#203 – A Discussion on Player Table Roles

Breakfast puppies?

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Good evening, you're listening to The Glitter Boys.

Howdy y'all, it's just Jacob with your Riffs farm report for the day. Anyways, welcome back to another episode of the Glitter Boys. Today we're talking about player table roles. That is not rolling the dice, but the roles players, not characters, have at the table. We've talked about this a couple times before, the importance of certain activities in a— outside the actual role-playing, but enabling better quality role-playing in the past. But we're going to really dive into it today. NPC, do you have any thoughts?

Well, I've thought about this a lot, and to the point that at least with 2 of the games that I've run in recent days, both my silly Hammer Crawl experience, but also my Saturday Palladium-ish fantasy games, I've codified them in a way that we sometimes forget, you know, because you tend to fall into old rhythms where you just start playing and forget about dealing these things out. But again, even between the sessions or sometimes mid-session, we realize, oh shit, we didn't assign these roles. Let's do this real quick because they do make the game flow a lot easier. And anyway, To answer your question, I have codified them myself. The roles that, that I have written down that I consider to be crucial to the smooth operation of a game. These are things that oftentimes the game master does, but doesn't necessarily need to. These would be the mapper, somebody who keeps track of where you've been, be it drawing out physical map or just keeping notes of what connects to what and how you got from point A to point B. The quartermaster, who keeps track of all of the loot and keeps track of things like party shares of that loot, distribution of that kind of stuff. The scribe keeps a running account of what happened so that the game master doesn't have to. Very nice if, if you want to do that for them. The timekeeper, who keeps track of things like ongoing spell effects or how much longer you have on the lantern or the torch or how how much time has passed kind of thing, because it's so much easier if one person does that that isn't the GM. And then the caller, which I think is the most important. The caller being the player at the table, especially if it's a large group, who is responsible for telling the game master what the group does. Okay, that was a lot of exposition. What are your thoughts?

All of those except for the caller I have used in many games. The caller, that's an interesting one. It's almost the, The, the players have a single voice so that way the GM isn't just hearing everything that's going on and they basically wait for the one person. That's an interesting role. Uh, the one that I like the most is your condition tracker. And we combine that with the initiative tracker. And usually we have a dry erase board in the corner.

Yeah.

And as everyone rolls their initiative, that person, while the GM's setting up the, whatever's about to happen combat-wise, that person's writing down everyone's initiative. and changes it as things change. Because sometimes, you know, initiative will change in a combat.

Yeah.

And it takes so much off the GM's shoulders because, I mean, we're really— what we're talking about here is let the GM run the game and get the minutia into the players' hands. And it helps them get more of an investment with the game, I think. As opposed to them just showing up and going, oh, well, you know, dance for us, GM, dance, you know, and just do everything for us. And it's like, no, The players can help and it helps them also. I've always seen it as an opportunity for the players to realize what's going on behind the screen and what they might do differently when they run a game and how they might run their table per se.

I mean, I first started doing these because I saw someone else do them years ago. So that exactly, that happened. You know, it inspired me. It's like, this is a great way of doing it. I need to incorporate this.

I mean, all of this literally dates back to 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and earlier. Oh, absolutely.

The caller was definitely rooted in the old tournament games that started this hobby.

The caller, the mapper, there was a whole bunch of others back there. You know, I've used bits and pieces of them. I, I find certain of them to detract from some of the style games I tend to run just because it puts the mechanistic nature of the role-playing game forward. Certain ones of them do. Um, and that can be a detriment for some of the styles of games, uh, like, and some of them are, I've found to be great in theory, but very, very rarely effective in execution. Like you have to have a very specific person with a very specific set of skills and talents to be an effective caller.

Mm-hmm.

You have— because that person has to be able to sum up what everybody else in the party is doing. And honestly, as I've gotten older, I found less and less people are capable of doing that.

We've had success randomly assigning it to somebody and just having them figure it out as they go.

