#200 – After the Bomb Character Jam w/ GM John

Breakfast puppies. This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. You are listening to the Glitter Boy. Uh, François, it's Glitter Boys.

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Fine. You are listening to the Glitter Boys. Tonight, on a very special episode of Dawson's Creek, we are joined by a guest for our 200th episode. Introduce yourself, guest.

Howdy there, everybody. I'm John Villain. No, I'm actually John from the Real Play Games podcast, but it's a pleasure to be here.

I hope you know what you've just done.

Welcome, Mr.

Villain.

I'm just gonna say that any lifer GM knows that deep in their soul, they are the villain.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yep. You've, you just did something. Oh, this is gonna be great.

Okay.

Anyway. Yes. So GM John from Real Play Games Podcast, which I must now admit, It was only like a week ago that I figured that out. RPG.

Sneaky acronym.

Sneaky. Yeah. I never even thought about it because you don't point at it. You know, it's, it never, you never just come out and say, hey, this is what it means.

It's got to make them work for it.

Very subtle. Anyway, Real Play Games Podcast also does a lot of Palladium stuff. And very specifically, John, you do at least 2 Is there a 3rd season of After the Bomb?

It's cooking.

Okay.

I'm about 50% of the way through planning what I hope to be a very entertaining season for that one too. So.

Excellent. Well, it's After the Bomb, 2nd edition, and that's what we are making characters for today. We're going to walk through the character creation process and let listeners know how it's done, ways to kind of get through it pretty quickly. So it's not as tedious as a lot of people make Palladium character creation out to be. And demonstrate some of the, the craziness that can come out of these.

And this is where you have the cut 6 hours later.

Okay, we're done making the characters and, uh, we can play now.

And it's like, no.

Why is everyone sweating?

They're all like stressed and—

Yeah.

Fortunately, there's no video component to this, so you don't get to see the sweat, but you can imagine it.

Yes, absolutely.

After the Bomb. All right, we're going to start with step 1 and we're going to roll some attributes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Let's roll up our 8s. And are we going to do this old school?

We're going to do this old school with a little bit of a twist. So the way I want to do it, because, because everyone does Palladium with their own house rules, After the Bomb, I think, is a system that benefits from having slightly higher, higher than the average stats, at least in Second Ed. So we're gonna go with the classic roll the 4 dice and drop the lowest of each one.

Okay.

Oh, and just so you know, there are bonus rolls.

Yeah.

If you roll a 16, 17, or 18, then the result is exceptional and you get to roll an additional 6-sided die and add the result. If that result is also a 6, then you get to roll a second and final 6-sided die.

Okay.

I can, uh, I can get behind that. If you're gonna, if you're gonna make me go in order, I want some sort of kicker.

And we're totally doing this in the proper order that it's in the book.

Absolutely.

Totally.

Completely in the proper order.

Which book?

Yes. Listen, listen here.

We're looking at page 10 of character creation in the After the Bomb 2nd edition book.

Excellent.

All right.

Page 10 and 11.

So I'm gonna use 3 of my wagon con die and my Savage Rifts die just to spite you.

Now, just to make sure, Buckley, those are the dice with the symbol on the 6.

Oh yeah, they're on the 6 and the 1. Oh wait, no, that's not supposed to happen.

Anyway, you don't need to tell me everything that you roll. We're just going to do a, a few moments later cut and then we'll get your stats. Jacob's over here. He's on a— he's on a— Jacob is, shall we say, On a roll.

Oh, literally.

Except for being— well, you can drop that one. Yep. Yep. That's a good roll.

I'll take a 14.

That's not— yeah, I'm, I'm pretty pleased with where we've ended up.

Is everybody done?

Yeah.

Okay. Tell you what, we'll start. We'll start with you, John. You're the last one to talk. So tell you what, tell me your 2 highest and your 2 lowest.

Okay. Let me, let me calculate them because I just have them spaced out with the numbers on it. So physical beauty or sorry, no. Oh God, no, my physical beauty is only a 9. Never mind, let me figure this out real quick. Uh, my physical prowess is a 19 and my speed is an 18.

Okay, what's your lowest 2?

My lowest 2, uh, well, lowest 3 actually. My lowest 3 are IQ at 6.

Oh geez.

Um, then we have my mental affinity at a 9, and then we have my physical beauty at a 9.

Okay, Jacob.

My 2 highest are my physical strength at 22.

Mm-hmm.

Ooh.

And my mental endurance at 15.

Okay.

My 2 lowest are my physical prowess at 11 and my physical beauty at 11.

Oh, all right. Not bad.

Luckily.

Yeah, John, you stole my notoriously bad luck. Yay.

So my lowest Physical prowess at 7 and speed at 9. So I am neither dexterous nor all that quick. My 2 highest, I have an IQ of 13. That's not horrible. You know, I can, I can do stuff. Maths I can do. My physical endurance is 27.

Ooh.

Which is pretty tough for an octopus. I don't have a skeletal structure, but I kind of smoosh a lot.

Well, if you think about endurance, As capacity. You're just using that hydraulic structure to its—

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I squirt everywhere.

Oh boy.

Oh wait, no, I didn't. You dirty man. I'm gonna put ink on you. Wait, that's not making it better. We've broken Jacob.

That's the second time tonight. I love it.

That's awesome.

First one, we weren't even on the mics. Well, I mean, we were, but yeah, exactly. Not on the record.

And I wasn't even thinking sexually until you said, you dirty man, and that just made it worse.

All right.

We're just right now mainly working with the first book. However, some of you have expressed interest in playing animals from other books. You can either randomly roll it or you can just go with it. Let me know what animal you are.

Well, I, for one, am going to randomly roll.

I think I'm going rando too.

I will be the holdout because I always am. Uh, so while you all are rolling, I'm gonna play an octopus, an octopus from, uh, Roadhogs. And I'm, uh, interested in this and I'm already thinking about the different background and what I hopefully will get. We'll see how it goes.

Okay.

Oh God.

What'd you get, Jake?

Uh, I'm an elk.

Elk.

I am looking. I got, let's see, let me double check on this table here because we love tables.

Absolutely. Tables are awesome.

It's one of my favorite things about the After the Bomb. Well, Palladium in general, but After the Bomb specifically is chock full of tables.

Yes. It's so easy to not have to think.

Next to, next to Nightspawn. Nightbane.

Nightbane. Nightspawn. Yeah, you're right.

After the, you know, Nightbane, After the Bomb, the tables are just amazing.

Yes.

Nightbane because you have the morphous tables. You have endless morphous tables.

So many, so many. And I love each and every one of them.

All right.

So that is urban animal. That is a chimpanzee.

Okay. Awesome. Great.

Great.

It's okay.

Great.

Every group needs a face and a Murdoch.

You know, you'd be surprised. You would be surprised. It could end up turning out that the chimpanzee is the muscle.

This is very true.

Very true. How much do you know about chimpanzees?

Chimpanzees are evil. Okay. So super smart and evil.

Side joke. Years ago, I was getting a group together to play in a just very casual Rifts game at the fraternity that I rented a room at, at the college that I didn't go to, which was Georgia Tech University. Shout out to Psi Upsilon University or Psi Upsilon fraternity. You guys are great. Anyway. We were putting together a very short Rifts game and I was looking through Lone Star and I noticed that the chimpanzee is getting like 5d6 strength. And I made a comment on it. And my buddy, my, one of my favorite gaming courts at that era was like, dude, do you have any idea how much pressure a chimpanzee can exert? So yes, the chimpanzee could end up being the muscle.

That's right.

Oh, I hope I don't have to be the muscle. This is FYI, the first time I'm actually being a player in a Palladium game.

Ever?

Um, ever.

Wow.

Ever.

Wow. Okay.

First one.

That's awesome.

I've been running them since '93. Hmm.

I think I first ran Palladium around that time as well. I think it was my first attempt at being a game master.

Yep.

Uh, yeah, I know I ran before that, but, uh, it was— we ran all Rifts, a little bit of Robotech, but mostly Rifts.

It's all fantasy here.

Yeah, I was deep in Palladium before Rifts was a thing. So it was—

yeah, I can't.

'85, '86.

Yeah.

I'm old.

Well, for us it was, there was Palladium wasn't, didn't have the penetration on the West Coast and the small towns and the Oregon coast and things like that. We just couldn't get to it.

John, the version of Heroes Unlimited that you started with, did it have the TMNT Bio-E stuff in it?

