An Acceptable Loss - Star Master Log: Season One Wrap (w/ The Whole Cast!)

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Jeff closes out season one with the entire cast at once instead of the usual single guest. Brian, Scott, Doja, and Stephanie sit down together to cover two years of recording, from the rule each of them got wrong the longest to the bit that somehow turned into an entire genre of made-up space rock bands. They swap favorite NPCs, worst decisions, and ships nobody saw coming, then each pick one word to sum up the whole season before signing off into the break.

New Star Master's Logs drop every other Tuesday, bridging the gap between our main adventure episodes.

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• Show Transcript

  [00:00:04] Star Master Jeff: Hey everyone, Star Master Jeff here, and welcome back to the Star Master Log. This one's special. Season one is done, and instead of one guest, I've got a whole crew with me today. Brian, who plays Thorne, Scott, who plays Felix, Doja, who plays Robert, and Stephanie, who plays Hayley, sometimes with two Ys. Everybody, welcome to the Star Master Log! Woo! star master log star master log so we have a jingle oh my god that's the new outro the new intro star master log did we get that you got more that's it yeah do you have more in the tank star master log star master your life oh star master log no is that something no that's nothing oh star master Brian, we're done with the bit. Twinkle, twinkle, little Star Master log. Okay, well, let's get started on the Star Master log. Or as I like to say, start Master log, because we're starting. So we started, we're on video right now and everyone's just shaking their head.

  [00:01:08] Felix: I got to hang up.

  [00:01:11] Star Master Jeff: So we recorded our first, I better just fucking talk over you guys. We recorded our first session on November 14th, 2024. And we released our first episode on July, whatever. I didn't write the date down. 2025th. So for eight months, we were just chit-chatting amongst friends. And really, we were just playing online while recording it and hadn't released it yet. So Scott, what was it like the first time you heard yourself back in the show? And do you regret joining the pod?

  [00:01:39] Felix: I mean, I don't regret joining the pod. It's been a fun experience. I generally don't like listening. I don't like listening to myself or watching myself. This has actually been helpful because it's been like kind of immersion therapy. You just got to listen to yourself. All the time, um, and it's gotten to the point where I'm listening to an episode and I don't even think of it as me, which is kind of a weird thing to say, um, but it feels — oh no, I dissociate — uh, Robert, Robert Ross is not me, that is a totally different freaking person. I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah, I agree, I have the same experience when I listen to episodes.

  [00:02:15] Star Master Jeff: For me, I am every character. There's a little bit of me in every single one of the characters. I opened it up to the floor too. Everyone kind of answered it, but I also want to hear from Doja more because I kind of feel like Robert Ross is a lot like you. I feel like you're a wild card.

  [00:02:30] Robert: I would definitely, there's absolutely an element of my personality. Like the best lie has a grain of truth to it. But the only way I can do this and then listen back to it is full send Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder. I don't break character until the director's cut.

  [00:02:58] Star Master Jeff: Oh, Doja, I'm realizing no one knows your race. Are we doing a race reveal? Yeah, we are.

  [00:03:08] Robert: There's literally a picture of me on the website. Yeah, there is.

  [00:03:10] Star Master Jeff: No, no, no. No one even goes to the website. It's like eating something, too. It's very Robert Ross. End of season two, we'll do a race reveal for Doja. There we go. Stay tuned.

  [00:03:20] Thorne: I know you're all on the edge of your seats.

  [00:03:23] Star Master Jeff: We know Scott's white. We know Brian is draconian. There it is. So Brian is doing a voice right now. Thorne is his real voice.

  [00:03:32] Thorne: That's not my real voice, either. You guys don't actually know my real voice.

  [00:03:35] Star Master Jeff: Let's hear it. Or would it shatter our psyche? Yeah, what? No.

  [00:03:39] Thorne: If I uttered a single syllable in my normal voice, your eyes would melt out of their sockets, your ears would turn inside out, and they would turn into mouths, and you would say, please stop talking like that.

  [00:03:50] Haleyy: That's awful.

  [00:03:52] Star Master Jeff: Anyway, that's question number one. Question number two. Oh my God. Oh no, we're not going to ever get to this. We're so on track.

  [00:03:57] Thorne: This is going great.

  [00:03:58] Star Master Jeff: Before we started, we tried a few systems and we landed on Stars Without Number. Literally none of us had played it until we tried. Uh, I think we played Hard Light, which is sort of the introduction adventure. And, uh, I told listeners that we'd be learning the rules as we went and to shout at us if we did things wrong, which they have done on the SWN sub. So Doja, actually, this question is for you, and then I'll open it up to everyone. What's a rule that you specifically played wrong longer than you'd like to admit?

  [00:04:28] Robert: So, this is one where I go to my kind of D&D heritage, and especially teaching new players how to play the game. I would always tell people, don't worry about the rules, just tell me what you want to do. And nine times out of ten, I'd rule of cool it. I've had multiple instances where they just did something that, like, there was absolutely no reasonable rule for it. But you know what? It was super cool, and they made out with the big bad, and you know what? It was great, and that was awesome. But things that I've done wrong over and over, probably — I know we've done saving throws specifically, whether they're high or low or how to beat them or how to it. It's a gamble. And you know what? I roll the number and you tell me if it's good or bad. And then I just go with it.

  [00:05:31] Star Master Jeff: Well, many times I've told you it's good or bad, and then Brian will be like, actually.

  [00:05:35] Thorne: Yeah, I was going to say, we've had the saving throws conversation so many times, and I don't know why. What is roll low? What is it? You tell us.

  [00:05:44] Star Master Jeff: Nothing. Well, Brian, you went on to host the Rules Explained segment on the podcast. So I'm sure everyone here has an answer to this. But for you specifically, when did you turn into a rules person slash stick in the mud?

  [00:05:59] Thorne: Yes, thank you. I do consider myself quite the stick in the mud. When did I turn into a rules person? So when I started playing games, it was, we just did everything freeform. And then we started playing D&D one day, 3.5. In those days, I didn't have a book. So I relied on my friends to tell me from their book, how does this game work? How am I supposed to play? My first character was a cleric. So I said, okay, what does a cleric do? Like, how does this work? And they showed me how to build it. You know, I assumed that it was correct. And then we had some friends over one time to join us as like a guest, come join our D&D game and like be a part of it for one day. One of those players is actually now my wife, but she came to the session. She was like, why are you a cleric with maxed out intelligence and no wisdom? And I was like, that's how you play a cleric, right? And she was like, I learned that day that if I don't learn the rules, nobody will. You're never going to get the girl. Yeah, that too.

  [00:06:52] Star Master Jeff: Girls love a rule follower.

  [00:06:53] Thorne: Apparently it works.

  [00:06:55] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. Anyone else have any rules that they accidentally didn't do correctly for a super long time? Okay, listen, I still don't think we're doing...

  [00:07:03] Haleyy: There's so many.

  [00:07:04] Felix: I don't think we're doing hacking raw. No, we're not. And — I think I've reread it a few times and I'm like, I ain't doing that. And as the hacker, I appreciate that because I think the rules as written for hacking are really strict and slow, and I don't think we'd be able to do it kind of as a part of combat. That's helped make some combats interesting, like when I was taking over the Goo Pool robots and things like that. If it's all the prep time and all the lead-up stuff, um, I think we're playing it more like you might see hacking work in like a D&D or a kind of more traditional — roll it the way you would roll sleight of hand. Yeah, I like narrative. Rather than I've got to sit down, I've got to prep a hack a week in advance, I've got to learn the systems, and I get one try. I still don't think we're doing it quote-unquote right, but I think we're doing it the way that works.

  [00:07:55] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I like narrative. Sometimes slow is good. But it feels a little misplaced because if you're going to have a hacker character, they're generally not going to be a warrior. They're going to be an expert. So you end up with all these big, flashy combats where an expert doesn't necessarily have a lot to do, except for shoot their gun poorly. And then they're sitting on all of these skills that do really mix well in combat if you just make them a little bit more cinematic. But the way SWN is written raw, it's not really an option. So I think we did a good hack there. Yeah, I think so. We hacked the system.

  [00:08:29] Robert: Hack the world.

  [00:08:30] Star Master Jeff: Hack the system.

  [00:08:30] Robert: Hack the planet. Hack the planet. Oh, shit. Hack the planet. Jump in with my first question because — oh, wait, no, I have an answer to this one.

  [00:08:37] Haleyy: Please, please, please, please. So Haley, I don't think we got her focus right or any skills for the first half of the podcast. There is nothing — the only consistent thing about her skills and ability to do something is that she can punch really well. Other than that, you can never tell if she's like a psionics character, a warrior character. She just uses everything. And it's like, we specifically were like, no, she's a cross-class character. She was built to be that way. And then depending on different times, I think we were just ignoring it at first. And it took until like the back half, when Brian had memorized the rule book, to be like, no, actually she can't do that anymore — in terms of, I think the big one is realizing that I cannot actually just automatically hit if I want to once a scene happens.

  [00:09:29] Thorne: We were definitely taking the best of both worlds for a while. Yeah. But it was also because we were trying to hide something interesting, but it was taking away half your kit. So it didn't seem fair that way either.

  [00:09:39] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. In the beginning, we were like, oh, we're going to land on this secret psionics thing because I don't like just starting with psionics or magic. I wanted to introduce the weird, which then was going to kind of irreparably change your character as you turned into that. So we were like, how do we juggle this and give you warrior abilities, but also a little bit of psionics? And then we did both of them poorly, in that we gave you too much. But it didn't matter. Like, Thorne still almost died twice in situations where you were kind of protecting him. So Roger's Billiards has a jukebox. Thorne reacts to it way stronger than I thought he would, almost sexually, I would say. Gravity Well, Nebula Cult, Solar Wardens, Black Hole Bloom are all bands that we kind of made up on the fly there. So that one reaction by Brian for Thorne turned into a whole musical universe in the sector. So Brian, what were you thinking when you reacted to that jukebox? Did you already know it was going to be part of Thorne's character? And for everyone, is there a certain band or song from the show that you love or hate?

  [00:10:41] Thorne: So, no, I did not go into that with a plan like Thorne's a music guy. I'm a music lover for sure. But that wasn't something that I had intended to imprint on the character until there was a jukebox. And you got me out of character. I was like, ooh, jukebox, so I have to go touch it. That's just true. If there's a jukebox somewhere, I have to go look at it. So my character had to go look at it. And it just sort of evolved into this sort of like, what if we make up a bunch of silly pop culture things in universe that we can just reference for fun? Because I love that kind of stuff. I mean, I live and die on references to pop culture. I feel like the actual listeners don't get to see the hundreds of memes per session that I have to post in the memes channel because I can't have a normal human conversation without referencing one of three cartoons from my childhood. Yeah. But yeah, it just sort of happened. And I was like, yeah, I think it will be cool if he was an oldies guy, even because I was starting to think about like the characters in Cowboy Bebop and how that series is very tied to music as well. And how they use sort of like almost anachronistic oldies on top of spaceships. Like you can't tell if that show takes place in 1989 or 3089. And that's sort of the point. But yeah, it was an accident, a happy little accident.

  [00:11:56] Star Master Jeff: So Wafisa, I think Steph said that that was her favorite planet. And when you guys show up, the spaceport is empty. The Guardians are shaking you guys down on the street for 50 credits. And then when you guys say you'll pay it, I think they're like 75. Actually, that's where Thorne almost dies for the first time. And actually, I think Haley also is almost dead on Wafisa at one point, like in that same interaction with Joran. Joran and the crew's too wounded to even like fight over the credits, but you do it anyway. And then you try to go back to your ship and almost step into another big battle. So Stephanie, having played D&D with you, when did you think that, like, when did it sink into you that this game was very different and it was going to actually hurt and your character might die?

  [00:12:38] Haleyy: This is probably going to sound bad, but I knew I had a lot of confidence that if my character died during an episode, I would be making my case very shortly for why that had not actually happened, why my character was still alive. And I just knew that would be a really frustrating conversation to have for both of us.

  [00:12:58] Star Master Jeff: Interesting. Okay, let's play it out real quick.

  [00:13:01] Haleyy: Haley was never going to die, like, in this first thing, ever.

  [00:13:06] Star Master Jeff: Steph, Haley takes 10 points of damage, which is going to bring her down to death.

  [00:13:11] Haleyy: It might kill her.

  [00:13:12] Star Master Jeff: So she's dead now.

  [00:13:15] Haleyy: Nope, nope, she's not dead. There are a lot of feelings about this. Lazarus Patch. I was very attached to it.

  [00:13:21] Star Master Jeff: Lazarus Patch.

  [00:13:22] Haleyy: Lazarus Patch. So, yeah.

  [00:13:26] Star Master Jeff: Lazarus Patch.

  [00:13:27] Thorne: Dude, that's one of the most memorable parts, I just have to say.

  [00:13:30] Star Master Jeff: It's so good. Like Doja's acting on that was so good. It's actually in that same scene on Wafisa was Haley was dying. And so Doja, what are you tapping into? Cause you've had a few scenes like that. They're really emotional. Are you like thinking to yourself, like if Stephanie ever did get hurt, this is how I'd react? Or are you just remembering like a Wishbone episode or something?