I, I've seen— because I've not seen the caller, I don't have as much experience with that particular position. But the chronicler or the note-taker and the quartermaster, those can be very interestingly hit or miss. The person who has a lot of attention problems probably shouldn't be either of those.

Yeah.

If you want to, if you need to rely on the nuts and bolts that are being taken, but it can be a great way for them to learn how to pay attention. Also, uh, there's a sidebar of having the player that plays the rogue be the quartermaster will Inevitably lead to a horrible conversation later.

No, okay, that, that is a whole other conversation. That's about player trust.

Okay, this is true.

If you have somebody who is abusing their character to be a dick at the table, that's a whole other discussion for a whole other episode.

Okay. Okay. Granted.

The rogue player should be just as reliable as the paladin player when it comes to any of these roles. Because they're your friend and you're sharing an experience together.

Admittedly, I know exactly what you're talking about. And I will say the worst blowup I ever saw over that was because they put the Paladin as the quartermaster playing 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. And what do you mean we're nearly broke? I'm like, well, the church we passed by was in disrepair.

Yeah.

But that said, like a couple of the ones that I almost, I regularly use, Note-Taker. I will put a caveat on what you said about not being great for people who struggle with focus and concentration. I will say yes, but to that. I have found some people regularly who at first glance have off-the-chain distractibility at the game table, who when they're put into the note-taker role, slide into this beautiful zone. Okay.

I could totally see that.

But, but it has to be how their focus, their individual focus works.

Yeah.

If, if they're writing inclined, it seems to be more likely to work. And for them, it suddenly becomes a much better experience. I will also say I have literally used abject bribery to make a note-taker. Like, part of it is having been the note-taker, having done that job, and knowing what a pain in the ass it actually is to take notes at a gaming table. Um, I make no bones about it that if anybody is going to be the note-taker and actually do the work well, you're getting extra experience points. End of story. I will brook no comment or argument from other players on this. It's— if they're doing a good job at it, everybody will be looking back at it when they need it, and you get a reward for that.

So we're going into an area that I actually wanted to talk about. But before we get there, are there any other roles that we can think of that you've seen in your games or you've seen in other games that you want to talk about?

There's one that I have become increasingly fond of in the last year or so, and that is a role that I call the Wrangler. The Wrangler is in charge of keeping records and keeping track of all of the party's hirelings. henchmen, and pets.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now they don't necessarily have to state the actions for those pets, but having somebody who likes to write numbers down and do that kind of tracking to keep track of their hit points, keep track of that kind of stuff, makes things smoother.

Well, you've seen my spreadsheets when I'm doing quartermaster and stuff like that, right? Yeah. I just got out of a game that was a Spelljammer game. That we kind of remodified. Yeah, we had fleets of ships by the end of the campaign, right? It was a year-long campaign and our spreadsheet, or excuse me, the spreadsheet that I maintained for the group, you know, it was a, it was a master's MBA.

How many tabs?

I think I had 10 tabs.

That's it? Um, well, amateur.

I had a lot of formulas in those tabs.

Amateur.

And only a couple of the people could really understand the spreadsheet. So it was okay, but it gives you a great history later on too.

I think I've got about 39 tabs just in my character sheet alone?

Well, yes, but you have automation up the ass.

You have tabs that are hidden tabs for a reason.

You have—

To do math.

No, no, no, no, no. Let's not simplify this. This man has hidden tabs for hidden tabs.

I have tabs that do nothing but collate data from other tabs.

And then show up on a 3rd tab. Yep.

Okay.

Well, that's a whole other level.

I will say that I actually have used the same thing. that NPC describes. It first actually started in a Wild West game I was playing. I was in high school, everybody else in the group was in college, and very fun Wild West, not Weird West, but like, like true Wild West. True Wild West. But this actually meant that we were like managing posses and the local cavalry troop detachment and that sort of thing. And our title for it was the cattle— a cow puncher.

Okay.

