#210 – State of the Podcast 2026

Breakfast puppies.

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

The glitter boys.

It's that time of year when we like to look back on where we've been and where we're going. Not dwell on too much where we're, where we've been, but definitely where we're going and try to talk about what our plans are for the year, both for the podcast and for our own personal lives, because those tend to interact quite a bit with this, this, this very interesting exercise that we've been doing.

I don't really have a social life outside of the Breakfast Puppies Discord.

That's somewhat of a lie, but— That's mostly accurate.

That's like a 5% lie.

Maybe 15. For me, 2025 for me was a transition year. It was the middle of a decade, middle of the '20s. Now, those history buffs out there, go look at every century of the '20s. It's weird how consistently turbulent it is. You had the Roaring '20s, you had the 1820s, the 1720s. It's really bizarre.

So these are the fuck you '20s. These are the fuck you '20s. Yes.

Absolutely. So for me, the 2025, I changed major roles in a job. I stopped doing some things. I started doing some things. Like Coke?

Yeah.

Like, like, no, not like—

Which one of those did you stop?

We're not playing 2 truths and a lie.

Okay. But— Speaking of which, would you like some Coke?

I brought some. I'm only doing Peruvian right now.

I mean, wait.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Coca-Cola.

No, no, no, no. I brought Mexican Coke.

No, no. It's a little red right now, I think.

No, I brought Coke Beverly. So I'm sorry.

We're going to look at this and talk about it. And I'm thinking for me, for 2026, I do have some goals. I added it up for 2025 when I started with Glitter Boys and it's been an amazing experience. I've been about 30, 35 so far of the over 200 that we have now. I want to get those numbers up for me. I enjoy this a lot. And those that don't know, I commute a little bit to do this and I, I really enjoy it. And I would cut, cut time out of my schedule. I'm also going to try to push towards publishing some things, actually publish some things.

Would any of those things happen to be things that I've proofread?

You've proofread one of them.

Okay.

One of them is brand new and it's my all, all my own IP.

Well, let me know if you need an editor. I do have official On record, paid-for editing credits.

That's awesome.

Yeah, let me know.

Same. I mean, like, all of my credits don't exist because I was a ghostwriter.

Right. But my only fee—

Is Irish whiskey.

Specifically a bottle of the Teeling Hybrid.

Listen, I have one bottle. The last time I bought that bottle, you can't find it anymore.

I'm sorry. Sir, I am a cut-rate hack. I will take it. I will take a single shot.

I do have an open bottle still.

Shot glass, teeling hybrid, and I will edit your books for you. And I will do it before I take the shot.

You might have to take the shot in the middle of the process.

No, that's a—

no, no, no, no, no. If you send it to him online, he has access to what I keep in my bedroom at the moment.

So for me, 2026 will be kind of proving out some stuff, I think, uh, when it comes to the podcast for Glitter Boys. I really want to see us get back to some of the world book reviews.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We've taken some very interesting, due to timing, availability, some interesting detours from that.

I was actually thinking about that on my ride home earlier today, thinking about specifically Rifts Africa. We're going to get to it. I recently reread it. We should do it. And, but, but, but, but one of the things that we're trying to do now is do things in a chronological order.

Yes.

And thanks to the amazing efforts of our Discord community, we have crowdsourced, because the information is harder to find than you might think, a master list of publication dates of all of the Palladium books. And folks have still been adding it. And again, for those of you who have been involved in doing this, thank you so much.

Yes.

I could not have found this information because I'm not that Obsessive, but I should be. I could be, but I'm not. But I would love to get to Rifts Africa. I would love to get to the other things that we've skipped over because we were just kind of going haphazardly and let's do a Robocheck book today. Or, you know what we haven't done after the bomb? Let's do that. I like that we're now like, we are on track. We're, we're going chronologically through it. Yeah.

I think we were following the number of like the world books, but that isn't actually the order they were published in, which is bizarre. At the same time, it's not if you understand what was going on.

Rifts, what was it, book 11?

Yeah.

Anyways, back to your goal, your goals for the next year.

My goals for the next year for the podcast, I want to make sure I'm here. That's for sure.