I believe so. I think it was the one with the Steranko cover on it with all the different superheroes on there. So I think it was 1E.

Okay, so that'd be 1e, probably 7th printing.

Yeah, something like that.

The shadow 2nd edition of Heroes Unlimited.

Yeah, the revised.

Yep.

Great.

Okay. Well, we got the animals. We got the animals done. That's both step 1 and 2. So let's move to step 3. We're just following along in the book. So folks, if you want, I should have mentioned this at the beginning, but character creation begins on page 11 of the After the Bomb 2nd edition book. We're up to step 3 now, background, education, and skills. And Buckley, since you chose to make a character from the Mutants Down Under book, if you wish—

Roadhogs.

I'm sorry, Roadhogs. I keep thinking Down Under. I don't know why. For some reason, octopus makes more sense to me in Australia than—

I would agree.

On a highway in California.

Roadhogs was the first one they did after— no, it was California Turtles Go to California.

Well, that— I think Road Hogs was the first actual after the bomb supplement, right?

So it makes sense that they're like, we're gonna throw a bunch of animals that we've never seen before. Octopus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's throw that in there. Okay, cool.

So if you would like, you can roll on that table instead. Just a note, the skills are done a little bit differently in 1st ed than 2nd ed, but I honestly, I think it more or less converts over.

Well, I think to be consistent, to be consistent, I'm going to stick with the After the Bomb book.

Okay.

And roll there. And that will kind of keep those consistent.

Great.

Raised on the Frontier for the octopus. I can already, already see it coming in my head on this octopus Raised on the Frontier.

And just to let folks know what Raised on the Frontier does, You, you get some nice bonuses to your starting abilities and you get a bio bonus and that's great. You don't get that many skills. Yeah, not that many at all. They're all, most of them are pre-picked for you and you get like 8, what are called domestic skills. And for a note, anybody who plays Palladium games outside of the realm of After the Bomb, domestic is also where they shoved communication.

Yep.

Yeah.

So it's not that limited. So that's pretty good.

So let's see. Well, this is damn weird. I am— my background is one of the academic underground.

Oh, that's really handy.

Very studious elk.

All right, John, what you got?

I ended up getting freed slave. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Chimpanzee freed. Ooh.

Free Chippy.

Ooh.

Yeah, I'm trying to mush this one together in my head a little bit and make some, make some candy out of it.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Doesn't that one give you like a bonus to your starting bio E too?

Plus 10.

Jesus.

Free Slave is really good. Academic Underground is really good for skills.

Yeah.

You don't get that much in the way of bonuses, but that plus 2 to IQ is not bad. And it gives you a bonus to physical prowess. And as we all know, physical prowess is a really good stat to have if you don't want to die.

And the starting equipment and money is nothing to laugh at either. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I got clothes and less than $100.

Whereas I'm sitting at $3,000, full set of clothing, travel equipment, a main weapon, and a computer with a huge library of electronic reference books. Pick 2 specialty topics.

I'm just looking at the 6 secondary skills that you also get, which is kind of impressive. Yes.

Yes.

So here's what y'all should do. Cause we're again, totally doing these in the order in the book.

Absolutely.

We are now at step 4, which is building mutants with a bio-E. Now we recently, if not our previous, our last episode, it's the one before it where we did a whole episode talking about bio-E, a fantastic fucking system. This is the, this is the chef's kiss of, I think Eric Woojik's masterpiece contribution to Palladium. The Bio-E system, for folks who are unfamiliar with it, is essentially a point-buy level that you get to— a point-buy system of 5-point levels where you get to customize how big your character is, how human-like their character is in like 5 or 6 different ways, and you can even buy special cool abilities like Venom sacs or prehensile tails or even psychic abilities. This is, in my experience with After the Bomb and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this ends up taking longer than skills. Skills in this are actually fairly straightforward as opposed to many of the other Palladium games. It's the Bio-E system trying to Maximize your character's potential. So each of your characters has a starting BIOE based upon your animal type, which you should already know because you've already got your animal information in front of you. Uh, just real quick, we're going to start Buckley. I just want to know your current starting growth step and your base BIOE. And remember, if you get this starting bonus, be sure to add that in from your background.

Okay.

Right.

Uh, I have the octopus starts at size 2 and starts at 70 bio-e, but because of my background, I have a +5. So I have 75 bio-e to spend.

Wow.

It's, that's a lot.

That's a lot.

Uh, those size 2 means I'm pretty fucking small. I'm 5 pounds. I'm like, I'm an octopus size if I stick at that, which means, yeah, it could be entertaining. That, that, uh, high physical endurance is actually because you just don't fucking see me. And I'm, I'm story-wise getting out of the way of damage.

Yeah.

So yeah.

John, what you got?

Okay. Well, I have a base of 20 and then I also get an additional 10 for my, uh, freed slave status. So I have 30 BIOE total to start and I am size level 9. So almost human size, a little bit shorter than an average human, I think, in the book.

Jacob?

I start at a base size of 17 and 0 BIOE. Oh, well, you're a elk.

Oh, that's right.

Elks are fucking huge.

Elks are fucking huge. People don't realize how big elk are.

Oh no, no, I'm quite aware.

Well, I mean, you have them and you're wandering through your backyard.

I would note that for folks who want to follow the mathematics around, size 17 starts— he says he starts with 0 BIOE. However, If he wanted to drop down that elk to the same size as the octopus, it might not be allowed. But if he— if it was, theoretically, he could drop down to size level 2 and he would have 75 BIO aim. Funny how that works out.

Which balances out with my 70 plus 5.

Yep.

Which is pretty impressive that that—

yep.

Almost like they mathed it.

Yeah. Very nice. And so When you are adjusting your bio-e and buying or paying off your sizes, uh, or selling off your sizes, like you can drop down a size level. Every size level you drop down gets you 5 bio-e versus every size level that you buy up costs you 5 bio-e. The reason you might want to consider this, folks, is because doing so also has innate adjustments to your IQ, your physical strength, your physical prowess— I'm sorry, your physical endurance, not prowess— your speed. And it also determines your starting base SDC, which is, you know, your, your extra hit points, your hit points that don't involve blood.

And for those of you who are new to the After the Bomb setting and are randomly rolling characters and have just discovered, like myself, that you are a massive walking hunk of meat. After the Bomb adds some special options for incredibly large characters where you can go big and dumb or big and slow. And there's 2 grades of each and you pay some attribute penalties in exchange for getting a tiny bit more bio-E.

Okay.

So Uh, I'm looking at that hard at the moment.

So.

And keep in mind, as NBC pointed out, there are penalties for size 2 characters. You can't just say, I'm going to make a small little octopus. Like I was thinking about, you get a -6 IQ, a -6 PS, a -4 PE, a +7 to your speed. So you're, you're fast, but that's after you've rolled everything.

And a starting SDC of only 10.

Yeah.

And a starting SDC of 10. So you're, you're actually a lot squishy.

As opposed to Jacob with a growth step of 17. That gets you— well, you start with 0 bio-e based on your animal, but what is that? Plus 11 to physical strength, plus 9 to physical endurance, minus 7, minus 7 to your speed, but a very nice healthy 65 SDC.

Right. Yeah. And that's kind of impressive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not kind of impressive. That is impressive.

So what we're going to do now is go through the psi steps, take a look at your characters, figure out, you know, I want to get some extra points. Maybe you want to buy some psionics and maybe you want to get some of those extra vestigial abilities. Not sorry. Maybe you want to acquire some of those vestigial limitations in order to get extra bio-e. Folks who have familiarity with some of the RPGs like the White Wolf systems or Shadowrun or even Savage Worlds might— will be familiar with the concept of edges and flaws or benefices and hindrances and so on. This is the same thing.

You just—

they're more or less 5-point BIOE costs up or down. Like you can limit your character in some way to get bonus, or you can spend some of those extra points to get a cool thing. Let me know if any of you have any cool ideas that you are like specifically want to talk about.

So, so for me, looking at the octopus, because I'm so small, I'm gonna start with the idea of going to at least size 6. So at least I don't have any of those big penalties kicking around and, and use that as my base before I start tweaking things. And I might want to go bigger because size 6 is kind of small. I don't get any bonuses, which is fine, but I don't have any penalties. And those penalties are kind of hefty if you really look at them.

Yeah, size 6 is like that sweet spot. Yep. Yeah.

And if you think about it, size 6 is 75 pounds. So I'm the size of your turtles.