  [00:13:52] Robert: This is a — I go all in on, I have to be the character. And I enjoy the, like, this is the RP of it. And you know what? You got to stretch that sometimes because just being Robert Ross and being like a kind of chaos incarnate, you know, is one side of it. At the same time, being able to tap into like something that's a little different makes a character three-dimensional. So yeah, I really like adding that little bit of like — there was a couple of times where, like, Felix and I had a little, like, quiet bridge conversation that got a little deep. Thorne and I have done the, like, getting into it over the jukebox at the Aurora, Loki pond. Like, there's just those moments where adding a little bit of three-dimensionality to the character makes it fun. And I have no problem going all in and making an ass out of myself because none of y'all know who I am.

  [00:15:16] Star Master Jeff: So I asked all the cast members to bring some questions to ask. And I'm going to start with Doja. Doja, do you have a question for me today?

  [00:15:26] Robert: One of the things that stood out to me through the season is how often there are little details, side nothings that come back and that pay off in the long term. The time loop pays off from the Scrapjack episode. The signal that we've been following from Camiri and the Forks, the Voss orb, and eventually all the way into Prometheon. From behind the scenes, how much of that is planned? How much of that is natural following what we want to do? And how much of that, and I'm really curious, is specifically going back and having to do the edits and listening to the episodes and finding those details? Because I've DM'd before and I don't remember half the stuff. I've recorded myself as a DM and I never go back and listen to it, not one time ever. But having to go back and do those edits over and over, how much does that influence future arcs?

  [00:16:29] Star Master Jeff: So the first two things, 100%, it's not that I'm saying they're going to find this and they're going to find this and that's going to lead to this and that's going to justify this. What I do is I go, what are these aliens? And I figure all of that out. And then, when I'm figuring that out, I'm like, I want them to be able to interface with alien technology. What does that look like? A fork. What does a fork do? And then I'm like, people have been running into this, but it's brand new. It's only been around for seven years. So what are the fanatics look like? Because I'm thinking factions, like governments a faction, corporates a faction. It's got to have three factions, in my opinion. I want three sides. I want a triad so that there can always be an aggressor, a defender, and a neutral party. And you guys can always try to find the neutral party to pull them towards the side that you prefer, right? So GMing 101. So as I'm building that out, I'm like, what sort of technology do they have? Fork, they try to replicate the fork. And I just build all that out. That was all figured out before episode one. So there isn't a lot of going back and listening. The part where you guys are naturally following is actually what the story is. And that's just — these things exist, and as you go from place to place, there's a piece of it where it's like you're following natural breadcrumbs and I know where you're going to go next. But for the bulk of it, I don't know what you guys are going to do. I know you guys are going to be enticed by this exo site and you're going to get wrapped up in the auction. I'm 99% sure that's going to happen. And let's go to Stephanie. Stephanie, you brought questions as well. Can you ask your question that you brought for a random castmate?

  [00:18:02] Haleyy: So, Felix — I mean, got Felix. What are death sticks supposed to be exactly? Like, is it just cigarettes? Or do you have something in mind? Is there a page? Can I go look up a trip record or something?

  [00:18:18] Felix: No, so I guess — I mean, I wasn't thinking of death sticks as cigarettes because Felix does also smoke cigarettes. He has in episodes, at least when we record. I don't know if it's made it in episodes that he's a nicotine fiend. But in my mind, death sticks are like from Star Wars, right? They're like some kind of drug that gets you high, like probably cocaine equivalent.

  [00:18:39] Thorne: Something that makes you want to go home and rethink your life.

  [00:18:42] Felix: Yeah, yeah. As not a drug user, that's what I was imagining. Something like that.

  [00:18:48] Star Master Jeff: So as not a drug user, you were like, this is like crack to me. Yeah. All drugs are the same, didn't you know?

  [00:18:54] Haleyy: I've been trying to visualize death sticks for like ages.

  [00:18:59] Felix: I think we defined them as like something you crack, like the death sticks, Jeff. Yes, I remember the cracking, yeah. I think you crack them and they have like a short life.

  [00:19:09] Thorne: Like a glow stick. You crack it to combine the fluids. Maybe it's like super weed.

  [00:19:14] Haleyy: Super weed?

  [00:19:15] Felix: It's like acid-waste weed. There's that and there's Moon Rocks too, which you also were very excited about. Moon Rocks are probably more like cocaine. That's probably more like crack or cocaine.

  [00:19:27] Star Master Jeff: From your personal experience.

  [00:19:28] Felix: Oh yeah, lots of it.

  [00:19:29] Star Master Jeff: I've been watching a lot of dirty New York movies lately, so it's just like that. What's a dirty New York movie? Now, we can't go down a cinema hole with Scott tonight. So the big swing of the season is I planned four Focus episodes. So we have an entire season of you guys like bumming around in the galaxy, doing like what you would call the main plot. But there are actually four things that I was like, at these certain points, we're going to do these Focus episodes. And I did know what they were. And I did know how they were going to formulate. And I did know how they were going to play out because they're already settled history. All the stuff in the middle from getting from point A to point B, all those — well, I guess just say A to Z, everything from B to Y. Is that the second to last letter in the alphabet? Everything from B to Y are all the random things that you guys did in those episodes. I wanted to tell them like the Canterbury Tales or like Hyperion. So it's just like, I wanted the feeling of you guys on the road, learning about each other, telling your stories. And that's very Canterbury Tales or very Hyperion, which I'm a huge fan of both. So, Scott. Which story that isn't your story are you proudest to have been a part of?

  [00:20:38] Felix: I mean, Haley's, because we got to play these weird versions of ourselves that were like kid versions of us. And not to bring it back to movies, but like Kids on Bikes movies are some of my favorite films. And so getting to participate in something that felt like that was really cool, especially following on from the arc it had been with like the Wafisa alien place, then Robert's focus leading up into Haley's, and had kind of that narrative weight to it as well. I also feel that right around then, like when we left the alien place on Wafisa and went through those two focuses back to back, I feel like we all kind of reached a new, I don't know, a new like level of our role playing and like the way we were performing, for lack of a better word, and like the improv that we were doing with each other. And it felt like we'd kind of clicked a bit at that point. So really proud of that one. And to everyone else, same question.

  [00:21:31] Haleyy: Obviously the Haley one. Haley one was great.

  [00:21:34] Star Master Jeff: Except for your own, I said.

  [00:21:36] UNKNOWN: Okay.

  [00:21:38] Thorne: I really like the Robert one. Oh, my God.

  [00:21:40] Haleyy: Yeah, that one was so much fun. I love that one.

  [00:21:43] Thorne: The things that made that one the most interesting to me is it was like a lot of weird stuff happened. It had this really silly tone, which was really heavily contrasted afterwards by Haley's. But also like we kept pulling out of the flashback of Thorne and Felix being like, Robert, could you please just tell us the story how it really happened? Yeah.

  [00:22:03] Robert: Which, that's one of the things I really enjoy in the, like, retrospect. There are, like, episodes and episodes later, like, ten episodes later, where the two of you are like, wait, how much of that actually happened? Yeah, yeah.

  [00:22:20] Star Master Jeff: Was that actually?

  [00:22:22] Robert: I know you were like making stuff up, but was that actually all the truth?

  [00:22:31] Thorne: When any of it proved true, suddenly we have to question how much of it was true. And the viewers get to do the same thing.

  [00:22:38] Star Master Jeff: It was very apropos that Scott wanted to talk about cinema because the focus episodes were actually all closely mirrored on cinema, like tropes and genres. We had the neo-noir. We had the heist, the futuristic sci-fi heist. We had the military film. And then we had Haley's, which is the kids on bikes. Yeah, I literally based it on Tropic Thunder when I was writing it. I think I had a specific movie in mind for each, I can't really remember all of them, but obviously Haley's Kids on Bikes I was thinking E.T.

  [00:23:12] Thorne: Or like the first season of Stranger Things, stuff like that. Yeah, those were really fun to write. The Robert episode really made me think about the Star Wars Clone Wars stuff and its spinoffs. I couldn't help but compare the different Robert Ross clones to the Bad Batch. But I feel like the final cut maybe didn't capture like how much of a pirate Scott was trying to be. I was being so much of a pirate, I was trying to play my guys like really angry, but it wasn't coming through. So there were parts of that where I was like, man, we could have taken this so far, because in my head that episode was solid gold plated with diamonds. Well, Steph, how disappointed were you that you didn't get to do a Robert Ross voice like the rest of us?

  [00:23:58] Haleyy: I struggle so much with voices. I do not — I was right where I wanted to be that episode. I was Hayley. It was great. It was my first time really getting to jump into being like the more Hayley role, really starting to flesh out like, you know, why she has two eyes. Um, but I really love that episode.

  [00:24:18] Robert: I mean, that cuts to the development of Haley. What was the arc of Haley? How much of that developed in the moment?

  [00:24:30] Haleyy: Almost for me, so much of it, because Haley exists because I really liked my character from our one-shot. Yeah, I remember. Amazing scenes with Thorne at some nightclub where she was like his bodyguard for some reason, which I think we did something like that again.

  [00:24:49] Thorne: It wasn't even Thorne? It wasn't Thorne. Bartleby was Bartleby, yeah.

  [00:24:55] Haleyy: But it was Hayley and I really loved Hayley.

  [00:24:58] Thorne: Shoutouts to Bartleby out there, if he can hear me.

  [00:25:04] Haleyy: But I have really enjoyed doing all of the side stories because I really struggle with, you know, voices or having like really defined characters that are separate from each other. And so it was a really helpful way of like committing to forgetting outside of my comfort zone repeatedly, which was really nice.

  [00:25:25] Star Master Jeff: So speaking of Hayley and Hayley's focus episode, in that episode, you all play 12-year-old versions of yourselves on BMXs, chasing Hayley's missing sister down an abandoned railroad. It ends with Hayley with one Y and Haleyy with two Ys merging and the table rallying around her and the room is saying, "scapegoats forever." It's just a line that Steph sort of threw out there and is now sort of the calling card of the Scapegoat crew. And we close every SML with it. Stephanie, what was it like to play that acceptance scene with everyone in the room staring at you, trying to have that emotional moment?

  [00:26:00] Haleyy: Um, I would say like pretty easy. It's like the emotional stuff — you know, there's emotional scenes that we've done in other episodes that were actually much harder for me. But that one, I think, because it was really just — this focus is purely on Haley here — it was kind of just easy for me to like get out there, do my own thing and really commit to where I'm at with her character and how she was feeling, from remembering everything correctly. So I feel like that's not the best answer to just be like, it was super easy. So easy.

  [00:26:28] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, no wrong answer.

  [00:26:30] Haleyy: Because we're so good at role playing a little bit in this group and committing to that and not pausing when we're in character.

  [00:26:39] Thorne: Doja said it, right? We commit to the bit.

  [00:26:42] Haleyy: Yeah. And I love a good bit in my characters. So.

  [00:26:46] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, we always commit to the bit and we're very accepting as a group. And if something doesn't work, it comes out in the edit. So there's always that safety net of like, if you were sitting there and you were like trying to merge Hayley with one Y and Haleyy with two Ys and you're like, I just don't know — nope, scratch that, scratch that, let me show that again.

  [00:27:03] Haleyy: Well, no, I think during the episode, I got frustrated like quite a bit trying to figure out like how Hayley, one-Y Hayley, as they're trying to merge, exactly how she's responding to certain situations. So like that, I remember when she's like really interacting with the environment around her, that was really difficult for me. So I have to go back and see how much of it actually came out versus what we recorded.

  [00:27:30] UNKNOWN: But yeah.

  [00:27:32] Thorne: The introspection is almost like it's my character. So what happens in their head, I understand even more than the things that are in the room with them, because I only know that stuff secondhand because you told me that the room is round or rocky or dark or cold. But I know what Thorne thinks because I made him.

  [00:27:49] Haleyy: So maybe that's kind of based in the character's reality, not even necessarily our shared reality in the game. Yeah.

  [00:27:57] Star Master Jeff: Pass round, Scott. What's your question for me? It's gotcha question time.

  [00:28:02] Thorne: Yeah, we've all been waiting for this.

  [00:28:04] Felix: So this is kind of along the lines of some other stuff that we've talked about as far as like adaptation versus planning. But has there been a time when we've done something that really threw out kind of like your plans? I'm thinking of something like Scrapjacks where we all split up at the start of the episode. Robert and I were in one place, Thorne was in another place, Haley was in another place. So maybe you expected that, or maybe there's something else that's like really threw a spanner in the works and had you thinking on your feet.

  [00:28:33] Star Master Jeff: So I've recently come to understand that people don't normally perceive reality in this way. But when I'm looking at something, all I'm seeing is the problems, which is why I was a good software engineer. So when I'm writing these adventures down, I'm thinking of all of the problems, and what that ends up creating is an outline of not everything you guys might do, but everything that I need to cover. And it gets me into a situation where I'm never really like, oh, you guys threw me for a loop, because I'm not really expecting you to do stuff. I'm more like spending my free time imagining all the fun things you might do and then making sure I have that covered. And as for splitting up the party, I fucking love splitting up the party. You're not supposed to split the party. Dude, what's rule number one in a horror movie? You split the party. I want everyone to split up. And especially in like the finale, for instance, but anytime it happens, I love being like, let's hold on what's happening with Thorne and let's catch everyone else up. And by that, I don't mean in time, I mean to the energy level of Thorne's situation. And then when we get to that energy level with the other group or other two groups, it's like, okay, we got a battle here, we have a death-defying hack happening here, and we have Strake betraying Thorne here. And then I just like to be like, A, B, C, A, B, C, and just go around and around, just keep checking in with everyone. Ooh, I love that. And it makes for so much fun. The rounds feel so good and so tight. And it just makes for such a compelling story.