You've been here pretty reliably. Thank you.

And making sure that it's scheduled out well. Uh, some of us do a lot of program and project management in our real lives, and that becomes super important time-wise.

Buckley, I just want to thank you for making sure that there is always a Matt at the table.

Absolutely. We have a Matt quota of 1 plus.

One day we'll have 2 Matts, and then it'll be like a Paladin and an anti-Paladin. What happens when they meet?

Oh, I, I, I have a plan for that. We'll get to my section.

We could end up with Matt Cube.

Just saying, we have a lot of Robotech books to get to.

Cut that out because that's in my section.

For me, those are kind of my goals for this year is survive, survive my day job, which is insane right now, and make sure I'm enjoying life. And Glitter Boys podcast is one of those things that helps me enjoy that, which I really, I really value it a lot. What about you?

I am super, super, super, super, super proud of us crossing episode 200 threshold. Not a lot of podcasts do that.

And the crowd goes wild.

Crowd goes wild. It's a good number to cross. Like, I think 100 is a lot easier than most people think. Crossing the 100 threshold is a nice thing, but if you can get 200, that's more of a, oh, we're actually doing this. And we crossed that threshold, and I think we did so very well. I think both of the times that we've crossed those centennial thresholds, we've had really good people with us. The first time we had Basim and Cranny from the Turtle Power Pod join us. And Cranny, or Cranston, has joined us on the Rifts actual play games as Dark Falcon. We should get Basim on it again at some point too, but he's busy with life.

Yeah.

But with episode 200, we had GM John from the Real Play Games podcast, which I'm almost finished with. John, we need more. Going back to the backlog. Anyway, having him on and join us there, it was beautiful. It was a wonderful time. And it was an emotional moment for me. It made me happy that we've stuck with this. We keep going.

Yeah.

We've had some breaks between where we just haven't managed to catch up with it. I haven't managed to catch up with editing or we've cut through everything. We just don't have anything left to do. And we got to find some time to jam some recordings real quick. But we crossed that 200 threshold and we're still going. And let's set the scenes. Those episodes, I thought it was just going to be like a fun, silly thing to do. And the response that we've gotten from them has been Overwhelmingly positive.

I've actually, as someone who's not a person who watches a lot of the, the Critical Role type things, I've never been on the receiving end, minorly, of people going, I love that. I want more of that. And that was, it was immediate. I was surprised. I was blown away by how positive it was immediately. People were like, yes, more please. Yeah. I was like, wow. Okay, cool. Done 2, 3?

2 so far.

2 so far.

Yeah.

That they know of.

That, well, 2 so far at the time that we have recorded this, but there are more on the schedule. Yeah. That I'm really excited. We'll talk about those in a bit of, of things coming up. Gaming-wise, I'm really happy with the state that my home games have gone. My home game largely being a Palladium Fantasy game that started with Palladium Fantasy 1st Edition. But has morphed into something very heavily based on Matt Ballance's Valley of the Pharaohs. Still in the Palladium fantasy world, but using the Valley of the Pharaohs engine. I think I've answered your questions.

Actually, you completing reminded me of a couple of things that I want to do this coming year. I just completed about 24 sessions of an urban fantasy game that I was running, and it's one of the ones I want to try to convert into my own IP, my own publication.

Ooh.

But at the same time, with that convention coming up, WagonCon, please come.

Please come.

I'm going to run— I wasn't sure I was going to do this year. I'm going to run a couple of Palladium Rifts games that are going to be new scenarios that I've never run before. I think I'm going to run 2 and I'm going to set those up and see what people think. And maybe in the following year, which is our 10th year, I might run what I did a couple of years ago, which is an entire mini campaign at the convention and set myself up to do that in 2027, which is a lot of work for those who haven't done something like that. And it's kind of crazy.

I was going to save this for later, but now that it's on my mind and you've just created the opening for it, I have a challenge for you, Buckley. Maybe not this year, but 2027. My challenge for you is to run Savage Worlds Rifts using only the Savage Worlds core rules and Sci-Fi Companion. None of the actual Savage Rift stuff.

Oh.

Remake the juicer.

Okay.