Right?

I'm a large adolescent, a small teenager in size, but I'm an octopus, which is kind of hilarious. But that's going to cost me 25 of my 75 bio-e. And now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with that bio-e. So that's, that becomes important.

Yeah. And let's see, what do you get for free? You get You automatically get partial hands.

Right.

Which is nice.

Um, you don't get biped, but no, you crawl along with arms, of which you have 8.

Right. And this is where some of the differences in the pre, we'll say 2nd edition after the bomb versus the original TMNT, some of the residual things, some of the fleshed out of the animal is not there. that you would expect to see. But that's fine because it still gives you quite a few options on what you want to do.

I—

that multi-limb coordination power.

Yeah, I was looking at that. That's really cool.

So the way that works, folks, is for 15 bio-e, you can add 2 more limbs that can work together. So the idea being that the assumption is We're just going with the concept of characters only being able to do the standard of an arm, left arm, right arm kind of thing. Even though it's an octopus, you're still stuck in that limitation. But by 15 BIOE, you now have instead of 2 arms that can work, 4 arms that can work.

Well, it looks like—

You can actually go up to 45 BIOE and have all 8 limbs can function independently at the same time.

I would be able to do very little else, but I basically have paired weapons times 4.

You would get 1 additional action per attempt to purchase this and +1 to strike. So if you spent 45 bio-e, you would have a starting bonus of 3 additional attacks per melee and a +3 to strike.

Yeah, which in After the Bomb is powerful. Very powerful. I don't think I'm going to do that, but you know, because I want suction cups. I think I want suction cups. I don't know why I want suction cups, but I think I want suction cups.

For reasons I'm not going to go into right now, I really want you to have suction cups.

Dear listener, you can submit your fan fiction suggestions to [email protected].

I'm playing this a little boring, I have to say. I'm, I'm going to state my exact size.

Well, what size is your default size? I didn't, I didn't catch it.

It's a 9 medium.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's not a bad size.

I'm actually very happy with chimpanzee because it was kind of just all laid out for me for the most part, unless I really wanted to make it a weird baby.

Well, like one of the, uh, the weird big-headed mutant humans.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, you can. I'm sure you can do some freakish stuff with it, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and play it as if this is— well, I mean, this is my first time being a player in After the Bomb, so.

Wow. I was just looking at the chameleon power. I don't know if I've ever seen a chameleon power that's that powerful. As long as the character remains motionless, there's a 5% chance of being detected.

Well, I think that fits in very well with the way that the After the Bomb does their psychic powers.

Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it's been a long time since I've seen that blatant, like, you only have a 5% chance to see me. I'm chameleon, but it's a 20 bio each purchase, which is very expensive. Very expensive.

But it makes sense for an octopus. I mean, you're talking about an animal that can't— that not only can adapt its color, but adapt its texture.

Right.

And shape.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, oh, I'm going to look like a hammer.

Yeah.

Why are there 2 hammers in the tank?

Yeah.

One of those isn't a hammer.

What?

Yeah. They've—

You're giving me flashbacks of the game Prey.

Oh, geez.

Little shadow creatures. Yeah.

Let's see, I finished up. So I shrunk myself a bit. Okay, took myself from a size 17 down to a final size of 13.

That's it?

That's it. Okay.

Okay.

Still a good size.

Yeah, I'm still chunky.

Hefty boy.

Uh, I took full hands, paying that for that big. I took full biped, also paying for that big. Full speech.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

No looks, no natural weapons.

Okay.

I picked up the mutant— the power of advanced smell and then went really hard in the paint on vestigial disadvantages.

Oh God, tell us, tell us.

So I have seasonal antlers.

Okay.

And that means not only do I grow antlers, I have to deal with the full felted antlers Itchy and the shedding and all of that. I have vestigial ears, which actually gives me some stat penalties and makes it— anyone who knows anything about deer or stag ears basically can look at me and tell my mood immediately.

You have mood ears.

Yeah, I have very moody ears. Okay. Okay. I am an obligate herbivore. So I took diet herbivore, so I cannot eat meat. It makes me violently ill. And I have musk glands.

So you have that great sense of smell.

Yep.

That is overwhelmed by your own sense of—

Oh, I have olfactory fatigue to myself.

Oh, okay. Fair. Fair.

All right.

All right.

So yeah, that's me. And I came out net neutral, so I'm not picking up psionics or anything, but I am one beefy boy.

Okay.

Looks like an upright stag.

Phenomenal.

Did anybody take psionics?

I'm picking up Danger Sense.

Okay.

In lieu of trying to figure out how I'm going to get the chameleon powers. So like the kind of residual thing, my— I'm an octopus. I'm very aware of what's going on. So I'll have Danger Sense. That makes— I think it fits for how octopi are always like, if they don't want you to see them, you're not going to see them. Right, right. They're gonna see you, but you're not gonna see them. But I'm trying to figure out where to spend this last 10 points, so that's, that's where I'm, I'm kind of stuck.

I mean, I could take them from you if you don't want to use them. Well, you know, uh, yeah, I, I went a different route than I think either of you did. Uh, I went hands are automatically full for a chimpanzee. I had automatic partial biped, but I spent the 5 bioe for full. I spent the 10 bio-e for full speech. I spent the 10 bio-e for perfect human looks.

Wow.

And I made myself an herbivore for a negative 5, or a plus 5 for my bio-e. And I used what I had remaining to purchase extra physical beauty.

So you're a sexy chimp.

I am the sexiest chimpanzee you're ever gonna see.

As someone who knows way too much about chimpanzees, this just gets more and more disturbing.

Absolutely.

I'm kind of wondering what they'll do with the— I think the octopus was mentioned in the Kickstarter.

It might have been.

There was some mention of it because I'm wondering what you would do with the residual things.

I forget what the creatures were. All I know is that the ones that I voted for, nobody wanted. I think one of them was like Pangolin.

Pangolin.

Which that is a injustice of the first generation.

I agree.

They're such a wonderful species and they're endangered. And like, if you ever watch, like, I watched a documentary about the pangolin men, that's just heartbreaking. And from that day forward, I was like, pangolins forever, 100%.com, you know.

Pangolin and silky anteater. I mean, not the same creature at all, but They— you look at them and it's like that one went with an armadillo shell and that one went with fur and they have the exact same personality, a lot of the same behaviors. Yeah.

So Buckley.

Yes.

The Roadhogs book is from a prior edition, which doesn't seem to take into account the idea of taking Penalties.

Yeah, no, it doesn't at all, which is fine.

So if you want, you can look through the suggested ones that are in the After the Bomb core book. Um, I know, where are they? They are, I think it's after the skills. It's, uh, Vestigial Animal Traits start on page 73 of After the Bomb 2nd edition.

Okay, I'll take a look at that.

Take a look at the ones that— I mean, clearly you can't have vestigial hooves.

Well, why not?

Or horns. That'd be fun.

I don't think they'd be vestigial at that point. They'd be weapons.

Or vestigial wings.

You'd just look like an angel.

Yeah.

A big ball with a bunch of limbs and wings.

Well, I didn't take full biped. I didn't take biped at all. So I'm crawling along the ground as an octopus. So that's disturbing as it is.

So I'll give you a piggyback ride.

So interesting. Some of these could be interpreted in an interesting way to fit an octopus. The one that is immediately popping out to— well, 2 that are popping out to me are webbed hands and feet and tail vestigial. Now octopi don't have webs or tails, but that could represent that some of your limbs are webbed weirdly. Who knows why? Some kind of a weird recessive trait. But another one could be the tail could represent essentially devolved limbs, right? Like one or more of your limbs is more— not really dead weight, but it's just nowhere near the level of control that an octopus should have.

I would point out that multiple species of octopus have what's called an extended mantle, which means they have this skin basically that goes much farther between their tentacles than others, which would translate into webbed very well.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if any of these appeal to you, you can go for it. And John, did you take any of the vestigial traits?

Again, other than diet herbivore, no.

Okay.

Yeah.

Which is just wrong for a chimpanzee, just saying.

Yeah, they don't get much in the way of offerings for them anyway. They get nearsightedness or diet herbivore is the 2 potential choices that you can take. So it was either that or shrinking. And I'd like to be an okay-sized boy.

Okay.

So Jacob, what size level did you end at?

13.

13.

Okay. And Buckley, what size level did you end at?

6.

So we got a 6, a 9, and a 13. Okay, cool.

