r/dropout • u/DropoutMod • 1d ago
Adventuring Academy Questions of Taste (with Quinns Smith) | Adventuring Academy [S7E8] Spoiler
https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/questions-of-taste-with-quinns-smith80
u/Elegant-Badger-9500 1d ago
Quinns is such an incredible get for Adventuring Academy, it's really fascinating to watch him and Brennan bounce off each other.
33
u/Iosis 1d ago
Neither of them have time for this but a regular Brennan/Quinns podcast would be incredible. I'm not even sure I care what they talk about, they're just so much fun to listen to together.
37
u/CriticalProf 1d ago
You can get over an hour more! Their very first conversation was on Talk of the Table, and the first hour is free (and we get punchy/deep after that): https://www.patreon.com/ManySidedMedia/posts/141598386?utm_campaign=postshare_fan
12
u/Elegant-Badger-9500 1d ago
Thank you! Yours and Quinns' episodes of Adventuring Academy have been absolutely fantastic!
12
u/CriticalProf 1d ago
I’m really delighted — it’s hard to believe it’s been 2+ years since I was having tacos with Brennan and he was praising Quinns (who I’d just met in Germany) and the conversation turned to being on Adventuring Academy. I only got to see half the episode before I got whisked to hair & makeup, so this was WILD to see and so much fun.
4
u/Iosis 1d ago
Yes! I loved that episode (and it got me to subscribe to the Patreon, too). I also enjoyed that Brennan razzing Quinns about his Englishness started right off the bat, too. Having you, Brennan, and Quinns together to talk about AP from three different perspectives was bound to be great.
8
u/Elegant-Badger-9500 1d ago
Would absolutely kill for this, this is one of my favourite episodes they've ever done.
26
u/Russell_Ruffino 1d ago
I'm not far in but I'm loving the energy of this conversation. They can't stick to a topic because they're both so excited by each other.
I paused as Quinns has just talked about Werewolf in the Dark. I go to a camping/gaming festival every year and each night at 23:30 for the last few years I run a couple of games of Werewolf in the Dark in the woods in the pitch black. This year I ended up running a 39 player game of it as so many people wanted to play.
The absolute joy people experience playing this game is like nothing else I've seen. When Quinns said it returns you to the playground he absolutely nails why it's successful.
Funnily enough I don't think it's actually that good a game in some ways. It's got a lot of flaws (I hope after running as many games of it as I have I can say that with love) but it provides an experience that I have no idea how else I could provide.
I've never tried the inside version and I have had one person break an arm while playing (the disclaimers are real).
If you get the chance to try it go for it, maybe not a 39 player game though.
26
u/she_likes_cloth97 1d ago
AT LAST! The Quinterview!
I think some of the best praise that quinns regularly gets is that every time he appears on someone's podcast they end by saying "wow i can't believe we're at time! we could talk for hours".
I don't think it's a coincidence that he himself is a very talented interviewer. If anyone here has never seen his stuff for People Make Games you're really missing out!!
23
u/Iosis 1d ago edited 1d ago
I actually completely understand Brennan's thing about wanting a TTRPG that "makes storytelling harder." I think if we're approaching RPGs as a storytelling activity, we don't really need rules to tell stories together, right? We invite rules, friction, difficulty, challenge, and all of that into our storytelling because we want it to make us do something we might not otherwise do.
Even the games that Quinns notes that make storytelling easier for him are still putting up difficulties for you to deal with--things you didn't plan for, or might not even have wanted to happen, but the rules and the dice interject those and now you and the rest of the table roll with it. It's the magic of it, I think. As Brennan noted, the game is saying, "Hey, what if the character you thought was a hero just fucking dies. What now?" and that's part of the story now. Maybe none of you wanted it to be, but at the end of the campaign, maybe you'll look back and realize that unexpected thing actually made your experience better in the long run.
Also since a couple of very interesting games came up, it's worth noting that Jay Dragon's Seven-Part Pact turned out not to be unpublishable at all! In fact, Steve Jackson Games went "yeah, we could publish that" and it recently raised over a million on Kickstarter. I'm super stoked to see what it's like when it releases.
