Gregory 0:00
It was a hot dry day when that band of Ego Drivers out of Niederdorf rolled up on the Jacko Gang.

Gregory 0:06
There was that old miner driving a hundred tons of metal fed by diesel and hungry for vengeance.

Ben 0:12
Hi, I’m Ben, and I’m playing Jones Johnson IV.

Gregory 0:15
There was the rag-wrapped exile, leaping out of a strange vehicle they got who knows where.

Lucy 0:21
Hi, I’m Lucy, and I’m playing Vake.

Gregory 0:24
There was the wanderer, more machine than man, weary of everything except death.

Jim 0:29
Hi, I’m Jim Ryan and I am playing Karloff Carradine.

Gregory 0:33
And there was the one not much more than a kid who never got anything she didn’t make herself.

Zoë 0:38
Hi, I’m Zoë, and I’m playing Comet “Baby Teeth” Sharps.

Gregory 0:43
Would they all be able to survive the one they called Beat It? Would anyone live to tell the tale? And whose story would they tell?

Gregory 1:22
Welcome to Tabletop Garden, an actual play podcast where we collaborate on short, self contained stories about interesting characters… and we do it with an agenda. I’m Gregory Avery-Weir and this is Ego Driver, a campaign using the Big Eyes, Small Mouth Third Edition rules. As always, our agenda is to honestly portray diverse characters, pursue healthy play practices, and craft story with social responsibility. Additionally, for this campaign, our agenda is to: save yourself, make it look good, and live like you’re dying.

Gregory 1:56
I mentioned this last episode but in our first recording session we had some issues with Zoe’s recording and also some issues with my recording which will show up in this episode. But we have it cleared up for the future. So it gets a little rough in this episode. But, fingers crossed, this is the last of it.

Gregory 2:13
If you’re interested in supporting Tabletop Garden, you can recommend us to your friends; you can leave reviews on iTunes or the podcasting environment of your choice; or, you can support my work on Patreon at patreon.com/gregoryaveryweir.

Gregory 2:29
We now continue Tabletop Garden: Ego Driver.

Gregory 2:40
and

Gregory 2:40
And Beat It… let’s see, who’s who’s got the highest kill count here? Jones is pretty close. So we’ll have him go after Jones. And Beat It points at points at Jones and this gang member fires the missile.

Ben 2:54
Oh dear.

Gregory 2:55
All right. So he rolled a 17 to attack and you rolled a 16 to defend so that will do damage. Your armor is very high, but it penetrates 30 armor because it’s an armor piercing missile. So you will take 30 damage.

Ben 3:11
All right. And I will start, “Rass fraggin’ raggin’ hell waggin’…”

Gregory 3:16
And Beat It is still continuing along doggedly. Any of you who who are close to him and kind of can read people decently well, he’s he’s got that look of like, “Well, if I’m going to go I’m going to take as many of them out with me as I can.” He’s not going to be making it through this.

Gregory 3:31
And you have arrived at the interchange. Vake, you’re the first one here and it’s it’s one of those standard clover leaves. So you’re on a divided highway, but not particularly divided. Like there’s a little bit of dirt between the two sides. So you could go to the to the opposite, like oncoming side of the highway if you wanted and then there’s there’s an off ramp here that swirls around onto a bridge.

Gregory 3:56
You could either end up going back the way you came or you could spend a little time like going onto an off ramp and then onto an onramp and then swirling around the clover leaf in a loop if you wanted.

Lucy 4:09
Okay, well Vake and Beat It share a similar disposition in that I’m not expecting to be around that long either. So let’s see what happens. My idea for what I would like to do is basically try to swerve to the side so that… I think it’s Karloff? is no longer directly behind me, and then put the car in reverse and drive it backwards directly into the Beat It car.

Gregory 4:49
Alright so you kind of pull the side and are like stomping on the brake, and then as soon as you’re going slowly, enough punching it into reverse and accelerating back towards Beat It.

Lucy 4:59
Yes. I do plan to exit the vehicle before it crashes into the other car by means of my pole.

Gregory 5:09
Okay. So, which way is your tank going?

Lucy 5:12
Actually, I would love to get Jolissa on the line so that they could follow me backwards and give me a landing point.

Gregory 5:22
All right. What does that conversation sound like?

Lucy 5:24
It is in my mind, but it sounds like: “Jolissa, we’re going backwards. Like, now.”

Lucy 5:32
“All right, going backwards, like, right now.”

Gregory 5:37
So in a beautiful ballet the two vehicles act almost in sync. The tank is a much better vehicle than this ramshackle hot rod so it moves a little more gracefully, but the two of them work together quite well and they’re soon hurtling back, I think, immediately past Karloff faster than Karloff is really able to do much about it but Comet and Jones can can see this pretty clearly. Give me your drive check and I will do a drive check for Beat It.

Gregory 6:08
So there’s a mechanic that Beat It may be using at this point where important NPCs and PCs can spend energy points in order to kind of try really hard at a thing. I think this is a circumstance in which he is going to be trying hard. We’ll see if it’s necessary because you can pick after you roll.

Lucy 6:24
I have rolled a 17. My specialization is not relevant for my driving this jalopy.

Gregory 6:31
You’re good at tanks. He rolls a 16, but he does have a specialty. So you are even, but since you’re the aggressor, you are winning for a moment. He’s kind of playing chicken with you for a while, holding the the wheel very tight. And then finally as you as you get closer and closer he goes, “Ahhhh!” and moves the wheel to one side and then just barely swerves out of the way as you climb out of that car and jump… on to the tank? Or are you jumping straight into it?

Lucy 6:59
I’ll jump on to the top of it. It’s sort of prepared for exactly this thing so there’s probably lots of things for me to grab onto.

Gregory 7:05
All right. The car that you jumped out of, now that you’re not steering it anymore, goes off the side of the road. Beat It has survived this immediate encounter and you are now way behind the rest of the group because you’re still moving in the opposite direction as them/

Lucy 7:19
However, can can we agree that it was cinematic?

Gregory 7:22
It was very cinematic. Jones, you can see this this interchange coming up. Vake has just zipped past you and not managed to take out Beat It. What do you do?

Ben 7:32
There’s some some jerkwad leaning out of Beat It’s car with a some kind of launcher of rockets. I’m not approving of this. I would like to to hand them a rocket back…

Gregory 7:43
Excellent.

Ben 7:45
…in the form of a stick of TNT. And this may be a called shot, because you’ve given me a sunroof.

Gregory 7:52
Yeah, I think that if you want to chuck it and get it right in the sunroof, since he’s standing in the sunroof at the moment, I think that’s going to be a minus six ,the equivalent to, like, a head shot.