Just because it was thematically appropriate. We all agreed it was funny. But yeah, no, that one is really, really good, especially if you're doing any game with lots of hirelings, lots of ancillary characters. I tend to find it becomes incredibly useful in most Savage Worlds settings because for whatever reason, Savage Worlds, maybe because its NPCs tend to be a little bit simpler to manage, than a lot of other games. Groups tend to acquire a lot of hirelings and hangers-on and that sort of thing.

I started doing that specifically in a Savage Worlds game, and it was a game that was heavily inspired by a series of comics called Alien Legion. And I adapted the DCC funnel rules to Savage Worlds to do a space mercenary game. The concept of the comics, which I ported over to the tabletop, was that any of the characters could just bite it at any moment.

Okay.

They were just very expendable. But although I started with the idea that each player would have multiple characters, there ended up being one player at the table who was just really into playing different characters. So what we did is we ultimately ended up with having most of the players each just end up playing one character and one guy played Everyone else.

So he was—

it worked very well. He basically became the— he became the, the, uh, the conscripts or the privates.

So he was basically the Star Trek redshirt. Every episode was a new— that's awesome.

Yep.

So one of the things that I was— I've seen here is, and this gets into the topic that, uh, Just Jacob just started, was the, do you dangle a carrot in front of the players to help encourage them to do this? And I think NPC and I, you've had a— we have had a brief conversation a while ago about this. In one of the groups that I was playing, the GM introduced this and every role that he had, he said, I would like a player to take one of these roles. When you take the role, you get a special in-game mechanic ability that you can exercise once per session. Kind of a very small carrot.

Mm-hmm.

Somewhere between the level of an edge or a feat or something like that, but maybe not quite as powerful. And they're very thematic. Like the quartermaster could say once per session, hey, we happen to have insert widget that we kind of needed today. And it couldn't be anything over a certain value or whatever. And the conscriptor, the person who took all the notes or took care of NPCs could say, oh, I know a guy, right? This type of thing. And I thought it was really interesting. What's funny is most of us just said, yeah, we'll help you out. and totally forgot about these things.

Yeah.

Until someone did remember them. And it was always a very pivotal, like, oh, you know, you're down to the last bit of nitty-gritty. You've run through everything you have and you're like, crap, how the hell are we going to— oh, I know a guy, you know, or, oh, I happen to have a skeleton key in my pocket or something silly, right? That kind of helped out. And it was really kind of cool, even though we didn't tend to use them session in, session out. It was a way to encourage your players to help you out, even though I tend to think that players should want to help the GM. Some players, well, for whatever reason, aren't there. And this gives them something to latch onto. What do people think of that?

I'm not opposed to it. I haven't used it that much at all, other than in a couple games where that's mechanistically built into the rule set. Um, there's a few out there. One, like, one version of Paranoia had it, like, not the first, uh, soft one, but like one of the earlier box sets had a little bit of that. Um, which, uh, went out the window because let me tell you, putting, uh, player roles on top of the inherent mistrust that you need for a Paranoia game just does not work well.

Um, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And in that case, what it is, is for those who aren't familiar, paranoia, dystopian future underground complex run by an insane computer, ardently anti-communist, as any right-thinking computer should be, is not— one of the things that every player at the table got assigned was a mission role. And very early versions of Paranoia, that mission role wasn't just an in-character thing. It came with a set of things you were responsible for at the table. And I've— there's been a couple other games where I've seen that as well, where it's mechanistically built in. Um, I'm not opposed to it, but I'm also not inherently a huge fan of it. I will admit That, that's partially because I kind of use the note keeper, uh, and for some games quartermaster. If this person does it and they're doing it at a decent level, they get an XP bump. Uh, that's my, uh, gateway drug to getting the rest of the group.

Well, that's recompensation, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's a gateway drug to, uh, getting the rest of the group to start blue booking between sessions, which enhances player engagement. And since I'm all about bluebooking whenever possible, it's, it's just a very easy way to pull people into that.