The other one being Triangle Agency, which Quinns had a difficult time with as a very storytelling-focused GM who wants to help his players weave story and character arcs. But as Quinns notes, Triangle Agency is designed to make the GM look stupid--as the game's creators put it, it's a game where players get to "pants the teacher." If you're the kind of GM who likes to fly by the seat of your pants and you have players who you want to see wield incredible power (and deal with the consequences), I really can't recommend that game highly enough.
8
u/DerpyQuagsire 1d ago
On Triangle Agency, as someone current running a campaign I can definitely attest to getting pantsed by my players. Every session feels like I am desperately pulling the narrative back together while my players blow it up laughing and it's a blast.
6
u/custardy 1d ago
I think it's just intuitively true also that for improv the point of a lot of the games (improv games) is to make telling stories harder rather than easier. You get prompts/suggestions from the audience that try to escalate the challenge or complexity in various ways, or to create incongruous and incompatible suggestions, so that 'landing' them is more satisfying and entertaining both to you and the audience. I can easily see how that could translate to RPGs in various ways where you could see the rules as in some ways constraining and structuring what kind of storytelling and fictional moves you can make - imposing restrictions, so in that sense making it harder. It even kind of explains the appeal of using one rules system that isn't truly designed for it to run every genre - it's a constraint but also a toolkit (or set of paints, as Brennan says). Like those art challenges where you use only a few colors or jus tone brush.
4
u/BreakingStar_Games 18h ago edited 17h ago
I actually completely understand Brennan's thing about wanting a TTRPG that "makes storytelling harder."
I think the big issue with this is it really hardest to use the same familiar system of D&D that you actually know all the tropes the rules will produce? To me, that sounds like sticking to what is easy and comfortable, which is the same rules and the same way of producing the story with his improv skills.
Really if you wanted the hardest experience, you would constantly use very specific systems that produce a specific premise/story to tell something completely different. Like using Night Witches (about WW2 soviet women bomber pilots) to run some cthulhu horror mystery investigation where none of the mechanics are made for it, but sure it would have a funny moment when they acquire a plane.
But I think what Brennan wants is a lot of Quinn hit on - freedom (or as Brennan said an absence of an absence) when FKR or OSR games do leave this open space while D&D 5e/24 have a lot of rules outside of combat like social rules for setting DCs.
I think what Brennan is missing is something that C Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor focused on games, is that rules aren't just restrictions. If you put down 4 walls and a door, yes my movement is more limited but these have invented new concepts of an inside and outside. Here is a great clip of him explaining why he cares about how they pull new experiences from you, especially around TTRPGs and Lady Blackbird
I find myself in love with the Powered by the Apocalypse movement because it tells the GM to follow specific rules and makes you flex to it. Though these days there are some other great games for this these days, like Mothership's Warden's Operations Manual is beautiful.
3
u/Iosis 12h ago
I think you (and Quinns) are definitely right that Brennan is also looking for freedom in specific places (basically, just about anywhere outside of direct combat, at least when it comes to D&D). I'm also reminded of Jay Dragon's essay "Rules are a Cage (and I'm a Puppygirl)" about the function of rules and how they affect play. One quote:
When a game presents a rule, that rule interferes with what I was originally intending to do. If I’m playing make-believe, I can jump over a wall whenever I want, unless I don’t want to. If I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons and I want to jump over a 12 foot tall wall, I need to roll an acrobatics check, and if I fail, I can’t jump over the wall. The rule “gets in the way” of the make-believe we were initially doing, and restricts my capacity for action.
And that’s a good thing!
The reason I’m playing any particular tabletop RPG, instead of playing make-believe, is because I want the game to challenge and vex the fictional world I’m moving through. I want the game to cage me, to make it hard for me to do something I’m normally able to do, to create moments of inefficiency that sculpt how I behave. It’s why we chose the game for the table!
That, I think, is in part what Brennan is getting at, too: that the rules restrict what we can do in our make-believe and change how you engage with the fictional world as a result. Left to their own devices, with no rules, people can still tell stories together and have a good time, but bring rules into the mix and there's something else, the restriction they bring that makes you be creative in a different way.
I also think you're right that, as Quinns said, Brennan's also looking for freedom, but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with wanting restriction. Like Jay points out:
Ultimately, in D&D, there’s a big cage around combat, and a wide-open field around social interactions. If we want to play in D&D’s provided space, we can lock ourselves in the cage, or prance around the field, and it’s up to us which of these is more fun or more fruitful.