If we stand a certain way, 2 of us can hide behind a 3rd.

Absolutely. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, depending on the season, my character is gonna ride, you know, Akimbe on top of the elk, holding on to the antlers and, you know, into combat with my sucker hands.

I dare you to ride my back.

Nope.

Giving you smell and taste with your suckers.

Nope.

I'm gonna ride right on your head and I'll use my other suckers as blinders so you don't see the combat coming, so you don't freak out.

I did not take the, um, uh, the limitation, the Vestigial limitation that makes me, uh, a natural prey species.

Okay.

So, so I didn't do that.

That would have been great.

So starting with you, Jacob, then at size level 13, your final modifications are +7 to strength, +5 to physical endurance, and -3 to speed. What does that put those at?

So that puts me at a 33 for physical strength.

Whoa.

Uh, because I also got a +4 for being an elk. Whoa.

Damn.

Uh, it puts my, uh, my physical prowess to 12. Again, +1 for being an elk. And it puts my speed At 30.

What about the physical endurance? Did you mean physical endurance or physical prowess?

Physical prowess, because there's a +1 bonus for elk.

Gotcha. But your physical endurance should have gone up by +5.

Oh yes. Yes, it did. So that's at a 19. Sorry.

Great.

Tough mofo.

Tough mofo. Fast mofo. We, I think the elk is the tank folks.

What, the octopus has what, a 27?

I have a 27 PE.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna have a lot of hit points, right? So, but I have an STC of 30, so yeah.

Okay, okay. Uh, John at 9, there's not really much going on there. It's a bonus to physical strength and physical endurance. What does that set yours at?

Well, I was a dumb dumb and didn't actually, um, add everything on hand. I was piling it to neat little categories so I could add everything later, especially with the physical skills that I'm contractually obligated to take as an escape Okay, great.

A boxing wrestling chimpanzee.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Beautiful.

Beautiful boxing.

I might be the tank, but out of the box, a chimpanzee is a war crime on legs to begin with.

And he's a sexy chimpanzee.

I'm going to be so hot when I rip somebody's face off.

And what was your IQ again?

Oh, I had a hot 6 to start.

Yeah. Okay. I was like, dumber than a box of rocks, but he's pretty to look at.

I'm gonna pull a himbo out of this one and I'm real excited.

Okay. Well, I think we were past that point. That takes us to step 5. We haven't gotten to skills yet, have we?

Nope.

Or is that actually considered part of the beginning? Should we have done skills during—

Skills is actually a little further out.

Yes, it is.

It's all the way down on page number 37, starting in the core rulebook.

Yeah, skills is step—

oh wait, no, skills should have been done in step 3.

Yeah, it should have been. We intentionally kind of skipped over that.

We'll come back to it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Honestly, actually, I think this is a good point to circle back then. Okay, we got the base stats. Now that we have your animals, now that we have like, we know the core of who the characters are. Now we can circle back to step 3 and do the rest of everything that's in your background, which is going to include your apprenticeship. If you get one, not everybody does, your primary skills and your secondary skills.

Yeah. Apprenticeship, none.

I think the only one with an apprenticeship would be the character from the Academic Underground.

Yeah.

Which one are you going with?

I'm having a tough time. Let me get back to you in a sec.

I consider myself blessed. I actually have a sheet of all the— it's just a PDF I made for all the skills in After the Bomb because some of my players refused to read Refuse to read the books. And so I can look at one while I'm doing stuff from the book as well. So that's really handy.

You should share that.

A, you should share that. B, yeah, uh, to all y'all out there, don't be that player.

Read the book. You don't, you don't even need to buy the book. PDFs. Okay, well, first off, somebody should buy the book.

Yes.

Oh yeah, I bought that.

But then, you know, like we used to do back in the day where you would have a gaming table and I remember sometimes we would all like throw in money and buy a table copy of a book together. You can still do that today. That's considered to me as part of the whole PDF experience, you know?

Oh yeah.

At least read like, at least read the animal description. To this game's credit, there's not that much that you need to read.

No.

Yeah. Not as a player. No, it's pretty minimal.

It's pretty minimal.

Know your character and know your skills and that's it.

Yeah.

Really?

The system is very direct. Woojik again had this way of making everything concise yet evocative.

Well, didn't he crack it out in like a weekend?

I think so.

Yeah. Like that's an incredible feat.

Like, hey, we have been blessed by the gaming cat.

Yay. So the amount of—

I'm sorry, what was that? Oh no, it's okay.

Go ahead.

I was just going to say like apprenticeships, but yeah, yours is more important.

Oh, I was just going to say the amount of skills I don't have to choose is really refreshing for this as well.

I feel that way about most of the backgrounds in After the Bomb. You don't actually have all that many choices that you need to make. I honestly, I think Jacob might have the most.

Yes.

Yes, I do. So if you want to spin around to somebody else who's easier to handle, that might be a good idea.

I mean, Jacob, I figure as a Palladium veteran, you have it covered.

I mean, technically, yeah, but it's given, you know, academic underground stag. I didn't even want to glance at them until I figured out how my stats lined up.

So one thing I will note, just for folks listening at home to kind of figure out what's going on, is that part of the After the Bomb skill system from your character's origin and background, you have a chance at having what is called an apprenticeship. The apprenticeship gives you skills options in addition to the skills and choices that are listed in your background. Not all of them start with apprenticeships.

Nope.

Yeah, so the ones that do, they are considered very valuable options. So the Academic Underground member Jacob is the only one of this group that starts with a choice for an apprenticeship.

Mm-hmm.

And he can select from either artisan, electrician, farmer, mechanic, or healer. Do you know which one of those you're gonna take?

First of all, it's not farmer, it's farrier.

Barrier? Did I read that wrong? Oh, I did. Yep.

I am currently debating between mechanic and electrician.

Okay. Both of those are very awesome. Yeah. Here's what I would say. Well, let's, let's do this. Um, if we think about it as a, you know, a group of player characters, there's certainly areas of expertise you kind of want to have covered in a Palladium game. One of those is combat.

This is true.

Some level of being able to fight, be it up front or from a distance. Do any of you think that you're going to be good at fighting?

I do.

What type of fighting?

Probably up close, because I don't think I have anywhere near enough money to actually have a gun to start, or even something I can throw at people. It may just be me tearing people's faces off, but I picked my 4 athletics, uh, rather 4 physical skills that I get. And they have significantly added to some of my physical stats like they do in the Palladium system.

Oh yeah.

So I now have all the modifiers for all my stats.

Yeah, yeah, what you got?

Well, let's see, I'm gonna roll a d6 to see what it increases my IQ from, and that's because I'm a chimpanzee. And a 1. So I now have a 7 IQ instead of a 6 IQ.

Those, those with a 6 IQ look at you as a genius. Yeah.

Oh boy, this is gonna be a good one.

His coming was foretold.

Right. I get a +2 to ME. I get a +2 to MA also. So that brings it up to a hot 11. So I'm almost a little charming. And then my physical strength is where the chimpanzee plus my physical skills really help me out because I get an additional d6 plus 8 total.

Jesus.

Um, also from my size, uh, as well. That's a 4, so that's 12. So that takes me from an 11 to a 23, or yeah, 23.

Oh wow, wow. Yeah, you're, you're the muscle.

Uh, my physical prowess goes from 19 to a 20. Uh, my physical endurance goes up to a 19. I get 1d4 plus 6 for my physical beauty. That's plus 2 because of my perfect human looks, and 1d4 plus 4 from extra physical beauty. So that's going to be 3 plus 6, so 9.

Jesus.

So I am now an 18 physical beauty instead of a 9. And 1d4 to my speed. And that's a 1. So 19 speed. Yeah, I think I may be all right in beating people up in this game.

Buckley, I kind of really need to know where you're going skill-wise.

Oh, okay. So the skills that I get with my background are interesting. I get, as you would imagine on someone raised on the frontier, I get farming and gardening and wilderness survival and stuff like that. I get very few physical options, at least to start with. And actually, I don't get hardly any of that. I'm a little sneaky. I get 8 domestic skills for my secondary skills.

Oh, wow.

I'm going to know how to use a knife, a shotgun, and a bolt-action rifle. So I'm thinking I'm gonna be a ranged combatant. I only have a PP of 7. I don't think that gives me a penalty. Can't remember if it does or not.

No, well, I mean, Palladium doesn't really have penalties unless you use some of the optional stuff.

Oh, that's true.