  [00:30:04] Thorne: Unpopular opinion, but like when the party is split up, it's a lot easier to share the spotlight when there aren't five adventurers in a 10 by 10 room. Like if they're all in their own little 10 by 10 room, it's so much easier. So I get it.

  [00:30:18] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, it's a bit harder to kind of like conceive of it and keep track of everything. But honestly, in my head, I'm picturing one location. I'm just like — shift to the left, Thorne's there; shift to the right, Felix is there. But you guys could be 10,000 miles apart. But it's because I'm constructing in my head three scenes as one scene and narrating it as if it was one scene. And then you guys are very good at making it feel like one scene because you guys are constantly on the comms being like, Thorne, what's happening up there? Felix, I can't do that right now. And it just ties it together as one cohesive scene, even though it's three different dangers against three different groups. So cool question.

  [00:30:54] Robert: And I genuinely feel bad listening to the recent episode where I don't know if Thorne actually communicated that he was getting betrayed by Victor, because I immediately shoot Victor in the face once the acid starts going. And then only in retrospect was I like, oh, my God, I was metagaming way too hard there. Oh, you shot Sabien in the face. The other Victor. The Victor Victor.

  [00:31:24] Star Master Jeff: No, no, Sabien is just Sabien. No, no, no, no, I shot Victor.

  [00:31:27] Haleyy: Sabien has many functions.

  [00:31:29] Robert: No, we killed — wasn't it the other Victor? Wasn't it Victor Strake and Victor Saren?

  [00:31:33] Thorne: We never saw Victor Saren.

  [00:31:35] Haleyy: Wait, I thought Victor Strake and Victor Saren are the same person.

  [00:31:38] Thorne: No, they're clones. They're not the same age. Yeah, they're not the same age. But you blasted Sabien in the face because he was a listener, essentially.

  [00:31:49] Robert: Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. But I immediately shot that dude in the face. Yes, you did.

  [00:31:55] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I know.

  [00:31:56] Haleyy: He did not deserve it. As you should.

  [00:31:58] Star Master Jeff: That makes more sense, because in the edit, I was like, Sabien is like trying to hold the door shut, they bust through and you're like, I'm having a moral dilemma here, do I just kill Sabien? And I was like, but another body in the room trying to stop the horde is good. But now that I know that's — you thought — because it is confusing, we have so many Victors flying around now. So he was getting the jump on another Victor.

  [00:32:23] Robert: Yeah, I figured that they were all going to absolutely tag team the stuff out of us, and that I hear the acid not working and I figure that they're in concert. So I'm like, you gotta kill this dude, he is 100% going to betray us at the most inconvenient moment. You weren't wrong.

  [00:32:46] Felix: Who's to say it wasn't Victor Sabien?

  [00:32:51] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. Actually, that's probably why Doja thinks that, is because we did make that joke. Too many S names. Because we were like, it's always Victor S. And we're like, Sabien could be a Victor. And I think that probably got lost in translation.

  [00:33:02] Robert: And it gets edited out because we're joking about it. It gets edited out in the podcast. And that's where there's some of these jokes and some of these things that I've definitely seen where — from Sabien-Victor-related jokes to other things that we continue to riff on — rip Chopper Choss — and you then have to edit out in episodes for probably the next 10 episodes or so.

  [00:33:37] Star Master Jeff: But yeah, it is tough, because when I have a whole episode, a whole session — especially in the auction ones where I'm like, I don't want the auction thing to be nine fucking episodes. So I want to take this one episode, or in this case I took two sessions and made it into one episode. I took six hours of audio and made it into 45 minutes. So a lot of stuff got cut. And the second I cut something like that — it wasn't me saying I'm going to cut Chopper Choss. It was me saying, Robert and Felix are investigating the dunes. And then Felix goes and investigates the Scapegoat's port. And that's an important plot point. Robert goes to the auction, that goes back to the ship, when he's at the ship is his next important plot point. So the fact that you went to the auction and interacted with Thorne and Haley and had the Chopper Choss thing, none of that is plot relevant, even though it was funny. I was like, I have to take out this little auction piece that's irrelevant and then splice out 500 Chopper Choss jokes for the next 20 episodes. And I fucking knew that was going to happen. But it's like, it's just — six hours has to come down to 45 minutes. And yeah.

  [00:34:40] Thorne: Sometimes I love it. The fact that we're playing a game and funny things happen, but they don't always make the cut, doesn't mean they didn't happen, even to the characters, you know? Yes, there's so much that happens to these people on screen or off screen. It happened.

  [00:34:55] Haleyy: Such as the orange juice. I'm obsessed with that. Oh, my God. Who ate the pie? I have to say, those — wasn't even in an episode — those warmups will live forever for me. And it's so funny, right?

  [00:35:08] Thorne: Because it was just a warmup. Yeah.

  [00:35:10] Haleyy: Well, the pie one was when we were doing, I think, Thorne's backstory. Thorne or Felix's backstory was the one of who ate the pie, which also became who ate the orange juice, I believe.

  [00:35:22] Thorne: Yeah, because I think that Nyx and Brick were in that one. Yeah, Nyx and Brick were in that one. They were among the people who ate the pie, potentially. That's great.

  [00:35:28] Haleyy: Just amazing stuff. I think it is important, though, for us at some point to talk about how we've had to adjust our characters or our style of playing because it's being recorded versus how we would normally play a tabletop RPG with friends. Because it's very, very different. And in terms of what we have to remember, our character consistency and stuff like that.

  [00:35:52] Star Master Jeff: We're also — we'll get back on questions in a second, but we're not a normal actual play, is the other thing. Like our bar is so much higher than a normal actual play.

  [00:36:02] Haleyy: We're a radio drama.

  [00:36:03] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, that's what I call it. It is. Like we are a radio drama.

  [00:36:05] Haleyy: We're an improv sci-fi radio drama.

  [00:36:08] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, if you listen to Mission to Zyxx or something like that, they are completely improv and they do multiple takes and you can hear their bloopers reel, but it's all improv. We're doing that same thing, just we have a set of rules underpinning it called Stars Without Number. Yeah. So by being at that level above actual play, which is just friends at a table, it's kind of expected that we completely understand everything and can be internally consistent. Unlike a normal actual play where it's like, just throw spaghetti at the wall and whatever sticks sticks. So I've unintentionally, based on my own preferences, made this about 100 times harder for us. And I apologize. Yeah.

  [00:36:48] Robert: Yeah, the polish level. Tell me, dig into that. Why do you feel that we need to be at that extra level up and understand the plot fully?

  [00:37:00] Star Master Jeff: I don't know when to stop. That's literally all it is. I do everything 5,000% and don't know when to not do 5,000%. So it's true. That's just the way my brain operates.

  [00:37:13] Thorne: Yeah, because you need that sense of pride. And if you don't have it, then it's the killing of a motivation.

  [00:37:19] Star Master Jeff: And art is interesting, because art is subjectively done to the level that's going to make the person that's doing the art feel proud. Let's get back into it. Brian, you have a question for a castmate. I would love to hear it, buddy.

  [00:37:32] Thorne: Oh, yeah, I have questions for castmates. Here's what I'm going to go with, because we just talked about this, and I think I'm going to point this one for you, Doja. So I want to come around maybe and hear from everybody else. But I had a question originally, which was going to be generally like, what are some of your favorite and least favorite NPCs that we've run into? You know, what did you like about them, or what did you hate about them? But since this one's pointed towards you, Doja, do you want to tell us all a little bit more about you and Reginald and why you just can't seem to get along? He's the voice of the waste. He was your hero for like one and a half episodes. One and a half minutes. To quote Doja, "like 10 sessions later, I kind of hate the guy now." I just want to know, how do we get there?

  [00:38:20] Robert: I also kind of want to know how we got there, because I genuinely wanted Reggie to be our hero. I thought he was going to be the kind of weird broadcaster for fallout, for radio, that would change the Black Harbor people, and we would be able to rally the forces, and I had this beautiful — how we were going to get in was we were going to create an inner revolt and Reggie was going to be our king. And every opportunity I gave him, he disappointed me.

  [00:39:20] Thorne: I think there was a period of time where Haley and Robert really intended to save Wafisa. From what exactly, I'm still not sure. But I definitely got that sense. Fascists.

  [00:39:30] Haleyy: I really wanted to. I cared about Wafisa.

  [00:39:33] Star Master Jeff: You know what? As we go into season two, you guys have a lot more — like you guys aren't running away from anything necessarily and you're not running towards anything. So we're going into a more potentially typical Stars Without Number job of the week type of thing. If you wanted, you can go back to Wafisa and take on the fascists. I want to go back to Wafisa.

  [00:39:51] Haleyy: Yeah, those Guardians still owe us — they shot me, I don't know what they stripped off our shit when we landed on Wafisa, but we came up with so much shit there, we got Loki Pond, it was the flowers, the Aurora, it was like — I think we did both of those things in the span of like 45 minutes.

  [00:40:12] Star Master Jeff: It's also the only city you've been in.

  [00:40:14] Haleyy: The cookbook? Yeah.

  [00:40:15] Star Master Jeff: The cookbook.

  [00:40:16] Robert: Like, there's so many great callbacks from that. And, I mean, even the Loki Pond deck that Reggie continued to drool all over and rip up.

  [00:40:29] Thorne: I mean, I'm not going to say I was baited, but I feel like — yeah, I think Jeff deserves some of the blame here, right? Like, he made Froggy so unlikable. Okay, it's the flanderization of Froggy.

  [00:40:42] Haleyy: And now it's starting to make us look bad because we're like...

  [00:40:44] Thorne: Here's the thing.

  [00:40:45] Haleyy: We can't bully Reggie anymore. Justice for Reggie.

  [00:40:49] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I flanderized Froggy because there's always a Nodwick. There's always some bitch-made henchman that everyone can pile onto and feel good about themselves. And that's part of being a hero, quote unquote. And every single game I've ever run, been a part of — anything at all I've ever interacted with that's like D&D or TTRPG — the group, if you're going to stop them from becoming straight-out murder hobos, you have to let them vent their frustration on a sponge. They need a punching bag. It can't be a sponge or a punching bag that's going to disappear because they kill it. It needs to be one that's tied to the group in some way so they can continue punching it every session. And that's how you get Haley to stop murdering people. It didn't quite work, because Haley is still planning and planning out and murdering people. But no one else is really killing anyone. They shouldn't be killing. Robert's still alive. I mean, Roger's still alive. We didn't take his son's hand. Half the drift rats are still alive. Yeah, son's hand is still there. He said "give me a hand." Well, let me give you a hand. Yeah. I did melt some scientists. You did. And I'd almost ripped the party apart.

  [00:41:56] Robert: Which, Felix, that got real dark at one point. How did Felix take that kind of turn? Yeah, what happened there?

  [00:42:05] Thorne: Because I get it, they're evil scientists — but are they? We don't know. We haven't even asked them any questions.

  [00:42:11] Felix: Well, I mean, Felix has — and not to turn this into being psychoanalyzed — but Felix has had a darkness in him since Petey, essentially, right? Oh, true.

  [00:42:19] Star Master Jeff: Psychoanalyzed or just psycho?

  [00:42:21] Felix: And, you know, then he had a new person who he'd come to care about taken from him again, right? So Petey had been taken from him, and now Voss has been taken from him, and he has never got to punish the people who took Petey. So he's lashing out, punishing whomever is involved with what's going on with Voss.

  [00:42:40] Thorne: And then she saved your life. Mm-hmm.

  [00:42:43] Robert: And now, if Felix push came to shove, had to save Petey or Voss — Jesus — who would he save? Jesus Christ, Petey's already dead.

  [00:42:56] Haleyy: Petey's in an orb.

  [00:42:58] Felix: If it was save Petey, as in I get Petey back, then it would be Petey.

  [00:43:05] Star Master Jeff: What do you mean by get him back, though? He's dead. He's an AI now.

  [00:43:09] Felix: Right. If it was magic — if I could not have him back, if it was AI Petey versus VI Voss, then I don't feel like I could answer that right now, because that might come up at some point.

  [00:43:21] Star Master Jeff: I think that's the question you're being asked. Does Felix have a crush on Voss? Obviously.

  [00:43:26] Haleyy: Like 100%.

  [00:43:27] Felix: I want to hear the words out of his mouth. Yeah, not fan fiction or whatever. I actually don't play Felix as having those types of feelings. I play Felix fairly ace.

  [00:43:39] Star Master Jeff: Let's do it for real. Is Scott attracted to Voss? No, because you're Voss. Then why'd you say no? Yeah, why'd you say no so quickly? You're on camera. You're blushing hard.

  [00:43:51] Felix: I'm looking at Brian.

  [00:43:53] Star Master Jeff: Hey, don't bring me into this. Which one?

  [00:43:55] Thorne: I'm just here to flick the lights on and off.

  [00:43:57] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, you're flicking them. Episode 31 opens with three quiet vignettes before everything goes wrong. Felix and Robert are on the bridge. Thorne and Iso are cooking Claire Harrow's pot roast in the galley. And Hayley and Froggy are in the cargo bay with Froggy's special juice. And also a death stick that she talked him out of smoking.