I read, what was that, read or was it a podcast about a GM who encouraged their players to enhance their character's backstory and enhance what's going on and they could get additional XP by writing short stories in between sessions. And I was, and I was listening to this and I was going, wow, what an amazing idea. And then I realized, oh, it was a writer's podcast. And all the people that were talking, like everyone out of that gaming group ended up becoming professional writers.

Mm-hmm.

And I kind of wonder, incentivizing professional writers or aspiring professional writers in a tabletop setting to get XP for writing short stories about their characters, that probably would go weird very quickly. So you gotta be careful on how you're incentivizing your players.

But that's a slightly different topic, but Yeah, I will say that this is a little off topic, but some of the bluebooking that has been done that I have had to review, let's just say BookTok was a thing before BookTok was a thing and just leave it at that.

I'm not opposed to offering rewards for that kind of stuff, and, and I've done it. I would prefer not to. My ideal setup would be that the players are keen on it. They want to contribute to the running of the game, to facilitating everybody else having a good time. That is my dream game. Doesn't always happen. Oftentimes you will just have players that just show up and want to roll some dice and don't really want to be involved in much else. And it's difficult to get them. To take on these roles. You might be surprised. Sometimes you can. And for them, I guess, encouragements help. There's also the slightly devious way to approach it, which is to figure out what you were going to give everyone anyway, then reduce that and explain that that's how much people get. And then anybody who contributes to one of these roles gets the extra, which ultimately just brings them up to what you in your mind already had set as the baseline.

That's more bookkeeping for my GM side than what I partake in.

You're like, oh yes, everybody who takes on one of these roles gets a 20% bonus to XP. Meanwhile, you're not telling them that you're already reducing everybody's XP by 20%.

That's devious. That's very devious. Yes.

Yes. And this is how XP throttling in pay-to-win games meets your role-playing game table. No, I'm just joking.

Yeah, we can put some microtransactions on this XP, folks.

Oh, you want to be a quartermaster?

Oh, so you've played one of Jacob's infamous bribe the GM games. I see.

Um, I mean, I've played games in the '80s and '90s.

Yes, yes.

Well, there are some charity events that are exactly that way, but that's, that's Upfront and for charity as opposed to the like, you know, I always noticed that when John shows up and he has a box of, you know, insert favorite cookie of the GM, he's always getting all the special attention. That's kind of weird. It's like, yeah, okay.

You too could bring me cookies.

A role we have not discussed because it's kind of a niche role, but I, I never initially started assigning it out. It was because I ended up with this stream of games where different players within the mini campaigns I was running would just naturally start doing it. And I finally went, I am going to actually add this to the roles I ask people to step up and take. Note-taker, like the only 3 that I really use are note-taker, Quartermaster. I mean, on the regular basis, note-taker, quartermaster, and then this one, evidence board.

Okay.

Yeah, because I run a lot of Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, back when I ran a lot of Mutant City Blues, other investigative procedural horror type games, one person whose job was to collate the clues, which is weirdly, having tried to do it myself, is actually weirdly difficult to do while being the note-taker because it's— you're trying to, as the evidence board guy, segment and collect out things that are evidence clues or whatever, whereas the note-taker is trying to do a running narrative. And, and the two aren't necessarily easy. There are some people who can do it, and it's very, very helpful for the party. Like, as the GM, I don't care, but it helps the party so much and improves the flow of the game. Yeah.

It can also— I can see this role in a game that I'm actually running right now that would allow the players to collate the information and not miss the key things the note-takers are doing. But you have one person actually putting all the pieces up on the board or whatever, and it ends up being in some games that I'm in, The players are doing that kind of as a collective, but having one person who puts all those notes up somewhere could really be helpful for them because they're seeing— it's always amazing to listen to them and they're making conclusions that I don't know how they got, but they got them somehow. And maybe if they would have written them all down, it might help. But that's an interesting, like the evidence board, the person who collects The information— doesn't collect the information, processes the information and puts it forth and presents it.

