#174 – Keeping the Game Alive through the Holidays

Breakfast puppies?

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You're listening to The Glitter Boys. Yeah.

Jacob, we miss you.

I know you all miss me.

We miss you.

I know, I know. So this was the way we were gonna lead this one in.

It is.

Started out by laying a huge guilt trip on me.

Jacob, please come to game. Jacob, honey, please come to game.

NPC, for the sake of the audience, explain why you are trying the next to impossible task of laying a guilt trip on an ex-Catholic.

Oh no, no, no, no. I don't in any way expect this guilt to work. This is, I'm just making a joke.

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.

The joke is Jacob hasn't come to our weekend game in months.

Over 6 months, in fact.

Over 6 months. Which is ironic because that's not actually what we're here to talk about. What we're here to talk about is something that I'm pretty sure we've had at least 2, if not 3, maybe 10 episodes on. And that is—

Yeah, it's, I, We've had at least across, uh, the Breakfast Puppies universe of podcasts. Uh, we have talked about it at least 4 times. This'll probably be the 5th.

This'll probably be the 5th. And that is gaming over and through and beyond the holidays, be it finding a way to game during the holidays or keeping your game alive through the holidays. We've entered that time of the year that Basically from Halloween through New Year's when games die and often die, die, not just hibernate, but die.

December and December kills get more campaigns than I can count.

I've, yeah, I, I am the veteran of many such campaign deaths.

Which is wild. I want to check in with you on this subject.

Okay.

Back when I was in high school, gaming used to pick up during this period of the year.

Well, we didn't have jobs.

We didn't have jobs. We had these— we had the Thanksgiving break to some degree, and we had the Christmas break to some degree. Uh, our parents didn't want us to fuck around, or if we were around, they wanted us contained and out of their hair. And so it was a great time to game more than usual. And then suddenly we get jobs and, you know, we can't keep a campaign going. And not only does it not just hibernate, they oftentimes self-destruct. So.

And now we are at the age where a variety of other things happen. First off, everybody's got kids now or is having kids or some of them have new grandkids. People no longer exist who once existed and graced our tables. We've drifted across the world. We've changed, uh, we, we've grown conflicts and political ideologies that increasingly these days result in breakings of friendships.

Mm-hmm.

Like, the older we get, the fewer people that we have that we are used to that level of gaming with are still in our circles of gaming.

Oof.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get dark there. Sad.

It's sad.

Pour one out over here.

But, but it also goes on to the point I wanted to make. I think back to even in my college, post-college days, everybody I gamed with, was either in the same town or roughly lived within half an hour of my house.

Yeah.

Currently, my in-person gaming groups, I frequently drive over an hour to get to.

Yeah.

And okay, cool, you— it's, it's an issue of distance, but think about it, when the holidays happen, what else happens?

Yeah.

People are on the roads more, they're going shopping more, traffic is more heavy, the weather sucks worse. And so like, oh God, I have to get in the car and drive to Vancouver, you know, is like it— and you know, there's the whole older, you have less energy.

Mm-hmm.

And in a time of year where you're being tasked to spend more social energy than you normally do throughout the rest of the year, it's It, the reasons why the season kills games are all of the above.

People have families. They have to go across the country or whatever.

Suddenly you're dealing with your in-laws. Um, yeah, that said, I might be introducing my nieces to gaming in the near future and I'm excited about that, but, uh, might, that might involve what I'm getting them for Christmas. So.

The Palladium fantasy role-playing game? I mean, this is the perfect time to introduce them to the joys of the Palladium Holiday Grab Bag, which is going on right now. Just for a low fee, you can get one for each of your nieces, and they can each know the joys of the Palladium role-playing system. You've heard it here first, folks.

Let me just go on record as totally endorsing NPC's pitch. But state that that's not what I'm doing. Um, oh, I'm getting, I'm getting the evil look, but—

You didn't.

Uh, no, I did not. I did not. Okay. No, I did not. No. God, no. Um, for, for those of you who don't know, um, my beloved spouse, In another universe, there is a version of them that's wandering around, uh, uh, with a full-on, uh, PhD in Tolkien studies.

Okay.

Uh, all things Lord of the Rings, all things, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, because of that, perhaps I am introducing them to, uh, a Lord of the Rings role-playing game first, uh, for both, uh, cultivating their interest in, uh, proper fantasy and, uh, keeping marital strife Nice.