The crazy using just basic character creation rules, edges, and hindrances. That's my challenge to you. Oh, I think you could do it.

Just the sci-fi companion?

Just it. Wait, remember, nobody cares about balance. It's Rifts.

Wait a minute.

What is the juicer but just a really fast warrior with an addiction?

Hold on. Are we introducing challenges for each other for the coming year?

No, this is one I've been thinking on for quite a while.

No, no, no, no. Okay.

I have.

'Cause I might want to use the superheroes book.

Sure. Yeah. Superheroes. Only the companions.

The companions, the core companions.

None of that Mars stuff. None of those classic archetypes or whatever.

Okay. Okay.

Recreate them in the basic concept of what these characters are. I'm, you know, I'm pushing an agenda here, but I want to see if you want to see if you can fulfill that agenda.

Okay. Okay. Let me think about that. Yeah, that would be 2027, but it might be GameStorm instead of WhitingCon.

So longtime listeners can go back and listen to when Nathaniel and I, I believe it was just you and I did the 2025 version of this.

I think so, because that was the— Matthew had to step down. You and I, it had just been you and I for a while. Yeah.

I want to report that I accomplished almost none of what I stated that year. Um, in a nutshell, 2025 was a huge year for me, uh, in a lot of different ways. I am currently in a state of flux of my life, but it's a state of flux that leads me to having more opportunities. Uh, one of those is just a heartfelt embracer to my Gen X nature by choice. And I have some coming plans for the year. First off, I am already planning on a couple set the scenes on this podcast. I already started sketching out Dark Reign.

Oh, nice. I'm sorry, what? I don't know this. Dark Rain?

Uh, sorry.

Um, not Dark Rain. I know you're saying—

yes.

Um, Dead Rain.

Dead Rain.

Dead Rain.

I was like, because in my brain I'm like, wait, hold on. Jacob is all about recon and Beyond the Supernatural. Is that a— is that a Beyond the Supernatural campaign?

Is that a recon campaign?

No, no, no, no. Dead Rain. Dead Rain.

Dead Rain.

Didn't even cross my mind.

Set the scene for Dead Rain.

Hell yeah.

Uh, set the scene for Beyond the Supernatural. Ooh, okay.

First edition? Or second edition?

Both. I, I am sullying myself unless Sean and other parties wish to give me a sneak peek on the unreleased, but I know you have the manuscript. version, uh, so I can introduce Arcanist to set the scene for 2nd edition Beyond the Supernatural. And the on hold but in already sitting in my save folder, already ready to go Recon set the scene. And in addition, I have a small podcasting side project That I am already gathering folks for that may or may not be appearing under the Breakfast Puppies banner.

Well, if you need an editor, I know someone for hire.

Uh, Will, I'm planning on talking to you and it may or may not go under Breakfast Puppies Publishing, but it is in the gaming space and it is The one thing I succeeded from in 2025 was running a short recon campaign. And a spinoff of that is a small side project that came out of that, that may or may not— at the very least, if you're on the Discord, you'll see links to that project. We may or may not do it under the Breakfast Puppies banner, but we'll talk about it.

Okay.

I've already gathered a couple initial guests for it. Uh, if you like this, you'll like that. But beyond that, big things. I'm gonna plan on going to WagonCon, of course. I'm planning on running a couple games at WagonCon. Of course, there will be the mandatory Jacob Delta Green game, which I always attempt to run, but Not always, depending on how the scheduling works. Uh, Matt, please don't schedule me on Fridays.

Well, I'm not in charge of scheduling this year. I've handed that duty off. So, uh, you do know next year, and I, I'm going to say this publicly, I think for the first time outside of the board of WagonCon, next year will be my last year of being on the board for WagonCon.

2027.

2027.

Okay.

Uh, it'll be our 10th anniversary. And it'll be our— my last year.

So I, I want to say, if you show up to WagonCon this year and you find JustJacob at WagonCon—

And you survive his Phoenix Command game.

No, no, no, no, no. I, I, I, I am a cruel GM, but there are limits, sir. Uh, Phoenix Command is a game where you have to give consent and I make you sign a form. And you have to prove you know basic math.

