AI Can't Replicate My Terrible Sense of Humor

You might think that a smaller cast would result in a leaner, meaner podcast, but as episode 34 of the Rascal Radio Hour demonstrates, the lack of a third wheel (complimentary) means that there's no-one to stop Chase and Caelyn from getting really deep into their bullshit. As opposed to the usual lighter, surface level bullshit they engage in.

Much to everyone's annoyance, the vagaries of crowdfunding is a hot topic once again, and our hosts beg for the tabletop games industry to just be normal for once. Caelyn recounts leading her friends deeper into Sword World, while Chase discusses his time spent playing MIIRU (sequel to MIRU, prequel to MIIIRU). There's also plenty of conversation about dice, and Chase unlocks Caelyn's long forgotten/repressed memories while the pair reminisce about TCGs of ages past.

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Here's an excerpt:

Chase: I guess I would argue that tabletop role-playing games are fundamentally, and I'm about to say something that a lot of people might disagree with because I'm making it so core and broad sweeping, it's just fundamentally, it's collaborative make-believe. It is storytelling together.

Caelyn: Yes.

Chase: That's something that I feel like people have been doing almost as long as we've been walking upright. And we shouldn't have to teach people how to tell stories. What the game book is doing is telling you all the ways that we have structured and scaffolded the telling of stories to get a very specific experience. But the actual  imagination building together should be very fundamental to the human experience such that we don't have to teach it or like, you know, preface it at all. And yet we do all the time. There's always that section of what is a tabletop RPG, you know?

Caelyn: I think a lot of that is about breaking down the barrier of what is an acceptable thing for adults to do with their time.

Chase: Now, now, this is compelling, yeah, uh-huh. We have put away the childish things and the book is trying to remind you, no, no, no, you can pick them back up again, please.

Caelyn: Yeah, because in all my years of role playing in any form — tabletop, LARP — I have never encountered someone who has actually given it a go and still thought nah, that's shit. That's shit and childish and rubbish. The worst case scenario is somebody who actually gives it a go and goes, I don't think that's for me, but I can see what you get out of it.

Chase: Right, I see why people do this.

Caelyn: I think people role play as adults a lot more than they realize, in a lot more acceptable adult pastimes. You look at someone who enjoys playing football — I mean soccer specifically here just because it makes sense for the reference I'm going to make — I don't think you're going to find a single adult who still plays football recreationally who hasn't at least at one point played a scenario in their head where the penalty that they are taking against their mate or one of the other guys at the five-a-side league is, in fact, a penalty that they are taking at Wimbledon to win the FA Cup. They absolutely do that. 

Adults that go airsofting, you're all pretending that you're soldiers, you know you are. Not one of you is just like, yes, this is just a purely abstracted thing. If you wanted that, you'd be doing paintball with all their funky get up. You wouldn't be like, this is my incredibly expensive, handcrafted Japanese airsoft replica of this specific gun from this movie that I really like.

Chase: Yeah. You just didn't like that your pretendy shooty gun had a little plastic bladder on it and made pop sounds whenever it shot a ball of paint.