Free League's got a good system in that one.

Free League does, has a banger of a system on that one. But beyond that, so that's keeping your current games going. What have we learned this year? What are we trying this year that we haven't in the past to keep the magic alive?

Well, at least on my front, you haven't experienced this with our group because you Stopped coming before we did this. And that was, I have now successfully perfected an in-person slash online hybrid setup where there are people at my table playing with me in present face-to-face while also 2 or so people online joining us. And we are communicating in real time as, and it feels like we are all in the same place at the same time.

So folks, as someone who's been trying to pull this particular form of black magic off since 2004, uh, I, I don't, I don't believe it. I, I, I don't believe it. I don't believe it's possible yet.

Yet.

Yet you're on the Discord channel where we talk about it.

And yet People whose word I take, not counting NPC, say it's working. So at some point, I really want NPC to write up his full tech spec throwout of how he's got this thing going.

Yeah.

Because honestly, like I said, I am highly doubtful of anyone who says they're running a hybrid game and it works. But people who I've seen been burned in the past by hybrid games are saying this one works. So I really want to see that.

As fortune would have it, in the last few weeks, I've started writing out all of my processes for everything that I do that is nerdy or technical. And I've been most, I'm almost finished writing it out, like, like laying out physically how everything is connected and so on. But the key point, the key feature, the defining, enabling, the, uh, what do you call it? The MVP of this whole thing. It would not work without it. Are these headsets?

Oh yes.

That we are using now.

Yeah.

These are ATH-M50x STS headsets. They are streaming slash whatever headsets, but they are not USB. They Are XLR connectors, and they have ATH condenser microphones on the boom arms. They are fantastic. They are expensive, but I'm a nerd and my hobby is expensive, so I'm okay with that. But I have a table lined with them. Some people have their own. Jacob has acquired his own. And because of that, because of these headsets, we have real-time audio with each other, with the people online, and back and forth, and zero echo.

And from what I have been told by people who are somewhat audio sensitive, I might add, there's minimal delay most of the time to none.

Yeah, I use a tool. We use a system called vdo.ninja. It's a website. It is— why anybody pays for Zoom in this day and age when vdo.ninja exists blows my mind.

Mm-hmm.

It's— it is— it does everything that Zoom does and more in a way that is decentralized. It is peer-to-peer, so you don't have to wait for a central server to process your call. I am— we're streaming directly back and forth to each other, and it's magical. It's wonderful.

And let me just say that, as had been mentioned on the podcast before, I moonlight as a professional consultant. I have started switching over some of my professional customers to meetings via VDO. We're not running with the high-end headset rigs we have here. It's still oftentimes a better performance to use video to maintain the cameras and the conversation, and then use a third-party tool like even Google Docs to present and not have it an all-in-one solution. It works so much better.

We could turn this into its whole episode of discussion, but I cannot praise this tool enough. Like, I give periodic donations. It's free. I give donations to the guy because I want it to keep happening. I want others to enjoy its freeness. It is so versatile and powerful. You can adjust every single element of it that you want to, everything from bitrate to channels to video streams. You can, if you want, at no overhead whatsoever, split every channel, be it audio or video, into its own individual URL feed and then have those fed individually to wherever you want. You want, you want them in OBS? Fine. You want them in 12 different OBS installations? Fine. It's amazing.

So you have the advantage that you fired up a hybrid game well before the holidays.

Yeah.

Were you to try to shift an in-person game to a hybrid game for the holidays, what steps would you have taken?

So a little bit about why this happened. We've had an ongoing weekly, quote unquote, Saturday game for a few years now. It's been going strong. I use a tool called the Goblin's Notebook to document it. And I think we're up to 26 or 27 sessions. And you know, over 2 years, that's not a lot of sessions, but—

For people in their 40s, that's a lot of sessions.

Yeah. We've had to miss many weeks and we got to a point though earlier this year and late— yeah, sometime I guess in spring of this year, started noticing that we were just missing every week because my rule is I need 3 players. Yep. I want 3 players. I've enjoyed 2-player games, but this is a grand adventure and the threats that I have just need at least 3 players to confront them. We just couldn't meet quorum. People couldn't make it and that's fine.

Mm-hmm.

This is 100% a drop-in game. I, there are, I'd expect no commitments from anybody. People can come and go as they please. We have a perfect format for any player showing up and immediately playing. And leaving and it ain't no thing. It works except when nobody can make it.