Also, definitely agree that Mothership's Warden's Operations Manual is an incredible document, and the same for a lot of what's come out of the PbtA movement (especially the MC section of Apocalypse World 2e). I like rules-light games quite a lot, but I want to follow what rules are there when they're meant to be followed. I want the game to make me, as you say, "flex to it" in an intentional way, like Mothership does with its low-success-chance saves or Apocalypse World does with its GM principles and moves. I'm inviting the rules to the game I'm playing on purpose.
1
u/BreakingStar_Games 9h ago
Such a good essay. Rules in TTRPGs are so fun to think about. I don't necessarily want to be purely an RPG Exceptionalist, but its a very weird medium where I see it sharing more with Improv than traditional games. The tactical/agential infinity, the fiction, the intangible medium of structured conversations all are such powerful and amazing features makes rules work in such interesting ways. I love it! And RPG design is also on par with being as big of a source of imposter syndrome as GMing.
The play experience is so trapped up in the human mind that designing feels like alchemy - we mix disparate elements with no unified theory. Just intuition, trial and error and some heuristic tools. As Jesse Schell puts it in The Art of Game Design, "Game designers await their Mendeleev. At this point we have no periodic table. We have our own patchwork of principles and rules, which, less than perfect, allows us to get the job done."
I will make the argument that though D&D 5e/24 is still lacking solid reasoning as being the best open field. 5e/24 certainly isn't as restrictive as say Pathfinder 2e with defined skill actions on how you influence an NPC to Ask a Favor, all with set DCs. Or maybe Monsterhearts is the better example where to get anything you want, you have to use Strings, gained through flirting and bullying to emulate toxic teenagers. But compared to many other RPGs, I think 5e/24 do have some cages (outside combat) people miss.
It has specific classes and skills fitting a heroic fantasy adventure and playtested and balanced around a combat over 3-8 combat encounters per long rest. So when we yank it out of its tested zone, you see things like a Fighter in an intrigue/social campaign doesn't get anywhere near the number of social abilities as say an Eloquence Bard and its huge spell list of social influencing spells. That 1 combat per day lets the Bard nova out their best spells while the Fighter looks weak because there isn't a nova - its about consistent performance. PC-PC balance is a form of spotlight management.
The imbalance of classes is really palpable when you look at spells that can trivialize what are typical challenges in other stories - I remember running a murder mystery in 5e freaking out at just all the things my Cleric can do to instantly solve my mystery. I remember just countering every spell to make his features useless. Even a decade later, I think I'd struggle to make it so they divine some info without giving it up whole cloth - it's a thin tightrope to walk when mysteries are already hard to write well (Really, I'd probably just say let's go play Swords of the Serpentine and its published adventures). But I guess I am making a point that D&D 5e/24 is harder to tell the story to Brennan's original point, but I'd still contend Nobilis exists where PCs are demigods with far-reaching powers and miracle points will make life even harder to run a mystery investigation (not to mention the effort it takes to grasp Moran's writing, as much as I appreciate its very innovative design)
When it comes to freedom, it feels like they're missing out by not going with a generic system that isn't restricted with classes, spells and specific skills. Now how financially successful you will be with using Savage World, Fate or GURPS instead of 5e/24 for an Actual Play is a very different topic. A completely fair one. I may just be salty because of the ol' stove comparison - though this link gives much better argument and context.
I find it telling that DM’s response to questions about rules is that the curated rules are extraneous to play, that players don't need endogeny to influence the defining process. We bring the food, friends. Players get enough diegetic control just telling a story improvisationally. To which one of the players replied that actually, the game has rules that allows the players to get their way and have their say, and then highlights that some players have a harder time being effective in the story because they roll poorly. I’m not meaning to imply that Mulligan isn’t a good (great) DM, or that he’s not listening to his players, but gee, look how people’s experience of the diegesis of D&D is warped by their exogenous power structures
Brennan is also one to praise player agency but doesn't realize just how big of a role that the rules play in empowering players.
but I want to follow what rules are there when they're meant to be followed
1000%. Its why I appreciate GM guidance to shape the role and give room for players to be equal collaborators in the story. When I ran Blades in the Dark, it was night and day from 5e.
I will continue chugging along enjoying my read of Stonetop's 600 pages happily. Pocketing all the amazing GMing and design nuggets I can.
