#220 – Beyond the Supernatural Chargen Session

Breakfast puppies?

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Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Today we have Stephen Dawes, and he's going to be sitting here with us as we create characters for a Let's Play Beyond the Supernatural. So with that, I am going to start and I'm going to play, I think, a Firewalker and see how that works.

Pyro, pyro, pyro.

Exactly, exactly. What about you, Jacob?

I'm gonna be playing either a genius slash— I'm going to be playing a genius slash natural.

NPC?

I think I'm gonna go with a healer.

All right, so we'll have a healer, a pyro, and a genius natural. Okay, cool.

Sounds like 3 characters just waiting to get killed to me.

Well, it is beautiful.

Did I say that out loud?

Yes, you did say that out loud. I'm not—

I mean, no, good luck. You guys are gonna do great.

I'm gonna say I've seen worse BTS PCC combinations. I mean, anything with a negapsychic, a, uh, one of the deep paranormalists who is a debunker, and then any hardcore psychic is just generally in for a bad ride.

Here we go. So pretending that you don't know squat about any of BTS, which for, at least for Nathaniel, that sounds correct. Yeah, you're gonna treat the Palladium process the same way you do with their, with their other books. It's the standard 3d6 rolling situation for your attributes. That said, I will, if you happen to roll, say, like a 7 or lower, if you really want to keep it at, say, like an 8, you know, I'll let you do it. Otherwise, it's whatever your numbers are, they stand.

Are you one of the players that likes to go straight down the line? You don't get to swap them around. You start at the top with IQ, go one for one all the way down to speed, or do you let people try to—

I'm, I'm good with either one, uh, but going from top to bottom to me almost sounds like it would work better for the podcast so people can follow a little easier. But I, I will leave that to your discretion.

I know that's one of those, uh, running conversations that we have here at the podcast is how hardcore you are. If you have to go straight down the line, or can you roll 8 and then assign? So—

No, honestly, I— yeah, I'll, you know, I want you to enjoy the, you know, your, your characters. And if— yeah, if you're trying— if you— if your whole intention, like in the case of if you're gonna play like a natural athlete and you completely whiff it with like a 5 for the— for your, uh, for your PS, I mean, yeah, then what's the point? So now, I mean, if, if you really want to, you know, kind of make sure you get stuff where you want them to go, I'm okay with that. Because it doesn't matter what you do, I'll kill you all anyway. I mean, uh, no, you're all gonna do great, I promise.

Okay, let's see here. Start rolling.

Starting off with an IQ of 9, I'm doing great. Well, I know which line of the natural genius, natural athlete I'm going.

I was gonna say, maybe the athlete's in your future. I think your decision was just made for you. I'm not hearing a lot of cheering. Sounds like the rolls are probably not so great.

Mine's very interesting.

Well, I managed, you know, I'm going to move some things around here, but I did manage to salvage a natural athlete out of this with a PS of 15 before bonuses and a PP of 16. Everything else is middle range. Only one 9 though, thank God.

But you know that considering some of the rolls I've made, yeah, just a 9. That's pretty good.

I've got a very interesting array here that I'm going to stick with.

I ended up with not horrible, a couple outstanding, which was surprising. An IQ of 14, which is not bad.

ME of—

for playing a psychic, I only have an ME of 12, an MA of 9. So I'm not all that personable. Physical strength 13. I ended up getting a 22 PP, which I did not expect. I never expect this high ones. 14 PE, 12 physical beauty, and a 19 speed actually. So that's, that's a solid set actually. I was like kind of surprised.

That's not too shabby.

Here, here, this one. IQ 13, mental endurance 23.

Oh, good for a psychic healer.

Very good. Mental affinity.

8.

Physical strength, 7. Physical prowess, 12. Physical endurance, 11. Physical beauty, 5. Speed, 13.

Apparently you're— did you steal my ability to roll today or something?

So that was a mental affinity of 8, I heard?

Indeed.

I imagine your bedside manner is gonna be, uh, just splendid.