And basic programming.

But if you find JustJacob at WagonCon and say, hey, I'm from the Breakfast Puppies Discord, you might be getting a special surprise.

That may require a consent form.

No, no, no, no, no, it won't. It will not. It's a special present that's already been ordered and will be available at WagonCon if you find me and you say, hey, I'm from the Breakfast Puppies Discord.

Would it happen to be a t-shirt with your face on it?

No, it is not.

Okay.

It is pocket-sized. I will say that.

Okay.

And more importantly, it's not something that you should be afraid of showing your family members, which is always a question I'm asked.

I have a request. I have a request. When we do the set the scene for Beyond the Supernatural, Yes. I would love to get Stephen Dawes to join us. And those that don't know—

100%.

Stephen Dawes is— when you go to the Palladium open houses, he's the run running Beyond the Supernatural.

Yes.

He has a panel of like 20 PCs that he updates the history of every game and what the player does to them. Uh, I have played in 2 of his games or 3 of his games. I'm Moses Browning. The Southern— the Black Southern Baptist vampire hunter. I'm basically Blade, but the son of a minister.

Well, if you can contact—

Please do, because honestly, I would love to have him on the mics. Uh, I know him from— not from the Palladium Open House, but from other channels. He doesn't realize we know each other, but, uh, I, I am aware of him. And, uh, if you could reach out and do an introduction, I would love to, because I would like to do a little bit of curation for him, because I I have a huge respect to what he brings to Beyond the Supernatural and as the, the master of niche games. Oh, oh, wait a minute. Niche games, Palladium, the other Set the Scene that I was planning.

We got something coming up, folks.

Oh, we got another, but there's another one I'm planning.

Well, we got something coming up and soon.

And I would hope to bring back an old host for one time, a set the scene of Robotech.

Oh, I was about to say, will it require volleys of missiles flying through space?

It may require volleys of missiles flying through space.

Bad pop music.

Oh my God.

It, it may actually require him to sully himself to play his least favorite version of Robotech.

Well, if we can convince him to play Lin Minmei, then no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

So we're playing a Southern Cross game.

Yeah, we are playing a Southern Cross game, and we're all in Logan's. No, no, no, no, no, no. We we won't go that far. But yeah, it's I do want to see if we can tempt the original Matt back. For one session to do a set the scene of Robotech.

If we're talking about things that we are fantasizing about, but, but are still ultimately possible.

This is going to happen in the next year, whether or not Matt can do it or not. But I would love to tempt him back.

No, no, no, no. Like, no, this is a 100% attainable goal. I appreciate it. These are, these are, these are things that we would like to do that aren't ridiculously impossible. So yes, I think that's a fantastic goal. I would love to get him back on specifically for a Robotech game. I think that's where he would just feel like a kid in a candy store.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I just might make you play a Desert Corps member.

Honestly, I know so little about Southern Cross. You could just hand me a character and be like, this is— I'd be like, cool. Do I get to blow shit up?

Yes.

Yeah.

I, I mean, I, I've been working on this since late last year. Uh, with the entire scope of having you, NPC, you, Buckley, and the original Matthew.

And I, that'd be nice.

Yes. Yes.

I would love to get Ramon or CJ back on for a game.

Yeah, absolutely.

If I could get CJ on, so, oh my God. So that's something, uh, looking back, I crossed off a life goal. I crossed off multiple life goals with this podcast, one of which was have a conversation with Kevin and record it and release it. That'd be cool. But my life goal was run a game with Kevin as a player. I still feel so awesome.

And I still feel so guilty about that one.

It was so good. Everything was good. Everything was perfect. Especially, especially The Bone Stealer.

And I feel so, so guilty about that.

Customers, come on in.

I am, I am. Okay, first of all, I want to talk. So looking back on the last year and our successes of the last year, I feel absolutely horrible that I, without realizing that's where you're going, I called out The Bone-Stealing Witch.

You did something totally unexpectedly awesome with that, which was establish in my mind the idea of this as a recurring character.

Fair enough. Yeah, but beyond that, you have rewritten a part of my life for me because that witch— I have played that goddamn dungeon At least 5 times.