That's true. The optional stuff is a little complicated and we're not gonna bother.

So I'm gonna B range. I also get it. I also took the multi-action, so I get to start with an extra attack and with a +1 to strike.

So yet another pistol swinging octopod.

Got it. Okay, cool.

Well, actually, no, excuse me, I took semi-auto pistol and shotguns. I was thinking about taking bolt action. I don't know if I want bolt. I think I'm gonna— I think I'm just pistols and shotguns. So I'll have an underslung shotgun with my second set of arms and a pistol with my upper arms, and I'll just like, you know, Just rootin' tootin' octopi with a cowboy hat. That's what I'm envisioning.

Incredible.

His dad watched a lot of Hondo and a lot of True Grit, had a whole collection of all the John Wayne on VHS, and we would watch it into the night from my tank because I'm thinking I'm the adopted son of a survivalist hermit whose only thing was he had this massive aquarium in his little cabin in the woods. And when the after happened, I mutated and he raised me as his child and we'd watch John Wayne flicks and hunt in the backwoods of Arkansas, you know?

So I decided without looking too closely, which was a bad mistake on my part, to go with the mechanic apprenticeship.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

So I'm going to be choosing skills for a while.

We'll just say that.

Because, because it's, I realize after the fact that, uh, of all the apprenticeships, uh, mechanic is one of the ones that actually gives you the most, then select so many other skills from this category as well. So yeah, I'm going to be doing that plus all of the slew of primary skills I pick up from just having an academic underground background.

If I may, if I may suggest, maybe instead take electrical.

I was contemplating that.

I think it might end up being simpler, but also if you go electrical, I've got a great idea for an NPC that can fill the gap. And cover mechanics.

Got it. Not a problem.

You don't have to do that, but it would make things easier for what is to come.

Yeah, it's, it's just, uh, and mechanic goes a lot of weird places. Just saying.

8 domestic skills. The thing is, is that the character starts with most of the domestic skills you would take anyway.

Well, remember, language and literacy are Domestic skills. That's right.

That's right.

Great. Yeah, you have no starting skills in this game other than what you get from your background.

Oh, that's actually a good question. Do you know how to speak your native language? Are you assuming that?

I'm assuming that everybody can speak. Everybody who has, well, speech.

It says in the book not to.

Really?

Yeah, right in the beginning of the skills section, it says you're not even assumed to start speaking your native language right at the beginning of the skills area in the book.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah, it's insane. I saw that and I was like, oh, wow. And that's, that kind of guided some of the principle I had when I was starting to run it.

That's, thank you for pointing that out. I did not even notice that.

No problem.

Well, no, I did notice it. No, no, no, actually, I did notice it, but I didn't, my eyes skimmed over it and assumed it was when it said language. My mind filled in the blanks and said reading. Clearly he's talking about reading, but no, as you pointed out, that's speaking. Wow. Huh. There you go. So if you want to be able to speak, well, whatever the—

So if I took partial speech, I should probably know how to speak the language, right?

Still take it though. Yeah.

Yep.

So it is not considered free with partial speech. Thank you, John.

Appreciate it. No, no problem. I was actually just reading that like 5 minutes ago and I was like, huh, that's weird. And I am go on skills.

Burns— that burns some of those 8 domestic skills I was trying to figure out.

So right there. So yeah, I'm gonna swap over to that electrician apprenticeship. Even though losing access to the demolition skill is— Although honestly, Given what the academic background gives me, it's still pretty heavy.

Well, do you want me to be the one that handles the explosives?

No. Yes.

I did look at taking demolitions because I get access to military, but I chose not to because I'm like, no, don't give the octopus bombs. That's just no. That's a Mega Man monster coming into...

Look, I'm afraid of him having access to explosives because he'll just chew on the C4.

I do have an IQ of 15 at this point, so I'm pretty smart.

I need guidance. I do.

So I don't need the whole list of skills, but what would you consider are your key skills, John?

Oh, my key skills are barbering, baseball batter, And gymnastics.

Okay, let me make sure I heard this right. Did I say bartering or barber?

Barbering. Barber. I'm great at cutting hair.

So like every other chimpanzee, you spend a lot of time grooming.

Got it.

Absolutely.

Oh my.

You have an IQ of 7 and you're a barber. There's a commentary there, but you know, we won't go into it.

He's a really gifted—

My skills are like 30s or 40s.

He's a really gifted barber, but everybody comes out looking like a K-pop star.

Action hair.

Permanent action hair.

What were the other 2? I was just so focused on barber.

Oh, baseball batter and gymnastics.

Okay. Okay. I love it.

I love it.

This is good stuff.

Yeah.

I can barely speak English.

But you did take the skill.

Oh yeah. I have a hot 40%.

Okay.

For any listeners who are familiar with our previous episodes, well, we're going by the book on the skills with this one. And what that means is I'm not using my weird skill system where I normally will base all of the skills off of combination of some of the attributes. We're just going to go with what it says in the book. Keep it simple. Because if we were basing things off of the attributes, oh, John, given that like, like 80% of the skills have some involvement with IQ. Oh no.

Oh yeah. There, there were, I was thinking about it and I was like, all right. This guy's like a little lower than Forrest Gump level intellect. How do we handle this? I picked all the things that don't really require him to be able to recognize a lot of shapes or anything like that. Ironically, he is literate, but I'm, I'm kind of percolating on a character concept because of the skills that I picked, and he may as well not be. He's got a 30%. So like sometimes he can tell what a word is.

He's tough. He's beautiful. He's got ape DNA. Have you watched True Blood?

Yes.

I'm thinking Jason Stackhouse, who I believe in the first episode referred to as dumber than a box of hair.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

But he's purdy and actually has quite a bit of character development over the course of the series. He really does. Yeah. Like amazing amounts of character development, to be honest. He still is dumb as a box of hair at the end, but he has some development.

I would watch a spinoff show with just him and Lafayette.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Lafayette getting him in trouble over and over and over, but getting him out.

Exactly. Exactly. Getting him into and then out of.

Yeah.

I'm running into one of the problems that the academic underground is prone to, which is what is left off of that list of skills you want to choose me to choose from?

Well, yeah, it's like he was like, I get all of these domestic skills and I already have all of the domestic skills.

Like all the skills I might actually want, I've already gotten. Okay.

I guess don't forget also you can take domestic skills at least. And I think some other skills twice and doing so makes it professional quality and gives you a 10% bonus.

Oh, okay.

So, uh, I forgot about that. The octopus sous chef is a thing.

Oh my God. John, did you take barber twice?

I did not, unfortunately. I was only able to get one skill like that unless I wanted to spend secondary skills on it too. And those are precious to me as well. I don't have many of them.

Oh my God.

A professional barber would be— what do I do? I hit things with a bat and I cut hair.

Yeah. Oh yeah. That's pretty much his whole personality.

And sometimes it's the same person. You hit 'em with a bat, knock 'em out. You have a horrible head of hair. I'm going to fix this. You knock them unconscious, you groom their coif perfectly, and then you just leave them dazed and confused at the base of some alley.

It's his calling card.

Yeah. It's like, wow, you look like shit. You have a black eye, but your hair, it's amazing.

What happened?

It was the blackout barber.

Ooh, fighting.

He can't add.

Terry Pratchett's book called Soul Music, where everybody got obsessed with rock and roll. Anyway, they had a— they put together a band and there was a— the drummer was a troll and he was like, all right, 1, 2, 1, 2, many lots.

I can't find a skill and I'm wondering if I'm just missing it.

What are you looking for?

It's hunting. I get it as a skill, but I'm like, I usually am used to it being stacked with something else. And I'm wondering if I'm just missing it.

It may be the one that's not in this book because I know there is a single skill that is listed in this book that is not actually in this book.

Like the backgrounds give it to you, but it's not listed as a skill.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not on the list.

Yeah. But it is one that I get. And I think this is it. Hunting.

There's not even, there's not even a—

There's several other skills that overlap, like tracking and trapping and yeah.

It's a 1st E skill.

Yeah, it must be.

Let me pull up. I've got 1E pull.

No.

Well, that's TMNT, I guess.

Well, that's what it would be. It'd be a TMNT skill, right? My original TMNT skill.

Let me pull that up real quick.

And I want to say it's a skill that just gives you flat stuff. It doesn't—

Yeah, it gives you bonuses.

Yeah.

Huh. Well, it's not in the first book. Maybe it's in Roadhog? I don't see it in Roadhog's.