I am Al Wisniewski, CPA.

So it sounds like everyone's got their stats, which means— I believe that means you can start going to your individual, uh, uh, you know, pages with your PCCs. And I don't know if we can jump around or I can kind of work with you guys one at a time. It's, it's however you want to do this, because if we are to go one at a time, the first one, uh, going chronologically in the book, the first one would be the Firewalker.

Ooh, Buckley.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, looking here, we got some powers. Burning Touch, Commune with Fire, Fire Awareness or Sense Fire, Fire Knowledge. Okay.

All right.

So attributes, standard 3d6, any alignment. I get a d4 to PS and PB. That's interesting.

I ended up getting a d4 to MA, which increased it from an 8. To a 9. Hey, but, but I rolled a 4 for my PE, so that went up by a decent amount. I'm not even supposed to be here today.

So we have the same mental affinity, which both 9s are like, we're, we're just, why are they here? They don't know. And just don't, don't talk to them. Don't just leave them alone.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I have the highest mental affinity in the party with my goddamn 11.

Oh yeah, yeah, multiple points higher. I got some, uh, different psychic saves, um, some limitations here. Okay, uh, and there's my standard PPE, and then ISP 2d4 2 per level.

Yeah, sidebar on the base ISP situation, um, And I'll get back to Nathaniel specifically on his, but for the base ISP, if you roll a 1 on either one of those, reroll it. I'm not going to make you guys start with no PPE to start.

Other than those of us who start with no—

Well, yeah, but being as the athlete has no base ISP, you have nothing to worry about because you're one of those guys. You're a normie.

Yeah, I'm technically a normie. Technically.

Just a really, really physically capable normie.

Yep.

And also, um, here, here's kind of a GM, uh, you know, and, and, and being as you were asking, uh, one of the things that I do offer that some GMs are cool with, some are not, being as when you're just especially like if you're new to the game or just getting out the gate and you're not entirely sure what all you want your starting psychic abilities to be, I will let you keep empty slots during your first level. And that way, as you come across the situation, you know, kind of help you realize, oh, okay, I see value of this particular psychic ability, or maybe you didn't before. And then I'll kind of let you add it in then. But by 2nd level, I kind of expect you to have all your slots filled out. So yeah, basically this first one, you can kind of fill them in as you need them.

Okay, cool.

If you have some people, they know what they want exactly, they're ready out the gate. But I will give you that flexibility to kind of develop as you go because sometimes You don't know what you want to do.

Oh yeah, I'm coming straight out of the gate on this one.

So yeah, the, uh, Communing with Fire, Burning Touch, Fire Awareness, Sensing Fire, you know, Fire Knowledge. Basically you're all about the fire, which makes sense, you are a fire walker. Any, uh, any particular— before I move on to the next character, are there any particular fire abilities you know right out the gate you're just dying to get?

Not yet. I'll take a look at them. Uh, I got— I actually maxed out my ISP, which is kind of cool.

Nice!

But yeah, um, but it's interesting. Again, in Beyond the Supernatural, you only start with 2d4 plus 2 per level. So I actually maxed it out. So I rolled my, my 2 4s, and so per level, so 2, I think that's 10. But if you look at a lot of the powers, you're not gonna do a lot with only 10. In normal mundane life. But there's this nice, you know, indicator times 2, 4, 6, and 10 depending on the threat, depending on the supernatural experience. Those ISP points just jump through the roof real quickly. And so it, it's, it's just one of those interesting mechanics. You look at it like, oh, I can't do much. It's like, well, you can do a lot more than you think you can, but only when danger's around. So what, what's going on with the other characters?

All right. So I will let you figure out what you're doing for, or pick out the stuff you're going to. So up next we have the genius or natural, or what it sounds like I was hearing is you, you've pretty much been picked for you that you are the natural athlete. Am I, am I hearing that right?

You are correct. I'm going with a natural athlete. Part of the natural athlete's abilities is they get stat bonuses of 1d6 each to physical strength, physical beauty, and speed. So a helpful +4 to my physical strength, taking it to 19. My physical beauty went from 13 to 18 because I got a 6, and my speed is a respectable 18.