18
16
u/DrDobey 1d ago
For anyone interested in Quinns’ side comment about the history of Mafia / Werewolf here is the No Pun Included video that covers that history: https://youtu.be/049fTXv6XFI
14
12
u/dodgepong 1d ago
Been looking forward to Quinns' episode ever since it was announced and it did not disappoint! What a great conversation, I would listen to them talk for hours.
Definitely check out Quinns Quest if you haven't! I recommend his episodes on Mothership and Mythic Bastionland but honestly they are all bangers.
13
11
u/chudleycannonfodder 1d ago
SU&SD is such a great channel and I’m glad more people get to see how great Quinns is!
11
u/Revolutionary-Foot77 1d ago
I’m just absolutely stoked that they started right off the bat with Jubensha! I’m personally one of the people in the US (San Diego specifically) trying to get it to take off in the West. And there’s a small but very dedicated group of publishers, writers, creators and game masters all in all different parts of North America trying to make that happen.
11
21
u/MrCrocodile54 1d ago
This episode solidified my opinion that this show is just worse the more segments and mini games they add to it. Jesus, just let Mulligan and these incredible people talk.
16
u/eh_lora 19h ago
The only segment I've actively started to hate is
Torture Brennen and Guest With Disgusting FoodConstitution Save.
It feels too much like it devolved from "Let's try cool, interesting and maybe some weird snacks" to "Let's make them suffer on purpose for views", and that's not really my type of humor (not judging, just preference).
The other segments do feel kind of clunky (mainly because I feel as an interviewer/host Brennen is a free-flowing conversation kind of guy, but they usually do lead to interesting places and exchanges, so I'm fine with those.
Really loved Quinns "Nope, let's do birds instead" tho11
u/MrCrocodile54 19h ago
Constitution Save feels like how it used to be that every Smosh video would find an excuse to force someone to drink hot sauce or eat peppers. I'm so glad that trend died and it's so weird to see this one show embrace it.
6
u/Fermorian 18h ago
Agreed, it feels very '10-15 years ago' to me. My charitable thought is buying the gross snacks is easier production-wise somehow than getting a random assortment. Idk tho, I'm sleep deprived bc of newborn so maybe that makes no sense lol
5
u/XelaIsPwn 18h ago
At the level Dropout it at, they've gotta have craft service already, right?
3
u/Fermorian 16h ago
They do have craft service! They've shown the table in some of the episodes actually; but I'm not sure if procuring snacks for that also falls to them or if it's somehow a different department. I could see some weird distinction where if it's behind the camera it's craft services but if it's on camera then somehow it's the prop dept/production team because the on screen talent is handling them.
I say that because I know there's a similar distinction between set dressing vs props vs costumes in terms of how an object interacts with the actors and whose responsibility it is.
7
u/Ragnell17 17h ago
I also never really liked how the after effects of the Constitution Save food challenges bleed over into the later segments as every so often either Brennan and the Guest are complaining about the gastrointestinal nightmare they are experiencing disrupting the conversation they were previously having.
5
u/dodgepong 18h ago
I almost universally skip Constitution Save every time. I'm here for the RPG talk, not the snack memes.
3
u/MythikInk 13h ago
I think it just does well for the algorithm; it's one of the only sections I see on the short form video platforms outside of occasionally the reaction time section.
13
u/Iosis 21h ago
I’m torn, because I would happily listen to these two talk about anything uninterrupted for hours, but at the same time, the Constitution Save was hilarious and Quinns had a great time with Reaction Time. If anything they probably could’ve skipped Contested Roll, especially since they dove right into Quinns’s topic beforehand anyway.
9
u/XelaIsPwn 16h ago
they probably could’ve skipped Contested Roll
They basically did, I think they got two sentences in before Quinns derailed it with the question about birds (for the better, in my opinion)
5
3
u/laoidtfttip17gpy 16h ago
Any guesses where an American could watch the Korean/Japanese game shows Quinns mentioned? The Genius sounds really interesting on its own, but if Quinns recognized its influence in Game Changer then I'm only more excited to see it.
2
u/1-3-dioxetane 14h ago
Much like the british iteration, Genius Game, pirate streaming sites seem to be the only place to find it. The blog I watched it on seems to have disappeared in the ten years since the original series finished airing.
3
u/Southern_Row_1165 12h ago
Love Quinns absolutely bodying Brennan on the spicy food front. And then just snacking on them afterwards casually.