Ben 8:02
Well I do have skills against that. I have I have Dead Eye.

Gregory 8:07
That drops it one stage, so drops it to a three, a minus three.

Ben 8:10
Okay, yeah, I’m feeling this is this is important enough. So I’m going to actually pull a little bit closer, just so that I can lean out. “You dropped this, ya bastard!” And then toss the explosives at him.

Gregory 8:22
And I’ll roll Beat It’s defense. He’s moving the car around, which is more important than than what…

Ben 8:28
Yeah.

Gregory 8:29
…the gunner is doing. So you rolled a 13 which turned into a 10. Beat It rolled an 11…

Ben 8:36
I’m going to use one of my rerolls.

Gregory 8:38
So you have something called divine relationship which lets you just be lucky.

Ben 8:43
Yep, I feel this is something I’m lucky on. It’s bouncing on the hood and then…

Gregory 8:47
…drops right into the sunroof.

Gregory 8:50
So let’s pause for a moment as this explosive is sitting in the floorboards of Beat It’s car and I will ask Karloff, how are you dealing with this interchange coming up this cloverleaf that you’re very quickly approaching, it can’t go straight on?

Jim 9:05
Well, funny thing. When I did the last retool on this character I was able to buy back jumping for my vehicle. So I’m wondering if I have a sufficient amount of it to be able to clear this intersection.

Gregory 9:17
Quite possibly. You’ve got, what, jumping three? That’s pretty high. What does your car do that lets it jump?

Jim 9:23
This is one of those weird physics defying things that one sometimes sees in media of this kind. I’m imagining it as being not unlike the Knight Rider turbo boost, basically. Where there is a point where rockets that have been concealed in the undercarriage will suddenly burst forth and fire, lifting the vehicle, this clunky Humvee thing, up and over the terrain.

Gregory 9:52
Excellent. Are you looking to land on the other side of that of the rubble or like up on the overpass?

Jim 10:00
I think that… well we need to deal with Beat It. I have a feeling that we’re about to with the forthcoming explosion but just in case I think I want to be in a position where I can have the high ground on them. If I can get from the overpass down to the other side fairly quickly afterward I think I’m gonna go for the overpass.

Gregory 10:20
Okay. Give me… I guess this is a drive roll?

Jim 10:23
Okay!

Gregory 10:24
This is probably tricky This is probably a TN 12.

Jim 10:28
Okay, let’s see what happens.

Ben 10:31
You only live once.

Jim 10:32
That’s right.

Lucy 10:33
But you can jump often.

Gregory 10:34
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Jim 10:36
That would be a 23.

Zoë 10:37
Jesus!

Gregory 10:38
Your rockets fire and you launch into the air. Comet, what what are you doing with this interchange as he is doing this?

Zoë 10:46
If I see that a stick of dynamite has just been thrown into the car, I’ll probably just take the safe route and go up an exit ramp. One so that I can turn back around and go in the opposite direction unless there’s enough clearance for me to do like an e-brake, like power slide turn before the rocks happen, so I can drive by the explosion and get a good look at it.

Gregory 11:06
You can definitely do an e-brake if you want to.

Zoë 11:08
I would like to do that, then. That seems, again, the most cinematic and I would also… if, well, if I’m successful… let’s find out first. That’s a 16.

Gregory 11:18
More than enough.

Zoë 11:19
Great!

Gregory 11:20
This makeshift ambulance spins and does an e-brake turn, immediately heading back the the other direction on this highway as Karloff’s vehicle flies majestically through the air…

Zoë 11:34
Can his card jump over my car while I turn backwards?

Gregory 11:37
Yes. He sails directly over your head, hits angled so that he’s like landing on one of the ramp so he can turn as he lands and be on the overpass and not go over the other side. Vake is still kind of vanishing into the distance from their attempt and Jones… Are you gonna bother stopping?

Ben 11:58
I’m just going to turn on the the forward drill.

Zoë 12:02
Yes.

Gregory 12:05
All right. Jones just probably kind of casually looks forward and turns on the the giant spinning drill on the front of his vehicle. Comet zooms past Beat It’s car as there’s an enormous explosion and Jones’s vehicle just plunges straight through the rubble leaving a relatively tidy hole in his wake that… the rubble’s short enough that it’s not like a perfect tunnel but there is like just a break in the rubble now and Jones is continuing just fine on the other side and Beat It’s car slowly rolls to a stop.

Zoë 12:37
As the explosion is happening. I’m making a explosion sound into my loudspeaker to complement the actual explosions.

Gregory 12:47
Excellent. So we will jump forward to your return to town.

Gregory 12:55
Most of this world that you’re in is wasteland. It’s empty dust, it’s dry rocks, it’s dead plants. There’s there are things living but they’re… even the the plants that are living in this space look dead because they’ve changed and evolved as quick as they can to deal with the radiation and other strange effects of of the disaster that happened just a generation or two ago.

Gregory 13:24
But there are a few bright points and one of them is the town of Niederdorf. As you’re approaching it, with some of you with more damage on your on your vehicles than others, you see the outer barrier first. And around this city is a bunch of like concrete bollards and wrecked cars stood upright in a very, very large circle that’s not… It’s not a solid wall, but it is tight enough that it’s very hard to drive through. And there’s a checkpoint on the road that has just a whole lot of guards with weapons. And they’re all wearing these gray uniforms that are the guards of Niederdorf.

Gregory 14:07
They wave you on through and within that barrier, you see a whole lot of fields. The color of green on these fields is shocking, because out in the wasteland, you’re seeing grays, and dusky greens, and tans, and beiges. But the the color of the plants here is impossible anywhere else because at the center of the city, beyond the fields, beyond the rather impressive looking wall that is their their final defense against raiders, beyond the buildings that have been restored and are actually rather nice for this world, there’s a large facility that surrounds the wreckage of the Terror Engine that that fell to Earth. And it generates the energy that allows this environment to stay hospitable, to grow plants, to have clean air, to reduce radiation, and is a very striking contrast to the world outside.

Gregory 15:14
Probably you’re allowed into the guard garage to do whatever maintenance you need to do on your vehicles. You’re seeing all these cops keeping the peace among a bunch of civilians, which… civilians don’t really exist out the outside world, even in the even in Jones’s mine, like everyone kind of knew how to protect themselves. But there are people here who don’t have to worry about that.

Gregory 15:37
You’ve got a little bit before you have to report in for your job, and you’re welcome to spend it in town however you like. I’m going to ask each of you real quickly what you do in the small amount of time you have in this oasis before you are learning when you have to head out again.

