 So yeah, let's get right into it. We talk a lot about RPGs like the first panel we ever did at a PAX was called Beyond Dungeons and Dragons back in 2008. And the whole gist of that panel was guys, there are RPGs that are not Dungeons and Dragons or like or like Dungeons and Dragons in a different skin like Pathfinder or 20 Star Wars or whatever. Or those garbage games like Shadow Run, which has never actually been a good game. Anyway, the point is you had a period of time where you played a lot of RPGs in college and shortly after college and we still have a lot of people who are good to play with. You don't have that problem. The problem we have is all the people are adults and you can't get time together and RPGs usually take a significant time to play. Yep. They take the good ones often have a lot of rules to learn and investment. And that those are our hurdles. And this is I think like people don't play tabletop RPGs in general and will even pay GMs to run games to them is because it's just such a to do to play an RPG. So actually, there's another point that I want to make before we get in as a as a reviewer. I can read the rules to a board game and review it. But with RPGs, it's very hard to review an RPG without playing it a lot with a varied audience of people. Right. So it's very hard to get to the point, even if I played a bunch of RPGs where I am comfortable passing some sort of judgment or reviewing it. Right. I've got some RPGs in my shelf. I've never played a lot of them quite a few. And it's like, I would have to play one of those several times with several different groups, because I might have a good review. But like, oh, no, that was the group or we played it wrong. Or, you know, I'd have to see like, what is this game really all about? Yeah, such a thing. When you review a game, you got to be able to say who is this for? Who is this not for? Right. You got to get, you know, it's like, Oh, well, that time, the people didn't really learn the game when we played it that time. I played it with the experts. We played the Wizards grimoire enough to give a real review of it. Right. So the Wizards grimoire is a game that I saw. And it was like, Hey, get it on like it's IO for like a few dollars. And you get all these other games in a big bundle that are all just PDFs. And I said, that sounds good to me. Just a bunch of PDFs not going on my shelf. Won't feel guilty if I don't play them. Right. Yeah. So paid the few dollars and it's IO. I downloaded a bundle of PDFs. I read the Wizards grimoire, the first one. I didn't read the other ones, but they're the similar from what I can tell other barbarians, bloody quest and all the other ones are basically the same mechanics just with different, you know, different setting, different character. And basically it's by Vincent Baker, who you may know from Apocalypse World kill puppies for Satan dogs in the vineyard in a wicked age. Apocalypse World is what most people would know. Right. So puts out this game. It's a really brief game. The PDF is like a handful of pages. Most of the pages you don't even have to read to play. You only have to read like two pages to play. In fact, you need to exercise the sell the like the force of will to not read everything. That's right. So the way it works is one per it's a solo RPG. One person is the player. And what you do in order to play the game is you need to find two, not one, not three, exactly two volunteers to play the game. Those players need those volunteers. They're not players. Those two volunteers need a no prior knowledge of the game whatsoever. B no time commitment whatsoever. You can play for one minute or forever. Yep. Like basically any player can say no, we're done. Any player, the player or any volunteer can just be like, that's it. Are done with this session and you can end it. I hit myself with the mega. I didn't even cause it this time. You can end the game as abruptly as necessary at any time. Whenever you want or have to or any doesn't matter, right? It is the least investment imaginable. You could, if you are the player solo game, remember, you can just carry the game around with you and literally any brief moment that you have found two volunteers, you can play like you're on a train. You happen to two nerds happen to sit near you or a better nerd and like a random non nerd. Right. You convinced them to volunteer. They volunteer after five minutes. They're bored. You're done. All right. You did it. Good. It's like now literally is that easy to play this game. I would be shocked if you ran into people who after five minutes were bored because what was fascinating about this, both playing as a volunteer and by watching other people like play it and other people be volunteers is that it's really easy to get invested. Like the gate, the simple bare minimum mechanics and the rules of how the story progresses really get people to be creative. And the fact that there are two volunteers is crucial to this. Here's how it works. The player reads their little document and it tells a story. You are some kind of wizard. Build your stats with this system. You can change your stats every session if you want to go nuts. Who cares? Yeah, they don't progress or anything. Right? So was that a best of the two courts compiled or notes into a signature? Right? Right? For travel? Right? There's