Ellie fills in her character sheet and Matt fumbles an easy MacGuyver reference.
Created and hosted by Matt (@merelymj)
In association with Blackshaw Theatre Company (www.blackshawonline.com)
Episode transcript
Matt: Who'd like to go next?
Ellie: Yeah, I’ll go next.
Matt: All right, Ellie, you’re up!
Ellie: Okay.
Matt: All right, everybody. Ellie's Mind Body and Soul: which is top, which is bottom, which is middle?
Alex: It’s gotta be … I’m stepping in again real quick. It’s gotta be like…
Matt: Alex has opinions on all your personalities.
Vikki: I love it. I love it, I'm here for it.
Alex: Can you imagine that? Me being mildly opinionated? Mind one, Soul zero, Body minus one.
Vikki: Yep, done.
Strat: Yeah, all right.
Alex: There we go.
Matt: Ellie, are you comfortable with that, or do you want to swap two?
Ellie: That is exactly what I would have said.
Matt: Awesome. All right, so, abilities. You get an ability, you get an element, you get an item.
Ellie: So excited.
Alex: It is, isn't it?
Ellie: Yeah!
Matt: So there's one on that list of suggested items which is sort of on there basically for you. But that doesn’t mean you have to use it.
Ellie: Is it…
Alex: Eating ice cream?
Vikki: No.
Ellie: No. Is it “MacGyver something”?
Matt: Sorry, on the items list.
Ellie: Oh, on the items list.
Strat: Pet!
Vikki: Peeet!
Ellie: I wondered if it might be pet.
Matt: Yes, so you don’t have to, but Tilly is an option.
Ellie: I mean, how useful would she be though?
Vikki: Oh god, not useful…
Alex: She’d be a hindrance. She’d be an absolute hindrance.
Vikki: Hey, if you need something like, nuzzled to death, she is there for you.
Alex: Kind of aggressively nuzzled.
Vikki: She has just made an appearance actually.
Strat: To…
Vikki: As we’ve mentioned her name. Tilly!
Matt: Tilly is a cat.
Ellie: Yes.
Matt: For anybody who doesn’t know.
Ellie: It's not a person I keep in my house.
Strat: No. Just to, just to add to this, Matt and I currently are playing another roleplaying game in which one of the characters has a troupe of cats…
Matt: Oh god.
Ellie: Oh wow.
Alex: Oh yes!
Strat: …oh, and Alex as well, he is also playing. And they have not been helpful.
Ellie: No.
Alex: They just…
Vikki: No way!
Strat: In fact, two of them have died.
Alex: There's only three left.
Strat: There are only three left!
Vikki: I stand by it. Cats are pointless.
Matt: Thinking about the genre, though, sometimes animals are good at sensing the supernatural.
Ellie: That’s true. She does quite frequently just suddenly stop and look at something behind me that's not there.
Matt: Yep. So it's a suggestion. You don't have to do it.
Ellie: I think it'd be quite fun to see how terrible she is.
Vikki: Yeah, let's bring her in.
Ellie: Let’s bring her in.
Matt: Okay, so your item is Tilly.
Strat: Amazing.
Matt: And I think you also need to put “Tilly: plus two” in your Trust.
Ellie: Oh, okay.
Alex: You trust Tilly plus two.
Ellie: No, Tilly trusts me plus two. I don’t trust her.
Strat: Do the rest of us get Trust with Tilly?
Matt: Everyone else, can you write “Tilly: plus one”. Because Tilly knows you all.
Ellie: She does.
Vikki: She does.
Matt: But…
Vikki: She does hate me though.
Ellie: But you … she doesn’t, because you feed her quite frequently.
Vikki: No, but … yeah.
Matt: If you think it'd be more appropriate to be like a zero or a minus one with Tilly, that's fine. Whatever you think…
Vikki: I'm gonna put a plus one. No, we're friends really. She just gets a bit confused when I turn up and she’s like, “You’re not Ellie”.
Matt: Okay. So, ability and element are the other two bits.
Ellie: Yeah, so I feel like … there's one that's … “anticipate and already be there to help” is quite…
Vikki: Yeah, I mean, that’s you.
Ellie: I think definitely something that’s maybe around like, planning and preparation would be my ability.
Matt: So you mentioned “MacGyver something”. Just to explain that, in case anybody doesn't get the reference, that's basically like, put random stuff together to make like, a new thing that might be useful, like Ripley does at the end of Aliens.
Or like MacGyver does in the series MacGyver.
(laughter)
Vikki: For the legit pop culture reference, see TV show: MacGyver.
Matt: But yeah, that “anticipate and already be there” is quite … it can be quite fun for storytelling, like we can sort of bring you into a scene that you weren’t in.
Vikki: I had that in the practice. That was one of the things that I had as a…
Ellie: Yeah.
Strat: That was cool.
Matt: So whatever you think is going to be awesome for you to play.
Vikki: There's some good Mind ones actually.
Ellie: Yeah, “recall useful history or lore” looks quite good.
Vikki: I was gonna say, that’s like … I would say that's a full-on skill that you would actually like, relish in real life.
Strat: You’d have researched where we were going.
Ellie: That's very true.
Alex: One hundred percent.
Matt: I think probably anyone can like … anyone can roll for that to see if you know some stuff.
Vikki: “Do I know some facts?”