Gregory 15:56
So, Ben, what is Jones doing?

Ben 16:02
So Jones has two things he needs to do. In my brain a rocket launcher probably tore off one of his… one or two of his armor panels he added to this vehicle. So he’s probably got to do a little bit of work to fix that and get some new steel plating to bolt back into place. But the one thing that he definitely does whenever he comes into the nice towns is he goes to try and get himself a can of tobacco. That’s definitely one of the pleasures of city life that he he goes and looks for whenever he’s in town.

Gregory 16:42
All right, you’re able to get the necessary supplies and repairs to your vehicle and you head into town and you walk into a store. Like, this is not this is not the the the you know supply depot. This is a place where there’s a counter and there is a man behind it who looks at you kind of appraisingly and disapprovingly as you enter and says, “How can I help you?”

Ben 17:09
Well, sir, I’m looking for some some nice cigarette tobacco so I can roll some up myself.

Gregory 17:15
Are you looking for the nice tobacco or the affordable tobacco?

Ben 17:21
I suppose if you’re asking the question I’m going to say affordable.

Gregory 17:25
I thought that that might be what you meant.

Ben 17:27
Yeah, yeah.

Gregory 17:28
And he goes back to like a little box back behind his counter and he takes out a scale and shovels, with a scoop, some tobacco onto a little paper that he’s got lined out on on where the pans of the scale and is sort of looking at you to see guidance on how much weight of it you want. And you can… with how much you’re getting paid for this job, you can afford a decent amount of the affordable tobacco.

Ben 17:51
Well, I’ve probably got a pouch that I’ll pull out, look at it, kind of weigh the pouch in my hand, and then just kind of look at them and like, gesture for a little more, then say, “Ah, it’s probably about right.”

Gregory 18:05
He kind of sniffs and folds up the packet and then kind of holds it and waits for you to…

Ben 18:12
Are we still a currencied economy?

Gregory 18:15
Yeah. I think you’ve got coins that are minted here in Niederdorf.

Ben 18:19
Okay.

Gregory 18:19
Their technology is is pretty good.

Ben 18:21
I figured paper might might be to destructible in this world.

Gregory 18:25
Yeah, they’re dealing with metal currency.

Ben 18:28
All right. I’ll take the bag and kind of shuffle it into the pouch. And I’m sure he’ll love this. I kind of hand him back to the piece of paper or just put it on the table and then put a few coins.

Gregory 18:40
When you put the paper back, he crumbles it up into a ball and throws it away.

Ben 18:45
“Ah, thank you very much. Always do appreciate some of the nicer leaf you guys have here. Can’t quite grow the good stuff out where I’m at.” And I’ll just kind of make my way out. “Well, have a good ‘un!”

Gregory 18:57
“Have a good day yourself.” So, Lucy. How is Vake spending their time?

Lucy 19:02
Vake is going to put in earplugs and firmly affix their goggles and then they will make their way to whatever sort of medical facility this place has.

Gregory 19:20
There’s a pretty decent clinic that’s real near that central facility where the Terror Engine is. You enter and everything is very clean, clearly been scrubbed, there’s the smell of bleach in the air…

Lucy 19:31
sigh So nice…

Gregory 19:36
There are a lot of bright lamps shining on exam tables and well lit X ray light boxes. And a woman in blue scrubs kind of looks you over as if she knows that clearly you cannot possibly be as injured as your bandages all over you would suggest. And she says are you you one of those Ego Drivers?

Lucy 19:59
Yes, I’m damaged. I need medical care.

Gregory 20:02
What’s the problem? You’re going to need to… you want to take some of those rags off? You can step in back here if you want privacy.

Lucy 20:10
“I don’t particularly care about privacy.” I’ll start unwinding some of the bandages. “I got shot by a shotgun. That’s all. It was a lot of shotgun.”

Gregory 20:20
She says, “We don’t normally deal with many people who survived a shotgun blast.” She kind of lays you out on a…

Lucy 20:29
I have an exciting learning opportunity available for you.

Gregory 20:33
“So it seems…” She takes out some tools and several of them are are not a sort of technology that is very common. She’s got like a weird little caulk gun. It’s like a little thing to spray a material from a vial, and it’s this strange blue goo that’s in a vial that she’s…

Lucy 20:55
I’m sorry, I’m not sure that goo is going to work for me.

Gregory 20:58
She says, “Oh, you don’t want to heal it the old fashioned way, do you? I mean we’ve got the Engine here. We can heal you up much faster than you’d be able to get healed out there.

Lucy 21:07
But is it sticky?

Gregory 21:10
I’m not sure why that matters but it’s more it’s more slick? It’s suspended in a neutral lubricant.

Lucy 21:16
Slick sounds acceptable; sticky is not. I don’t need to impress upon you the importance of this adjective choice. Is it slick or is it sticky?

Gregory 21:27
We won’t spill any of it…

Lucy 21:31
Slick, sticky? Slick, sticky? Which one is it?

Gregory 21:32
I’ll stick with “slick.”

Lucy 21:34
All right, then. Proceed.

Gregory 21:35
She gives you… do you take anesthetic and she digs pieces out of you?

Lucy 21:39
No! No.

Gregory 21:40
She actually looks a little pale as you turn down the anesthetic but she picks bits of shot out of you and and injects this goo into your wounds and very very carefully, like, wipes off any that gets outside of your body with a piece of bandage with alcohol on it.

Lucy 21:56
And was she right? Is it slick and not sticky?

Gregory 21:58
It’s slick. You you are very suspicious that when it dries, it will be sticky, but none of it seems to have gotten on your skin.

Lucy 22:06
All right.

Gregory 22:06
It’s all gone inside your skin.

Lucy 22:08
All right. This seems like we can manage.

Gregory 22:11
Jim. What is Karloff doing to spend their brief time here?

Jim 22:15
Well, Karloff is pretty much the definition of anti social as he’s internally sneering at all of these soft civilians. What he’s primarily going to do is just for practical stuff, I assume we’ve been paid already, yes?

Gregory 22:30
You’ve been allowed to use whatever facilities around. You got an advance before you headed out and you’ll get the rest of your payment when you meet with the Mayor.

Jim 22:39
Alright, so I’m going to leave my death junker in the the the motor pool area wherever is sort of securely… wherever we plug it into harvest the energies or whatever it is that we do and sort of getting out of the vehicle, put on my black Stetson and just pull up the little dust around me. Grab grab my blade slinger which looks a lot like a crossbow but it fires circular saw blades…

Zoë 23:12
Nice!