Hey, that's not too shabby.

No, I got to do the weird decide how to spend my PPE to buy my abilities. And for the natural athlete and genius, that gets a little complicated because you almost have to figure out your skills before you do it. Is a lot, especially for the genius, a little less so for the natural athlete. Many of the abilities you can buy with your initial PPE are bonuses to skills, with the natural athlete also being able to buy bonuses to their stats, hit points, and SDC, and to actually their saves, which is incredibly helpful.

So yeah, I, um, again, yeah, yeah, I will leave this to your discretion that if you kind of want to put a pin in that until you figured out what your, what your occupation is and get some skills figured out and come back to it, it does make sense to do it that way.

Being an experienced BTS player, uh, and having had players who chose this class at my games before, uh, I knew enough to roll my occupation already and let that dictate.

So as you're ahead of us, where's the occupation on the— where's the table?

Uh, the table for occupations is roughly around 179.

Uh, yeah, give me just a second here.

And—

Oh, there it is. 176, I think.

Yeah, uh, 175 in the book. I think it's 176 on a PDF, you know, because they're usually like— there's— they're usually about a page number off. Um, yeah, you can, you can either randomly roll or, you know, pick something that seems fitting. Like, you know, if Yeah, the psychic healer, you could roll up and get something weird like, you know, skeptic debunker. Yeah, that'd be a weird thing for a healer, but if you're up for a challenge, otherwise, you know, you can pick something that you think will work to your strengths.

I mean, you literally, I believe there is an option for a CPA if you really are set on doing that.

Because sometimes it is just fun to see what the dice are telling you you're going to be, but you know, sometimes it works great, sometimes not.

Okay, I'm picking my profession. I know exactly which I'm going for. This character is coming together in my head. Oh, this is going to be great. This might be the most hated pre-gen ever.

So while you are looking at that, I feel like, uh, let's see, Nathaniel, looks like you are up next.

I'm mostly done except for skills. Not feeling any of these occupations. I'll just roll it.

Yeah, I just rolled it. Entertainer. Oh, that works well for a firewalker. I could, I could be a, you know, basically a fire dancer, a poi dancer.

Yeah.

You know, something like that. That works.

Yeah. Fire dancer, street magician. Yeah. You got options. You could be like a professional firework technician. I mean, there's all sorts of weird stuff you can do with that. But yeah, I was just kind of reminding my, reminding myself as I go here with the psychic healer. So yeah, you have your natural Resistance to magic illnesses and curses. You got the Miraculous Healing Trance, which actually does a lot more than most people realize once you read what it can do. And so those are the only 2 that you start with, but there's also quite a few different healing selections. And I am going to leave this to your discretion, uh, on this one, Nathaniel, being as you are a newbie to all this and I kind of want to help you out the gate. Healer, uh, healer stuff can be kind of on the expensive side. So on your choice, I am willing to let you either roll your base ISP, or I will let you go ahead and max it out, if only so that when you're playing today, you're actually able to do, you know, well, some healing stuff, as it were. I'm gonna leave that your decision.

Thank you.

And if you— and, and if you do, or if you're looking for, um, if you're looking for suggestions, being as you're again new to the game, uh, there are 3 particular healing abilities that I would encourage. And then the rest of you can kind of pick as you will. Or if you just want to wing it, I'm here for you. So I will let you go as you will.

The powers that I chose were Healing Touch, Mind Block, Dead in Pain, Stop Bleeding on Self, and Bio-Regeneration.

All right. Looks like you've got a nice eclectic roundabout range of stuff to start. So it sounds like we are at the point where we're picking out our psychic abilities. Sounds like some of you are working on your occupational skills. Any questions for me as you're all, you know, to kind of fill some of the dead space here? Any questions as you're all going?

What's your favorite PCC or PPC?