No?

From what I can see, it gives you— adds the following to the appropriate skills, which is +2 to Prowl, +5 to Track. I'm pulling this from the Ultimate Rift/Palladium skills list.

And that's what I remember it doing. So it's a— what was the prowl?

It was a plus, I believe, 2% on prowl and plus 5% to track.

Okay. Well, we'll go with that until I verify otherwise. So.

Man, this, this, the, just the content of this book is so wonderful. Now I'm just flipping through these pages trying to find the skill, but at the same time, I'm just like, man, this is just so, so good. Yeah, I know it's missing a skill, but ah. This book is so great.

I mean, let's be honest, if it's just missing one skill, that's actually surprising. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a success. It is like there's a lot of skills in there.

Yeah. So for now, we don't necessarily need to write down all the percentages if it can move us along. Just make note of the skill. And if you get a bonus, make note of the bonus and we can always fill in the percentages later.

I get no bonuses. It worked out really well, honestly. Like thematically, at least it's kind of perfect.

I have that, uh, the 28 physical endurance. So I got a, I got a, I have a big old save to my coma death or magic poison. Otherwise I get no bonuses.

Oh, I meant for skills. I have plenty of physical bonuses and stuff. Like my strike is kind of insane.

Like I said, I get one bonus. I don't think I get bonuses to anything else. Which is fine.

Oh man, you— yeah, freed slave is almost kind of, well, shall I say, liberating in that you get nothing.

14 skills. 14 skills that I had to worry about choosing. That was it.

And you don't have to spend any money on equipment.

Well, I'm hoping I roll at least a little money so I can buy one item.

You might as well go ahead and do that now.

Yeah, let me see if I can get more than 20. Yay, I start with $60, so may I please buy a baseball bat?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Fantastic.

Can he, can he get the barbed wire wrapped around it for free? Yeah, he's found some barbed wire. There's a baseball bat with barbed wire.

So one of the old school Renaissance games that I'm very fond of is called The Nightmares Underneath. And in it, it has a, uh, you have a 7th stat and that is your social status. Which is anywhere from like the Blood Royal down to the Wretched and Penniless. And it does your starting equipment. You can either just do the standard purchase, whatever, or if you want, and you should, you can roll on the random starting equipment based on your starting status.

Oh, wow.

So there's, there's like 7 different statuses, and then each one has a 3d6 table of starting equipment. And they are all over the board. My favorite ones, though, my favorite are for if you are of social status like 3 to 5 and you roll on this table, you can get anything such as like you start with, you know, a handful of broken bones. Your weapon is the arm that you just ripped off of somebody.

Incredible.

Shackles on your ankles. Go.

Go.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I can, I can work with that.

I think another one is like your starting equipment is this magic item, this magic item, and the knowledge that you only have 7 days to live.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Okay.

That was like the, the 7-point flaw in the World of Darkness setting at one point was Mayfly. And here's your 7 points that you can spend wherever you want, but you only have 7 days to live. And you're like, ah, that's super powerful. But what, what, what?

5 minutes before the campaign began, you got a phone call. Some weird creepy girl said something like 7 days and then hung up.

I love stuff like that because you can build an entire campaign around that too.

Oh yeah, there's a lot you can do in a game in 7 days, especially if your characters don't eat or sleep and if the players don't eat or sleep.

What's really sad is that I had pre-planned my skills to a certain amount based on what I thought my stats were probably gonna come out as, and I turned out to— unfortunately, all of the avenues It's like, fuck it, it's wide open, go for it. Because I, I am notorious for rolling terribly. Like—

Oh, I— yeah, yeah, I'm a horrible roller as well.

Well, we're all forever GMs, aren't we?

Well, yeah, and, uh, so I'm, I'm so notoriously bad at rolling that one of the things I frequently do at my table is make players roll for the rolls I want to make. It's like, I'll just point at someone and roll for the guard to hit.

Yeah.

You know, actually, it's interesting as the escaped slave or the freed slavery one, you start with 3 times the amount of money that I do as someone that's from the frontier.

Wait, how much money do you start with?

A d6 plus $20.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, but I start with some equipment. I have some equipment.

So, okay. Yeah, I spent, I spent half my starting money on a bat.

Yeah.

I mean, I can do 2d6 plus 10 points of damage if I hit somebody with that bat. And I have a +7 to do it with. Hey, at least one of you has hair as a character, so I wouldn't be completely useless to the group.

You're gonna look at me and go, what is this? What do I do with this?

Wasted. Wasted potential.

I'm just gonna say, as a barber, remember that historically barbers were the ones who made, uh, toupees.

True. Yeah. And if I've got a thick enough client, easily like 5 or 6 of them.

And like, all I'm saying is the octopus waking up to find an Elvis do glued to his head is—

Getting plans.

So, uh, the other 2 of you, did y'all take any physical skills? And if so—

Oh yeah.

So the 2 physical skills that I got access to, uh, I took Hand-to-Hand Basic because you don't get a hand-to-hand. I figured I might want to have that. And I took Prowl. So not a lot of things to figure in there. Uh, I really wanted to take Running to go a little faster than 11, but—

That 4d4 to speed is very nice. But I only get too physical.

And with the one thing that's interesting when you're looking in the After the Bomb, unlike Rifts and some of the other settings, Prowl only shows up in the physical list. Whereas in some of the other settings, Prowl shows up in multiple groups of skills.

So it is a— oh, interesting. Yeah, it's not considered rogue.

No, it's— that's where I was hoping I was going to get access to it, but no. You only get it in physical.

Fascinating. Just to note that running is a secondary skill.

It is, but I only get domestic skills for my secondary skills. I get 8 of them. So I am, uh, I'm kind of your jack of all trades. I have farming and gardening and wilderness survival, fishing, hunting, tracking, trapping, land navigation, and camouflage. Um, I know how to fight a little bit. I know how to pick locks. I know how to hide. I also have carpentry and cooking, so I'll be doing that. General repair. I can imitate animals and insect noises.

Mm-hmm.

And I can speak English and write English, and I can speak Spanish, and I can sew. So I'm an interesting eclectic— I'm very much— I grew up in the frontier, right? I could do a little bit. Oh, and I also have a knife, semi-automatic pistol, and shotgun.

Okay.

So I can do a little fighting. I'm a very rounded—

Very, very well-rounded. You've got a lot of— very versatile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A fill-in character. And then you add my, my abilities as an octopi and it'll be interesting to see where this goes. It'll be interesting.

So since he's a bit of a show pony already, I gave him Athletics General, Baseball Batter, Bodybuilding, and Gymnastics as his primary physical skills that he gets, which is the bulk of his primary skills. He also got Prowl as a secondary skill.

I love that baseball is a skill in After the Bomb.

And a religion.

And a religion.

Oh, that's great. It just reminds me of playing Fallout 4 and all of the interactions around baseball and the, the The Boston area.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm not gonna lie, I took Baseball Batter partially because it's actually a broken skill. I mean this in the best way possible because it gives you +3 to strike and parry with a baseball bat. Oh wow.

Okay.

Does +2d4+2 damage— no, does a base of 2d4+2 damage plus any PS. Well, yeah, that's, that's actually pretty heinous. Speaking of Fallout, I've been playing through Fallout 4 and I've been challenging myself to play only melee. In fact, not just only melee, but only with a baseball bat.

Oh, you're a sadist. You're a masochist.

Everything that went all strength, all movement, everything moving across, back, back and forth across the battlefield on VATS. And I, all the things that let me maximize my melee, um, modifiers for making weapons. And I grabbed a single baseball bat and I used that for about a third of the game until I got a legendary baseball bat, which reduced my VATS action point cost by like 80%.

Oh, wow.

So I just run into a room, I hit VATS, I go, okay, double tap on that, double tap on that, double tap on that, double tap on that. And I've got that thing that lets me move further. And the further I move in VATS, The more damage I do on the first strike. So literally every single fight is run into a room, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, and then I just watch the cinematic play of me running. Run up, smack. Run up, smack. In power armor, by the way. Power armor with a baseball bat.

Melee power armor of doom.

Pretty much. I have a gun, I have a hunting rifle, and I use it for one purpose only. And that is shooting turrets that are on the ceiling that I can't hit with a baseball bat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

'Cause you can't really jump above.

Can't do anything about it.

Right.

But I'll tell you, going after a Mirelurk Queen with a baseball bat.

What?