Jim 23:14
And you know sort of sling that over the my shoulder. Securely lock the vehicle and go ahead and head out to grab a couple of supplies. Make sure I have enough mines and harpoons. I want to make sure I’ve… I’m well supplied with those since I used a couple.

Gregory 23:33
The stuff you’re doing is probably in among the guard supplies just inside the gate on the main wall of the city. One of the guards in gray who’s working at the quarter masters place, you put in your request, and as someone’s fetching it, he sort of gets chummy in that way of like, “Hey, we’re both people who risk our lives every day.”

Gregory 23:56
He says, “So. How is it out there? Did you run into any trouble putting down those punks?”

Jim 24:02
No. They went down a little too easy if you ask.

Jim 24:05
Well,

Gregory 24:05
Well, easy is good, right? I mean, it’s good to have an easy day once in a while. You know what I mean?

Jim 24:10
Well, sometimes. A lot of times that heralds worst days coming, we got to keep an eye out.

Gregory 24:18
Well, with you you Ego Drivers out there, I bet the the fine folks of Niederdorf don’t have anything to worry about.

Jim 24:24
I just sort of narrow my eyes behind my sunglasses so he can’t really see it just sort of at this guy. This is a guard, though, right?

Gregory 24:29
Yeah.

Jim 24:29
So this is someone who at least appears to be fairly handy when it comes to such things. I just sort of look over my shoulder and just sort of shake my head. “Hmph. I don’t think any of them would last five seconds against what’s out there.”

Gregory 24:40
He shakes his head as if sympathizing with you. But also it kind of seems like maybe actually thinking about what the citizens would do out in the wasteland just kind of bummed him out.

Jim 24:50
Yeah.

Gregory 24:51
He steps away and finishes the paperwork. I think you’re getting like metal that you can bend and hammer into shape, as well as, like they’re they’re perfectly willing to help you with with that. But they they probably got like spikes that are used for repairing fences and and that sort of thing that that you’re adapting to your purposes.

Jim 25:11
Cool. So I’m gonna just get a hold of that stuff and start heading back to the vehicle to work on it a little bit until it’s time to go and see the mayor.

Gregory 25:19
Zoë, what is Comet doing?

Zoë 25:22
I think Comet probably takes stock of the mobile lab in the back of the Volvo. Upon getting back to town and noticing some shotgun holes in a few different, you know, jars and bottles. Nothing, nothing too toxic. That’s that’s puncture proof. But she’s probably going to go to probably a seedier part of town. If there’s like a warehouse district or something I’d imagine she has contacts where she gets that like non medical grade chemicals and you know stuff to sythesize her own medications and stuff like that.

Zoë 26:03
So she’s got a bud out there to make a stop by. He’s probably also help her work on the car and give her a space for that to for some of the less savory purposes.

Gregory 26:14
Alright, have you lived, like… if you know this person have you lived around Niederdorf for a while now?

Zoë 26:20
Yeah, I would I would imagine that Niederdorf is where I’m where I’m sort of semi from.

Gregory 26:25
Okay

Zoë 26:26
Before I joined the Ego Drivers.

Gregory 26:28
Ego Driver is generally used as kind of a generic name for people who can operate the sort of technology that is part of your vehicles. For some reason, that technology that comes from the from the Terror Engines doesn’t work for everyone. Not everyone has the knack to get it to function properly. And the further away it is from the engines, the more it tends to act up and break and you’ve got the knack for keeping it running.

Zoë 26:56
That that clears some things up. I would I would guess that I know a guy.

Gregory 27:00
He says, “Car’s more beat up than usual. Everything go all right out there?”

Zoë 27:07
I took a few bad hits. I made some… I made some adjustments last time and I think I, well I really really put a lot of time into, you know, offenseive tactics and I really… these guys hit a little harder, you know, and i think i think i’m going to try to… if you want to buy some of this stuff off me… I made some powerful shit, my friend… but but that’s not that’s not why I’m here. Do you have any HM5-37 in like a like a liquid? Or a powder would actually be better. You guys have any of that around?

Gregory 27:53
Boy, uh, we don’t have much call for for that in the store houses but I can probably synthesize some up and have it for you when you’re done with your meeting. I mean, I, I know i don’t have to tell you how to keep it like safely contained…

Zoë 28:13
Yeah this one, thankfully, wasn’t one of the ones that got blown up but I’m running a little bit low and I… well let me just let me just show you a couple of these other things I might need you know just like some better…. like a nice little safe or something like that that maybe maybe is machine gun proof? Maybe a machine machine gun proof safe for some of the stuff because I’m… you know, I thought the mobile lab thing was a good idea for a while and then… I don’t know, I might be a little over my head.

Gregory 28:45
Well, I don’t… I don’t have much cause to deal with machine guns in my day to day but we can see what we got.

Gregory 28:53
And you head off to look at stuff.

Zoë 28:55
Just a just a just a pretty pretty sturdy sturdy box? You know, just see what you can do for me.

Gregory 29:02
So after a couple hours you all reconvene, waiting outside of the office of Mayor Leopold. His office is very near the facility where they keep the Engine. You’re in a dark room with fancy leather chairs that are as well maintained as any furniture you have seen from the old world. He’s got a good looking secretary. She is deliberately ignoring you as you wait for your appointment time. And finally, she looks up and she says, “All right, the mayor will see you now.”

Ben 29:36
Well, thank you, darling.

Gregory 29:37
You stepped into his office which is full of bookshelves with intact books. He has a large wooden desk. You can’t tell whether that’s recent build or old build, but this is this a very nice room. He is a man in a well cut gray suit. He’s a little heavy set and he has a very thick white beard that goes halfway down his chest. And you can see that on his desk he has piles and piles of folders that are currently all closed and they have different colors of material that they’re made out of.

Gregory 30:08
And he says, “Well, well done out there. You seem to have demonstrated your usefulness very well. The city of Niederdorf thanks you.”

Lucy 30:16
Is the city of Niederdorf also paying us?

Gregory 30:19
“Yes, well, of course.” And he takes four lock boxes off of his desk and I guess lines them up on the front side of his desk and each of them has like a key in its lock. And he says, “I think you’ll find that it’s all there. Feel free to look it through. Let me know if there’s anything missing. We want to do right by you folks.”

Jim 30:37
I will immediately go to my box and open it.

Lucy 30:39
Same.

Zoë 30:40
Yep!