You know what? I have a particular fondness for the Diviner myself. I love playing a Diviner and I also kind of love being the GM of one because there are some character classes that work really well as kind of being like GM tools, for lack of a better term. And the diviners are great for that. And probably because that also is— I'm a pretty wordy, vivid imagination dude. And, you know, the things in my head are generally far grander than I can really convey to most player characters, except for sometimes through like a psychic sensitive or a diviner. Otherwise, I kind of have to hold my tongue and let you all figure it out for yourselves. So when I can, I love playing them and I love GMing them. GMing one or being the GM of a Diviner player, I guess. And maybe I'm saying that wrong, but they all have their charms. I'm not saying there's, there's, there's one, you know, there's, there's any real clunkers out there. They're all, they're all great classes, but I do have, I have a particular love to the Diviner.

Is it okay with you if I basically just reskin this as a tax accountant? I would with the computer programmer. It seems roughly on the same level of Uh, skill building.

I'm okay with that. So what I'm hearing is you're not gonna be like a battle medic or anything. You're, uh, you're, you're, uh, here, you're gonna be a tax accountant who, uh, who does psychic healing work on the side kind of thing.

Oh, I'm only here because they forced me to be here. I'm like really good at doing this one thing that I really wish that I didn't know how to do. But unfortunately, I keep ending up with this group of people who need me to do that thing that I don't really want to be doing. So here I am.

The reluctant combat medic?

Pretty much. Guys, I just want to go home!

Come on, Milo.

There's a marathon of Mama's Family on and I want to catch it.

This is—

you know what's great is having a fellow investigator who can do our taxes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, I, I would tolerate a lot of weirdness from a fellow investigator if he could Get me, uh, ooh, oh, oh, this gives me an idea on my background. Excellent.

So all this, so the shotgun and all the silver ammo I purchased, do you think I can get a, uh, like any kind of tax exemptions out of that? Can, can you help me out? Any, any deductibles on this, uh, silver cross I just bought? You know, what can you do for me? Just bought this big jug of holy water, you know, can I get that deducted at all?

Wouldn't that be kind of a reverse tithe?

I mean—

Okay, I got my skills down and I'm about to have my abilities figured out. Okay, I'm gonna grab— drag you kicking and screaming into one of the great debates around the natural athlete. So one of their powers is You should spend 10 PPE and you can get +20 on 3 occupational skills. You can also spend 5 PPE and get +5 on all physical skills. Do or do not those not stack? Reference is page 48.

You're asking, for example, like the 10 PPE one, or what was the one you're asking if it stacks?

Okay, so you have the 10 PPE that gives you +20 to 3 occupational skills.

Okay, because that one does have a note that that can only be purchased once on the bottom of it.

Correct. The next power is the 5 PP spend for +5 bonus to all physical skills.

Oh yeah, okay.

Do those 2 stack together if you take them both?

Oh, if you take them both, absolutely they do. You can only take them once apiece, but as far as I'm concerned, you take them both, they can stack.

I am glad to see you are a man of reason and sensibility.

I'd see no reason to buck that. I mean, it's Yeah. Well, the whole point of it is you're playing a pretty physically extraordinary guy, or I'm assuming guy. I mean, I don't know what you're playing yet, but anyway, the point being, yeah, if that's how you want to do it is that you want to stack up the bonuses, who am I to get in the way of that? Do you want to be so— you want to be physically impressive and your skills there, then, then, you know, go for it. I totally support.

Good, good, good, good. Like I said, it's good to see you're a man of reason. I've seen that argument happen. It's funny.

Which honestly, it's, you know, that feels like a kind of like a pick your battle situation. I don't really see what the argument to that is, but whatever. I'd almost like to have a conversation with whoever you had that argument. Now that's kind of bugging me. I want to sit that guy down over some coffee, you know, and like, like maybe like a really hardcore espresso so I can really just get all jittery up and then just, just start asking him, so You got a problem with the, the bonuses stacking up now, do ya?