Took like 12 strikes. She went down.

Wow.

Wow. Okay.

Yeah. It's possible, folks. It's possible. Realize your dreams.

Oh, and I also took Han-Han Basic because I figured it'd be really helpful.

Okay.

What category is languages under?

Domestic.

Domestic.

Yeah, domestic.

Yeah, so what I was saying earlier about how in After the Bomb, the spinning of bio-e tends to take the longest amount, that's true unless you're from the academic underground.

Yes, yes, as we're seeing.

In which case—

Almost done, almost done.

Just 5 more.

Yeah.

Now, my question is, does he have the same amount of skills that the other 2 of us have combined?

From what I've heard, more.

Incredible.

Let me run the numbers. Let's see what we got. Okay. Freed Slave.

I have 14 total.

Okay. 14 skills on the Freed Slave.

I have, I have 19 skills, it looks like.

Okay.

So 33 skills.

I'm done.

Well, just from the primary and secondary skills alone, that's 24. That is not including the apprenticeship.

Incredible.

Whatever the apprenticeship got might push that. Let's see. Oh yeah, he has more skills than both of you combined.

I have the skills.

I get 16 skills alone from the apprenticeship. We'll just put it that way.

Yep. Yep. That's 40. So what was The total, you were, yeah.

It was, I think, I think 33 between the two of us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Cool.

So here's what I want to do. We don't have to go over all of the skills. We've already talked about the ones that John's best at. Very fascinating. We've already kind of approached that Buckley's character, the octopus, is kind of a jack of all trades, generalist, can fill in anywhere. Yep. What are you best at, Jacob?

Well, technically that would be my apprenticeship skills. So electrical engineer, basic and advanced math, computer operation, programming and repair, electronics, general repair and maintenance literacy, radio basic, TV and video systems, optical systems, radio scramblers, read sensory equipment, navigation, and automobile.

Okay. This is just your apprenticeship?

Just the apprenticeship.

Wow.

So would you say that that's like your focus? In you, Jacob, your perception of this character, you're the electrical person, or is there something more to your character that we're not seeing beyond those skills?

Well, I kind of intentionally chose the rest of his skills as kind of an old-school wandering journeyman tradesman. Obviously he's a wandering journeyman tradesman electrical engineer, but like a lot, everything else kind of falls into that. I have chemistry, chemistry analytical, biology, botany, antiquarian, and that botany primarily because, well, when you're an obligate herbivore, you figure out what you can eat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I have a couple medical skills to just, you know, when you're traveling around, you got to be able to patch yourself up.

What languages do you speak and what languages do you read?

I read English and I speak English.

Okay.

So that's it.

I—

that's all I do. Because I'm out and about, I know my way a little bit around a fight. We'll just say that I might be— when you're a walking tank, naturally, you just pick up a few things. Weapon proficiency crossbow, weapon proficiency blunt. Revolver, bolt-action, and polearm.

Wow.

Just because the thought of a size 13 elk with a polearm—

Intimidating.

It sounds like your group, despite some of your flaws that you might perceive, is fairly capable.

Yeah. Yeah, I think we have, we have pretty much all the bases covered, at least.

Very much so. And, you know, I, I have some habits— hobbits.

You have some hobbits?

I have some hobbies that are near and dear to my heart. Like, I really like drawing and painting and And I'm very good at photography.

Okay. In my mind, you're drawing and painting and taking photographs of hobbits, but I can't break it now.

Again, size 13. Lots of things are hobbits.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, so because once again, folks, if you're listening at home, remember we are doing this 100% by the book in order of the steps as presented. In the book. I can't say that with a straight face. We're at step 5, which is hit points, SDC, and AR. So hit points again is your classic Palladium. It's your PE plus a d6.

Oh, wait, wait, hold on. I don't think you get the d6 to start with. You get it? Do you?

After determining your character's base hit points, pick up one 6-sided die, roll it, and add the number to your hit point base.

Okay. Uno.

Hot one.

All right.

Let's see here. Maybe I can, I'm gonna see if I can double what John got. I pentupled. I got 5. Awesome. But with my PE of 28, I have 33 hit points. I have 3 more hit points than SDC.

So how do you figure out hit points again?

Roll physical endurance.

Physical endurance and a 1d6. And a 1d6.

Not bad.

Yeah, no, I'm sitting at 23. I'm happy with that. Nice.

What you got, Jeff?

No, I'm not mad.

And SDC came from your combination of your size level plus your physical skills, if you have any. Does anybody have an SDC over 100?

I do.

I mean, it's possible.

Alas.

Okay.

Give me just a moment here. I have to get back to the size table. I forgot to note that one down.

Yeah, you got a decent chunk of SDC just from being a big'un.

Yep. And I think with a 13, you get a base of 45.

Yeah, which is not that far off from mine.

Yeah. So I'm sitting at 45 plus, uh, I don't think any of the physical skills I took give additional. I'll have to look later, but yeah, 45 plus.

And Academic Underground doesn't get any. You did add in the IQ and PP bonus.

Yeah.

Yes, I did. Academic Underground does not inherently get physical skills. However, you get other skills.

Yeah.

And let's just say the physical is one of the lists you can choose those other skills from.

Wow.

And so I'm a boxing, wrestling, running elk.

Do any of you have a natural armor rating?

Nope.

Guess not.

No.

No. Okay, then the next step would be alignment. There are 8 alignments of Palladium: 2 good, 2 selfish, and 3 evil. The alignments begin on page 31, but at this point I expect you all to be well-versed in the Palladium alignment system.

Oh yeah, I'm gonna have a lot of SDC. I forgot that boxing gives you SDC.

Yeah. I think I'm gonna play a naive, scrupulous character.

Okay.

I almost, I almost wanted to go with, with the Boy Scout, but I don't— with the, uh, principal, but I don't think I could be that good. Yeah, I'm gonna be— actually, no, I'm gonna be—

Scrupulous is fine.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna be principled. I'm gonna be a Boy Scout. Like, like, you know, I was— my dad taught me to take care of people and to help them, even though they're probably gonna stab you in the back.

Yeah.

And I think I'm going to do unprincipled.

So you're surprisingly good for a chimpanzee.

And yes, boys and girls at home, do not research how nasty chimpanzees are to other tribes of chimpanzees. Do not do that. Don't.

Even within their own tribe.

True.

Even within their own troop. Yeah. Do not research that.

And I am going to be scrupulous.

Okay. Principled, scrupulous, and unprincipled. This group will work.

Yeah.

I think that's it.

I mean, other than equipment, which I don't feel like—

Which we already, of course, did because that happens during step 3 of the system, obviously.

Yes, absolutely.

Because we did everything perfectly in order. Yep. Step 3 would have involved your equipment, which your background gives you, and some extra cash. I know that, uh, John has a baseball bat and some clothes on his back.

I have $21, a pistol I don't have ammo for, and, uh, some odds and ends. I have seed potatoes. I can grow some potatoes, which is, you know, I'm sure that'll come into—

I like you.

Yeah, I know you do. Yeah, it's disturbing. It's the suction cups, isn't it? I have cooking tools.

No, I just like it, the fact that you have seed potatoes. So as an obligate herbivore, you're kind of like, oh, hi, you carry snacks.

Yeah, we're all excited about that.

$3,000? Yeah, I know!

I was just gonna say, I have a full set of clothing and traveling equipment, a main weapon, which is going to be a polearm, and a computer with a huge library of electronic reference books.

And $3,000.

I wasn't going to mention that.

It's like, well, what would you like? Everything? I'll take whatever and the shelves. It's that scene from Waterworld where he walks in and buys everything in the general store, including the shelves.

So I will say, because I did some pre-looking on this, that $3,000 tends to go fast for most of the academic underground because Unless you want to start with none of the toolkits you will need to do your job, right? You, you, them, but that money gets soaked up fast.

Okay. Well, do we have character names?

I think I've hit on one.

What you got?

But I think he has 2 names actually, because one was his birth name and one is his assumed name. So his birth name, or at least adopted birth name, is Preston Q. Horvath. But his assumed name, his current name, is Miles Longer.

Okay, tell me about Miles. Why, what's up with Miles?

Well, my concept that I'm kind of percolating with right now is that he was a little baby ape that was born looking completely perfectly human on a plantation right near the contested zone. And because the overseers that ran the plantation could not have children, they basically kidnapped him as a baby. And raised him as a human until a couple of years later when the— I would say probably some free mutants ended up taking out the plantation that they were working on and spared him because he was just a kid and took him back to Cardania where he was probably from initially.