Oh, wow.

From now on, whenever I think about that dungeon, there is now a voice attached to that character that is 100% yours.

Come on in. Have a seat. Let me get one of your bones.

That was not one of my proudest moments.

And as someone who, uh, whose tailbone is firmly damaged from a drunk driver. Uh, she can have that any goddamn time she wants.

Sit right down.

I'll make you comfortable.

Yeah, that, that was so fun. I had so much fun with that. I, that, that was a life. That was, uh, one of those dreams of a teenager that I managed to cross off a list with a checkmark next to it.

Yeah.

So now that we're moving on to reflections of 2025. One of my fond lookbacks was the episode you and I did for Nightbane of the Nightlands.

Yeah.

That episode has echoed with me ever since. And while I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it in 2026, the fantasy version of the Nightlands has been Like every so often I'll be doing my day job or whatever, and I'll pull up the nightpad, uh, the notepad and add a couple more lines to that project. And it's, it's there. Uh, I will say that I'm probably going to steal some of the people from your regular session.

That's fine.

To, to do Palladium Fantasy meets the Nightlands.

Yeah, I was so happy to talk to CJ. That was another dream come true.

Oh yeah.

No, I, in my mind, I like, no, I had never communicated with this man, but in my mind, like he was the Nightbane guy and he was the, the, the South America, the FaZe World guy. So like, I was like, oh my God, talking to him. I have almost was expecting to fanboy harder than I did when we talked to Kevin for the first time. Yeah. And then he was just like, so fucking chill.

Right.

So chill. CJ, cool, cool dude. 100% A+ thumbs up. And hearing about his writing, talking to him about the, the, the new genre of fiction that I have been introduced to. Thanks, CJ. Grumble, grumble.

What?

What?

The lit RPG?

Lit RPG.

Oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't use sarcasm in there.

It's way better than people give it credit for.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It is absolutely as terrible.

Oh, it is.

It is. I've read several lit RPGs. I love them to death. So you guys can all—

no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Let me give you a wry smile with pursed lips.

Listen, listen. I want stat blocks in the middle of a chapter that take up 20 pages for no apparent reason.

Wink. Wry smile.

Let's be real. New genres— this is a pattern that has happened through literature history. New tropes/subgenres in literature are introduced.

Oh yeah.

And oftentimes there's like one initial really, really good version of it that's introduced, and then for a very long time absolute crap comes out to follow it. And then—

Sometimes it precedes it.

Sometimes, but weirdly enough, not, not— it's more often there's one person who absolutely introduces it, who does it well.

Okay.

Are you done with this? Yeah.

Long story short, lit RPG is a genre that is full of garbage.

Garbage. Yeah.

But someone came along and reinvented the genre, and we got to meet him.

In a world gone mad, where lit RPG is full of crap and bullshit, and wry smiles, one writer comes along once in an epoch to deliver us to awesome. And that writer It's Tom Cruise coming up. No, no, it's CJ.

Jeez me Christmas.

On a related note, projects for potentially 2026, it all depends when they get the final product out. I would like to sit down with you and play a game of the new Black Company RPG.

So if anybody wants to get a hint of how that game plays and what it sounds like, check out Bastard Quest. They recently did a 3-part series where they played through the playtest version of that.

Yeah.

I've read the playtest version. It's really, really solid. And I would love to see how my 2 co-hosts would handle that.

I mean, for me, my biggest thing in 2026 is the upcoming release of Mechanoid Space. I cannot wait to get my hands on that.

You know, that's not going to happen in 2026.

What are you talking about? I know it. No. Well, I have faith.

I have faith that, uh, Mechanoid Space will be released Right before the United World of Warlock, uh, Phase World book.

And it's going to have a portal right into the Old Kingdom.

No, no, no. I, I have decided that the day before Mechanoid Space drops, Jacob, Just Jacob will drop dead of a heart attack. So if you, if the Discord server suddenly is filled with memorials that Just Jacob suddenly died from an aortic event, you know that mechanoid space is on the way.

Which is fine because we'll just ignore about the death and just celebrate mechanoid space for the next year.