Except when nobody can make it or only like one person can make it.

Yeah.

Which weirdly seems to be the point where you have the rule of 3, but rarely do I ever see a weekend where it's only 2 people can show up.

Yeah.

Uh, it's, and so by going to the hybrid.

Yeah. With a hybrid, I was able to extend offers of Do you want to join our game to people remotely? One of our listeners turned really close friends, uh, has joined us. And, um, one of my oldest and closest friends from the East Coast has also joined us. And we, we have a fantastic game going on. It's a matter of finding a good fit, but I'm glad that we did it before the holidays. And it took a lot of testing.

Yes.

We would have sessions where I'd be like, look guys, I don't think we're going to play today. I just need some help. We're just stress testing some things and figuring out if I've got everything connected the way it should be. And we had some mulligans. Sometimes it just didn't work. It took a bit of ironing out to get that way. But now I've set up in a way that I can do the whole thing remote if I want to. I generally don't want to do an online-only game. I make exceptions to that over the holidays if it's the only way I get to game. But usually my rule is I want at least 2 people at my table.

Yeah.

And if I can get at least 2 people at my table, then we can get other people online and whatever. But I just, I, I need that face-to-face, that live spiritual, our bodies are vibrating at certain frequencies in the same enclosed space energy.

So I'm going to put a couple, 2 things on the whiteboard as it were here for, uh, lessons we've learned over the last year for potentially making your holiday gaming a success. Uh, one, plan in advance.

Yeah.

Like even though I'm not showing up to the games, I'm still on the Discord because I'm invited. And you all were talking about how to handle the upcoming holidays.

Yeah.

2 months out.

Yeah.

And so pre-plan, pre-plan, get the conversation going early with concrete elements, weekends, you know, figuring out what weekends are definitely no-gos in advance.

Yeah.

Um, so everybody's on the same page. 2, if you're going to introduce new tools to your gaming to keep the gaming over the holidays, test them in advance.

Yep.

Uh, Don't try to do it as the holidays are starting because you're just adding to the stress of the holidays, which kills people's desire to game. So, okay, 2 points there. What else do we got?

And I will expand that second point, provided you have enough time and you're doing this well in advance. If you are trying to make a bunch of complex changes to your setup to accommodate hybrid or even shifting everything fully online, One change at a time for testing is what I made sure to do when we would play is I would have an idea of what I wanted to happen. And then I would look at the way that things were currently set up before I ever shifted, before I ever felt confident enough to invite remote players to join us hybrid. We would sit, we would join and have our regular session. And I'd be like, okay, today, Even though we're all face-to-face, I'm going to introduce microphones and we're going to see if it sounds okay.

Mm-hmm.

Or the headset mics. Sure, there's nobody online. There's no reason, I'm not even recording this, but I just want to make sure that we can all talk to each other like this. And it works. It even has the added benefit of some people don't realize the volume of their own voices. Sometimes people may be too quiet or too loud. If you're all on microphones with closed headsets in the same room and you got a mixer, you can fix that. It's wonderful. So, but, but one change at a time, because if you try to introduce, if you're like, okay, in between, since the last session, I've completely redesigned and rerouted everything. And you want to test all that at the same time? Yeah, that's a recipe for failure. And I hope you were okay not gaming that weekend.

Yeah, it is an iterative process, not an evolutionary process.

Iterate.

So, couple suggestions I bring to the table. This is more for your game masters out there. I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend wrapping up an arc of your game top of November.

Yeah.

First week, week, second week of November. And then devote the holidays, like in your game plan, and I strongly, strongly recommend that game masters have a game plan. It doesn't have to be on the rails, railroading, yada, yada, yada, but you have to have some sort of game plan on where you're going with things that covers you from the middle of November to the end of January and have that built out. So you have games that are specifically designed for people not to be able to attend. Don't have things predicated around specific players. Don't have— even if the rest of your campaign involves a chosen one type character at the table. This is the time to put the spotlight on others, perhaps people you know who are more likely to be able to make it or something like that. One's places to run adventures that aren't potentially as critical to moving your overall grand story forward. Plan that out for the holidays. Therefore, it's Much more resistant to disruption. So that's one. 2, keep the game going.

Yeah.