  [00:44:19] Thorne: And then ratted on him.

  [00:44:21] Star Master Jeff: And ratted on him, and Haley said out loud to someone other than Iso that she is going to die in six months. Stephanie, why confide in Froggy?

  [00:44:31] Haleyy: Froggy really needs a friend, okay? He needs one so bad. He was going through it and...

  [00:44:37] Star Master Jeff: He had one.

  [00:44:38] Haleyy: Safe space for Haley in that moment.

  [00:44:41] Star Master Jeff: The cargo bay or talking with Froggy?

  [00:44:43] Haleyy: Probably talking with Froggy, because he was also really down in the dumps right there. Like the lockeep cards he keeps around were also thrashed and just really, really sad state. I think Haley is likely doing a lot of reflection on her life, including the way that she has treated Froggy at times, and wants him to be the person he wants to be. Embrace his agency.

  [00:45:08] Thorne: Let him use the shower.

  [00:45:09] Haleyy: Let him use the shower. Like — sorry, Reggie's getting a glow-up.

  [00:45:14] Thorne: You guys aren't even going to recognize him in season two. He's going to be wearing a greaser jacket. He's going to have his, like, a pompadour.

  [00:45:22] Haleyy: He's going to be like VP of marketing for GoodBot.

  [00:45:26] Robert: If he wants to become the voice of the wastes, I will absolutely glow up Reggie.

  [00:45:37] Thorne: He records voiceover lines for talking AI dumpsters and they call him the voice of the wastes.

  [00:45:43] Star Master Jeff: What if Froggy's last name starts with an S and he's really just another Victor?

  [00:45:46] Robert: Oh, Froggy Saren, can you imagine? I will so happily shoot him again.

  [00:45:53] Haleyy: Oh, my God. We get — no. Okay, so we get Froggy in the shower. Oh, calm down. Gets all done over. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

  [00:46:00] Felix: No, no, we get Froggy in the shower.

  [00:46:02] Haleyy: He gets all done over, like, Miss Congeniality.

  [00:46:04] Felix: Cut that, cut that, cut that.

  [00:46:05] Haleyy: Like, in Miss Congeniality, and then comes out, takes his glasses off. Is that Victor Strake? It's Froggy Sandra Bullock. It's Victor Strakes all the way down.

  [00:46:16] Star Master Jeff: Froggy Sabien. So Felix, you show up at the Prometheon station in that sector and you scan for Petey's data vault and you don't find it. So the whole Causeway 3 trail of the vault ending up at Prometheon station was not correct. How does it feel to reach the place the trail promised and find that the GM has rug-pulled you for his own amusement?

  [00:46:39] Felix: I mean, I played with you for a long time, so I expected it. So as Scott, it was not frustrating.

  [00:46:46] Star Master Jeff: Voss was there, though. That was true. I didn't pull all the rugs.

  [00:46:50] Felix: Felix was very frustrated, but had to compartmentalize. But also, it's reassuring that things go from here to other places, too. Right. And, you know, season one ends with us having some resources available to us. So, you know, maybe the trail is not so cold after all.

  [00:47:09] Star Master Jeff: Okay, I need one word to encapsulate your feelings on season one. One from each of you. Brian.

  [00:47:15] Robert: Come back to me. Easy. Two words. Scapegoats forever, motherfuckers. Nice. That's three words. Does not follow direction.

  [00:47:28] Haleyy: I have my word — I guess this is going to be cheesy — but it's going to be "continuing," because there's a lot of stuff with Haley that I want to keep going in on. And I can't just keep — you know, I don't want to keep it contained to like fan fiction that I write for my own character that I created. I want to make all of you guys have to participate in it with me.

  [00:47:48] Robert: In the fanfiction?

  [00:47:49] Haleyy: Yeah, is the one word fanfiction? The Hayley-specific stuff. You guys do not necessarily need to read the Hayley fanfiction.

  [00:47:57] Star Master Jeff: What's your one word for season one?

  [00:47:58] Haleyy: Oh, I already gave it.

  [00:48:00] Star Master Jeff: What was it?

  [00:48:01] Haleyy: Continuing.

  [00:48:03] Star Master Jeff: Oh, continuing. Okay. I missed the word and then I heard your explanation and I was like, is the word Hayley?

  [00:48:07] Thorne: Do you allow hyphenation?

  [00:48:11] Star Master Jeff: Actually, for you? Definitely. Oh. Yeah. We're on the first question of the speed round. Good, good, good. We're making good time.

  [00:48:22] Felix: Mine is evolution.

  [00:48:24] Thorne: Oh, Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball fan. Please don't speak of Dragon Ball Evolution in my presence ever again.

  [00:48:30] Star Master Jeff: It was Scott, not me. Brian, we're still waiting for your word. I called on you first. Angry. Okay, moving on. Because you guys brought up Dragon Ball Evolution, that is your one word that sums up season one: angry.

  [00:48:43] Thorne: Everything was good until this exact moment, yeah.

  [00:48:46] Star Master Jeff: It spoiled the whole thing. Now I call this the toilet season. Favorite NPC of the season — hey, that was my question. Oh, shit, but you only asked one person, so now we're gonna ask everyone. I really fucking like the cat doctor. Do you remember her name?

  [00:49:00] Felix: No, I just remember calling her cat doctor, even though she wasn't actually a cat.

  [00:49:04] Star Master Jeff: She wasn't a cat. I had just watched Lower Decks and kept doing that voice. Yeah, but she was so much fun to play against. She was awesome. We got to bring her back. That was a good one. Season two. Season two.

  [00:49:15] Haleyy: From the — there's a scratch.

  [00:49:18] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. The crazy doctor. Yeah. She was a favorite NPC. What else we got? I thought you're going to say Voss, but OK.

  [00:49:25] Haleyy: I thought he was so fucking funny.

  [00:49:27] Star Master Jeff: I wasn't thinking — it's all Scrapjack characters.

  [00:49:30] Felix: I wasn't thinking Voss or Froggy because I consider them like part of the crew and not necessarily as much NPCs, even though they are, but they're more like permanent fixtures. I make them too real.

  [00:49:41] Star Master Jeff: They don't seem fake to you.

  [00:49:42] Thorne: Oh, I was going to say Froggy, so now I can't because you took it from me by doing that. So thanks.

  [00:49:47] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, how about non-crew NPC? Oh, Roger — see, you just killed it, because I was gonna go with Iso, which nobody mentioned. Now she's crew, but she's just — Robert, that's what he likes about her, that's why — I'll go with — I love Iso, I'm really happy that you guys took her on, I think she's a great character. Literally every NPC that I have, I'm like, they're going to invite this person onto the crew. And I'd say 75% of the time that is not what happens.

  [00:50:19] Thorne: So when it happened with Iso, I was like, yes, they have a medic and she's really fun to play. I had just finally taken the Authority focus and I was like, man, we need more NPCs. So the first chance I get, I'm picking up an NPC.

  [00:50:30] Star Master Jeff: Okay, best decision the crew made all season. What do you guys think?

  [00:50:35] Haleyy: Shooting Sabien in the face when he was helping us hold the door closed.

  [00:50:39] Robert: Thank you. Yes. My cold-blooded murder.

  [00:50:44] Haleyy: Your Haley moment.

  [00:50:47] Star Master Jeff: The horde busts through the door and he falls sprawled on the floor. And Robert's like, "he's got a gun, just shoot Sabien in the face." I don't see — the way you looked at me. Felix's reaction is like, "what the hell are you doing, we don't have time for that." And you're like, "oh, sorry guys, but I don't regret it." And then Haley's like, "that was fucking awesome."

  [00:51:07] Robert: I just let a hundred zombies through the door for absolutely no reason. The person who was blocking the door and helping us, I just shot in the face. But you know what — wild card. And then, of course, Haley's just like, yes, yes, my back is burning.

  [00:51:25] Star Master Jeff: It leads us to Haley's line of, "have you ever asked the question, one woman versus a hundred horde members?" Because Haley's about to answer that for you. We never had that line if it wasn't for you killing Sabien. Any other best decisions or worst decisions?

  [00:51:41] Thorne: I could tell you a regret that I have, and it's walking away from the scapegoat when those Guardians of the Work were trying to break into it. That haunted me for months, even while we were playing and not playing. I was like, damn, that was stupid, why didn't we do something? But then I was like, they would have just killed you, dude. But I was like, no, we should have done something. Two of you were at like one hit point. Yeah, I know. I just still regretted it.

  [00:52:03] Robert: And we were just like, there's no way we don't all — like, that's the TPK.

  [00:52:09] Thorne: It felt so bad, though. I was like, man, that was just bad captaining.

  [00:52:13] Felix: I think a sneaky best, maybe also bad decision, is Steph saving the rope by jumping down the elevator shaft.

  [00:52:21] Star Master Jeff: Because we use that rope like three or four more times, like we just used it in the finale. Okay, just — I'm gonna blow your mind — but in the year 6000, rope is fucking cheap. You guys probably have like 10 miles of it on the ship, special rope. But you don't understand, we would have ruined all 10,000 feet if she didn't jump down.

  [00:52:43] Robert: We had no money until the last episode. We were pumped.

  [00:52:49] Haleyy: Oh my God, you're right.

  [00:52:51] Star Master Jeff: I remember how long it took — that conversation of how everyone was going to get down the shaft and the rope and everyone climbing down and then Hayley deciding to jump down and the conversation. We're talking like an hour of our session. Well, it's because climbing down and then talking about Hayley jumping down and trying to figure out how hurt she could get and being like, is this worth it? And then you're like, fuck it, I jump. And it was like, why didn't we spend an hour talking about the game?

  [00:53:18] Haleyy: He is a player — if I ever get frustrated by something, or I'm like, we're talking too long about this, I will just do the first thing that comes to my mind. And unfortunately, that makes life hard for other people. Yeah, yeah.

  [00:53:31] Felix: I think that puts you — best case.

  [00:53:33] Star Master Jeff: Go ahead.

  [00:53:34] Felix: I say the game measures in meters, and you measure in feet. You put us on a planet that had partial Earth gravity, so it took forever to do the math to figure out how much damage she was going to take.

  [00:53:45] Thorne: If only there was a table for velocity in this book. Like, what kind of system is this?

  [00:53:50] Star Master Jeff: Is there? No, that's what I mean. No, I was literally looking up the GURPS rule on it. Yeah.

  [00:53:57] Haleyy: Because I assume there is.

  [00:54:00] Star Master Jeff: I think that both Steph and Doja are finding themselves in a game with two other people that are very exacting like that. And that's why we end up in those scenarios. Because I think Scott and Brian are more likely to be like — oh, okay, so it's 20 meters, what is that in feet or yards, and what happens to the human body, 0.6 gravity, how fast would you fall, could you survive that, could you bring the rope — like figuring out all the little nuances and gives and takes. And I think Steph and Doja are like, it's more of a 50-50. I know I'm going to survive, so I fucking jump. I don't need to know any of this other stuff. And I think both are very valid.

  [00:54:36] Robert: I do not care if I survive. I am going to jump on that saw doctor and ride it like a fucking bucking bronco because it's going to be hilarious.

  [00:54:47] Thorne: And it was.

  [00:54:47] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I think Steph is like, I think I'll survive, so I jump. And I think Doja is like, I think it will be funny, so I jump.

  [00:54:57] Thorne: Okay, so — can I say another regret? Yeah, sure. The Aurora. Guys, I just wanted to keep it nice. That's all I wanted in life was to keep it nice. Oh no, the Aurora. Why did we bring Froggy? Why did I put his bloody corpse in there? It was my fault. I brought this on all of us.

  [00:55:14] Robert: Speaking of things that took us like an extra hour to deal with, was breaking into dealing with the loot of the Aurora and getting out of there for something that we ultimately just got like a billion bloodstains and gunshot holes in. Honestly, it was...

  [00:55:38] Haleyy: Worth it all for that one scene where the crew is in the car getting high off the burning flowers as we roll like supernatural characters or some shit to the port.

  [00:55:51] Star Master Jeff: And that is the smartest plan you guys have ever had. And Hayley came up with it. Goddamn right.

  [00:55:56] Haleyy: She was frustrated. She was like, let's just fucking do it.

  [00:56:00] Star Master Jeff: The gun with the AI-like laser guidance, the revolver that Felix gets in that episode, which is like episode six. He goes on to not use until episode 33. I don't think you even pulled it out.

  [00:56:11] Haleyy: Felix, did you know you had that gun?

  [00:56:13] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. And in episode 33, you're like, you're waiting for the authorization from Thorne. And you're like, oh, I need something to fucking do, I shoot some horde members. Bang, bang, bang. And you hate your shots. And you're like, cool, okay, put this away for another 30 episodes. Yeah.

  [00:56:26] Thorne: Yeah, season two finale.

  [00:56:28] Star Master Jeff: Okay, here's a loaded question. Who's the real captain of the Scapegoat? It's Thorne. No, no, the real one. Who actually runs the Scapegoat?

  [00:56:38] Felix: So Felix thinks he runs the Scapegoat, but he lets Thorne be the captain because the captain takes all the responsibility.

  [00:56:45] Thorne: I believe that from your perspective. You see yourself as the one who's responsible for the ship, but not the one who takes the fall.

  [00:56:51] Felix: I keep the ship running.

  [00:56:52] Thorne: Yeah, but nobody comes to you with their problems. Brian's pissed, guys. Sorry, Brian. So mad. This is the angriest I've ever been.