Which is how I want to go out.

On a serious note, unrelated to Palladium stuff, but related to my life, one thing that has surprised me recently that I am really excited about is the discovery that finally The Savage Worlds version of a game that I wrote called Motobushido is going to be Kickstarted by Sigil Entertainment. So pay attention. Oh, who knows? By the time this releases, it might have already hit Kickstarter. They've been advertising for a few weeks now. It should be really good. It looks like there's new art from the original Motobushido artist, Rick Marks.

Yeah.

And I'm super excited that they kept the covers from the previous project that Pinnacle funded. The covers are fantastic. They are this pink and purple and black kind of mesh of colors, giving this feel of violence underneath blossoms. It's wonderful. I'm looking forward to it. It should be really good. I have read an early playtest draft of it. For those of you who are into Savage Worlds and also into motorcycles and samurai, you should check this out.

As someone who is into all of those, especially the in-depth details of the ronin culture and the '50s, '60s motorcycle culture, people who have No place in the wake of a giant war. I am so jazzed about this.

Yeah, I, I think they'll do it well. Yeah, I hope it succeeds. I wish them luck. Yeah.

As someone who randomly walked upon the advertisement for it and having you and I talked about like the whole, the whole trial that you went through, I was like, what? Why didn't you tell me about this? And then you're like, what?

I didn't know.

Well, Nathaniel, do you recall the first time you actually got introduced to me by name when I walked up to you and had you sign a copy of Moto Bushido?

I don't. I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

So Nathaniel and I had crossed paths numerous times before. The first time he probably ever heard my name was when I walked up to him at a game storm and went, hey, I bought this copy of Motobushido. You wrote it. Can you sign it?

Mm-hmm.

And he looked at me with those sleep-deprived, glazed-over eyes that were gleaming with a hint of recognition for the fact that, like, someone loved his product, but also, oh my God, leave me the fuck alone. Fuck alone. I want a cup of coffee and to be left alone. And he signed it in Sharpie for me. Uh, who would know that less than a year and a half later, we would be sitting at the same game table, and then less than a year after that, we'd be sitting behind some mics.

Yeah.

I just want to take a moment to— Nathaniel and I would not know each other were it not for his writing on Moto Bushido.

Oh, and I hope you thought it was good writing.

You wouldn't know each other if it wasn't for his writing on Moto Bushido.

I would not know your writing. No, you're— yeah. So as someone who grew up in motorcycle culture, Moto Bushido, someone who grew up in motorcycle culture and grew up with a father Who was— could have been an Asian studies major should— if he hadn't decided that biology paid more. Your writing on Moto Bushido spoke to me so damn hard that I— there is a small part of me that in all the ways that you and I are different, there's a seed of a fanboy for you personally in me. Oh, thank you. And your writings on that particular project.

So my response to that, I'm going to, in the interest of keeping this relevant to our past accomplishments and also outsourcing so I don't have to deal with my feelings, I'm going to bring in my spokesperson. Yes, tell me more about how you love me.

Well, would you— so since you've opened the gateway—

It got very uncomfortable in the recording booth at this point.

I appreciate praise from all of my minions.

And more to the point, uh, as someone who the deep, dark, evil part of his soul enjoys making people experience their emotions, as someone who lives with post-traumatic stress disorder, I have shared that game with other gamers who live with the same experience, and it has spoken to them as deeply as it has spoken to me over a dozen times. And seeing it get a wider audience this year touches me personally and touches people I know personally. Now feel your goddamn feelings and get on the mic.

Excuse me, I must go have a conversation with my knife. Thank you very much. Now let's talk about our Rifts game.

Oh, you mean the one we do on air?

Yeah.

Oh yes. So for those of you who have been listening to our, uh, actual play of Rifts, I, I'm gonna share a deep dark truth.

We're at that point of the evening. Excuse me, I must pour more wine.

Yes, please. So in actuality, I didn't expect our actual play to go beyond 4 sessions.

No, I gave it 3 or 4 at the top. So I thought, this is going to be fun. We're all going to die.