Gregory 30:40
It’s full of coins. It will take a while to count them all but they are all there. And he says, “Now, now, listen. I want to give you folks time to repair and recuperate but I’ve received reports on shortwave that there’s, there’s an encampment about four hours travel out where one of the Jacko Gang lieutenants is holding court. Their assaults on us have become more insistent lately. We’ve had some some caravans hit and they’re enough of a problem that I think it’s time to definitely take the fight to them. As soon as you all are ready you people should head out and go take out that encampment.”

Lucy 31:19
You’re using some words there that I’m not sure you understand the complete value of. When you say “take a fight to them,” say more about what you mean. Do you mean us four drive our vehicles there?

Gregory 31:39
Mayor Leopold looks at Vake and says, “Forgive me. I know that we tend to use more flowery language here in town. What I mean is that you should drive to this encampment and kill them all.”

Lucy 31:50
Check.

Gregory 31:51
Any questions?

Zoë 31:52
How many are there?

Gregory 31:54
It’d vary on when you show up and how they’re… our information is a little sketchy but seems like this is a small group that tends to travel out from this this site. Sounds like our report says maybe 20 of them in total but they’re likely not all there at the same time.

Zoë 32:13
So maybe they have like a barbecue on Tuesdays so we should probably you know hit them while they’re all there? Or, I mean what’s the idea here? Just to drive off a couple of them? Are we trying to… I mean do we need to stake it out?

Ben 32:26
Stake it out?!

Lucy 32:28
I’m not going to a barbecue of any kind

Gregory 32:31
The important thing is that you take out the lieutenant. Whoever’s in charge of that group needs to die.

Ben 32:37
Oh, do we got ourselves a name? I always love putting those on my checklist.

Gregory 32:44
Our code name for him is Smooth Criminal.

Ben 32:48
That’lI work for me!

Zoë 32:52
Damnit, Greg.

Ben 32:53
And at that…

Jim 32:54
I’m sensing a theme.

Ben 32:55
Jones will actually pick up the box, because he hasn’t touched his chest yet, grab the key, and just put them straight in his pocket.

Jim 33:03
I’m just going to step forward and look down at the mayor and say, “Hits costs double.”

Gregory 33:11
He sucks his teeth and says, “Well, I reckon this is pretty important and will be working with you on an ongoing basis. So if that’s amenable to the rest of you, we’re, we’re willing to pay.”

Ben 33:26
Twist my arm.

Zoë 33:28
Yeah. Sounds like a plan.

Ben 33:30
So what day’d we say we wanted to do this? Tuesday. Catch him on the barbecue?

Zoë 33:34
It was a metaphor.

Lucy 33:35
No, absolutely not. No barbecue.

Ben 33:37
Oh, come on. I can give them a couple explosives look like hot dogs. It’ll be a ton of fun.

Zoë 33:41
Ooo, I like the sound of that.

Lucy 33:44
Oh, just the thought of it makes me feel like I’m gonna vomit.

Ben 33:48
Okay, okay. Why don’t we head out on Monday, then, and we’ll shoot them up before they have the barbecue.

Lucy 33:53
That sounds ideal.

Ben 33:54
All right.

Jim 33:54
We should hang out and do recon on them as soon as we can.

Zoë 33:57
I’m all for that soon as I get my car fixed up. You guys just shrugged off all that damage like it was nothing! Gotta give me some pointers.

Lucy 34:05
I sought medical care.

Ben 34:07
You want, I can strap some more armor plating on yours. Just got to put the bolts in there tighten them you know once every week or so.

Zoë 34:15
I think I can handle it.

Gregory 34:20
So, we’re using Big Eyes Small Mouth and it is a very old fashioned system. Most of you have been roleplaying for a long time so you’re familiar with what roleplaying systems used to be like. Zoë, I think you’ve played Pathfinder?

Zoë 34:32
Yeah,a couple years now. Lots of math.

Gregory 34:34
So you you know like, yeah, that old school lots of math thing. The whole, like, point buy character construction, whole lot of numbers attitude of BESM.

Zoë 34:44
Once I set up an Excel spreadsheet that calculated and recalculated and tallied everything for me, it was way less daunting. But, like, going into it, never having looked at the Player’s Handbook before and like never having done a character build like that….

Zoë 35:00
It was like… there was a big barrier to entry, I think. Whereas creating a character in, like, D&D 5e takes like 15 minutes practically. Like it is, it is easy. And even if you were, you know, creating custom classes and stuff, it’s still… I think would be way faster. Now that I have a better idea of like, how everyone else is set up, I could very easily make some small adjustments and level things out and be much happier and fit in better with the general vibe of damage and armor and whatnot.

Lucy 35:36
May I just speak the wonders of Zoë’s spreadsheet? It’s very good.

Zoë 35:43
Well, I do spend all day at work making spreadsheets, basically.

Gregory 35:46
But modern systems don’t tend to require spreadsheets anymore.

Zoë 35:50
Yes.

Gregory 35:51
I think Jim probably expressed the most frustration during character creation.

Jim 35:55
Character creation filled me with so much rage. I have to tell you. I think I was about ready to… I didn’t have a physical book. But I was getting ready to define some way to just print out the PDFs and scatter them on the road and drive over them.

Jim 36:14
I was consumed with so much rage at that point. I was reminded somewhat of Champions, a little bit, in the character creation. And even as I as I’m playing. I played Champions back in the day. And it was always having had other folks put the characters together for me, because it involved needing to know so much already to do it, that you can’t just casually look through the book and build a character. This was a thing where, back in the day, back in the 90s, I had some time to actually read through an entire rule book. But ones that had this many layers of detail it just was it was not a thing that I could get to, even back then, let alone now when I’m distracted all over the place with social media and what have you and doing various things that I do. So just having that in front of me, I realized this is one of those things where I’d have to have read the entire book and memorized the entire book in order to actually make a character correctly. Or at least that was the impression that I got from it on the second or third attempt that I took at rebuilding this guy.

Jim 37:23
There are many things that I miss about the 90s. This is not one of them.

Gregory 37:29
One of the more kind of more modern natural choices for a campaign like this would be Apocalypse World, which is like…

Jim 37:36
Yeah, yeah.

Gregory 37:37
…here’s a sheet, pick one of four choices a few different times, and you’re set and ready to go. And I think that I definitely prefer that experience. I think that one thing that I was looking for with using BESM is that feeling of detail to how your vehicle works, right?

Gregory 37:58
Like, the fact that you all could make weird off the wall pieces of equipment that were supported by rules feels like simulationy and, yes, very 90s-y. That grittiness and chunkiness… I don’t know, I’m using very aesthetic terms to describe these rules. But I think that that’s the thing that I was really reluctant to give up.