I will say there is a weird trend I've noticed for people who played a lot of old-school, uh, pre-7th edition Call of Cthulhu who come over to BTS to just bounce off some of that ability stacking, but it's not universal by any stretch of the imagination. I myself played Call of Cthulhu before I came to BTS, and so it's I, I, I just don't see it.

Well, and I'm also of the mind of, you know, again, while I do, while I will let stacking and things like this happen, at the end of the day, in the grand scheme of things, BTS characters, no matter really what you try to stack up or get around, you've only, you're, you know, you're, you're still ordinary people for the most part. At the end of the day, you're all a bunch of squishy folks, even like really amongst the best of you. So it's like, it feels like you're kind of nitpicking for, for something that you're not really going to get a whole lot of payout. matter what. You know, we're not— this isn't Rifts. You know, we're not, we're not playing cyborgs and, and, you know, and dragon hatchlings and whatever else. You know, we're all, we're all average Joes with some psychic abilities, or some of us are a little more physically capable than others. But, you know, that, that, you know, the average demon is still generally still has the bigger advantage over any of us, you know, at the end of the day. And usually it requires the combined efforts of all the team working together to be able to take down said demon, because individually Yeah, odds aren't so great, even if you do stack together those percentage bonuses.

Okay, I got a character other than a little bit of math.

Excellent.

We'll wait until everybody is done and then we can round robin, introduce the characters, and go from there.

All right. You know, you got me thinking about it. Yeah, while everyone's polishing up their characters, you know what you got me thinking about? I do remember having the arguments with players back in the day. And this is, uh, Palladium's gotten a lot better about how their occupational skills work these days. But like back in the original old school versions, it was theoretically possible. I wouldn't say theoretically because they were doing it where, you know, they were pretty much every character was like bulking up every physical skill they could. You know what I'm talking about? Oh yeah.

I mean, it's kind of nice to be playing a class that actually is, that's your entire thing.

And so it was like back in the day, it was like basic math, speak English, physical, physical, physical, physical, like on down the list. And I was like, there are not enough hours in the day for you to do all this physical exercise you got to do. An interesting kind of a quick anecdote aside from that, several years ago, well, probably longer than that, one of the earlier rifters that came out, somebody that I wish I could remember his name because I'd tell him to take a bow right now because he It was a great write-up. He added on some extra notes for physical skills and he wrote a bit for basically diminishing returns. And it's a brilliant bit. And I wish, I wish I could off the top without digging through all of my books and such, I couldn't tell you what number it is off the top of my head, but it was one of the earlier rifters. And that got introduced and people got so mad about this diminishing return thing, which told me as the GM, I was probably doing it right. Because yeah, holy smokes, people were like maxing out, you know, their physical stats, you know, just, just left and right. And, you know, it's like, you know, we're— you understand we're ghost hunters, right?

You know, that made a— that made sense until the rise of, shall we call it, dudebro paranormal investigation. And there's a couple ones where it's like, I'm not gonna say the guy's a steroid freak, But, uh, I'm wondering what his TRT dosage is. Because I know what mine is and I'm not getting those results.

So yeah, we kind of had the, uh, the buffest bunch of ghost hunters around at one point, basically. But the, then the rules updated and changed and you really can't, you really can't run into that anymore. Kind of like you said, unless you're specifically playing like a Yeah, a class that that's really what they're about. You would expect the athlete to have, you know, to have a decent amount of physical skills. That's what they do.

One thing I do love about BTS, whether it's 1st edition or 2nd edition, is the fact that if you go with a random roll of occupation, it really gets the feel that what's happening to humanity is some weird random almost evolutionary response to the intrusion of the other worlds. And it's, you know, you— your psyche may answer the call, but, you know, it doesn't change the fact you work at McDonald's.

In one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer had that as a running theme in later seasons. Like, the mother had died and now Buffy has to figure out how to support the household while being a vampire slayer, right? So she worked at the— I can't remember the name of the, the, um, analog for like McDonald's, but she basically had to work a crappy burger flipping job to support and pay for all the bills. So it was like—

And she hated it, but yeah, it paid the bills.