a story where somehow there was a magic book and you've got it and you don't understand shit in this magic book. So you are going to try to learn what's in the magic book and the magic book is the several last pages of the PDF and you only read sections of that book that is literally given to you when you have achieved enough understanding by in game mechanics and then with yourself adult restraint, you only read one section of the book at a time when you're allowed to do so. So I've only unlocked up our one section of the book. I haven't read sections two through X. I don't know how many sections there are. Yep. I only know what's in that first section. And the goal as the solo player is to play enough to have enough sessions that you can read the whole book. But that's not actually your goal. Your actual goal, according to the rules, it says your goal as the player is to get in trouble and then get out of trouble. Hopefully. And that happened reliably. Every single time I played, I got in trouble and got out of trouble. Right? Now the volunteers, what are they all about? Well, here's how this game works. 90% of the game involves no dice. When it doesn't involve dice, it's a D six. But don't worry about that D six right now. The way the game works is you are the player, you find two volunteers who are willing to volunteer. They read some little tiny pieces of paper, which is like a whole page of the PDF. And it doesn't tell you have it doesn't tell much just tells them that player is going to ask you questions. You answer them. Your goal as volunteers is to just answer the questions in the way that pleases you most entertain yourself with your answers to the questions. Yep. However, your answers to the questions only count and become real. If both volunteers agree, yes, that is the answer. So that is the magic. That's the secret sauce. That's the only that's the whole game, basically, because if there's if there's just one volunteer, like it's stupid. Yeah, it's boring. Like it doesn't go anywhere. You don't have enough creative juice from one person they can get stale. But two people like when I was playing with the other I was one of the volunteers and we had another friend as a volunteer, like he'd say something I'd be like, no, but what about and we really started bouncing off each other in a hurry when we could veto each other. And it made sure that whatever be unanimous, you need two votes for anything to become a correct, true answer. But the other magic sauce is that we can't just like, we're constrained heavily by all we can actually do is answer questions that Scott asks. That's right. These volunteers, if they have any I can't just be like, you are sitting in a wall by the woods. These volunteers have any concept of normal are typical D&D style RPGs of the GM. They feel like they're a team of GMs, right, where they decide everything in the world. It's like, no, no, no, that's not what you are. Scott will ask a question is procedural generators of answers. It is almost more into like a sleep is death. Except there's two people who have to agree on what happens to the player, right? They're really in control by asking the questions. They'll be like, you know, and sort of mostly in control, right? They'd be like, what's the weather like? Right? What time is it? Yep. Who who knocked on my door? Right? Who not? Right? What's I go into a town? What building do I see? The players that volunteers might be like, you don't see a building, right? There are no buildings here. It's like, all right, fine. I go into a tavern. What does it smell like? Who's here? Who's sitting at the table in the back corner? You can ask all kinds of leading questions, non leading questions, and those volunteers have to answer all these questions or end the session, right? And that is what makes the things happen. Now the dice, right? So sometimes you want to do something, right? And, you know, you that you can't necessarily get done via asking questions, or there are questions that you can't really ask, right? Like if I'm just asking the questions, like, what does the grimoire mean? Yeah, it's a ha ha, right? What is that? Oh, I met you met a large mysterious man. Is this man planning to kill me? Right? It's like, that's not something that like you would, you know, be able to tell like how warm is it, right? Because like if I got to ask that question as a volunteer, you don't know, you can't read his face. Now what? Right? So what you do in those cases is you have your stats, and you roll the one d six and the way the system works is you pick the relevant stat. And if the d six goes over the number or that's sort of like equal or over, that's a failure. You want to be as high as possible while being under. So if my stat is four, I think maybe equal, I forget, it doesn't matter, right? You over is bad. I forget if equal is bad, but under is definitely a success. And you still want the number to be higher, right? So if I'm doing like a, you know, test for stealthiness or whatever, right, or subtlety, I forget what it's actually called, not looking at the PDF right now. You know, then I would roll. And if I got like a three in my stat was four, it's like, all right, well, I can, you know, I was really good. I got like three opportunities to be stealthy or whatever. And it's probably going