And if you're running that kind of game, I highly suggest getting a physical corkboard on the wall or a fold-out magnetic whiteboard like I have that is actually the size of this table, push behind that shelf. And then you can magnet things and move cards around, index cards and shit. Yeah.

When I embraced this, uh, as a concept, For games that I was going whole hog in and doing a lot of handouts and a lot of that sort of things, there was a cork bar— a board with a bundle of red yarn and a box of stick pins.

I think for one of my games, I would need red, blue, green, maybe some yellow, and just, just to see what would happen towards the end of the session, you know, and end of the campaign.

Which also led to a, very fun thing where the, the players came in to an investigation that was already underway, but all of the investigators had died. Oh, and I had set up the corkboard that the previous investigators had been using.

Oh, I may steal that. That's great.

Oh, it was fun because they were already used to the idea. And this is a tangent I wanted to bring up. If you do these rolls at the table for your players, it sometimes opens up interesting story ideas that really don't work as well unless you have people in these roles. Like, there's a tendency for players to not want to deal with a lot of NPCs hanging around if they know it just pisses the GM off to have to manage the 60-some hirelings they have and that sort of thing.

Mm-hmm.

But if they're handling it and they've gotten comfortable with it, suddenly you actually have small armies under your command. And suddenly the game goes from taking out the lone watchtower to, and this fortress is going down this afternoon, folks, you know.

And it helps if you're playing a game that has concessions for that built in, such as classic AD&D with that charisma modifier and henchman maximums and all the rules in there for handling encounters and stuff. You got somebody who has that high charisma, they may be interested in taking on the Wrangler role and actually making, you know, taking their abilities to the fullest.

As a Dungeon Master who broke down weeping when the Fighter hit the level where suddenly they have a fortress and a bunch of followers, yeah, I, I totally agree with that.

While it's not Palladium, I ran a Birthright campaign. And of course in Birthright, for those that don't know, you are playing nobles of a kingdom or of a region of a kingdom. And it's built in that you're going to have a whole army of some kind. And as a GM, I was flat out, you will manage your own armies, players, because I'm managing all of the bad guys' armies. So you don't, you don't get it. If you come up to the table and say, my army attacks. And I say, what is your army made of? And you don't know, you're going to lose said army.

Congratulations. You have nothing but peasant levies.

So it's funny you bring that up. Like I had, dabbled around in games that had these various player roles and such, but the game that really solidified a lot of my opinions about these roles, the usefulness of various ones of these roles, and the importance of them was Birthright. Birthright, hands down, was the game where you had to— you and your players had to have it and had to have it dialed in.

Now, one role that I think we could talk a little bit more about, because I find that Initially, a lot of players are hesitant to take it, if not straight-up afraid, and that is the mapper. Because a lot of people make this assumption that their maps need to be perfect.

Oh yeah, absolutely not.

Well, they really don't. They don't, they don't even need to be maps. The idea of the mapper is Their purpose is to keep track of where you've gone, where you've been, and where you have yet to go. So really, instead of drawing a map, if that's not your thing, all you need to do is just put a circle and have a note about this room and just have some unended lines leading off of that circle that goes somewhere else. Or as my favorite mapper that I've ever had in one of my games did, She was so good at this that we, whenever she was at the table, were like, and here's your notebook. Here's the sketchpad. Because her take on maps was she drew what was happening in the room as it happened. And she drew like a little scene about that room and the events in that room. And then would just draw a line from that to the next scene.

And it was Fucking amazing.

It made it so much more memorable. People knew it was there. Their characters were there in, you know, caricature format on this scratchpad.

It—

I, I would love for someone to do that again. It was just, it was beautiful.

My moment like that is less artistic, but in one of my games, I had this person who described themselves as an autistic savant. mechanical engineering project manager. Flow diagrams for every single room.

Oh my God.

Like, I— they handed it to me, and this is a— this was a quick cut-and-dry dirty little dungeon I ran into— ran them through. And this flowchart, oh my God, I have judged professional project managers' flowcharts against this one and found them lacking frequently. Oh my God. Like, um, input nodes were like, what encounter was in the room? And like, oh yeah.

