 Day eight, three-part actual play podcast miniseries, Hatchlings, A Face's Story, suggested in our first double pick by Fabby Garza, who was actually a player in the series and seconded by 25 people. We'll see if anyone suggests their own work again. One summer back in high school, I was hanging out in Colt State Park in Bristol, Rhode Island with some of the other kids from my theater camp. We were playing werewolf, you know, the one where a bunch of people sit in a circle and try to kill, capture, save, or otherwise engage with each other. It was my first time and I was arrogant enough to think that I could be the moderator after having seen Devon, who would later go on to work for The Onion, handle a few rounds. I mean, if I was able to do anything, it would be come up with interesting deaths, right? Wrong. It was terrible. No one enjoyed the round and I never tried again. And I say that because I couldn't do even the smallest fraction of what a GM has to do in a proper tabletop RPG. I am in genuine awe of their abilities. But I say that from a distance. I enjoyed listening to The Adventure Zone for a while and I still enjoy listening to Dungeons and Daddies, but those are the totality of my experience with both actual play podcasts and actual TT RPG play. I have a basic understanding of how D&D works and kinda remember what Monster of the Week is like and that's it. I've never participated in a game and while I am conceptually open to the idea, I'm not gonna force the issue, so it'll probably never happen. It is wild to me though, how many different non-D&D games there are, each with their own rules and mechanics that I don't and maybe can't understand. Take, for example, Masks, A New Generation. It is a game that is all about superheroes and being superheroes and stuff, which is cool if you're into that. Unfortunately for the subject of this video, I'm not really. I watch most superhero movies and paid a Canadian artist like $500 for this cool Batman thing that's behind me, but I've never really followed comics and don't find super-powered beings inherently interesting hence Batman. And all of this is to say that Hatchlings, which is an actual play podcast, done using the Masks game set, part of a podcast series called Moon Harbor Heroes that's been going on since 2019 and which styles itself after comic releases with each episode being called an issue. Well, it had a pretty enormous gap to bridge to get me on board and it didn't. And that's not entirely the series' fault, but it's also not entirely mine. Fortunately, Masks uses some of the same terminology as Monster of the Week, so I wasn't completely lost when the actual mechanics came into play. I understood some of what was going on. But the important thing that I didn't understand were the stakes of any encounter. Like at no point in the three episodes do either of our heroines get hurt and I don't know who to blame for that. Was that an issue with the miniseries or is it a problem with Masks itself? In the end, doesn't really matter. By being bloodless, Hatchlings felt kind of lifeless. That's not entirely fair. Superheroing is about more than just fighting, of course. We've got our core narrative here of two trans girls, Nube and Sana, with daddy issues trying to find their own place in the world, which in the immediate term means escaping from the mansion of Sana's supervillain father. And I love that for them. Also, I really, really liked the whole Nube has wings and so these two awkwardly-enlighted girls have to hold on to each other to get around. It's very cute. And while Sana smiles as a response to virtually every interaction, definitely get exhausting after a while. The series is short enough that I wasn't actively shouting, "'Jesus Christ, just kiss already.'" That stuff is fine at least and often better than, but I really wish the performers were more assertive. I get that these are new characters and 90 minutes, including explaining the background, isn't a lot of time to really find them, but that unsureness is thrown into our faces. And when the whole thing is just people describing, those descriptions need to be definitive and that's not what we get. Clearly, our GM is much more experienced and does their best to smooth things out, but it felt like half of all of the player's description started with, I think, or I guess, and that kind of sucks. And there was also some inconsistency about using character names versus me and you leading to bizarre declarations like, I think she hugs you. This made connecting to the characters on anything more than a surface level needlessly difficult. I have no doubt that if the series kept going, it would only have improved. But if I didn't have to listen to all three episodes, I wouldn't have made it through the first. It feels bad criticizing a project like this. Moon Harbor Heroes is clearly a labor of love for everyone involved and this spin-off too. It's trying to be an inclusive space for a diverse and underrepresented community who want to tell interesting stories through actual play podcasting. And here I am as a siss hat white dude stomping all over it. It sucks for all of us. So honestly, if you're into this sort of thing, you should check it out. There are hundreds of episodes for you to dig into and I have no doubt that there are some gems in there. Just don't start with hatchlings. 4.0 out of 10. Thank you so much for watching. I thank you particularly to my patrons, my mom, Hammer and Marco, Kat Saracada, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Magnolia Denton, Elliot Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I'm the sword, Riley Zimmerman, Claire Bear, Taylor Lindyce, and the folks who'd rather be read than said. If you liked this video, that's great. If not, I'm sorry, Fabby. If you want to see more, please suggest them in the comments and it'll be what I do in three days. Bye.