The organization of this book, uh, could use some help.

One of the pages or sections of the House of BTS, and I'd have to look it up, and I kind of wish I'd looked it up before I asked or said this just now, but there is a— I do have a character creation advice, uh, section where it's kind of basically make characters the host way. I'm not gonna— yeah, I didn't think this was the right place to bring this up because there's kind of like a mixture of home house rules and things that I add into it as well, but it does have a really good setup. But you know, so when you're ready for this, you'll find it on this page, this page, this page. That's— I would kind of love to go in and streamline, uh, basically I said that the player's guide or something where, yeah, you can just kind of get all of it in the one area.

I'm looking at SDC and I forgot that this is one of the games. It's like, uh, all PCCs start out with a d10 plus 12 SDC. Some occupational, you know, get some more. What's interesting to me is like, I don't think I've seen any other of the Palladium games where it's a d10. +12, at least in this printing of the book. Hopefully that's the way it is. It's not a typo in the book, but—

I think maybe Dead Rain has that.

I—

but you might be right. I think that might be the only ones. Yeah, Dead Rain also does the d10 +12, but I— yeah, I think the rest of the Palladium lines, yeah, they're, they're all very different.

So I think I can, can do this. Oh, I need a name. Hold on.

The name thing is important.

Once upon a time, one of the things I really, for a while, hated about modern-day living was once upon a time when I needed a name, I would just go to the phone book. I'd kind of like flip open, I'd just randomly flip open and David is this, is his first name. And then I'd shut the book. Now I need a last name. When I'd open it again to a random, you know, David Smith, you know, I was like, oh, come on.

Well, coming from Minnesota, I used that method, but I had to Specifically rule out the Olsen section.

Yeah, I, uh, a buddy of mine who was a GM when I was growing up, he bought one day, he went into a bookstore and found a book and it wasn't very big and it was, it was like 10,000 baby names. And basically that became his random name generator. for the next 40 years. Like, it was like a $6 purchase and you could just flip it open in the back. It had a bunch of surnames. So you could basically come up with pretty much any name you ever wanted out of this book for, you know, good portion of the planet even, which was really hilarious. And it was, he was like, it was the best $6 he had ever invested in gaming supplies.

I use a website called behindthename.com. It has random name generators where you can filter all different types of origins and cultures. You can change genders, gender options. You can generate surnames. But the best thing is that every single name that it pops up, it could be like a first name, a middle name, a last name, or whatever. You can click on it and it'll take you to an entire page dedicated to just that name and tell you the history. of that name. And it's many thousands, many cultures, like anything from Polish to Nigerian to fantasy Norse to fairy speak to wrestler. Wrestler is one of them. Transformer. Transformer is one of the options. You want to come up with your Transformer wrestler name? You can do that.

I'll have to take a look at that page.

It's— it is actually a pretty amusing page. And yeah, like he was talking about, I decided one day I'm gonna look up what the Dawes thing— yeah, I, I just kind of basically looked up myself. And frankly, yeah, this website had a far more interesting version of me than I really am. It's, it's just one of those things.

Do you want to be Double Vendetta Star Crippler Whirl? Super Assassin Cliff Jumper McClane? Nosecone Cyclonus Inferno. I love this page.

God, I forgot how hard it is to figure out your SDC when you're a natural athlete.

Get your calculator out.

I have 21 hit points and 22 SDC. I didn't take any physical feats.