This is— this one puts a lot of impetus on the game master, and I'm always looking at how I can offload more off a game master into the shared space of the gaming table, whether that's virtually or not. But keep the game going by talking about the game. We're in the middle of getting a new game up and running and we're being damn fools and trying to do it in the middle of the holiday season.

I think we are putting in a truly commendable amount of planning and communication.

Oh yes. Yes. But part of that is, and I don't know whether how aware you're doing this or not, But you keep throwing out about once to twice a week prompts and ideas about the game. Now, this is for a game that we're starting, but that can easily be done for a game that's already going on.

Yeah.

You can use the holiday season and the fact that you are not meeting in person as much to examine some big questions or have collective conversations about the party's overall motives and such, which keeps the excitement alive, keeps the interest alive. And it doesn't mean that after the holidays, when everybody finally is able to come back to the table, they're staring at each other going, what are we doing again?

Yeah.

Um, and whether you're doing that via A shared text message group, Facebook Messenger, Discord channel like we do, throwing out those prompts, throwing out those questions, throwing out weird things like, hey, this picture seems really evocative of X character, and driving the conversation and that interaction and that tickle in the brain of everyone that the game's a part of. our shared experience with each other helps keep the game alive and prevents it dying over the holidays.

Another bit of, again, and this is still in the preventative stage. We haven't quite reached the fuck stage. The preventative stage, if you can, as Jacob was saying, arrange for the conclusion of an arc in late October, early November or so. Reassess the format of your game.

Mm-hmm.

Again, we're coming from the perspective of people in our 40s and so on who, who enjoy spending time with our friends and have adapted our games to play in a certain way that ensures that we get to play as often as possible, fitting the limitations of everybody's time. And one of those adaptations is the concept of the open table. Where we're not running a, uh, an extremely story-heavy, character-driven, plot-all-the-time kind of thing. There's a point, there's a dungeon. And they're going through a dungeon. And each session, whoever's there is who just happens to be together in the dungeon at that time. And we don't have to worry about What if this person didn't make it this week because they're not important to the game? I mean, that's not to put down the character or their involvement in the story, but as long as there are no central characters who the game hinges upon, you leave yourself with fewer options for it to collapse upon one person's absence.

Mm-hmm.

So you have, but that's something you have to arrange in advance. You have to set up a format for that. You don't have to follow that format, but it certainly makes it easier.

Going off the same idea, one thing I've used in the past and I'm actively using this season, uh, vignettes. I have for one of the Delta Green games I run, uh, we are, holiday season became vignette season. And as you run through a campaign, there are these little secondary interests for characters or side things they want to take care of, or the thing they always do in the background that everybody finds kind of interesting, but just, it would take too much away from the table.

Yeah.

To run it when the full group is there. And so I have, of the 4 characters, 4 players in the group and 4 character, 5 characters in the group. if I have characters in the group, I have a series of vignettes based on that. And depending on who can make the session, we run the vignette that is— fits with who's available.

Yeah.

And they're almost all designed to be 1, 2 session sort of things, but enrich the character and enrich the overall story. is it fleshes things out.

Yeah. But again, that all falls back to making sure that you have a game format that can accommodate that. Even if it's not a fully open table, not everything is going to have, not everything is going to allow vignettes. If you're playing a campaign where the characters themselves aren't very deep, Where you're primarily doing like, you know, minis combat or objective-based kind of things. You might not be able to do vignettes, but you could take it and adapt that same concept to micro missions or side story, side missions. Like, or, oh, hey, you remember that time the 2 of us got stuck in that warehouse? Sure. Yeah, I remember that time. Let's talk about it. And play that out. Maybe not something from the current story, but flashbacks.

Flashbacks. That was— flashbacks is a great way to do that as well.

And something with flashbacks. Oh my God. We could, we could talk about flashbacks in great, great, great, great, great length. But if you go into it something like that, if you're, if you want to play out a flashback with existing characters, you know, everybody's got to be on board with certain Certain rules. No one's dying. Yeah. And probably certain things in the future can't be overwritten, but you can always use that, that as a little side story and then turn it into like a character trait later kind of thing as the reward for the adventure.

I'm going to warn GMs in advance on one thing that has happened to me multiple, multiple times with flashbacks. It's a blessing and a curse. It seems like every single time I run a series of flashbacks, an NPC that the party falls in love with ends up popping up in the flashbacks. And then you have to figure out how to work this NPC into the game where they never existed before because everybody wants to go find what Alexander is doing.