So one thing to note about mapping is a lot of times when the game master is giving you directions that are like north and south and east and west, those actually usually don't matter.

No.

All that really matters is where you were in connection to the previous place that you were. And if you get so stuck on mapping cardinal directions, that can actually trip you up. That can lead to a worse map than you were planning on doing.

One of the players I've played with historically, when she did maps, it was lines with numbers telling you, getting the idea of how far between rooms and circles or squares. And that was her entire map. And we did a, a really extensive dungeon. And I looked at her map after the session or 2, and I was like, how the— oh. And after a few minutes, my brain figured out what the heck was going on. It was a multi-tier dungeon. And so she had a couple extra notes when there were stairs or there was a ramp or something like that. But as you were saying, cardinal directions really didn't matter all that much.

Yeah.

Because when you're trying to get out of the dungeon, because the the big bad is chasing you or something, you decide to flee, you really don't care which direction you have to overall go. You care, is it right or left and how far it is? And that's really it.

Is it right or left? Is it forward or back?

Right.

Is it the way I'm going or the way I just came?

And it's really, it's very simple. And now I've seen people that are, I would call cartographers, and they have beautiful maps. Though, unless they are incredibly skilled, it will slow the game down as they're trying to get it perfectly.

Yeah.

Right?

I mean, to be honest, you end up in a scene and yes, the GM may have told you that it was a 20-foot-wide hall that went 100 feet and then had a 90-degree turn and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, okay, I want to cast Fireball. Will I kill the rest of my party if I cast Fireball? Yes or no? No.

Okay.

I cast Fireball. That's really what you need to know. You don't need to know much else. And as long as the GM's not being a dick, and trying to trick you, they're going to say yes or no. They'll warn you. I mean, most good GMs will warn you, you know, that fireball has a 20-foot radius and the room's only 12 feet in diameter. You probably don't want to do that.

Right.

Um, so, but, but the cartographer or mapping, now, of course, we're talking about a role that may not show up in your games. If you're doing a very political game where it's not really much, you're not really going into dungeons or going into caves or castles, it may not show up. But it might in weird ways.

Because instead of a physical map, you could have a heat map, a faction map, you know, the, the ways in and out that connect things representing favor for and favor against. So instead of drawing that detailed map of rooms, you're drawing this map of, you know, ideals and opinions of different groups.

Absolutely.

Totally.

Maybe a slightly different skillset, but it would work very similarly in the way we're talking about drawing these maps. I have a player right now that's trying to figure out, it's a fish out of water game. The player's been dropped in this world that they're learning. And I have a player right now trying to build a flowchart or a context sheet or something to figure out how all the different political factions tie to each other. And he's just getting turned into knots as they're trying to do it. But it's awesome 'cause he's doing this in character, not just out of character, 'cause the characters are trying to learn this. And it's really interesting to watch them try to figure it out. And on the side, in character, he's using a 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual and correcting it based on the monsters they run into. They're like, oh, oh, in D&D a ghoul does this, but we just ran into things that people call ghouls and they do that. And so he's also taking care of the world lore for the players.

Fascinating.

And so it ends up being this role that I've never really seen before.

Right.

And it's because they're trying to figure it out. It's really cool.

One thing that I think will help actually make better maps is as the game master, when you're describing things, don't describe feet, don't describe inches, but like about 20 paces.

Yeah.

About 3.5 golden retrievers, something along those lines. Come up with systems of measurement that are Vague, or that, uh, you know, it could be something like, for example, uh, in our Palladium game, I've invented something I call the Timmerowan League. The Timmerowan League is a system of measurement that is based upon the, the scouting radius of the Timmerowan army when they set up a new forward operating base. That's the league. So it's how far away from base do they go before they report back. And it is not an exact measurement either. So I try and do measurements in that way whenever I can remember it, because again, old habits, they fall in, you fall into that 20 by 20 statement. But I love the paces system or the yay. It's about yay long, about 3 yays. And so when someone's trying to interpret that to a map and they're like, okay, well, how much is that in feet? It's like, figure it out. Yeah, you can either focus on that or you can just sketch something real quick, you know?

