know? And if he'd said, nope, I'm going till I hit level 20, I might have given it to him. But I knew my players. And this is really the lesson for this. If you're gonna do this, you have to know your players and you have to know to what power gaming level will they go. Cause I think a time loop is rife for abuse in a power gaming perspective, right? in the future they go, ⁓ you know, ⁓ I know how to drive a Zamboni. I did that in my time loop. Right. And you kinda can't, you know, refute that.
speaker-0: Yeah, but I I do think that there's like so I think that what that does is that gives you different level levers to explore. ⁓ I do also agree that like yeah, it's like having the backstory of Doom that's three hundred pages long that contains literally everything, right? Like, ⁓ yeah, it's
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. ⁓ mast Mr. Jenkins.
speaker-0: Old Man Henderson. Anyway.
speaker-1: Man Henderson. Why do think it's Jenkins? Anywho.
speaker-0: ⁓ but yeah, like that but that idea of like you have to trust your players, I would say is even secondary to you have to be willing to accept the consequences of what your players choose.
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
speaker-0: But that said, if you are a particularly prone to this group, maybe don't put this particular option in front of them in as night and day terms. So
speaker-1: Right, right. Yeah, I mean literally in this case I told him. I told him straight out this is what the Lodoriki wants to do. The Lodoriki said to him, Isn't this wonderful? I've given you ultimate power. And the character said, Fuck you, get out of me because I knew this group and they would trust nothing the Lodoriki said, even if it was completely true.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that the other part of that, right, is that like ⁓ so here's what here's what I would actually consider if they did take the devil's bargain there, right? Like you trained for like, I don't know, fifteen years, right? How did you not go crazy with that? Like how did you get so into a thing where that you that you didn't do anything else, right? Like ⁓ what is your What is this new change psychology that you have? You're also, like, probably aging normally in the loop or something similar to that. You're playing with time. Play with it further like that. Like, yeah, there could be like accelerated aging effects or other weirdness when you get out of the loop and stuff like that.
speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah. And and there's a world in which I monkeys paw it, you know? because I I do think there's a world in which you do that.
speaker-0: I also just I'm thinking of these tropes where, you know, a person gets thrown into some kind of portal and then comes back and three years have passed for them and they're all grizzled and badass now. Like
speaker-1: Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, no, absolutely right. In the future everyone is jacked, as ⁓ Kim Possible ⁓ told us.
speaker-0: Excellent. I was not a Disney XD kid. And Clifford did not have a ⁓ episode where he got jacked. So
speaker-1: ⁓ it's actually a movie. It was they find this monkey that can move people through time and the villains use it to conquer the world. ⁓ but in the future where that has occurred, everyone is jacked. and there's a whole line about why is in the future, why is everyone jacked? ⁓ because it it was wonderful. God, that was a great show. In any case, man, I'm all over the place today.
speaker-0: Yeah. It's the most frustrating part of this loop. Yes. And I have a drive to Boab after this. Anyway. Keep it going.
speaker-1: You're not gonna arrive there today. You're gonna have to do it tomorrow. It has to be done in your arm.
speaker-0: It has to be today, funky.
speaker-1: I I think to there's this there's this quote. ⁓ there was a there was a mu ⁓ a musician who played with John Coltrane. and ⁓ if you know John Coltrane, he is a jazz musician. He's incredibly intense and he is one of a series of incredibly talented ⁓ improv jazz performers. And there was some musician with him who said the line, you like he was asked like, how can you play with someone so intense like John Coltrane, gone John Coltrane? And he said, You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker. And when he was asked that in the interview, like along with a whole bunch of the band, everybody kind of like laughed for a second. And he just stared at the interviewer like, no, this isn't a joke. I'm dead fucking serious. You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker, right? And if this performance goes down in flames, that's just what it is. But we are doing it together. And I think in many essences, that's what a time loop is in an RPG setting. Is you trusting your players with the fucking keys to the kingdom and saying, go for it. What are you gonna do with this? Are you gonna live out the genre? Are you going to engage with this? Are you just gonna take it and go, cool, I'm old man Henderson, baby? I know everything, right? Or how are you going to play this? Because I just handed you the the entire scene and said, have at it. Have fun. This is your show now. And that's kind of what you have to do at a certain That's what improv is, and that's in a lot of ways what this medium is, is you and a whole bunch of people around a table all willing to die for a motherfucker.
speaker-0: That's why it's the spotlight episode. Yeah. I we are by default following your lead, whether you want us to or not.
speaker-1: Ha So yeah, all that to say, I think this is a really intriguing way of running some sort of you know character exploration thing. I think this is a really fun way of giving your your player singular, right, a big moment to have, you know, how he chooses to engage with this. ⁓ they, he, they, whatever. And Also give your other players just kind of a fun time, right? Like one of the characters just decided to not engage at all. ⁓ our our friend Mark, who plays Zap, as in literally Zap Branagan from Futurama, who is the captain, ⁓ could not be arsed to wake up because it wasn't like noon yet. and just kind of like went whenever they would call at the door. He just did nothing. He was just entertained. The entire the entire session for like four epis four
speaker-0: Which was ⁓ completely in character.