to be a successful endeavor, right? The other thing that's really interesting is that there is an option to submit to circumstance, right? So for example, in the third session where you weren't there and I played at one point, it's like, oh, you stumble into a bunch of cultists and you, you weren't stealthy and they saw you and they caught you. It's like, I submit the circumstance, right? So I submit and when you submit, it's the same system, but all the as high as you get is the number of things you can keep. So you can choose. I keep my dignity. I keep my dignity. I keep my life. I keep my bearings. And it's like, all right, well, you lose up, you lose your clothes and that's so right. It's like, you know, it's like that basically to prevent the volunteers, it's like, okay, you choose what you keep, you choose what you live. And then the book says, all right, the volunteers now tell you, you know, what happens next, right? It's like there are instructions on each dice roll for the different six or seven different ways you can roll the dice on exactly what to do and exactly what the volunteers do. So it's like, if you if you fail a certain thing, it's like, okay, you are unconscious. You, you, you are, you know, surprised or shocked. You're unconscious. You are then what you're snapped out of it by something the volunteers have to say what snaps you you ask the volunteers what snaps me out of it, right? And now they have to answer that question. And this leads to really fun interactions. Like at one point, Scott, I mean, one of the games we played, you basically did a thing that lets you know the mind of one of like one of our right. It's like that when you roll the dice, it basically either allows you to ask questions or forces you to ask certain questions or it's always relating to the questions, right? It's like, well, now you have to ask this question or you may now ask these three quest up to X questions normally couldn't are do these bandits actually plan to harm me. And then as a volunteer, I got to decide what the truth is there. Yep. And be truthful about it. Yes or no, but you just you have to answer my question or stop the game. And there's some magic here. Like this concept is very powerful. And I was incredibly surprised at how easily even because, you know, when you try to get someone to play an RPG, even like what seems like a short low investment, investment one, like ghost court, sometimes people like aren't super enthusiastic or like they're really hesitant. People who are even hesitant all you got to do is answer questions. Yeah. It's like even someone who knows nothing about RPGs. It's like, all right. You know, it's like every session starts with a sort of like a hook, right? This is a little like tiny, single paragraph or even smaller hooks in the in the PDF. That's like a whole page actually just hooks. You I've just been picking one and starting. But I guess you can make up your own hooks also. But you just pick a hook and then start asking questions. You read the hook and start asking and all the volunteers got to do is answer. They don't got to do nothing. Yep. Right. The player is the one who has to know at least a little bit about RPGs, but you don't got to teach a volunteer shit. All they got to do is answer questions. You know. All right. What what what does the town look like? What time is it? What what color is the bartender's skin? What's there? What do they sell it in the shop? The highest? What's the price? And the thing is you can't do anything but ask questions. So it's like, how much does the beer cost? A gold piece? How many gold do I have? Five gold pieces. I drink five beers. All right. I offer the man a goal. It's like, you know, how many gold do I have? None. The two things. You don't have an you don't have an inventory. You just ask questions. The highest praise I can give is that in the game I was an assistant in and then a game I watched were radically different. Every game I played was radically different. Like the first one volunteers basically and it's who is playing and who the volunteer questions they ask and who the volunteers are and their mental state drives the game in a crazy different direction. Like the first one was like, oh, these bandits actually aren't that bad. And the second one was like Scott's erotic journey. Yeah. The third one I played, the two volunteers were seasoned D&D GMs who had, I imagine, little experience with other RPGs. And sure enough, it was a dungeon full of cultists. And it's like, I guess that's the story you know how to tell. But the most high praise I can give is that sitting next to a game of this, you really want to be able to answer questions. You want to be a volunteer like badly. It was really hard to not shut up when Scott and Kate were being your volunteer. Like I kept jumping in and you were like, yeah, I didn't ask you. Yeah. But I really wanted to answer. I had good ideas. Too bad. This game, the the risk to you as a person who could play an RPG is so low, you should just get this game and make random people play it with you. Also to the stuff you need to play this game is you need the PDF which you could put on a few pieces of paper or just like your iPad or your phone, right? You need a single D six. You need nothing else. I have been like having a book and writing down everything