Matt: But like, if you have it as a special ability, then I'll like, I'll bring in some … some extra. It'll be extra.
Vikki: It does feel like it’s…
Ellie: It’ll cost you extra!
It's tricky.
Vikki: There’s lots of good ones.
Ellie: Yeah, so there’s like, analyse a possible course of action. But I feel like that's just playing the game, isn’t it?
Vikki: In Ellie’s world, yes.
Alex: In my world…
Vikki: Not in Alex’s world!
Alex: …it's a complicated task that may take a year to … you know, two!
Matt: So in game terms, you … for that one, if you picked it, you'd probably be like … you'd roll and depending on how well you roll, you basically get to ask me … like, what are the probable outcomes of these courses of action? Which the other guys would have to just actually analyse it based on the information they've got. Like, if you have it as an ability, it will be a bit more sort of heightened and supernatural. Not actually supernatural, because it’s not a Soul thing.
Ellie: No.
Matt: You know what I mean.
Ellie: I am really stuck here, guys.
Vikki: It's just like, there are a lot of good things to choose from.
Strat: That course of action one is particularly good, because there are gonna be times where we're like, “We can do this, that or the other,” and if you can go “That one's probably the best”...
Vikki: If you can get some kind of hint about which one is the…
Strat: You're probably going to be there as the guise of director anyway in this story, so that does kind of make sense.
Vikki: Yeah.
Ellie: Let’s go with that then.
Matt: Okay.
Ellie: So, analyse a possible course of action.
Matt: Yep. You can give that like, a name like “super strength” or “psychic shield” if you want. Like…
Vikki: “Know what to do”.
(laughter)
Strat: “Think”.
Alex: “Planner extraordinaire”.
Matt: “Sherlock mind”.
Vikki: Yeah, Sherlock mind, mind palace.
Ellie: In this, Matt is my mind palace.
Matt: And then when…
Strat: I like how you’ve outsourced your mind palace.
Vikki: I mean, that’s a classic Ellie move.
Ellie: Delegate.
Matt: When are you in your element?
Ellie: Ooh. See, I've got two different sort of things in, that I think for me personally, which is, one is the same as Alex has gone with though, which is when I'm defending other people … like with spiders, I can get rid of spiders if there's someone else there that’s scared of spiders, but if I'm on my own, I'm in trouble. And then the other one is kind of more logical, like … basically, when I'm in control of the situation. But I feel like that's not gonna happen very often in this game!
Matt: I feel like it would be hard to define, as well. When are you in control?
Ellie: Yeah … probably like, can we have like, when I'm taking the lead?
Matt: Yeah.
Vikki: Oh yeah.
Ellie: So like when I’m saying, “Right, guys, this is what we’re going to do”.
Matt: That’s a good way of phrasing it, yeah. So the way we’ll work that is basically, like, when people that you've suggested a course of action to are following that course of action, you will get bonuses.
Ellie: Okay, cool.
Strat: Oh, so if we're not there or if we're doing something contrary to what Ellie suggested…
Matt: Yeah, if you disagree or go off and do your own thing then she’ll lose that bonus.
Ellie: So I’ve got to have other people with me for that.
Vikki: That makes sense.
Matt: Okay, all right. And Trust. So same scenario: someone's dumped you. Who's concentrating on you? Helping you through this? On the sofa with the ice cream? Or whatever you like.
Ellie: No, what's really hard is all three of them would.
Vikki: We would all be there like…
Matt: Okay, who’d have got there first?
Strat: I’d bring my own dairy free ice cream.
Vikki: I mean, Alex is physically closest.
Ellie: He is physically closest.
Vikki: But I run really fast.
Ellie: Yeah. I think probably Vikki.
Matt: Okay. All right, so Vikki, you get an Ellie plus two in your Trust. And then who … they can all be on the sofa with you, but which one of them is on their phone badmouthing your ex to all their friends?
Ellie: Again, this is never gonna be Strat, is it?
Strat: I don't eat ice cream and I'm really friendly online, so I’m never going to be chosen for anything!
Alex: You’re too lactose intolerant and too considerate. I think these are the things we’ve ascertained.
Vikki: And that I can eat my body weight in ice cream and Alex can be really mean to people when they hurt people he loves.
Alex: Just unending vitriol.
Vikki: Unending vitriol! If you need some unending vitriol…
Ellie: So I’m gonna have to go with Alex.
Matt: Alex, can you write “Ellie minus one”.
Ellie: I’m sorry, Strat. It’s not a real reflection of our trust.
Matt: It’s all right, it means you're gonna be … like, the way it's heading is you're probably gonna be like, average for Trust. Not good, not bad.
Alex: Mediocre.
Ellie: Something to aspire to.
Matt: Yeah, maybe Trust … maybe I need to work on what that stat is called. I don't know. It’s Trust for now.
Ellie: The stuff I would always trust Strat with is like, problem-solving.
Vikki: Yeah, like if I need something fixing at my house, then Strat is the first person I’m asking.
Matt: Yeah, because I considered variations on the question around like, if you had a secret, like who would you trust with it, and that sort of thing. But given the way that Trust works in the game, which is usually to like, comfort someone, talk them up from a like, a bad situation, this seemed like the … it's the emotional support stat.
Vikki: Okay. Sure.
Matt: Okay, Ellie’s done. Happy with all those things?
Ellie: Yeah, absolutely.
Matt: Awesome.