That would have made some of the old school D&D and AD&D modules make way more sense as opposed to things like, there's a 4-poster bed in this room and it's 50 feet by 50 feet and nothing else is in the room.

Yeah.

What?

Why?

You know, and they get focused on that huge, vast— it's a bedroom. It's a big bedroom and it has a big bed in it. Oh, okay, cool. Moving on. You know.

I've been impressed when I've— the Dungeon Crawl Classics modules, the official modules, the maps that they have in there, they go back and forth between some exact measurements and some that are just like, you know, it— you're going to the tower and instead of like showing the floors of the tower, they just Drew a fucking picture of a tower. And so they'll, they'll make things very thematic instead of exact. I love that.

So on the rolls, do we have anything else that we want to talk about these rolls? I think they, as a modern gaming tool, not necessarily modern, they've become more useful. And I think they can help the GM and help the players being really involved in the games and become more thinking about what they're doing in the game, not just their character.

I want to touch back on the caller for a moment.

Oh.

Again, the caller is probably the oldest of roles. It was in early D&D-related texts and books. The caller, I think, is extremely important if you're running a group of 5 or more people, especially if you're running an online game, because online games, when everybody is just a voice in your ear and a face on the screen that isn't 100% synchronized with what they're saying due to lag and the internet, Having a caller there when everybody starts to talk at once and say, I want to do this. Okay. Well, I'm going to go check it. Hey, what does that thing look like? Hey, can I do this? When everybody's doing all of that at the same time, having somebody who is just responsible when the game master can turn and say, Dave, summarize what everybody's doing for me. It's so helpful. I cannot stress enough how helpful having that player role is.

I will say my biggest takeaway is figure out what works for you as a GM and what works for the particular game you're running. Not all roles are as critical, and honestly, a couple of them get in the way sometimes, sometimes, uh, for certain types of games. I personally, as a GM, find, and this is a personal thing and takes nothing away from the fact that having played at NPC's table, I understand why he likes the caller role. It would be the last role I'd be asking for, um, just because of partially the different style of games I run from NPC.

I don't think you'd be good at it. Yeah, no offense. Yeah, it's not your, it's not your jam.

It's not my jam.

I don't think you'd have fun with it.

Nope. Um, I, I, having had, I, I have been told I'm a fairly decent caller, I know there are a lot of people who are far, far better than I am at it, which comes as zero surprise to me. And, but figure out which rolls work for you, which rolls work for your players, uh, and most importantly, what works for the game as a whole, you know?

Yeah, absolutely.

They can be tweaked and modified for whatever game you're rolling, the players that you have at your table. Uh, I've never used a collar. Specifically, but that could just be the games I've run into, or maybe the players I've played with. But I like the idea. I think I really do like the idea. And if I do ever run another game online, I would totally have someone be that person. I think probably a lot of times the person who ends up playing the face of a group falls into this role. So maybe I've run into the role of the caller, but it's not been explicitly called out. As the caller, so to speak. Um, otherwise, a lot of these roles these days I find really important to kind of call out at the beginning of a campaign, especially a long campaign. If it's a one-shot, okay, I might specifically point some people, but a longer weekly game that's ongoing, these roles become super helpful and help the GM and help the players at the same time. And it, it makes things flow more quickly, more smoothly. I really like most of these rolls and I would use most of them, if not all of them. I really want to try to use the evidence board one, Jacob.

For procedural slash investigative slash horror games. Very super helpful. Um, it, it can also be fun. I'm going to just throw this one in here.

To change the board on them.

Well, no. Well, there's that too. This is for all you GMs out there so players can quit listening now. But if you and your evidence board person, after it's firmly established as a group in the group and is a common thing, have a small conversation about unreliable narrator.