that happens. That is not necessary or dictated or whatever. That's just fun. You guess you could actually do an audio recording might be easier. I think we're going to try to play this game a few times and record it and see how that goes. Maybe live stream it. Right. But the point is you need nothing. So you just bring a D six with you everywhere you go and either a digital or physical copy of the PDF and anytime you're in a situation where you got nothing to do for some minutes, even a few minutes, you know, maybe at least, you know, 10 minimum, right? Maximum hours. You got two people. They're ready, willing and able. You play. It's your game. You carried around with you. You're the player. It's not like you have other, right? If other people want to play, they get their own PDF and start their own deal. Yep. Right. And maybe you can volunteer for them too, but no, it's your game. You're playing solo. You just need volunteers to help you unlock the Wizard's Grimoire and the other ones in the series appear to follow the same mechanics. So I imagine I'm going to actually now that I'm looking at them, I think the barbarians bloody quest is the one I might just start playing. Say I looked at the PDF of the barbarians bloody quest briefly. It is basically the same game only obviously you're unlocking not a wizard's Grimoire, but something else. You're your Conan figuring out why the wizard killed everyone you've ever known. Right. And, you know, you unlock pages in the in the PDF that you don't read at the start with your adult abilities. You have similar, you know, just different themes, but you still find two volunteers and ask them questions. That's the mechanic of the game. And you can make, I guess, if you wanted to, there would be nothing stopping you from making more games using the two volunteer asked question system, the Wizard Grimoire system, just write up a new character, a new scenario, a new thing to unlock, right? A new set of stats, a new character generation system for those stats and a bunch of hooks. And that's all you need. You can copy the volunteer page verbatim, basically. So if you if there is anyone you want to be a celebrity guest on a live stream where Scott or I play these games, let us know, like I want to stream this game, this game of all the RBGs we could stream. This is the one that has the most potential to not be boring or procedural. It needs nothing, right? And also, if you can't have friends in person, like if you go on the Internet, don't you can play this on Discord with zero problems? Go on a Discord and just find two freaking people who are on the Discord at that moment who have a few minutes, right? Send them a digital copy of the thing to read the one page, the volunteer page, not the other pages. You don't even need voice chat. You can do this over text. It would be just chat. You could just chat your questions. But voice chat is probably easier if you have speaking and hearing abilities. But if not chatting, texting, just fine. Yeah, you can even play this game slow rolling over email, email a question, then they email it back and forth. Yeah, you could play this game by mail. You could do this, whatever. This is the most flexible, least investment, highest payout RPG in maybe history. A plus for this game. Yep. Vincent Baker is always standout. But this one, I feel like this one has given me ideas I hadn't thought about. Like it put it pushed new ground that I had not considered an RPGs and is making me think about a later future of RPGs. It's like, please be a computer for me in this game. I am play. Yep. Because the one thing they're volunteers is like they're just helping you play. You thank them profusely for their, you know, their time and efforts. Computers can do a lot doing what a computer should and possibly will do in the future. But computers can do a lot in terms of procedural generation. But one thing they're not good at procedurally generating is stories and I've seen some not good ones. Not usually machine learning pretty good stories. Yeah, yeah, I have, but they're not they're not interactive like this. Anyway, this game is a hundred percent worth playing at this game. This has been Geek Nights with rim and Scott special thanks to DJ pretzel for the opening music. Cat Lee for Web design and brand OK for the logos. Be sure to visit our website at front row crew dot com for show notes, discussion, news and more. Remember Geek Nights is not one but four different shows. Psytech Mondays, Gaming Tuesdays, Anime Comic Wednesdays and Indiscriminate Thursdays. Geek Nights is distributed under a creative comments attribution 3.0 license. Geek Nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience. But unlike those other late shows, it's actually recorded at night. And the patron patrons for this episode of Geek Nights are the signal to load the usual Greg Oliver and Joyce Eddie McGill, just like a dude guy to our top machine linky G Graham Finch Jennifer Hitchcock, Chris Midgett, MyStady.com, Jay Bant, Scooter Lonely, Sean Yeager, Nicholas Brando, Mr. Strong Stretching, 421 Creations, like Johann Sebastian, Baccaroc, Almanus, McIntyre, Cyan, Mansor Thunder, Sherman Van Horl, Rory, Superboy, Clinton Walton, Ren from New Zealand, Ryan Perron, Draupenlander Finn, Dread Lily Tannebrae, Sean Klein, Chris Reimer, Thomas Hahn.