Yeah, that's about par. In fact, it was that low SDC hit point thing that I was able to officially lobby and advocate because Kevin had never really thought about it before. But one of the things I brought— I asked him about rule clarifications for Creature Feature. I was like, you know, I want to put it out there, especially in the case of BTS, that we are playing some really squishable guys. And one of the things you bring up about double damage that you've not ever actually gone into is, do you also double the damage of their physical strength bonus? And I brought up, it's like, well, you know, for example, Mr., uh, Mr. SDC 21, hit points 22, you know, 43, you know, he's got 43 points total. If a, uh, you know, if a standard monster with supernatural strength, uh, you know, gets a good strike at him and gets a natural 20, he could effectively, you know, like just, just butcher this guy in one swipe. And, you know, Kevin's kind of like, you know, you make your point quite vividly. And, and that's when we officially made the ruling in Creature Feature that, uh, you know, you do not double your, uh, your, your damage bonus. You just double up the dice for your hits. So I, I, I lobbied hard for that and I won. Which coincidentally I also lobbied hard. Uh, I don't even think I told the healer this, and I probably should have, but it's probably too late for you now. Uh, I did lobby, uh, for the healer to be able to have access to, uh, uh, mind bolts. And after I presented the case to Kevin, he agreed. And that note's in, uh, is in Creature Feature as well. Just saying, if you, if you still had open slots and wanted to take a mind bolt or something, you still can. Just throwing it out there.

Thank you. I'm good though.

All right. Like I said, you just, I'm just throwing you stuff. You, you know, you let stick with, you know, to the wall, whatever you want.

Okay.

So how are we for characters? Are we pretty much done?

I'm done.

I'm ready to rock.

All right.

I'll go ahead and introduce mine first. My character's name is Colette Avard. She was a rookie firefighter. In her first— as a newbie firefighter, she got caught in a house fire. So she ended up in the ER with massive burns, which kind of manifested her firewalker ability. Unfortunately, she has burns over like 50% of her body, and she was put on disability because they never thought she would recover. And she became a street performer. With fire. And so she actually, because of her ISP, she actually uses some of her psychic powers on the street to make it look like she's playing with fire because she has eat fire and she can do some fire bolts and some things like that. But the house fire actually was started by some sort of paranormal group. She never figured out who. That's how she got keyed into the, uh, the supernatural world and why she's, you know, basically out there trying to stop what happened to her to other people.

So what I'm hearing is her, her introduction to becoming a psychic paranormal investigator was literally a trial by fire.

A little on the nose, but yes, absolutely.

I like it. Colette, you say? Street performer, firewalker. Got it.

What sort of skills and abilities does she have that are notable?

Uh, that's notable? She has a little bit of training. She has hand-to-hand expert. Uh, she speaks Spanish and English, of course. She plays with chemistry. She actually— part of her recovery process, she did a lot of bodybuilding and running and general athletics to kind of bring her body back. And she ended up physically better than when she was a firefighter. She actually, she's fairly strong now, definitely on the edge of what a human can actually do. And she's kind of put herself together and back together. And then one of the key ones is she was trained paramedic. So she had some, those are some of her more important skills.

I like where this is going. So who's next?

All right, so over here I got Brett Halsey, the natural athlete. By day, an extreme sports competitor, part-time stuntman, and owner of a moderately successful CrossFit gym, Brett can often be found walking around in a tank top and jeans or athletic pants. He is 100% that guy. He's really, really good at a whole host of physical skills. Even worse, because he gets +20 bonus to 3 of his occupational skills, one of his occupational skills he's— that +20 bonus applies to is his seduction skill. Yeah, he also heals twice as fast and, you know, he's very much a— that part-time stuntman, occasional former professional kickboxer sort of thing. He's kind of a tank, but not the most combat-forward tank. He takes better than he gives.

He's a great meat shield is what I'm hearing.

Yes, he's definitely a hunk of lean, flexible meat that is a danger to every bored housewife in a 3-county area.

Lock up your wives and daughters.

Please note, for the purpose of the description, Brett does not discriminate.

Between wives and daughters?

Well, no.

Brett, like many professional CrossFit athletes, is an out-and-open pansexual.

Whatever you're into, I don't judge.

Over to you, NPC.

Hey, I'm Al Wazniewski, CPA.

You said Al?

Al.

Prefer Albert.

Al.

Got it.

I prefer people call me Albert, but nobody listens. Everybody calls me Al, so it's Al.