Gregory 38:21
I mean we could have like used… is it Fate that has the thing where you can be like, “Okay I’ll just put tags on these abilities to kind of narratively simulate that?”

Jim 38:30
Yeah, usually you can tag someone with an Aspect.

Gregory 38:34
But for some reason that felt like numbers were what what I wanted to see in this system.

Jim 38:39
Well, you got your wish!

Ben 38:41
I suppose I’ll be the person taking the other side of the coin. I haven’t played BESM 3 but I used to play a little bit of BESM 2, and speaking of Champions, I’m actually still in a Champions game right now, running Champions 6.

Lucy 38:56
Whoa.

Ben 38:57
One of the things I may have commented about when we were first creating characters is: these are kind of systems where I’m used to a firm hand on how do we handle the wideness of the powers? How do we… All right, here’s a rough power level cap, defense cap. And one of the things I know I forgot on version one of this, which is that this is… BESM is one of the systems where attacks are four times more effective than defenses, typically. You think, “I put 20 points in defense and 20 points in attack,” and then you realize your attack will blow through your defenses and all your hit points and have 20 points to spare. And you’re like, oh, oops,

Zoë 39:40
I did that.

Gregory 39:40
Yeah, and I kind of just said, “Hey, here’s the number of points you have, here are a few tips, make a thing and we’ll take a look at it and see if we need to adjust stuff!” And I think that that did not improve the complexities of the system.

Ben 39:52
Both Champions and BESM, pretty much all the crunchy point buys, are pretty difficult. I mean, I will say BESM is a step down from Champions, which makes you do multiplication and division rather than addition and subtraction. So it is a little easier on that aspect. But it’s still a hard system for people without exposure and someone hand holding them through their first or second or even third character.

Lucy 40:17
I have a very vivid memory of the one time I played champions, somebody making my character while I dozed on the couch. So this kind of system is not what I’m used to. And I thought it had a very steep learning curve. Like at first I thought it was extremely overwhelming. But then once you learn a few of the larger designs about the way it works, like once I understood the way items operated, sort of as things within things, it made a lot of it make more sense. So I do think some of it is the way it’s presented in the book. I think maybe it’s presented in an overly complicated way.

Gregory 40:58
Yeah, I think one thing that’s that modern role playing games do, both in how they present the information and what rules they’re presenting, is just make stuff accessible. Like make it so that you don’t need to be inducted into this secret society of roleplayers where someone has to be like, “Oh, well, remember to take Awkward Size on your vehicle to make it bigger and get that extra number of points.” Or, or “Oh, no. Well, you see the alternate attack on your vehicle gets divided in two because it is an alternate attack. And then it gets divided into at the end because it’s on your vehicle.” Like all that stuff… I think that people are wisely moving away from in the sort of Zeitgeist of games.

Jim 41:37
I just want to also mention that first, I think if it had been just like a separate list, that you know, unattached to the rest of the math for doing vehicles, I probably would have had an easier time with it.

Zoë 41:52
Yeah,

Jim 41:52
That list can be as long as it wants as long as it’s just that and I know that that’s the only thing I have to look at.

Gregory 41:56
BESM, like, uses the same rules for vehicles and for people. You just are buying things for each.

Jim 42:02
And I mean, I understand the utility of that. But getting into that, I think that also did have a barrier to entry. Like my experiences with Champions, I had fun playing.

Zoë 42:11
Yeah.

Jim 42:12
Once we actually get rolling, I’m fine with it. And I enjoy it. The system’s not that big a deal to me to try to use in play, especially since we’ve got roll20 in front of us and everything’s kind of calculated and I just hit a button. That’s very nice.

Zoë 42:24
Yes. That was awesome.

Ben 42:25
Yeah, that’s a lot easier.

Lucy 42:25
Oh, man, that was so great. Thank you, Gregory for putting that in there. That made my life so much better.

Gregory 42:32
Sure thing. But do you think that the fact that it’s easy to use an experience of playing it justifies that level of complexity with character creation?

Jim 42:41
No, I do not think it does.

Ben 42:45
I’m going to say yes, but I think it’s fair to say no, I think most gamers I’ve gamed with would say no.

Gregory 42:51
There’s, I think a certain personality and approach enjoys that grittiness and enjoys having that level of control over the details and minutiae of your character. And I think that some players don’t.

Zoë 43:04
It’s weird, like having played role playing games that are less complicated and just as fun. It seems like you can, I don’t know. If you’re not as creative and you don’t want as much of a story based game and you like doing all that math. And that’s part of the fun for you, then super awesome.

Gregory 43:28
And I don’t know that it’s that it’s a matter of how creative you are, and more like, from where do you want the creativity to arise?

Zoë 43:35
Yes.

Gregory 43:35
Like, do you want to be creative about the numbers that you’re putting out, or do you want to just be pulling them from thin air?

Zoë 43:41
That is a much better way of putting what I was trying to say. Yeah, so I think it was… the gameplay was very fun. And it made me feel very accomplished after putting everything together to see it in action, which was part of the fun. And now after one session. I feel like it wouldn’t be as hard in the future. Like it’s not unreasonably complicated. I don’t know how this Champions thing is, but y’all are making it sound pretty scary.

Lucy 44:09
It’s real complicated.

Zoë 44:11
So I would I would do I would do it again but I wouldn’t choose it over an Apocalypse World or Fate or 5e or something like that.

Jim 44:19
This is one of those games that I’d be happy to play again just like I’d be happy to play Champions again. But I would require other people to make my characters for me.

Gregory 44:30
Well, thank you so much for spending the time to make them because I know that it was a matter of weeks that we were putting these together before recording so I appreciate you all taking the time for it.

Lucy 44:41
I ended up enjoying making it a lot more than I thought I was going to.

Lucy 44:53
How much time has passed between last session and now?

Gregory 44:57
You probably spent a day or two in town.

Zoë 45:00
Modifying your vehicles so that they met with the game better?

Gregory 45:04
Quite possibly, yes. Let’s chat about modifications that you’ve done.

Zoë 45:08
I have depowered a couple of my weapons. Including the lance, which I massively depowered and the machine gun which I slightly depowered… no, pretty significantly. Nevermind. I have more armor now and I have some more hit points. I messed with my combat enhancing drug cocktail and I am now slightly tougher. I put a lot of armor on my car. Someone offered to help me last week.

Ben 45:33
Yeah, Jones is…

Zoë 45:34
Thanks. Thanks, Jones.

Ben 45:36
You and Jones are both going around wearing jean jackets. So, you know…

Jim 45:40
Ah.