  [00:56:59] Felix: Listen, Brian, you should just turn down the shows. Brian, just try to evolve your feelings. Yeah.

  [00:57:05] Star Master Jeff: Evolve. That's your line. That's your Dragon Ball word for the season.

  [00:57:11] Robert: And I would say that, um, for Robert, Haley always had, like, as his previous commanding officer, there's always an element of that. And yet, I feel like Thorne has taken a lot of the captain role well. At the same time, there's been a distinct change from Thorne — for example, during the ship-to-ship battle, I'm pushing the ship at full speed, and Felix is like, "the engines are gonna give out," and Thorne's like, "yeah, you punch it, you absolutely punch it." Then the Promethean arc, Thorne has absolutely no time to process what's happening in the lab with Voss, with the hack information, and then sees Felix absolutely, straight out, cold-blooded murder some folks. I'm real curious, Brian, how has Thorne developed as a leader, and especially, like, when do you trust your team versus when do you let chaos reign?

  [00:58:38] Thorne: Well, generally, if someone's just killing people for no reason in cold blood, I don't really like that, so we'll start there. But no, it's a good question, because at the beginning, when I made this character, I didn't expect that I was making the captain. I thought I was making the comedy relief character. Like, I almost thought that you and I were swapped roles, that I was the comedy relief and you were the hotshot pilot. But it ended up being completely the other way around, which is really funny. So I started taking on this responsibility. Thorne's almost like a begrudging leader. The only thing he does as a leader is tell you guys to stop bickering. And the only reason it works is because each character has their own reason that they respect Thorne that even I don't necessarily understand. But if he says, guys, shut up and let's just go, then everyone shuts up and goes. But if Felix told Robert to shut up, he wouldn't shut up. And if Robert told Felix to shut up, he wouldn't shut up. So that's Thorne's job, is the ringleader. I think Jeff and I talked about that in like a previous SML episode — that ends up being what I do, is just keep you guys from going too far into your chaos zones, because you need that. The chaos is what powers, especially you two warriors — you're chaos powered. So if I tell you to only do exactly as you're told, you aren't living up to your potential. So I gotta let you be chaotic. But yeah, when you guys start doing stuff that's like, oh, I just want to light the Scapegoat on fire because it'll be funny, I would be like, yeah, maybe don't do that. Or, you know, I want to jump off of this building and see if I survive — maybe don't. Or, you know, I want to melt these scientists because I don't know why — yeah, maybe don't.

  [01:00:09] Robert: There wasn't even an awning down there.

  [01:00:11] Star Master Jeff: Why would you jump off the building? That's why I said you were the stick in the mud, because everyone else is trying to have fun and you're like, maybe don't jump off that building.

  [01:00:19] Thorne: Maybe don't melt those scientists.

  [01:00:21] Star Master Jeff: Yeah.

  [01:00:22] Felix: Just let me blow up the Aurora, Thorne. Just let me blow up the Aurora. Yeah, that was another one.

  [01:00:25] Thorne: You guys really wanted to blow that car up.

  [01:00:28] Star Master Jeff: It's come up lots of times.

  [01:00:30] Thorne: That's actually personal, though. That's not like, oh, it's dangerous, or I don't want you guys to. That's like, oh, I love this car. So, just for personal reasons, I don't want you guys to blow it up.

  [01:00:39] Felix: Dude, it's super dangerous, that sucker's nuclear. I just want you to know that that is one of Felix's main side motivations — blowing up the Aurora. Every time he's in there, he's looking at it and thinking about how he can hook up a timer to it or a remote detonator. And like, every excuse, I'm like, we could use the Aurora for this. We could.

  [01:00:58] Thorne: That's why I don't let you do the maintenance on it anymore. Ever since I found that weird timer in the glove compartment, I was like, Felix isn't coming here anymore.

  [01:01:05] Robert: Oh, I thought you were going to go with, ever since you won it in the Loki Pond game. Well, that, yeah, that too.

  [01:01:12] Thorne: I didn't win the car. I won the jacket and the gloves. You did. The car's every once in a while.

  [01:01:19] Star Master Jeff: Steph, what's your question for me?

  [01:01:20] Haleyy: I had a few, give me the best — honestly, we've kind of addressed some of them already. So one was, how do we fix this situation with Froggy, which might not be the best location for this, but I want Froggy to have a redemption arc, and we get a hashtag going like save Froggy, voice of the wasteland, send out an X, or — a Scott would say "send out a Truth" — wait, what's the Blue Sky thingy, what are they called — because I'm, well, I'm using Blue Sky these days in a very specific circumstance.

  [01:02:01] Thorne: I don't know what they call it. Like a butterfly? I don't know.

  [01:02:04] Haleyy: But to message the organ player at Fenway to play songs. And he does.

  [01:02:11] Robert: Wait, really? Nice.

  [01:02:12] Haleyy: He's awesome. His name's Josh Cantor. He's great. He takes requests on Blue Sky in-game.

  [01:02:17] Star Master Jeff: What is your question for me?

  [01:02:19] Haleyy: Sorry. Have you thought through how you'd handle a character death in the show? Because we do come into combats like that. And yeah.

  [01:02:32] Star Master Jeff: It is one of my greatest fears. We've had Thorne go down twice, one time almost dead. And Felix died in the loop, but you guys didn't know it was the loop yet, so I felt much more comfortable with that. And yeah, you guys are really good at playing the game the way it's meant to be played as an OSR game. I don't get a lot of, oh, there's bad guys, therefore the game master must have calculated all the different levels and the CRs and figured out if it was appropriate for us. I don't get that sense from you guys at all, because you guys are like, oh, there's one, there's a little kid up there. Hmm, should we approach?

  [01:03:14] Thorne: Maybe that lollipop is a sharpened stick.

  [01:03:16] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, it's like, Robert, just to be safe, take out that little kid. There isn't like a lot of you guys being like, "oh, five guys with guns, doop-de-doop-de-doop, we start shooting, roll initiative." So I don't have to worry about it.

  [01:03:30] Haleyy: Like, who plays a game like that?

  [01:03:32] Star Master Jeff: That's how D&D, like heroic fantasy, is — like, enemy, I'm going to go bash my head against it and we're going to see whose hit point pool goes down slower.

  [01:03:41] Thorne: If it's a heroic system, yeah, for sure, you just kill everything you see.

  [01:03:44] Star Master Jeff: But it's that we have, on some levels, extremely experienced gamers, but on some other levels, we have people who are so invested in the characters and their backgrounds and their survival right from episode one, that all of you have been, even in your most wildcard moments, like, I don't want to go so far that I could truly see this character dying in this situation. So I haven't really had to worry about that. But I do think about it, and it is a big fear of mine. And what I would do is we would figure out an appropriate send-off, and we'd have a Viking funeral. And then I'm assuming Stephanie would be rolling a new character.

  [01:04:27] Haleyy: And her name would be...

  [01:04:30] Star Master Jeff: Hayley with three.

  [01:04:32] Felix: I'm not saying who this would happen to, but she would have to roll a new character. Do you worry about creating a situation in the story where a character sacrifice would happen? Because I could very easily have seen — because we're such good role players — I could have seen me sacrificing Felix to save Dr. Voss in the finale.

  [01:04:53] Star Master Jeff: I picture you putting an award around your own neck like that. Obama. I was thinking the same thing. We're so good because we're such good role players.

  [01:05:00] Felix: Can you possibly imagine a universe where any one of us would sacrifice our character for the story?

  [01:05:07] Thorne: For sure.

  [01:05:07] Star Master Jeff: I tried to jump on a grenade like three times. I literally jumped on a grenade. Your ask is, do I worry, when you're creating the story? Unlike what Stephanie is saying, where it's more like a random death.

  [01:05:22] Haleyy: Yeah, it's like one of us dies in combat and stuff, rather than one of us wants to roll a new character and so we have time to narratively plan out a character.

  [01:05:32] Star Master Jeff: Right, there's kind of three different things. One is you're in a situation and you take random chaotic damage and you die. Another one is you guys go, I think I've tapped out this character and I'm really excited to start a new one — like someday Petey gets saved and Felix is like, I want to do a Space Cases and swap dimensions with Petey, now Felix is the AI and Petey's in real life, right, whatever, that's exciting to me. And then a moment where everyone's going to die and then Robert jumps on the grenade and covers it and gets capped like Captain America and just blows out his sternum and dies. I don't fear that at all because it's such a good story moment. The only one out of the three that I fear is that Thorne is going, "hey, guys," and then a bullet goes through his head because he wasn't doing well in combat. I fear that. That was that — anticlimactic, and only a way that OSR can do. So it could happen. But yeah, when there is a character death, it's likely going to be someone just takes a stray bullet and dies, and we're going to have to figure out how to make it dramatic later on.

  [01:06:33] Haleyy: There was the acid. I fear that, if only for the awkward conversation that we will be having, Jeff, where I advocate for Haley's survival in increasingly batshit ways.

  [01:06:44] Star Master Jeff: Well, when Hayley with two Ys dies, that's when we find out Hayley with one Y really was another person. Ooh. Yeah. No, no, she wasn't. She wasn't.

  [01:06:52] Robert: There's the acid where you're like, you take another sister, a secret sister.

  [01:06:57] Haleyy: It's very Sherlock season four.

  [01:06:59] Robert: Ooh, damage, Felix. And they're like, Robert, you take like 16 damage. You're fine though.

  [01:07:06] Star Master Jeff: And I'm rolling the same damage for everyone. I think last — in the very last episode, Thorne took like almost all of his hit points in damage from two bullets and a knife wound. Right.

  [01:07:16] Thorne: You took like 12 or 15 hit points or something like that.

  [01:07:18] Star Master Jeff: You took like 12 or something. So I'm doing real rolls. But I think what happens with Robert is that he ends up in front of like a horde — yeah, it was the horde and the acid, yeah, yeah, yeah — no one else is in front of the horde, and you're in front of the horde and I'm like, take 17 damage because there's like 30 horde people here. And you're like, ow, okay. And everyone else is going, Jesus Christ, yeah, I take four damage.

  [01:07:43] Thorne: I'm like, well, two more of those and I'm dead. And that's why you don't catch Thorne standing in front of the horde. That's why he's always behind Hayley and in front of Strake.

  [01:07:52] Haleyy: Was it this game where I didn't update my health in the beginning? I didn't roll my health correctly, and it took like three months for someone to realize it. And then — that sounds like I'd like to unfuck my character sheet.

  [01:08:08] Star Master Jeff: You were constantly, constantly, for session after session, being like, "guys, Haley's almost dead, oh, she can't take another one of those," and then it was like three months later, Brian's like, "why do we have six hit points, we're like level three." We can blame Foundry for that.

  [01:08:24] Haleyy: Yeah.

  [01:08:25] Star Master Jeff: You said the forbidden word, man. No, now I have to cut all of this out.

  [01:08:30] Haleyy: When we played 3.5 and I had spreadsheets to do this on, I never had this issue. Well, I think that's a really interesting thing about our show maybe, and how we end up playing now or in general, is that we have no maps, we have no diagrams for anything, which — so we end up role-playing so much more. But I'm not sure if other Let's Plays tend to have visuals to go off of.

  [01:08:59] Robert: We play a lot — yes, I definitely do. We were more like old school, sitting around with just books and character sheets and dice, even though we have the interface to do it. But yeah, I've run a lot of games where I love a map, but it's mostly to make combat more mechanically difficult, and that's really not the goal here. I don't know, I feel like the mechanics of combat with Stars Without Number is not as much about — like D&D is, let's optimize my character so that I can do maximum damage and make sure that I can screw around with what square I'm in. This is just like, I sit behind cover and I shoot him in the face. Do I kill that person?

  [01:10:04] Star Master Jeff: I think that's a really good way to put it. And not that I want to get on the D&D hate train, because obviously I learned on D&D — I played second edition all the way up to 3.5 and then a little bit of fifth later on — D&D is maximum rules with maximum lore, and it therefore attracts two very distinct sets of people that are also two very distinct sets of people we have here in this podcast. We have people who love rules. We have people that love lore and characters. Thankfully, the people that love rules also love lore and characters in this podcast. But Stephanie doesn't give a shit about rules.

  [01:10:38] Haleyy: Okay, I do care. I do. I do care.

  [01:10:41] Star Master Jeff: Bullshit. Have you read the book? I have a copy of it that I will have you read.

  [01:10:53] Haleyy: But when I'm sitting in my character building, I build my character and then I figure out what part of the rule book I need to utilize to shovel into the character.

  [01:11:05] Thorne: How do I do eight damage with my fists against enemies that on average have five health?

  [01:11:10] Star Master Jeff: How do I use the rules to serve the narrative I want to tell? Which is all I care about. So when sometimes we get into combat and it's like, how does shock work again, I'm just like, Brian, what is that, assistant GM, I know my place. I don't want to hold all that in my head and also be focusing on everyone's awesome backstories and how their relationships all work together and the things they care about and the things they fear. Those are the things that I want to focus on, and not waste the bandwidth on like, what is Felix supposed to roll to do a hack. I kind of offload that to you guys. And if you guys don't remember how it works for your character, I offload it to Brian to look it up if he doesn't know it offhand, which 99% of the time he knows it offhand because he has eidetic memory for really, really crunchy stuff.

  [01:11:54] Thorne: Only stupid shit.