Yeah. Or Boblin the Goblin. Yeah.

It's gonna happen. And so just be prepared for it and Uh, have your brain already geared along those lines.

Hmm. So keeping the game going can mean a few things. Do you want to keep playing it right now? Is that your thing? You're like, it's the holidays. I want to keep playing right now. Or do you just want to ensure that your game survives afterward? Different, different remedies for different Problems. The main thing about going forward is to just make sure you have, keep everybody, keep it in everybody's brain.

Yep.

So one of the absolute worst things is sitting down and everybody's like, the fuck? I have no, I have no recollection of any of this kind of stuff.

Right.

And yeah, having a Discord or inviting, as Jacob had said, offloading some of your GMing things.

Note-taking.

If you can come up with a clever idea for rewarding the players to, during the holiday, write a humorous or dramatic recap of certain events from their characters' perspectives, and then, you know, give them some XP or a cool reward or something because of that. Keeping everybody's brain there in that space so they don't forget those, crucial.

I have had to take full-on holiday breaks before where like the entire month of the— from Thanksgiving until January, sometime in January, we were not able to meet. And I am not above, uh, base bribery. And, uh, to keep the interest in the game going, because honestly, what kills games after the holidays where you don't come back is a combination of 2 things. One, that sit-down-at-the-table, what are we doing again sort of feel. Like, if, if you're not keeping the excitement and energy of the game alive over the holidays, even if you're not actually meeting, Mm-hmm. That's a huge blow. Second of all is post-holiday fatigue. As human beings, most of us living in either North America or the Northern Hemisphere, January is the month of hibernation for human beings.

Yeah.

It's, it, like, this is something that can be statistically observed in business productivity and everything. In fact, December is often slightly more productive in business than January is. As anyone who's ever tried to apply for a job, you can apply at the top of January, you're lucky if you get an interview by the end of February. You know, it's, it's January is the month of hibernation. I am not above setting our first game back, quote unquote, from the holidays to be a big production. Like, um, hey, our first game back. I have the crock pot loaded with everybody's favorite beef and barley soup, and I'm gonna have bread bowls warm in the oven. And, you know, that sort of thing. Um, oh, by the way, any of you who actually did the bluebooking about your characters over the holidays, if I have it before the game session, uh, I'm paying out the XP bonuses when you show up. You know, that sort of thing. I'm, I'm not above outright bribery to keep the energy and excitement and drive to get back to the table going on. Make the, make the return to the game an event. Yeah. If you have to.

It's not a bad idea.

To go and go quiet for the holidays. Um, you want to keep the conversation going if at all possible, but make that first session back at the table a Woo, this isn't just a gaming session. This is a fucking party. Yeah.

It helps if you followed our earlier advice and you closed out your last story arc already. And it's, it's at a spot where you can get back to it. And so the returning to that thing is exciting and pivotal.

Mm-hmm. And I'll admit, I am such a hardcore proponent of closing off an arc before the holidays that I have blown up buildings in the middle of fighting the big bad because I knew that it was happening. We weren't gonna close out the session with the resolution, and we were not gonna be meeting again until maybe top of January. And I have literally pulled the, there's a loud bang, white flash, and suddenly you're blinking, staring up at the sky. See y'all in January. Cliffhanger type stuff.

Yeah, I, I am actually facing this conundrum myself in that late October, I think we closed the— we had the climax of our most recent arc of the campaign. And what a climax it was. But there's still several weeks left of the year and we want to keep gaming. And I'm like, oh, now everybody's distant. And I don't want to— I am torn because I don't want to start something whole and new with just a handful of people. So I'm hopeful that I've got, I've got at least 4 players tomorrow who can make it. Oh, that's great. And I think 4, 4 is a good number to get something new started, to start the next arc at least. And we'll see. Yeah. It's also a good time. I have had luck in the past for this kind, for this, for this period of time of the year of doing side, of doing either side stories with brand new characters who connect in some way or reveal something about the backstory or something else happening in the world. Or just a fucking side game entirely, like a, a 1 to 3 shot of something silly that has no long-term advancement, like fucking Pirate Borg or something. You know? Yeah.