Hey, Al, have you ever thought about, you know, getting, you know, some physical conditioning? Sitting at the desk all day, it really does bad things to your heart. And, uh, you know, I, I got this great kombucha drink that would just help you start your mornings. I noticed you're drinking a lot of that Folgers coffee, and it's just not so good. It really suppresses your hormone system.

See, the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup, and that tells how sad of a life I live.

So, uh, what do you do for a living? What kind of skills you're working with?

Good, good at taxes, math. I can, I could, I can do a really sweet Excel spreadsheet. I can speak like 8 languages though. That's pretty cool. Housekeeping. Okay, so Al is, uh, completely milquetoast The most forgettable person you've ever seen. Kind of like a cross between a slug and a beetle that you shove into a poorly fitting suit that he bought at Men's Warehouse. He is, you know, he's a CPA. He likes to keep his head low, doesn't really like drawing attention to himself. There are 2 things that he does. I guess technically 3, but 2 things that he does that are unusual. He lets out steam and frustration in one of 2 ways. Either punk rock drumming in his basement, but, you know, very, very heavily soundproofed basement because he doesn't want to annoy the neighbors. And putt-putt. He's really good at putt-putt. Actually, it's the only time in his life he gets really aggressive. And he's like all about competitive putt-putt. And that's the only— that's the reason his only weapon proficiency skill is blunt.

Oh.

So there are several putt-putt places in town he's not allowed to play at anymore.

So is our post-investigation ritual going out to one of the putt-putt courses that allows drinks on the greens?

I think so.

Yeah, I'm down for that. I'm down for that.

Uh, how did—

I gotta ask. I mean, I didn't bring it up though. I have in my head how I got involved in the paranormal. Does, does Al have a backstory on that?

I'm not— I haven't been totally sure on that. I was thinking about that when Buckley started saying his. I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that he doesn't really know that he's psychic, and he probably doesn't even believe that he's psychic. He just can't die. I think he's been in a lot of wrecks. He probably got beat the crap out of him multiple times as a bully. Or with bullies growing up, but he just heals and regenerates and it just sort of— I don't know, he just doesn't get hurt.

Whereas unlike your character Buckley, who had a direct experience, Brett got pulled into the world of the paranormal by an ex-girlfriend, a goth named Lucy, who was really addicted to both paranormal hunting and true crime.

That's an excellent combination, paranormal and true crime.

It's a very common—

It's a very common Venn diagram. It's almost a circle over a circle, to be honest. And so a love interest dragged you in a haunted house?

Uh, yeah, yeah, okay, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I still moonlight, you know, um, a stuntman for less reputable, uh, paranormal investigation shows. I, you know, frequently show up on, that sort of thing.

They like to edit you in doing physical stuff because it looks good? You're that guy?

Yeah, or the ones that are super unethical and stage all their stuff. Uh, you know, I, I'm the guy who vaguely looks like one of the hosts getting tossed down the hallway on a shaky, shaky cam.

You got the earpiece in, so now jump around and look afraid. You're that guy? 100%.

And boy, can I— he has the performance skill for a couple different reasons. But yeah, he can make it look believable or not believable, but sells it well.

All right.

So we have our characters and we're going to go ahead and wrap this episode. And if you have questions about it, please join us on our Discord channel at breakfastpuppies/discord. Ask us questions about how we made the characters and hopefully stick around, listen to the next podcast of our Let's Play. And if you want to help us out a little bit, you can go over to our Redbubble website and you can get some merch from us or perhaps show up on our Ko-fi page and throw a few bucks at us to keep the lights on and keep us recording.

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Thank you very much, and we'll catch you next time.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Breakfast puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

Have a good one. You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Rifts, the Megaverse, and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium Books. Please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order directly at palladiumbooks.com, and their entire catalog is available digitally at DriveThruRPG as well. Our opening music is 8-Bit Bass and Lead by Furby Guy from freesound.org. This closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org. All sound effects used are self-made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero license. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as The Glitter Boys— that's B-O-I-S— and check us out online at breakfastpuppies.com/glitterboys. And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/discord. And if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time. Bye.