  [01:11:56] Star Master Jeff: I didn't want to say stupid shit. I slowed my sentence down so I could think of a different thing to say at the end than stupid shit. Crunchy stuff.

  [01:12:02] Haleyy: It's not stupid to us.

  [01:12:04] Robert: No, it's not stupid to us, Brian. Which does remind me — you were like, what rule have you repeatedly got wrong. I have never used gunslinger shock. I have level two gunslinger. Not one time ever have I used the shock damage attached to it. Because you hit every time.

  [01:12:25] Star Master Jeff: That's true. You're like, "I think I'm gonna kill this guy," dice roll, that's 22 to hit for 17 damage, and everyone goes Jesus Christ, and then I have to find, every episode when you hit something, you do more damage than the last episode, and I have to find a bigger and bigger gunshot sound effect.

  [01:12:42] Robert: Pretty soon it's just going to be the sound of a space cruiser crashing into a moon. First time loop — I missed a Hayley at the beginning of our series a number of times.

  [01:12:57] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, it's true. The first time you missed, you were like, you just looked at your gun and you're like, "why bad man not fall down?" I remember we were like, don't you want to auto-hit?

  [01:13:06] Thorne: And you were like, no, I'm saving it. I've never heard those words before.

  [01:13:11] Star Master Jeff: He's never had to use his auto-hit. And when he had a chance, he was like, I'll save it because it's going to be a bigger hit later. But then he just kept missing. He was like, okay, fuck it, I use it. He just thought, this is weird, I'll just start hitting again next time, this must have been a weird fluke, well into — his to-hit bonus isn't even that good, he's just unparalleled lucky on his dice rolls. You're not wrong. Have you seen the to-hit bonus? It's a big plus six or something. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. So I want to talk a little bit about where we're going now. We've talked about where we've been, we've talked about how everyone loves each other and cherishes each other as role-playing specialists — Obama, putting an award on himself, really good season. Yeah, I'm just really good at role-playing, guys, everyone else is so awesome. Season one ends with the crew having been picked up by Novacrypt after having been stranded on the wreck of Prometheon Station. They now have a contract with Novacrypt that they could potentially take up moving into season two. Doja, starting with you, in one sentence, what did your character want way back in episode one, and what do they want now? Sort of an evolution of what they want.

  [01:14:29] Robert: So the beginning of the season was — I got a little Robert Ross there, excuse me — true, bionic eyes.

  [01:14:37] Star Master Jeff: I was going to go with bionic eyes. Do you have like a line you say to get into Robert Ross?

  [01:14:47] Robert: Which I've had multiple times where you've been like, I've tried to edit things out and "well, now" keeps getting edited out. So originally Robert Ross was — right after the birth of my son, and we had spent a lot of time in the hospital, and that was where a lot of medical bills were coming up, and talking with people, medical bankruptcy and how devastating that can be. I had multiple people in my life come to me with harrowing stories of the things that our medical system can do to people. So I incorporated that — the best lies are using what you know. At this point, though, Robert Ross is still trying to recover from medical bankruptcy, get those bionic eyes, and yet the Scapegoat has become his family. And long ago it's passed from just a payday to making sure that we make it out of this as a whole and potentially get to a safe and stable space. And really the most immediate need is Haley having six months to live because she has rocks in her brain. Okay, who's next?

  [01:16:32] Haleyy: Oh, okay. So Haley started off wanting to find her sister, then found out she is her sister. And also a consequence of that is that her brain is turning, becoming calcified, turning into rocks. So where she's at now is trying to figure out who she is. Because, you know, the realization that she's like Hayley 1-Y does not change that Haleyy with 2 Ys exists. And so trying to figure out what line there is there, if any, especially like in her backstory, the way that her brain coped with having to create Haleyy with 2 Ys, and the depth of that character now becoming one person. There's some pretty crazy stuff, like delusional levels of stuff she went through to keep this up. But yeah, figuring out who she is, the brain rocks, how to stop the brain rocks. We've had a lot of discussions about character death — no, this is not going to be one of them, we will find a solution, you guys.

  [01:17:40] Thorne: Love the confidence.

  [01:17:42] Haleyy: Yeah, oh yeah, no, I'm entirely confident in this. I have a lot of belief. I'm committed to the bit.

  [01:17:49] Thorne: I die a lot when Jeff is the game master, just saying.

  [01:17:52] Haleyy: I'm pretty sure the first game we played, my character would have died, except Jeff realized that it would have broken me as a person, so he killed me instead.

  [01:18:04] Star Master Jeff: Nice. You're talking about in D&D, to Walter the dragon?

  [01:18:08] Haleyy: Yeah, in 3.5, with Errolyn. Yeah.

  [01:18:11] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, no, people die, I don't have any control over it. Yeah, no, Doja did. The character formerly known as Doja did. Scott, Brian?

  [01:18:21] Thorne: Yeah, oh, go ahead, Scott, you go first. No, go ahead, go, go.

  [01:18:25] Felix: So, I mean, Felix's is pretty much the same, because it's about finding Petey and getting revenge, and he has not yet achieved either of those goals. There's been some maybe additional wrinkles right around wanting to help Dr. Voss — her goals fairly align with his — there's definitely some interest in the alien technology that he's had some exposure to. But those primary immediate goals are still very top of mind for Felix.

  [01:18:55] Thorne: You interrupted me to say that they're the same. Anyway, yeah. So for Thorne, at the beginning of season one, it was fresh out of prison, just had this contract bought off, pretty bleak outlook on the world. It was sort of like, I want to get revenge on this Nexus Corp that took over my company and framed me. His whole family was in on it, though, so it was this complicated web of how do I get revenge, who's the right person to get revenge on, and how do I get my family business back in the family. Now though, it's really similar to what Doja was saying, where there's this new entity, Scapegoat LLC, that is a real thing that actually exists now — that Thorne created for a bit, but he did create it. And every day he sees it as more like, what is Draxus Goods to me anymore, why not just take Scapegoat LLC and turn it into something. What is that something? Right now it's keeping this found family alive, keeping them from either killing each other or getting themselves killed, whatever that means, and growing it. Just like the more people we can get under our wing, then we have not just a bigger family, but also a stronger force. And maybe even there's something in Thorne's mind that thinks that he could even crack the foundation of this mega-corporate hellscape that this sector seems to be in, but that it starts with the little guys, and that's us. Brian, do you want to ask your question to me? I had a couple actually for you — ask him about the jihad. It was really specifically about really sensitive topics that can't stay in the final cut.

  [01:20:38] Star Master Jeff: It's all socially political.

  [01:20:40] Thorne: Yeah, basically only things that'll get you flamed or death threats sent to you. What's your favorite sexuality?

  [01:20:58] Star Master Jeff: There is a word for that, I don't know if that's what you're going for though.

  [01:21:09] Thorne: Ask me the question, Bridgekeeper, I'm not afraid. So there's more to creating this whole Dark Star Adventure Cast than writing sessions and running sessions and fiction and narratives and rules of a tabletop role-playing game. There's also a whole technical layer. There's the work that goes in — Doja was talking about it a little bit too with his question, where you have to decide what's making the final cut and you have to put together these cuts. So what do we do that makes that hard? Because I know you have a system, but I also know that there have been episodes that we joke, even as we're recording it, that this is going to be impossible to edit. And just because we love yanking your chain, I feel like that makes us lean further into the stupid shit that's making it difficult to edit. So I gotta ask, what are some of the hardest episodes to edit, or what are the certain things that we do, other than mentioning Foundry, that make things hard to edit?

  [01:22:21] Star Master Jeff: Well, first I love all of you and I love the performances that you give — I know you're starting with that because there's gonna be a "but" — but I really hate all of you and hate the performances you give. No. It's kind of a boring answer, but the hardest part is compression. If I'm given a really good session — we do four-hour sessions, but then we always have prep and warmups, we like to joke around a bunch and do improv warmups and stuff like that, maybe we get three hours — if those three hours are very tight, then I could turn it into two 45-minute sessions. I think one time I got three 45-minute sessions out of it. Generally, though, I'm staring down the barrel of three hours of audio that's going to be compressed into 45 minutes. And that means understanding the skeleton of the story that ended up playing out, understanding what leads are going to continue on and which were one-off and which things are just going to kind of be dead on arrival because they didn't work or don't really go anywhere. So I have to map all of that out. And then once I compress all that stuff out, I'm usually still left with like an hour and a half. So then it's going in and tightening up and taking out additional stuff. So obviously you guys joking around a bunch — I want to leave as much humor and character in there as I can, but also I have to balance it with the fact that you guys are very dedicated to role-playing. So when I'm looking at three hours of audio and almost all of it is dedicated role-playing that moves the plot forward, and there isn't as much joking around, the joking around has to go because I have to keep the plot points in. And it always breaks my heart, because, like Doja was saying before, there was an awesome side character named Chopper Choss in the auction episode. It was Robert doing a character, billionaire Chopper Choss, where he goes into the auction and Mr. Peanuts it up. But although it was very funny, it had no impact on the plot. And that was an even harder edit than normal, because the auction episodes were so inflated that if I kept everything, it would have turned into nine episodes. And I wanted it to be three, or preferably two, because you guys had already been on Sibylen for a hot minute. And I wanted to get you guys to Spigot and gone. In fact, I was like, maybe don't even go to Spigot, because we've been on Sibylen for so long.

  [01:24:21] Haleyy: Sibylen sucks.

  [01:24:23] Star Master Jeff: And it just makes me so sad to cut that stuff. So I'd say that's the hardest part. It's not something you guys are doing.

  [01:24:29] Felix: What I heard from that is be worse at role-playing and better at jokes.

  [01:24:33] Thorne: We're too good at this.

  [01:24:35] Star Master Jeff: If the question is specifically what do you guys do?

  [01:24:39] Haleyy: People have to get used to the idea of there being just a plain old world-building episode. Everyone misses a good filler episode. We like filler episodes.

  [01:24:50] Star Master Jeff: I love a filler episode.

  [01:24:51] Thorne: Yeah, say what you will, but they do add interesting character development.

  [01:24:55] Star Master Jeff: So, yeah, I mean, we could just take three hours and turn it into three one-hour sessions and I could do very minimal editing, but I don't know, we're kind of different than a normal actual play. We really screw it down tight to a really short 45-to-50-minute audio drama. And I love that. So I think that's what we bring that's a little bit different, but it just means we lose a lot of that fluff content.

  [01:25:20] Robert: And I feel like that niche is filled in a lot of, especially like D&D genres. Was there a reason that you specifically picked the more audio drama, tighter focus? Because it does add a lot of work on your side.

  [01:25:41] Thorne: Yeah, true.

  [01:25:43] Robert: Versus just doing a normal actual play? Which are very common — there's Critical Role, Dimension 20, and hundreds of others that do just that. Some that we collaborate with.

  [01:25:56] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I mean, the simple answer is that I'm producing a show that I myself would listen to, and I don't listen to actual plays.

  [01:26:06] Thorne: Honestly, same, I've tried.

  [01:26:07] Star Master Jeff: I love Brennan Lee Mulligan. I love Matt Mercer as people, and their improv content is great, and the clips on their shows are great, but I cannot finish a single episode of either of those. I've listened to our sister shows and I think they're great, but I just can't listen to that much content that has that much player involvement.

  [01:26:30] Thorne: You know what I mean? It gets me antsy, because I want to go play. If I'm watching an actual play, I just want to turn it off and go play.

  [01:26:36] Star Master Jeff: I want the plot. So when there's like three hours of people playing Mothership, it's like, cool, they look like they're having a lot of fun, but if they stripped it down to the 45 minutes that actually mattered to the plot, I would also be having fun. But that's just me and personal opinion — the parasocial need to watch people and really get into the players as well kind of falls flat on me, except for with Dropout, because I'm obsessed with Dropout, so I'll be totally parasocial about them. But I have a hard time with — so the short is, I'm producing a show that I myself would listen to, and I think that the fans that I've interacted with, especially the ones on Patreon, because I chat with them quite often, multiples of them have been like, "hey, I really appreciate that your fucking podcast stands on business." We had a new patron join recently and they said that and I was like, fuck yeah, we do stand on business. That made me feel really good that we had chosen the right direction, even though it's more work.

  [01:27:35] Thorne: I would say that I wouldn't really enjoy them if it was an actual play. Completely honest, when we started this, that was my vision — okay, this is going to be a thing that we do for fun, I love playing tabletop games, but I don't see myself watching these episodes because I can't get through an actual play. It's just not for me.

  [01:27:51] Star Master Jeff: But I love audiobooks. I love the idea of an audio drama. So yeah, I mean, it works, I love it. I love audiobooks, I love audio podcasts, especially like mystery or horror ones, I listen to a lot of those. So when I'm editing an episode, I'm like, maybe one more sound effect, how can I ramp up the drama on this. Because you guys do really good on sustaining character and getting drama and tension, but then when I listen to it, I'm like, how would an expert editor produce this to use the vocal performances to elevate it. And I'm always trying to look for that, and it's just a whole new fun skill.

  [01:28:23] Thorne: Yeah, I feel like you probably had to develop a ton of different new skills. I know you've done some video editing and even directing in the past, but there's so much that goes into the technical side of this that isn't just running a D&D game. Excuse me, I know it's not D&D, but even that — getting somebody to just run a game is pretty hard. So getting people together to run a game, record it, actually care about keeping the plot consistent, actually care about creating drama, and actually care about making the final product sound really good and make sure the audio is tight and that there aren't annoying plosives — like, who gives a crap about that, except when you're listening, it matters a lot. So all that stuff is extra.