speaker-1: Yes, absolutely, right? Because everybody had been playing very in character, right? Like Tonko is pretty no nonsense, but also just wants to have a drink at the bar after having like gotten like shit faced, blowing a whole bunch of, you know, things to hell and back. you know, Scrockpo breaks things on the regular and has like misadventures. ⁓ Orion just wants to solve mysteries, and Zap frankly is in this for the awards that he's not going to get. You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker. Exactly. You gotta just give it to ⁓ and see what happens.
speaker-0: And I mean like I guess that's really the hottest take of all. Just like fucking go for it. Like
speaker-1: Fucking go for it, man! What's the worst that happens?
speaker-0: It it sucks and then you break ⁓ out of the loop early. Like yeah, it's fine.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, that was a mistake, guys. Sorry. I only kinda planned it, you know. I I thought it'd be a fun little distraction, but anyway
speaker-0: Let's go back. Second time loop.
speaker-1: I I have actually considered doing a series of these now in this game whenever they do like a long travel time. Everybody gets a time loop. You get a time loop, you get a time
speaker-0: That would be funny. ⁓
speaker-1: we're Legends of the Tomorrowing this shit. There's one time loop every season, at minimum.
speaker-0: You know, something I also find really interesting about these time loop episodes is how it can like really beat down a character as the repetition happens, right? So say like they did take that deal and they're just sitting there and they're stuck in that loop over and over and over again, right? And then like you've spent more time in the loop than outside of it. You forgot the names of your family, friends and the dog you left back on earth. Like yeah, there's there's something about this that like really does call to me from like that character acting perspective.
speaker-1: I think that's absolutely the monkey's paw to do a lot of the time, right? If somebody decides to fuck with this, is like, okay, what do you lose, right? What what you're you're obviously gaining something here, right? But what do you lose as a result of that? You know? ⁓ because I I think that there should be a loss associated with, yeah, I just spent three, four, forty years. Living the same day, you know, and learning from it, but inevitably still living the same day.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that ⁓ like unless you have a specific species or culture or something that like deals with time a lot, you're not adapted to that. You're not adapted to the repetition of being in the exact same circumstances. What do you do to make something new? Where is the novelty? Like, what do you do after you've finish your backlog of movies and video games and TV shows and everything, right? What do you do after after all of that? Like what's left?
speaker-1: You have watched all of YouTube. What do you do?
speaker-0: Yeah, but like i hypothetically, right? With infinite time, unlimited time, you can finish the internet. Right? And then it's kind of like, Okay, cool. I did that. I can't find anything else new about the situation.
speaker-1: Right? Yeah, now what? Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. And that's also goes into that like character crucible thing I was talking about, where some of the fun of that is seeing this character radically change from where their starting point was, and the other characters are having to react to this new focused, hardened version of this character who's acting completely rationally from their perspective in the time loop. But absolutely bonkers from somebody who they saw yesterday.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And yesterday was just having some eggs.
speaker-0: Right, exactly. And then all of a sudden they're like ⁓ yeah, they're they're like so I've been really into like skillian poetry recently. Like I've I've been I've been watching some experimental black box theater
speaker-1: Okay. Hell yeah.
speaker-0: Nothing else is new to me now. I don't know what to do. I've I've pa I've maxed out learning the sword. So yeah, what's in the left? ⁓ that's but yeah, I feel like that's also a really underappreciated facet of this exploration that can take place provided your characters and your players are willing to play in that space and Take up that mantle, which is honestly expecting quite a lot from a RPG group. But if you have ⁓ some thespians in your group, they're gonna dig into this and not let go.
speaker-1: Yep, that's exactly what they did. It was perfect. Really, really, really, really perfect.
speaker-0: Excellent. Okay. Well were there any other hot takes we needed to dish out?
speaker-1: Arya, I think for the one thousand ninety fifth time, it's time for outro music.
speaker-0: ⁓ god, I ⁓ true music, sure. look, I'm sorry, I gotta cut the short. I gotta drive. There's a there's a crystal at the dumpster at the back of the pasta jays in Boab. I have to haul ass to get there.
speaker-1: Thank you so much for listening to Tabletop Hot Takes. Please tune in in two weeks for our next episode.
speaker-0: And yeah, if you've really, really liked what you heard and feel the need to support us, we deeply appreciate it. Just go to tabletop dash hot dash takes ⁓ and you can find us on patreon dot com there.
speaker-1: We just want to take a moment here to thank the patrons that we do have, who aren't not many, but we can't say enough how much these people have taken a chance on us, and we can't thank them enough for that trust.
speaker-0: ⁓ absolutely. So Stanley Gore, thank you.
speaker-1: Jake Burden, thank you.
speaker-0: Pioch D Belile Thank you.
speaker-1: But now, time for some bloopers.
speaker-0: Okay, 1483rd time has to be the charm. Good day and welcome to Tabletop Hot Takes. In this show we will examine all aspects of tabletop role-playing games through our particular and peculiar lenses, thoughts, feelings, and of course hot takes. My name is Professor Arya, and I am joined for the last thirty years by
speaker-1: Professor Funky.
speaker-0: As mentioned, we have been playing RPGs for over thirty years, which is about how long I've been here in this room, and have thought have a lot of heavily informed opinions about that. With all of that beside us, let's get into this week's topic.
speaker-1: Man, this is a really shitty day to have a time loop. It's Monday.