Small warning, uh, because I've done the same thing before. Um, you as a game master are personally heavily invested in the story you're telling in your quote unquote main campaign. And you do a system swap or something to run a fun little game over the holiday, don't make it too fun. I mean, just, just definitely do it. But I've seen more than one campaign that I desperately, as a game master, wanted to get to a point die because What we did over the holidays was way too fun. And it was the call of let's do that instead happened. And as a game master, I will always go with that.

I know what you're saying. And I've been there and I felt that. And I've learned that the secret, the secret to that is finding something with no long-term potential. Like Kobolds Ate My Baby.

Yep. Perfect example.

Yeah. You are not campaigning that unless y'all are really fucked up. And if that's the case, Godspeed. But it's a perfect one-shot kind of thing. If it's, if it's a, if it's a game that has enough moving parts and enough long-term potential that that could happen, I would, yeah, don't do it because you run the risk of making sure that your previous campaign will never be returned to again. Although if that's your actual goal, Mm-hmm. This is the backdoor pilot.

It could work.

Other interesting ideas for keeping the game going. Again, we've talked many times about how we're older as far as the gaming populace is concerned. We're certainly not the graybeards. We are not gaming in the retirement home, unlike some of my friends actually are nowadays.

Mm-hmm.

I love to see it, but that's not where we're at in our lives. As I previously mentioned, you may have a game where only 1 or 2 of your regular players are gonna make it, 'tis the season for potentially introducing the young'uns to roleplaying.

Ahhh.

You, you may not be able to run your usual campaign, or you may have to run a much more simplified session of your campaign, but I have more than once had someone go, hey, it would be really great if I could get the kids out of my spouse's hair. Could we try running a game for a couple that includes a couple 12-year-olds? For the games Jacob runs, let me tell you, this is damn near impossible. But, you know, Jacob runs dark themes in his games all the time, and I've still managed to pull it off.

So, I mean, I played some pretty fucked up games when I was 12.

So, yeah, well, You know, Gen X was, uh, you know, drink from the garden hose, fuck around and find out, and, uh, rub a little dirt on it. And nowadays that don't fly so well. Um, but yeah. Um, that said, uh, nothing will make a game dark like a 12-year-old at a gaming table and they think a dog is in danger. Mass homicide will ensue. I will guarantee you that. But it's a great time to maybe, you know, uh, give the youngins a chance to come to the gaming table and see why dad or mom is disappearing for, you know, multiple hours every other weekend or so and be open to that. And one, you're investing in the next generation of gamers, which honestly, as someone who's a huge proponent of the culture of gaming, We need to definitely always be mindful of doing. So the holidays actually makes a great opportunity for that to happen. 2, it gets people to your gaming table who otherwise would not be able to make it from the holidays. I have more than once had people be able to show up because, yeah, bring the kids, we'll get them some basic characters and they'll be able to participate. And the spouse or in-laws who are like, God, no, you're going to show up, you're going to show up to go Christmas shopping, XYZ, whatever, are like, oh yeah, go, go get, get the kids out of my hair. Go, go give me quiet time. Give me my respite. And suddenly they're able to make a game.

You go buy the presents so they don't see them.

Exactly.

Yep.

You become the Mrs. Claus to Santa Claus for the day. And It makes it so people, A, turn up, and B, it feels like less of a burden on their life because in their collective family unit, they're paying back.

Yeah.

Plus more gamers in the future.

That's all I got on this one.

That's pretty much what I got.

Well, folks, uh, stop by our Discord and tell us about your games that you have happening right now over the holidays. And success stories that you've had, or tell us about the games that ended and you would desperately like to get back to them someday.

Who knows?

Maybe we can help you.

Or at the very least coordinate. Uh, I have a personal graveyard of games that died over the holidays and yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Well, folks, thanks for listening and not sure when this is going out, but it's sometime over the holidays. So I hope yours are pleasant and you're getting lots of nerd time in.

And remember to buy your Palladium gift Christmas bundle.

Yes, the gift bundle is out right now. The Grab Bag, Palladium's annual best deal in gaming. And I can attest it's the best deal in gaming. You should get yours. I got to put my order in soon. They usually extend them through the first of the year. So you've got a little bit of time.

God, I hope so. Otherwise I'm not going to be able to order the one this year.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm looking forward to it. All right. Thanks for listening, folks.

Talk to you later.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might've 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 It's available in 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.

Thank you.

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. And also join us on the Breakfast Puppies Network Discord at breakfastpuppies.com/discord. And if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening.

We'll catch you next time.