  [01:29:05] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, as you guys know, some of you from previous games that I've run, I am extremely selective as to who I invite to my games, because I put a lot of effort into them. So I try to find the people who are going to put effort in. So I think when I started the Ascension game, which people can go to my itch and download it for free — there's a whole campaign world book for free — I handwrote, in calligraphy style letters, and mailed them out to everyone with wax seals. Scott, you got one, right? Because the first session was like a ball.

  [01:29:36] Thorne: You joined later, I wasn't in it actually, not till later. Season nine. Yeah, later. Later.

  [01:29:42] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, so that first season I sent out letters and I was like very serious. I had a list of like 30 people and I whittled it down, because the thing is, when you're a GM, everyone wants to be your friend, so I have no shortage of people to choose from. But yeah, and that went into this too. So I think I chose people that are really, really good and have really good chemistry, even though you guys all haven't really hung out before the podcast necessarily. And I think that's probably the most important decision that I've made. And all the other stuff, learning audio editing and getting rid of plosives, and even running the game — I've been running games for whatever, 30 years, who cares, that's easy, that's second nature, I never stopped doing it, I've been doing it every week for 30 years. The hard part was finding the right people, and I think you guys are the right people. So we made the shortlist for you, kudos to you for catching my eye. You guys can't see it, but I'm patting myself on the back, he's given himself an award, Obama style. So someone out there is about to press play on episode one — hopefully they're not listening to this SML and about to press play on episode one for the first time, but maybe Doja, if you could talk to that person, and you could tell them something, anything, what would you tell them?

  [01:30:55] Robert: I mean, it's the classic "stick with it," because we grow a lot. I remember the first even just session zeros that we did where it was still kind of — I mean, I know everybody in the group, but creating a new system and a new set of characters that we can all kind of gel into in a new crew takes some time to develop, and I think we actually hit it pretty quickly. I think, because we all kind of know each other and we're all on the same page, it gelled pretty fast. And yet the stepwise improvements and iterations that we've done, mostly because of you, Jeff — gotta give you your kudos here — have been monumental, which — there we've had other discussions on Discord forums and other things where we're like, where would you start, and it's usually not episode one, it's usually more around Scrapjacks. We tend to tell people, if you want to just get a little taste of the show, check out Scrapjacks, it's great on its own, and then go back to episode one. But yeah, we get better at everything — the acting gets better, the story continues, the editing gets better, we buy better mics.

  [01:32:26] Felix: So it might even be something in the future where we're like, hey, just start with season two, because we've kind of hit our fucking groove by then, and then once you love us, go back to season one. Well, I mean, we're always tweaking, right — we've just started doing on-camera stuff now that we have a better recording setup, so that we don't worry about audio lag due to video coming across networks, and it's allowing for more engagement. You know, I didn't really know Doja or Steph before we started this, and so it's now allowed for more of that kind of connectivity. So yeah, we keep getting better.

  [01:32:55] Star Master Jeff: Scott, what would you tell people that are just clicking play on episode one? Let's go round robin.

  [01:32:59] Felix: I would tell them scapegoats forever. That's it.

  [01:33:04] Thorne: I would tell them that I do pick a voice eventually.

  [01:33:09] Star Master Jeff: I was just listening to that clip of like episode five, Felix repairing something that I'd cut out, and it just sounds like Brian being like, "oh, can I give you a hammer?" I'm like, who the fuck is this? It's like a really bad mic too. You're like "hammer." Who was on this? Who was on the show?

  [01:33:27] Thorne: Dude, the delivery was really nasally at the beginning, really nasally. And I brought the nasal down as we went.

  [01:33:34] Robert: It took you a hot minute to find cork.

  [01:33:38] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, cork. I think it was very interesting because you were super nasally, but you had a Fry from Futurama affectation when you go back and listen to those early ones. And then you definitely turned into cork. And I think you've refined it into something that is Thorne.

  [01:33:55] Thorne: While I loved the comparisons, as soon as you guys started calling me cork, I was like, man, obviously I need to adjust myself, I gotta switch this up. Steph, what do you think?

  [01:34:03] Star Master Jeff: What would you tell someone that's about to press play on episode one?

  [01:34:06] Haleyy: It's about family. And I don't know, honestly, it would be maybe not start at episode one — go to the Wafisa arc or start at Scrapjacks. Scrapjacks is like such a good intro to the personalities and where the show's going and the things that you're going to get a lot more of because of how we respond to it. But yeah.

  [01:34:29] Star Master Jeff: I would definitely say do go back and listen to episode one, because it sets up the plot. What version of it are we even on?

  [01:34:36] Felix: You get Rogers, you get Redshift Revelry, you get Death Stick.

  [01:34:40] Haleyy: Oh my god, you're right. Yeah, that is awesome. All that's coming.

  [01:34:43] Star Master Jeff: Rustclaw. I thought of it. Rustclaw. You get Rustclaw. There's so many classics, dude.

  [01:34:48] Haleyy: Yeah, you get the growth of Gravity Grease in the afro — the whole Robert Ross Grease arc is starting there. We get Door Guy — Door Guy is born on episode one, Door Guy is the longest running. That's amazing to me, that I don't really think about episode one, but I know all of these things, and if you said what episode would those come from, I would not say episode one.

  [01:35:14] Star Master Jeff: You have to remember that it's on Camiri 4, which is episodes 1 and 2. I think it was Camiri? Camiria?

  [01:35:19] Felix: No, no, no.

  [01:35:23] Star Master Jeff: I say it about 10 different ways in the first five episodes before I lock it down and figure it out. I'm like, what the hell did I write? That's before I got my Obsidian vault set up and I could quickly search, like, what the fuck did I call that space station? But in the moment I'm like, Camiri, Camiri 10, Camiri 4. Oh, I forgot.

  [01:35:40] Robert: I forgot that Door Guy started so early.

  [01:35:45] Thorne: I actually have an interesting group question, if you have room for it. Go for it. So, Door Guy is the segue into this — do any of you, this is for everybody, and I can tell you mine too if you want, have any unexpected schticks that your character has that you had no intention of giving them, and now you're stuck with it, or things that you love, schticks that other people have that you really like? Loki Pond — like the whole Loki Pond arc.

  [01:36:13] Robert: And we went way too deep into that. We literally didn't.

  [01:36:16] Haleyy: We gotta bring it back.

  [01:36:18] Thorne: Now that things have settled down, we're gonna start season two with Robert and Thorne getting back from a Loki Pond tournament, you know?

  [01:36:25] Robert: I also saw that you linked at one point the VGC, and I was like, oh my God, I used to go to VGC tournaments.

  [01:36:34] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. He was trying to sell me on VGC, in the last SML. "Champions is free," I'm gonna tell you, that's what I said, he's like, you sound like you're trying to sell me something. I said it's free, he was like, I am.

  [01:36:45] Felix: First taste, the first taste is free, Jeff. Yeah, he's trying to cork me. Cork me, Brian. Mine is obviously the Door Guy thing — that just has come out of nowhere and become like Felix's whole personality.

  [01:36:59] Thorne: I feel like if you were a rogue with a set of lockpicks, you would not mind the comparison, but for some reason Felix really does.

  [01:37:06] Felix: Well, it's because he asks me to do it when it's just a normal door. There's not even a computer stuff, it's just a door.

  [01:37:13] Star Master Jeff: It's a manual door.

  [01:37:14] Felix: This is a door to open. All of a sudden I'm jumping through space because I'm the Door Guy.

  [01:37:19] Star Master Jeff: Doja's very good at picking on people in that way. You got one, Steph?

  [01:37:26] Felix: I mean, the orange juice thing is the big one for Haley.

  [01:37:28] Haleyy: Yeah, that's what I was going to say, is the orange juice thing, because I've been hammering it into the ground for like over a year. And I really clung to that as something that's very Haley-driven. It's either that or the cookbook, which is — you don't put a named thing like that in a story and then just have it not do anything.

  [01:38:04] Star Master Jeff: Okay, I promise you that in season two we will reveal more about the cookbook.

  [01:38:09] Haleyy: Really? Another recipe.

  [01:38:11] Star Master Jeff: Crème brûlée coming up. Equivalent exchange. Oh wait, two of the pages were stuck together, there's a crème brûlée recipe we never saw.

  [01:38:20] Robert: That's a whole episode, baby. Shocked you didn't go with Reggie's cat.

  [01:38:27] Star Master Jeff: That's another great one. Percival. I love Percival. I'm going to go with Percival. Percival is in the art. The one piece of crew art we have, Percy's in it. Dr. Voss and Percy are the two NPCs in it.

  [01:38:40] Haleyy: How did we get Percy again?

  [01:38:41] Thorne: I'm pretty sure that we found Percy on Scrapjacks somehow. We left Scrapjacks with one more cat than we arrived with.

  [01:38:48] Robert: From the void. It is a demon cat from the void. I think Froggy birthed it.

  [01:38:56] Thorne: Also unconfirmed.

  [01:38:58] Haleyy: I think I was on the Froggy-birthed-it side.

  [01:39:01] Thorne: Wait, is Froggy a mammal or does he lay eggs? We don't know. I'm confirmed.

  [01:39:05] Haleyy: This is so interesting.

  [01:39:07] Felix: Have you seen his downstairs mix-up?

  [01:39:10] Star Master Jeff: On Scrapjacks, Froggy found a cat and took the cat, and then you guys were like, what, you guys have a fucking cat, where'd that come from, and he's like, Scrapjacks, you left me on a ship.

  [01:39:21] Haleyy: Oh my god, he does lay eggs. Okay.

  [01:39:24] Star Master Jeff: Unconfirmed. It's unconfirmed.

  [01:39:26] UNKNOWN: 100%.

  [01:39:26] Star Master Jeff: Until someone sees Froggy either lay an egg or give birth mammalian style.

  [01:39:33] Haleyy: We don't know. I mean, he has hair.

  [01:39:35] Thorne: We can't confirm anything.

  [01:39:36] Robert: Is the hair real?

  [01:39:37] Thorne: Is he actually furry?

  [01:39:38] Haleyy: What was he talking about, is the voice of the wastes?

  [01:39:40] Thorne: It's fake hair. It's been fake hair the whole time. Yeah, maybe he just is a frog, I don't know. All right, he's not a frog. I gotta say my favorite thing about Thorne, though, is that he's become a bit of a Lothario, he's a lover boy, he's seducing all the ladies everywhere we go. That was my example of an unexpected schtick, because I told you that I planned for Thorne to be the comic relief — I thought I was gonna be the little merchant you guys dragged along who was clumsy and goofy and a little portly, and I was gonna be the punching bag, and that did not happen. We got to Scrapjacks and Jeff was like, you know what, Thorne has a lot of charisma, that means he's hot.

  [01:40:19] Star Master Jeff: And I was like, okay. You walked in to talk to Yana 7, and for some reason two neurons crashed together in my brain, and I was like, Thorne's got crazy charisma, so Yana is hot for captain. And it just became a thing.

  [01:40:34] Haleyy: But that's your thing.

  [01:40:36] Thorne: Yeah, I'm fine with it, but it was an unexpected one for sure.

  [01:40:40] Star Master Jeff: I think it grew from that, in that same episode, out from Thorne's — his people from his planet are hot. And now we gotta go visit his planet where everyone is a straight hottie.

  [01:40:51] Felix: So you're like Betazoids, to bring it back to the start.

  [01:40:54] Thorne: He's like a Betazoid, yeah. So less Ferengi, way more Betazoid. What's the name of your planet again?

  [01:41:01] Star Master Jeff: Zephyrus 3. Oh, Zephyrus 3. Right. The people from Zephyrus 3. Yum, yum.

  [01:41:06] Felix: Are you guys also nude at weddings?

  [01:41:09] Thorne: It's optional. Yeah.

  [01:41:10] Star Master Jeff: They're never nude, so they're always wearing jean shorts on Zephyrus 3. That's canon though. I don't like that one. Everyone brought multiple questions. Does anyone have any other questions they wish to ask anyone — the cast, specific people, or do we get through them all?

  [01:41:26] Thorne: I do have one more, but I just went.

  [01:41:28] Felix: I guess I wanted to ask Steph — my question that I brought for a cast member was, Steph, after playing with you for a while now, and this and the one-shots, you're deep into backstory, right, you flesh out a complicated backstory to inform the way that you play the character. Were there any specific inspirations for Hayley that you've pulled from or continue to pull from as you develop her?

  [01:41:50] Haleyy: I definitely have played a very specific kind of character in almost every TTRPG that I have done, except for maybe one or two games out of five now, I think. And I feel like I'm kind of showing myself a bit here — Hayley is very much based off of the self-righteous sort of paladin-style character. When I come up with a character, I am almost always thinking through what are some other characters that I like that I would like to emulate here, or archetypes, et cetera. For the style of character that Hayley now is, it's very much like a righteous knight sort of paladin style character who wants to do good, but is like kind of just — she's a little basic when I lay it out like this. But I'm trying to think through the characters that I tend to base my RPG characters off of — this mix of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Utena from Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Brigitte from Overwatch.

  [01:43:02] Star Master Jeff: That pretty much sums up Haley, I think, actually.