Okay.

And he's, he's gonna be a big himbo. I think kind of a sex worker.

I mean, Miles Longer sounds like a male stripper name.

Yeah, it does.

He was basing it off of something that a lover had said. To him, like, a couple of months ago, that he was his name than anybody else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, great.

Okay.

And it's spelled not how you would think it's spelled. It's M-Y-L-E-S and then space and then L-A-W-N-G-E-R, because he's got a 30 literacy.

I love it. I love it. Longer. Miles longer.

Yeah, and just powerful himbo energy, even though he's a short king. He's only 5'6.

Yeah, but that bat.

And jacked. He's absolutely shredded. 210 pounds at 5'6.

Yeah.

So, uh, my character was an orphan, uh, raised and adopted by, uh, the local chapter of the Academic Underground, and I was given the name, uh, which is Incredibly mispronounced intentionally.

That's an interesting name.

Uh, Cerf Soiree. C-E-R-F-S-O-I-R-E-E.

Okay. Skip.

I love it.

His daddy done named him Skip. And that's it.

The question, did he, uh, affectionately refer to you as Squirt growing up?

Nope, just skip.

I gotta know, can you ink? Can you ink?

Yes.

That's a skill? That's an ability?

Yeah.

Oh, cool.

4 times a day, I can emit in water or air basically a cloud of blackness. Um, and, uh, I, I'd read the details, but it's, you know, anyone can go look at them, but it's, it's, uh, it's like a 20 square feet, which is hilarious because they say 20 square feet and I've never— I don't think—

I, I suspect that means underwater.

It specifically says a blinding cloud in the air or water.

Huh.

Okay.

But 20 square feet is actually a very small area.

Yeah.

And that's one of the things in the Palladium system, all the spells that talk about square feet and things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're like, I don't think that means what you think it means. Yeah. I think really it's talking about probably a 20 That's what they mean. Right? Yeah, they mean a 20-foot square. They, they mean a 24-square, not a 20 square feet, because 20 square feet is very small.

It's, it's something that a lot— unfortunately, a lot of writers make that mistake when they, they either say square feet when they really mean feet squared.

Right.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. Thankfully, I'm hoping you're not one of those Indian octopuses, you know, from the Indian Ocean.

Wait, what?

The ringtails?

I don't have poison. No, no, no, no, no, no. They're the, uh, many of the octopi that live in the Indian Ocean Their ink can— it basically screws up gills.

Oh, really?

So if not only do they ink someone who's going after them—

They suffocate them as well.

Yeah. And in fact, if they don't move fast enough, they suffocate themselves.

Oh, geez. Well, I'm short and kind of chubby, but I'm an octopus. I'm 67 pounds, but I'm only 31 inches tall.

Oh, wow.

My take on 20-foot square is essentially 10-foot radius.

Yeah, that's what I would— yeah. The 20 by 20 or 10-foot radius, like something like that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and it's 4 times a day and, uh, yeah, it's, it's kind of a cool little effect. I decided to pick that up and that was the last of my bio-E. So it was either that or increase in size and I thought that'd be more entertaining.

Nice. How many attacks per melee do you have?

64. No, um, 5. 5. Because I have hand-to-hand basic and I took the multi once. So I get it only once. Well, it's 15 points. It's expensive. So I, because I wanted Danger Sense, I have Partial Speech, Suction Cups, Black Ink, and the Multi-Limbs. So I have 5 attacks with a +1 to strike. So that's, I can do some stuff. I'm not sure what I can do at this point because I have a gun with no ammo.

Speaking of what you guys can do, who has a weapon? You have a gun with no ammo.

I have a gun with no ammo.

I have a polearm so far.

I have a baseball bat.

Okay. Who can drive and what can you drive?

I can drive automobiles, preferably without a roof.

Okay.

So Jeeps. I like Jeeps a lot.

Jeeps.

Is that it?

That's it.

Cool. Who can speak anything other than American or English?

I can speak English and Spanish.

Okay. It's gonna be fantastic.

I only speak English and for the person who gave me my birth— the name I go by, that's probably a good thing. Okay.

Well.

What do you think of these characters?

I love it. I can't do math.

Oh, I didn't take math either. Well, I mean, I mean, I could probably do some math. I have an IQ of 15, but I didn't take like basic math or anything like that.

So.

Yeah.

I don't think I can do any. I'll teach you one more than one. That's—

Yeah, my assumption is like, if you don't have the skill, it's basically like the troll thing. It's, you know, one and you know two.

Yeah.

And you know more than that, and you know a lot more than that. And that's basically all there is.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm a 6'4 elk that weighs 343 pounds, built like a goddamn brick shithouse, and is really good at electronics.

You know, it's like And what do you think of that?

It is odd as hell. Yeah. I've worked in some labs though where I would love to have this guy around just because the advanced smell is like, where's the ozone coming from?

Well, he also could pick up the lab equipment around the office and just move it easily. You don't have to wait for 4 people to show up to move the cyclotron or something.

That's also how I kind of figured he got his apprenticeship was because unlike mechanical engineers who They tend to be a little bit more robust in build. The electric— the electrical guys are a little bit less physical and having someone who can carry around spools of wire. Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

No, this is interesting. These are fun. This will be— it's the skills is the part that's really interesting compared to my core experience, which is Rifts. You get a lot more skills in your Rifts characters.

Yeah.

Of the games that I've played in the Palladium system, this character does not feel as front-loaded as most of the other settings. This feels like someone who was just kicked out of his house and you have to go find out and survive. Whereas most, like, especially in Rifts, most of the characters are very front-loaded. You are a badass day one. This, this, my Skip, he's not bad, but he's, he's not going to go save the world in the way he is probably. Well, he might try. He's going to try. He's scrupulous. He's really going to try.

I don't understand what you mean about getting less skills than the rest of you.

Listen here.

Because you have all of them. You have all of the skills and you won't share.

We couldn't have any because you took them all.

That's right. There are none left.

We got 2 vagabonds and a rogue scholar.

Yeah, exactly.

And not the good vagabond.

Yeah. Yeah. We got 2 Butts Edition vagabonds.

And they forgot their equipment. Yeah.

Yeah. I like that though. I like the fact that these characters feel more down to earth. They feel more appropriate for a world that is lived in.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Except for Cheat Code McGee over here.

But, uh, But, but, but Chica McGee, as you say over here, comes from the academic underground.

Absolutely.

Representing a specific faction in the game.

Absolutely.

Yep. Yep.

Giving you a little bit of insight into what that faction's all about. But also you think like perhaps they have a sheltered life. They might not have experienced all the things that you have. And this character probably might not be the most survivable outside the walls of the city without the company. of somebody who can beat things with a baseball bat and cover all of the other skills that he doesn't have.

Well, and you know, once someone figures out where he's from, they— he's ripe for exploitation.

Yeah. And it is a great disparity, but it is nowhere near the breadth of disparity that happens in something like Rifts or even, I say, Palladium Fantasy.

Yeah.

These characters feel much closer together. Cool. Well then, let's go ahead and cut this episode here. John, thank you for joining us for this once again.

Oh, it's been a pleasure. Absolutely.

And like I like to do whenever we have anybody on at the end of the episode, let's give another bit of detail.

Tell us about Uh, we are a kind of a documentarian-style podcast. It's just me and a bunch of my friends getting together to play games. Uh, we play a lot of Palladium games, obviously. We also do some Call of Cthulhu. I know we've got Shadowrun coming up soon.

What?

Yeah, I'm working on a campaign for that right now. Vampire: The Masquerade. We also do a lot of different indie games. Um, you know, which you can argue Palladium is maybe the oldest indie game out there, really. At least the independent game studio that's still going at this point. But yeah, if you're interested in finding out more about it, you can just find us at realplaygamespod.com.

Yeah, and they're on every podcatcher that I've used. I currently, the one that I prefer is Podcast Addict, and they're super easy to find. Yeah. Cool. Well, tell you what, let's go ahead and wrap this up. Folks listening, thanks again for giving us a listen, for helping us make it to 200 episodes. some with the little side stuff that we've done. Jacob, Matt, thanks for, for being here for at least a significant part of that journey.

Thanks for having me.

Always a pleasure.

Great. So, well, let's go ahead and jump right into what we're doing next. So folks, 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 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/glitterboys, and also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at.

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