First out, uh, first off, a shout out to our GM. I did not actually start listening to the Bastard Quest until after we started playing. And I would have changed my thoughts ahead of time if I had listened to him, but he's an amazing GM. More to the point, we have managed to grab a cast of characters for it that are absolutely amazing. I listen to a lot of actual play podcasts, and while I have to say I'm biased because some people I like are on this one, I don't like myself, so obviously I'm not counting. I put us in the top 3 actual play podcasts I've listened to. Now, if only we could get somebody else to guest once, it would be great.

It's not that he hasn't joined us, it's that I just haven't invited him. Yeah, there we go. No, truth is, we're trying to keep it to a small group. Yeah, I love The idea of bringing on guests. I'm basically the wrangler for the game. I'm the wrangler and the editor and this 8-foot-tall murder cat. I honestly, I would love to have Buckley on. Yeah. I think honestly, I think the main reason that Buckley's not in it is because he couldn't make the first session.

Yeah.

He couldn't make the first session and the internet connection to where he lives is questionable at best.

Uh, I run, for those that don't know, I live out in the boonies. I run 2 wireless-based internet services to make sure I have stable connection.

Yeah.

Uh, and it's iffy at that because we've talked over once.

Yeah. So, uh, which is why I travel to do these casts.

So what folks don't maybe realize is that we all play in the same room except for Kyle and Kyle is remote. And I have a setup that lets us all communicate with him at the same time with very, very, very, very little latency. And we're all watching him on a screen. But due to sound plugins and whatnot, I think it does a good job of making it sound like he's like right there with us. Yep. I've had people come up to me and say like, seriously, how do you get Kyle to come out here? Like, you think we're that rich?

We're not that rich.

Yeah.

We just might have someone on the quote unquote Glitter Boys staff who is that obsessive about tech that it sounds like he's in the same room.

I like things to sound seamless. That, that is my obsession. I like things to sound seamless.

I'm not gonna— there is no slight on that. Anybody who can make me listen to the— make me sound good enough to where I want to listen to myself is an amazing human being. And you are one of 3.

The best part is I make myself listenable to myself. So yeah. Yeah.

That is definitely, uh, for those that don't listen to a lot of other podcasts, sound quality is super important once you really listen to good sound quality and all of a sudden, and that's something I think we've talked about before, the quality of sound for any of the Breakfast Puppies podcasts is not just above average. It's an A. It really is incredible. I've heard some horrible stuff. And this is the section of the podcast where just Jacob and I laud applause and appreciation on our fearless leader over there and then watch him turn really cool shades of pink. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do go on.

Yes. I mean, as, as, as Buckley, someone who has got pretensions, I'll call it pretensions of soon publishing things. And as someone who isn't allowed to talk about what I appear in because of fucking non-disclosure agreements, uh, we're going to laud praise on the person who actually gets to put their name on products.

I appreciate the praise, but I prefer it in bottles of Tealing Hybrid.

Uh, if you would like to contribute to the healing—

Tealing Hybrid We do have a Ko-fi page.

We do have a Ko-fi page. I mean, admittedly, so let's have a realistic talk about that quick because we are talking about plans for the future.

Let's, yeah, yeah, sure, why not? We, okay, I, I hate self-promotion, so I try not to do it as often as possible.

So let me do it as the immoral asshole of the podcast. Folks, we love what we do. We would do love— we would do what we love.

We would also do love.

We would also do love. But what we do does cost money, and server hosting equipment, etc., does cost money. We recently had an LXR— XLR cable die on us. And how much is that gonna cost, NPC?

The XLR cable itself won't cost much, but in its death, it killed 2 of my headsets.

Right.

Unfortunately, those headsets were expensive. That's because I am a hobbyist. I like—

You're not a—

It's not, it's not, this isn't the Los Angeles studio shit, but this is the primo individual studio shit.

So realize that When you throw money at us, you're not paying for our lifestyles. You're not paying for us to drink higher quality whiskey. We're not— you're not actually paying for the Tie-Ling hybrid.

But you could.

It is an option.

It is indeed an option. I mean, honestly, should an angel investor ever drop in our laps, I have plans. But the reality is that what we do at the quality we all feel a need to do it at does cost money. And we appreciate each and every one of you who kicks us a couple bucks every single month or the months that you can, because I do know we have some people who have kicked us a couple bucks when they get their tax returns or whatever.