Oh, oh geez. Yeah, that's just, that basically plays into what I said. The GM changes something, just small things, right? Yeah.

For horror games.

Oh yeah. It's beautiful.

Well folks, that's what we got to say about player table roles. If you have Roles that you think we missed or thoughts on some of the roles that we discussed and how you have used them at your tables, please come join our Discord and talk about it. Join the conversation or, you know, use the feedback link that is in every single one of our episode show notes and send us a message. Drop a comment on YouTube, whatever. Yeah, we love to hear from you. Some notes is that the Palladium Grab Bags, the holiday gift bag thingy, has just started. This episode is going to be coming out a few weeks later, but it's going to be well enough in time for you to join in on this. We've said it before, say it again, I think it's one of the best annual deals in gaming and has been for a very long time. If you are unfamiliar with what that is, Uh, follow the link in the show notes or just join the Discord. Everybody's talking about it.

I have gotten some amazing things in that grab bag. And I will say that over the years I order it and it's a surprise to myself because sometimes it'll show up. I won't have a chance to open it and I'll stick it in a stack of things to go through. And like 3 months later, I'll go, what is that box? And I'll open it up. I go, oh my God, this is original artwork. Or a whole bunch of pencils that I can now hand out or all sorts of different cool things that I didn't think about. And it's, it's well, well worth your money. I've never been disappointed in it.

It's also a good opportunity to get a new player into the game. If you have people that you think would be just great for playing this game and really enjoy it, order a grab bag and say, hey, build me a new gamer package for somebody that I want to get into Palladium.

And they ask for that feedback when you go to the website and order it. They're serious about it.

Yeah.

I have put in requests that I didn't think I would ever get. Sometimes I get personal handwritten notes. Sorry, Buckley, you don't get more original art. You've taken it all. We're now going to give you something else, right? And other times it's like, hey, we found this in a disused lavatory that said, beware the leopard, and here you go. It's half of the FaZe world picture. It's like, cool.

I, I'm pretty sure that, uh, everybody at this table might be on a watch list at Palladium.

Absolutely.

Just because like you get Sorry Buckley. I'm— I know for a fact, given some of the things that have come in the boxes they've shipped back to me, that they know exactly who it is. It might be because the first line on all of the— all of my submissions is anything Recon-related art, Yeah, outtakes.

Da da da da.

They're like, yep, that weirdo sent back again.

And if you too wish to be on the Palladium watch list, when you order your grab bags, put a little note and let them know we sent you.

Oh yeah, please, please, please do that. We like them to know that you are showing your love to them because you found them through us.

Yeah. And if you want to help us pay some of our bills, we really appreciate it. The ways that you can do that, you can join our Ko-fi page or kick us a donation on Pinecast. The only real benefits that we have for that is I try and release some of the episodes there earlier for patrons, but I also like to do alternate renders of some of our actual play episodes with added effects and music as a bonus, as a thank you for, you know, helping us keep the lights on and keep the dice rolling. If you don't really feel like you have the funds to throw money around like that, but you're in the market for some digital gaming, we have affiliate links to DriveThruRPG in our show notes. Anything that you buy there following through that link kicks us a few cents of that back to an account that again, we pretty much just turn that around and buy more books. So it helps.

Yeah.

And of course we do have some merch on Redbubble. We don't really talk about that much, but it's there. We got some blankets, some stickers, some shirts, some hoodies.

Yeah.

And given that some of our local friends have bought some of them, so far the reviews on the quality have generally been favorable. Yeah. The fleece throw appears to be rather popular.

Yeah, there's one sitting right there. I think all of my laptops except for this one have Glitter Boys stickers on them. There's one right there. Yeah, we kind of went overboard. Well, I kind of went overboard with the merch. But yeah, thanks for giving us a listen and thanks for your support, be it just listening, be it dropping in and joining a conversation, or kicking some bucks towards Palladium to get yourself a Christmas grab bag.

Treat yourself.

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 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 Boys, 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 Furbyguy 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. Thanks for listening. 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.