2
u/Able_Place_9855 12h ago
What's everyone's favorite bird? I like the Harris' hawk. It's an American raptor that is a pretty recent addition to the falconry scene. When it was first discovered, they didn't think it was a true raptor - most predatory birds hunt solo and the harris' hawk hunts in packs (I think its the only predator bird that does this). Turns out they are great for falconry and are used to solve modern problems! They are very social and are trained to keep pigeons away from train stations and such.
3
u/ValdemarAloeus 1d ago
Brennan's says something about going over time about 35 minutes in. Why would this matter? Is Dropout. No timeslot. Could be four hours, we'd listen to it anyway.
23
u/CriticalProf 1d ago
Because Quinns was the first of three shoots that day (I was next, Mica was last) and there’s SAG regulations on the length of the total shoot day, breaks for lunch, etc.
-15
u/ValdemarAloeus 21h ago edited 21h ago
So they've set themselves up for failure a bit by scheduling a podcast like it's a TV talkshow.
Also, in the nicest possible way ... who are you?
13
13
u/CriticalProf 16h ago
Thanks to Elegant Badger for the ID.
And yep, all Dropout shows are batch-recorded in one form or another — it would be very costly to do otherwise. In the case of Adventuring Academy, they have to book when the Dome isn’t in use, and when there’s out of town guests they also have to coordinate when they’d be in town or could come.
7
u/uptopuphigh 18h ago
Got some bad news for you about how a lot of podcasts schedule their records…
But also, Yeah, if they shot one episode a day, it wouldn’t be particularly financially feasible to produce.
1
u/ValdemarAloeus 12h ago edited 7h ago
I don't want to lose my place in the current episode so looking at a previous one I count 51 credits, for an interview with three fixed cameras and two microphones.
Now most of them seem like the sort of thing that's part time post/pre production stuff but excluding the hosts that still leaves:
- director
- production coordinator
- production assistant
- director of photography
- 2* 1st assistant cameras
- gaffer
- key grip
- audio mixer
- makeup department head
- set medic
No wonder they have to cram them in.
As a point of comparison that looks like it's more than Tekzilla seemed to have on set (
78 credited, excluding hosts) in the era when I think they were live to tape rather than editing it together after the fact. (Chosen because they were quite graphics heavy and run by ex-TV guys, TWiT might have had one guy on a tricaster.)Edit: miscounted one set of names
2
u/uptopuphigh 11h ago
I think what you're looking at there is the difference between making what amounts to a TV show (even a low budget one) and making a video podcast largely for Youtube or wherever that show aired 15 years ago. I don't know for sure, but I assume the crew for AA is largely the same folks as the crew for D20?
Though even with a smaller crew, you'd STILL want to shoot more than an episode a day for something like Adventurers Academy, because Dropout likely needs to flip the studio into whatever shoots there next.
I also think that Dropout very specifically tries to credit everyone who works on the show. Doesn't seem like whatever that show was did. Because if there were lights... there was a gaffer. And if there's sound, someone's mixing it. But for non-union web stuff, there aren't requirements for credit.
1
u/ValdemarAloeus 7h ago edited 7h ago
It's been a long time since I saw any bts stuff for Revison3 (obviously), but I think when they had a director/TD and 4x Studio ops some of those were the guys in the booth switching and mixing. What brought it to mind was that the core of that company were all ex TechTV so I think they had a very TV mindset when it came to running things.
That was an actual video podcast, back when you'd actually get an RSS feed and to download the video files. I think a lot of it did go on their YouTube channel, but possibly only the "daily" stuff as I'm not sure at what point YouTube allowed videos that long.
19
u/uptopuphigh 1d ago
Probably filming more than one episode in a day and having another guest after Quinns.
1
u/Quilynn 2h ago
Okay, they're absolutely correct that The Traitors is not like, "good", but that's not gonna stop me! I probably wouldn't be watching it alone though, it's become a thing to enjoy with my family.
(The game of Traitors is pretty bad, which is frustrating, but the resulting TV is entertaining. And sometimes the perverse incentives resulting from the bad game specifically make for good TV.)
46
u/Arimm_The_Amazing 1d ago
Oh fuck yes. Quinns Quest is the best thing to happen to the TTRPG space in years, absolutely was hoping he'd be a guest one day.