It's appreciated.

It's appreciated, and you are valued to us on a personal level. I, I sometimes wish that Ko-fi would give us their specific real-world names so I could send thank you letters because—

They obfuscate a lot of it, right?

Yeah, because the reality is, is someone who grew up in the Upper Midwest, thank you letters are a way of life, and, um, Should— would those of you who choose or have the means to throw us a little extra so we can pay for the costs that go into this, understand it's not a feeling of we're thankful because we get to live our lives. We're thankful because you get to help us keep doing something that we enjoy and you enjoy.

For the future, for the coming year, what we've condensed down, I want to do it. I want to be in at least another 30 podcasts, which will double my number. I think that's an easy, easy one. That's our, that's our low level. Uh, I want us to do at least 2 or 3 Set the Scenes. I think we have already listed off 4 or 5. So I think we're going to pull that off. No problem.

I have 3 of those 4 already written out.

I want to set up 2027. I'm always looking to the next year.

Yeah.

Yeah. I want to set up 2027. And, uh, I, I personally want to publish something or become really close to publishing something. Or actually, I would feel successful if I get a clear rejection letter even, because that means someone read it.

No, no, no, no, no. You and I need to talk off the mics. Uh, there are avenues and I have experience in this space.

I think we both do.

We, we both do. We will help on this.

Make this happen.

Because even if you get rejected, self-publishing is a reality nowadays.

And if not the preferred version.

Yeah. And that's, that's a whole other conversation. But yeah, I, I've thought about self-publication too, but like IP protection. That's the part that gets hard.

No. Yeah. Between NPC and I, there's lots of experience. Also, if you're on our Discord and you have a project that wants to go live, Let us know. Let us know.

Pimp that out.

First of all, we'll pimp that out. And plus NPC and I from different ends of the industry have seen some of the thorns and we're more than willing to give you some pointers free of charge on how to navigate that.

I'm looking forward to where this goes. We're just fans, you know, um, I, I try to make a high production value, but in the end, We're just fans talking about shit we love and it could be whatever.

And if we can help other fans talk about shit they love, we're here for it.

I hope that whatever we do in 2026 and into 2027, we keep it above board and positive and get more people talking good things about their fellow gamers. The games that they love without needing to couch those statements in derogatory snipes at the things that they don't like. You can love one thing without it needing to be balanced by hating something else. You can love Palladium. You can just love it. It doesn't have to be a, I love this because it's better than X. No, you can just love it.

Yeah.

I love what we do. I love hanging out with both of you. I love talking on these microphones. I love when we roll the dice and pretend to be characters in Kyle's fictional fucking game. I love being an 8-foot-tall murder cat. I love it all.

So this is what I would like to invite all of our listeners to join us in, in 2026. Embrace what you love just for what you love, not because it's this and not that.

Drop by our Discord and tell us something that you love about Palladium and be sure to state it on its own merits. It doesn't have to be, man, I love it because it does this so much better than that. No, we don't care about that. It doesn't matter. That's probably also pretty cool to somebody else. We don't need to put down their— we don't need to yuck their yum. We can all have fun rolling dice and playing elf games in our preferred ways of doing it in the same space. Fuck elves. Well, so I also play Talis Lanta. No elves. For those of you who were there at that time, you remember no elves. I do love elves though. My first character wasn't— no, my second character, third character, and fourth character were elves, but my first was a centaur. On that note, thank you for listening to us as long as you have. Thank you for all the feedback that you have sent to us. Thanks for having a good time with this game that we all love and roll dice and pretend to be elves and dwarves and giant.

And dwarves.

200-foot mecha and Cosmonauts. We cannot forget the Cosmonauts.

Correction, no, uh, Riffs mecha nor Robotech mecha is over 200-foot tall.

None of those were harmed during this, but we may have blown through the corona of a handful of stars. Thanks for listening. 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 Opening music is Caravana by Philip Grass, 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 breakfastpuppiesdiscord.com. See you next time!

puppies.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.