Zoë 45:41
It’s a natural kinship.

Ben 45:44
Natural kinship right there.

Jim 45:45
You’re in the denim club.

Ben 45:46
Yep.

Zoë 45:47
Was it Jones who wanted to add a harpoon gun to his car?

Ben 45:51
Jones needed to find stats for the backhoe’s grapple mechanic.

Zoë 45:57
Gotcha.

Ben 45:58
And I did some looking up of the rules and I basically gave my vehicle proficiency in unarmed combat.

Gregory 46:05
That seems like the correct way to represent that.

Ben 46:07
So the vehicle has the ability to exert its weight a little more effectively. So in crashes, I now do more damage than I take myself and that also gives stats for the grapple attack. So when he uses the claw to like grab at people or vehicles it’s now got actual stats instead of just a random check.

Zoë 46:29
Nice.

Gregory 46:30
All of your vehicles have been repaired, you’ve gotten patched up at the medical center and I don’t know if any of you spent energy points but you’ve got those back as well.

Jim 46:40
Oh, we have energy points?

Gregory 46:41
So you’ve got energy points that are based on your… it’s your Mind plus your Soul times five. And you can spend 10 of those to get a plus one on a roll.

Lucy 46:52
I was hoping to add some armor to myself.

Gregory 46:56
You can jockey around character points or just spend some you have unspent and…

Lucy 47:00
Okay, I had some unspent, so I’ll just do it.

Gregory 47:03
Okay. So you’ve been given this location of this encampment. There’s some pretty decent maps of the area. Most of them are pre disaster that have been updated over the years. They’ve been copied from, like, government maps or road atlases. But marks have been made on what’s changed due to time or due to some of the strange effects of this apocalypse.

Gregory 47:30
Your general site for this area: the camp is near the top of a mountain in an open area that used to be some sort of parking lot for some sort of tourist trap. And there are a few different approaches. You can take a rather direct one over the the ridge of these mountains and kind of end up above this encampment or you can come up a windy road from below. In order to go up this windy road, you would have to go through a space that’s marked “anomalous” on the map.

Gregory 48:04
And you all know that when the Subaltern ships came down they broke certain parts of the planet in a strange way. Their technology was very odd. And so anomalous areas can be rather weird.

Jim 48:16
Are there like road signs up with images of people drifting into the void? Because that would be awesome.

Gregory 48:21
In some places yes. You’ll see signs of… kind of people have made where they’ve taken an old road sign, usually a big highway sign so it’s easy to see, and they painted like a story rift on it or…

Ben 48:35
Okay, okay, I know this is probably the wrong tactical idea, but I so want to go the anomaly route now.

Zoë 48:42
Absolutely.

Jim 48:43
I don’t think we can go anywhere else now.

Gregory 48:46
Okay.

Zoë 48:47
It sounds faster. It’s a shortcut.

Gregory 48:50
It’s it’s certainly more direct.

Jim 48:52
It should be just fine. What could go wrong?

Gregory 48:55
Alright, so you approach this encampment and when you get near this area that’s marked “anomalous” on your map, you can see that the roads themselves start lifting off of the ground. They ramp up into the air and twist around. And in some places, you can see some side pathways do a full 360 degree loop in midair before continuing. You can tell by the way that the wind is blowing dust, or the way that scrub and trees are growing on the roads, that it’s not that something has picked up these roads. But that space itself has been twisted around to create loops where you’re, as long as you’re going, you’d say decently fast, you’d be able to stick to these loops and traverse them.

Zoë 49:45
Awesome.

Gregory 49:48
You’re traveling through this anomaly in order to get to the encampment?

Jim 49:52
Oh, heck yeah.

Jim 49:54
Definitely.

Lucy 49:54
Fuck yeah.

Gregory 49:56
All right.

Zoë 49:57
If it’s more direct, as you said, then I mean it… it’s only logical.

Ben 50:01
Nobody expects anyone to come up the anomaly path.

Zoë 50:05
Also a great point.

Jim 50:06
Who would be crazy enough to go up the anomaly path?

Gregory 50:10
Everybody give me drive checks, please.

Ben 50:16
Oh, this went downhill fast. I think.

Jim 50:19
I’m so excited.

Gregory 50:20
Probably a 12 to get through unsullied. All right, everybody got at least a 17. So you did just fine. You’re… You’re zipping around. In places these roads are like splitting in two and drifting apart so you’re looking up or down at each other as you’re driving in a rough convoy. You probably, given the dust, don’t tend to travel in single file unless you’re in a particularly sketchy area just because you don’t… you want to be able to see better without having the exhaust and dust blowing your faces.

Gregory 50:55
Jones, you’re probably, I’m guessing, the one for whom this is most troublesome because your vehicle is designed to be able to burrow through things. And these roads are rather thin. And so with your experience in both digging and in driving your vehicle, you know that, like, if something goes wrong, there’s not much ground between you and unknown gravitational situations.

Ben 51:23
Yeah, don’t exactly have parachutes on this thing either.

Gregory 51:26
So eventually, you end up on the other side of this anomalous area. And you’re looking at this winding road that’s going up the mountain. Now, does anyone have the thing on their car where their engine is audible?

Ben 51:40
Oh, yeah.

Gregory 51:42
Okay, so any of you who have an audible engine, you’re going to be limited in your ability to sneak up on this area.

Ben 51:49
Am I the only one that’s loud? Because if so, I do have a cheat for that.

Lucy 51:56
I have ocean sounds playing inside of my vehicle, so I’m not going to know about it. If you want to do something.

Jim 52:04
That will cancel everything out. I think it’ll be fine.

Zoë 52:07
I considered putting some experimental jazz on my loudspeaker to go with the strange environment, but I decided against it because of the stealth effort.

Ben 52:16
I dunno, Baby Teeth, can you be like static, caw! Caw caw!

Zoë 52:24
Just make ambient sounds!

Lucy 52:27
I just want to be clear. These ocean sounds are on my character sheet. I paid for those.

Ben 52:35
If you guys are wishing to be quieter, I do have the ability to dampen my sounds a bit as long as we can keep the velocity to a reasonable number.

Lucy 52:49
In character, Vake will always strongly encourage you to make your vehicle as quiet as possible.

Ben 52:56
Okay.

Jim 52:57
I think we wanted to try to do the thing where we were going to get close enough to do recon before we struck them. Is that right?

Zoë 53:04
I definitely agree with that after several close calls in other roleplaying scenarios. I’m big fan of recon.

Ben 53:14
Make sure they’re not all getting ready for the picnic? No, it was a barbecue!

Zoë 53:17
Yeah, it’s a barbecue. Monday barbecue. No, it’s… the barbecue’s on Tuesday.

Lucy 53:21
We’re not going to the barbecue. We decided.

Zoë 53:24
We’re crashing the barbecue the day before.

Ben 53:25
We wanted to make sure that how many of them were coming to the BBQ.

Jim 53:29
Yeah.

Zoë 53:30
Well they would have RSVPed, but…

Jim 53:32
We are ruining the BBQ by showing up prior to it and…

Lucy 53:37
Alright, I’m back in then. We’re ruining the barbecue. Yes.

Jim 53:40
It really doesn’t matter if we take these people out or not like we’ve been paid to do. The real important goal is ruining the barbecue.

Gregory 53:48
So, Jones. How do you plan on getting close enough to ruin the barbecue without tipping them off?

Ben 53:53
Well, my logic is, since we’re through the anomaly, there’s ground again and if I go underground that will dampen the sound.

Zoë 54:02
Oh!

Ben 54:03
It may delay me a round if like we get jumped, it may delay me around so I can get back to the surface but all of my sonar scans work underground. So I can still do my range finding and things like that and detecting, you know, how many people are moving around and stuff like that from underground, but we do have to slow down because I can’t go at 200 kph underground.

Zoë 54:26
Naturally.

Ben 54:27
I can go at about 100 kph. But…

Zoë 54:29
Jesus.

Ben 54:30
You know.

Gregory 54:32
you know,

Gregory 54:32
So he gives you the numbers. And I assume, yeah, all of you would have reasonably functioning speedometers. So you’d be able to stick to that. You get to the base of this mountain. You’re kind of coming out of this valley where all this anomalous terrain is living. Most of you turn on to this winding switch back road that goes up the side of the mountain whereas Jones just turns directly into the rock wall and turns on the drill that’s at the front of his vehicle, and it starts spinning very fast.

Gregory 55:03
And there’s an enormous echoing boom as it impacts the stone. But you know, it’s far enough away that it could be just something falling in the anomalous area if you’re at a distance. And he disappears unsettlingly fast into the ground. It’s clear that whatever is letting him do this is not human technology entirely.

Jim 55:24
He’s taking the direct route.

Gregory 55:26
So the rest of you keep your speed low enough and take the corners slowly. And you soon are able to spot where you’re going to emerge out onto this flat area where the encampment was reported to be. You’re able to stop kind of at the last curve. And peer over the rise. Are you all staying in your cars? Are you like sneaking out and getting into the underbrush?

Unknown 55:56
Oh,

Ben 56:00
Before they clear the ridge, can I do a, basically, one of my sonar pings just to see if there’s, like, people driving around, like right across on the other side of the ridge, so they don’t pop their head up like a shooting gallery?

Gregory 56:16
Yes. Although I will ask, do any of you have radios?

Ben 56:20
I do.

Zoë 56:21
I have enough points to have had a radio, and it would make sense narratively. If we were working together.

Lucy 56:29
I do not have a radio and I am opposed to the idea.

Gregory 56:33
I think I’m fine with you just saying whether or not you’d have one

Zoë 56:37
I would have a radio.

Gregory 56:39
I will say that if you don’t have it on your sheet, you probably can’t, like, have a secure channel. You can have like a CB radio sitting around your car. But other folks could listen in unless you did something to make it so that couldn’t happen.

Jim 56:53
I probably have one that I have broken in rage and repaired several times.

Gregory 56:58
Okay, so Karloff has a bad radio, baby teeth has a decent radio, and Jones has an actual, like radio suitable for a miner to use.

Zoë 57:09
Makes sense.

Lucy 57:10
I’m assuming we may have discussed this prior to now. Although if we think not, that’s okay, too.

Ben 57:16
I think we would have had at least one point said, Hey, if we have to talk, we can use CB channel seven or whatever.

Lucy 57:23
Jolissa can be on the ham or whatever.

Gregory 57:27
Oh, does Jolissa have the ability to listen in?

Lucy 57:30
That seems like that’s in the realm of their capability.

Gregory 57:34
Okay, so Jones, you send out a sonar pulse and you can see the three other vehicles of your companions on that road just before that final rise. And you can also see a decent number of vehicle sized objects out on this flat area. And you’re good enough at using this that you can tell kind of which ones seem dense enough and structured to be intact vehicles, as opposed to just like rusting heaps that are in this parking lot. It looks like there are nine vehicles and you’re getting shadows of roughly 9, 10 people. It’s harder to detect them as well, but you’d say if you were to guess you’d say 10 but two of them are kind of staying close together.

Gregory 58:20
They are not moving around much; they are outside of their vehicles at the moment and like out in a rough circle near the center. Your thing’s sonar based, right?

Ben 58:29
Uh, yeah, that makes the most sense to me.

Gregory 58:31
Then you’re also getting this like low level like weird rumble and pop. This is probably a sound that you’d know how to recognize as a miner. It’s, it’s a fire. And it’s evening, late afternoon. Kind of sunset is starting to turn the sky a bit orange and so that makes sense for them to have a fire running.

Ben 58:49
But they’re all kind of in the one collection in that area. None of them are like driving around circles or whatnot or anything crazy like that.

Gregory 58:56
Correct. All the cars are stopped and the engines are off.

Ben 59:00
I will pipe back something along the lines of: “Nine turkeys getting ready for barbecue.”

Zoë 59:09
Roger that.

Jim 59:11
Okay.

Gregory 59:14
You’re getting a lot of noise on Karloff’s line for some reason.

Gregory 59:21
Next time on Tabletop Garden: Ego Driver.

Gregory 59:25
It is bright white and is like no car you’ve ever seen.

Jim 59:32
In mid air I will release the mines.

Zoë 59:35
As part of my gear shift, I think right past “reverse” is “flames.”

Lucy 59:39
Yes, this is all within the realm of expectation, and yet entirely unacceptable.

Ben 59:44
I am going to attempt to have two objects occupy the same space.

Gregory 59:50
And she aims that big fuck off rifle that she’s been carrying on her back directly into the front of the Vake’s car.

Gregory 59:58
Big Eyes, Small Mouth Third Edition was created by Guardians of Order.

Gregory 1:00:03
The theme music for this campaign is “Wasteland” by Phantom Elite, available under a Creative Commons Attribution non commercial no derivatives license.

Gregory 1:00:12
For more Tabletop Garden and to subscribe to us visit tabletop.garden and to support the work I do visit: patreon.com/gregoryaveryweir

Transcribed by https://otter.ai