  [01:43:05] Haleyy: Yeah, Utena and Brigitte. And then I fill in backstory that's appropriate for what comes out of that in the universe, which is really fun. There's like a whole school arc for Hayley that I've just never really been able to get into. She has actual in-depth rivalries going on. It's on the Patreon.

  [01:43:25] Star Master Jeff: You've written pages of fanfic that we release one story at a time on Patreon. You've done like a bunch of them. We should start that back up.

  [01:43:33] Felix: It's like a Persona game, but it's Hayley.

  [01:43:35] Haleyy: Yeah, it's just Hayley.

  [01:43:37] Robert: Yeah, Hero Academia, Hayley only.

  [01:43:41] Haleyy: Oh my God, someday we get to do a side episode where we go to Hayley's class reunion.

  [01:43:50] Star Master Jeff: Ooh. I'm making a note of it now. I don't even have to write that adventure. I don't have to be like, they go there.

  [01:43:55] Haleyy: I will write it.

  [01:43:56] Star Master Jeff: Yep. Yeah, you can run it.

  [01:43:58] Haleyy: Oh, no, no, that's terrifying. But I do like doing one-shots, though, also, where I figure out a character or a bit, such as the one-shot with Jerry's Berries, where she is a berry salesperson. I love that.

  [01:44:12] Star Master Jeff: Spoilers.

  [01:44:12] Haleyy: Oh, no, we did that one.

  [01:44:15] Robert: Did that come out yet?

  [01:44:16] Star Master Jeff: It did, yeah. That was The Witch Is Dead, not Mouse Ritter. The Witch Is Dead. Mouse Ritter comes out — that's the next episode.

  [01:44:23] Haleyy: My Lasers and Feelings character, which is literally just Sailor Moon.

  [01:44:28] Star Master Jeff: In a universe where she's been commoditized. So she has action figures and yeah. Doja, did you have a question? I thought I saw you.

  [01:44:35] Robert: Oh yeah, I do actually. And we've gone through from the beginning into especially the Promethean and time resets, but also with Robert and Hayley kind of messing with time and perception — what early scenes did people go in reflecting in hindsight on, have we gone through where, kind of looking back on it, we may not have been fully truthful narrators?

  [01:45:15] Thorne: I could think of at least a couple from the earliest of early days, but we smoothed them out. Like, how anybody knew Thorne at the beginning definitely was flexible. I think we had some side conversations, but what actually ended up being canon definitely changed from what we were thinking at the beginning. That's one that I can think of.

  [01:45:35] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I think we hit Thorne's focus episode and started really deep diving into his backstory, and that's where a lot of that crystallized. Because we were like, how long was he in jail, what's he doing now that he's out of jail, how could he possibly have known people at X-Y-Z timeframe. So it pretty much shook out that only Felix knew him, because he had done work release jobs.

  [01:45:56] Thorne: Yeah.

  [01:45:57] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, that's — I mean, that might be the most glaring example that I can think of, besides Haley being an unreliable narrator because she is cuckoo.

  [01:46:05] Thorne: And also the mechanics of Haley's character changing, but that's a little bit different, that's not a narrative inconsistency, that's just a mechanical one.

  [01:46:13] Star Master Jeff: How about you, Doja, do you have one?

  [01:46:14] Thorne: Yeah, do you have one in mind?

  [01:46:15] Robert: Yeah, because it was me lying about Haley's character the entire time. That was kind of why I thought about it, because in retrospect, Robert, from theoretically episode one, knew. Now, did we have that all fleshed out? Not really. But theoretically I should have known at that time.

  [01:46:45] Thorne: It almost makes it better, though. There are so many times where things that you said now are just a complete lie that give credibility to Thorne and Felix in your flashback of being like, why are you saying this stuff, everything you say is nonsense — and then having to realize that some of it's maybe true was just us behind the scenes finally dialing in what is true.

  [01:47:08] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, there's two things going on here, and both of them are awesome. One is, I knew that we were going to bring Hayley on this journey of psionic awakening, so I did have parts of that mapped out. But the Hayley-with-two-Ys-and-her-sister-has-one-Y thing — I was like, that's fucking weird, how do I make that more serious in-world. That evolved as we went. So we really have two sides of that coin going on. One is we kind of plan some stuff out so that we can build towards it — like you guys have goals and dreams and you're reaching for that. And then there's things that have to kind of happen to progress the story in the way that all of us have agreed that we want to do. So we're all working towards it, there's no reason to not do it. The other side of it is it's almost all completely improv. So as we're going, we do discover these fun little tidbits, like Doja is talking about, where it's like, oh, this means my kooky character has been acting so irrational this whole time and keeping this secret, and once the secret is revealed and the fact that he has known about the secret puts everything into perspective for the way that he and Haley have been acting. And I was like, just a fun quirk of improv that we were able to align on at the table, which I thought was — it's just a testament to how well everyone commits to the bit, really. No one's going to the table being like, how do I do a very specific thing out of context. Everyone's going to the table being like, I have the burden of 32 episodes on my shoulders, and I'm going to commit to the consistency as hard as I can, regardless of what that means. And I think that everyone has done that. It's been pretty good. It's very rare that I'm in an episode and I'm like, oh, this isn't consistent. It's super rare.

  [01:48:54] Thorne: Old, rusty, and illegal in 48 states. You guys think we should close this one out? Give me your weird ships. I need your weird ships, besides the obvious Felix and Voss — that's too easy. I need weird ships.

  [01:49:11] Felix: Did you guys listen to my SML where I talked about the ships?

  [01:49:15] Thorne: I missed all your ships. Give me your weird ships. It's Robert and Froggy, that's one of mine. Yep, that is definitely.

  [01:49:24] Haleyy: You know what, enemies to lovers never really exists.

  [01:49:26] Star Master Jeff: Yep, yep, yep. Heated rivalry.

  [01:49:28] Haleyy: Yeah.

  [01:49:29] Star Master Jeff: Robert.

  [01:49:30] Haleyy: There is no heated rivalry in Felix. Sorry. Froggy is not in a heated rivalry style story, actually.

  [01:49:39] Star Master Jeff: Froggy and Robert. The thing about Froggy and Robert is that they're both equals, and they really challenge each other in that way.

  [01:49:47] Thorne: Both on and off the ice. We are going with Frogbert, right? Yeah, okay, good.

  [01:49:52] Felix: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I did Thorne and Felix.

  [01:49:57] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, wow, we have the exact same ships. Damn. Voss and the Concordant, they just clink together.

  [01:50:05] Felix: I honestly, I mean, I wasn't sure for Haley, if I'm being honest. I didn't know who to ship Haley with. I think it was — we came up with one, I thought, in the SML — I would probably ship Haley and Brain Rocks. Haley and Brain Rocks. Also clink together. I said Haley and the Fork. Haley 1 and Haley 2. I said Haley and the Fork. Oh, it's Fork. Oh, Haley and the Fork. And Hayley and Roger.

  [01:50:33] Haleyy: Oh, Hayley and Roger. That is so much drama there. Wow.

  [01:50:37] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, he's amazing, and he's got like a 30-year-old son — oh, he was that old, I thought he was like 19 — no, the son's like 17, he's like 19.

  [01:50:45] Haleyy: Hayley's been writing letters.

  [01:50:49] Star Master Jeff: He's like 17. Wait, to the 17-year-old son?

  [01:50:51] Haleyy: No, to Roger.

  [01:50:52] Star Master Jeff: I think it's Robert and Iso, because that's a weird ship. Iso and Cat Doctor. But Iso and Robert might work. So here's the thing about Robert and Cat Doctor — they're too dang similar. Iso and Cat Doctor, yeah. I think Hayley and Buddy maybe — no, she needs someone that's more chipper in her life.

  [01:51:49] Haleyy: That's the joy of her character.

  [01:51:51] Star Master Jeff: Okay, she doesn't need — but there is a hole, a joy hole, and Buddy is a joyful person.

  [01:51:59] Haleyy: Hayley — sorry, I have latched onto the insane drama that is Hayley and Roger and Roger's family and this crazy tour they did when she was forming the group that led her on this crazy journey. And now she's having to hear herself out while also questioning the ethics of non-monogamy because Roger's married.

  [01:52:28] Star Master Jeff: Fanfiction.net slash Dark Star Adventure Cast slash Haley slash Robert.

  [01:52:33] Haleyy: It's a whole White Lotus thing. Oh my gosh.

  [01:52:37] Thorne: Okay, is that everyone's ships? I was trying to think of one for Victor Strake, but I guess we don't have one.

  [01:52:42] Haleyy: Yeah, Victor Strake and the doctors that were in that acid lab.

  [01:52:45] Thorne: Well, no, I was trying — Petra and Ren, now I need to know. But I was thinking Victor Strake with — you guys remember the guy from Scrapjacks? Not Sabien, but like the Sabien equivalent on Scrapjacks.

  [01:52:58] Robert: Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, the one that you chit-chatted with the whole time? Brother whatever. Brother Lawrence.

  [01:53:06] Star Master Jeff: Heloc? Yeah.

  [01:53:08] Felix: All I remember is the old lady that Hayley folded in half.

  [01:53:12] Robert: Oh, mother...

  [01:53:15] Star Master Jeff: That was Mother whatever. Oh, mother. How does Haley — she goes, "oh, mother," and then she just fucking folds her in half. Crunch.

  [01:53:30] Haleyy: And the woman's like, "oh, Haley did that." Oh, no.

  [01:53:34] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, but she was going to shoot you with a shotgun already. And we established that she had bones of steel.

  [01:53:39] Felix: She did. Yeah. Nobody could hurt her.

  [01:53:41] Star Master Jeff: And then you were just like, weren't you?

  [01:53:43] Felix: You were like an old-timey strongman with a steel bar, but it was an old lady. I have one more ship, and it's a thruple ship. It's Petra, Ren, and the acid. Get out of here.

  [01:53:56] Thorne: You were just uniting things that wanted to be together. I thought the thruple was going to be Vera Corbin, Mere Proust, and whatever that other woman's name was. Sally Galen.

  [01:54:08] Haleyy: Yeah.

  [01:54:08] Robert: Yeah.

  [01:54:08] Thorne: The Concordant plus. The Concordant is the name of their throuple. Yes.

  [01:54:12] Robert: Nobody gave Vera and Reggie a ship. No, because they are so platonic.

  [01:54:18] Thorne: They're like cripplingly platonic.

  [01:54:20] Haleyy: It's like, I don't know.

  [01:54:23] Thorne: I see Froggy with Robert way before Vera. I'm sorry. I've seen him multiple times. Exactly.

  [01:54:31] Felix: The fire is there. I think Robert's stinking after Froggy's little hidey hole every night. I think something's going on.

  [01:54:39] Haleyy: Wait, his what? Why do you think it's so sticky? No.

  [01:54:44] Star Master Jeff: He's doing what to his hidey hole?

  [01:54:46] Haleyy: Does he take the security of Europe that he's had for so long? Or walk the more dangerous route with Robert?

  [01:54:55] Star Master Jeff: She's his wingman.

  [01:54:56] Haleyy: Dangerous because he keeps dying.

  [01:54:58] Star Master Jeff: I think Froggy and Robert would work because I think couples that survive are couples that argue. I think the couples that don't argue let it fester. And I think Froggy and Robert always get it right out in the open right away. And I think that's why they would survive.

  [01:55:11] Haleyy: I think that is flawed and bad and they won't survive and they're going to take the ship down with us. They need to just conflict in a reasonable way.

  [01:55:19] Star Master Jeff: But I think you just want Froggy to end up with Vera, but she's locked inside of a metal orb now, so...

  [01:55:26] Robert: I was going to go with tune into season two to find out.

  [01:55:30] Star Master Jeff: Froggy gets his hidey hole visited by Robert. Froggy is not really reconciled.

  [01:55:39] Haleyy: Tune into season two for Hayley's character assassination as she goes after a married man because she wants to go hang out at his bar. Yeah.

  [01:55:49] Felix: We're doing the adulterers tour in season two. Is season two going to be the horny season?

  [01:55:54] Haleyy: No.

  [01:55:54] Robert: Sexy Battle Wizards take a backseat in season two.

  [01:55:59] Haleyy: Dude, Sexy Battle Wizards.

  [01:56:01] Star Master Jeff: We recorded a one-shot called Sexy Battle Wizards where the whole point is that the game is horny and we took it too far. I have not edited it yet, but I am going to edit it and I am going to put it on Patreon only with a disclaimer saying this is too dang horny.

  [01:56:18] Haleyy: Stephanie talks about centaurs for a really long time. There are centaurs everywhere.

  [01:56:25] Star Master Jeff: Stephanie is very centaur-anatomy focused.

  [01:56:32] Felix: It comes up a lot. I'm so angry I wasn't there.

  [01:56:38] Star Master Jeff: Oh, man. You were invited. And Stephanie was there for Mouse Ritter.

  [01:56:42] Haleyy: Head of the horse, legs of a man. What can I say?

  [01:56:46] Star Master Jeff: Yep. Were you a man in that one?

  [01:56:48] Haleyy: No, no. I think — I forgot what I...

  [01:56:50] Star Master Jeff: I can't remember. I think everyone was kind of genderless. I think it was just sort of a horny, amorphous blob with centaurs.

  [01:56:57] Haleyy: I'm pretty sure I had a really strong rivalry going with someone in that universe who was also...

  [01:57:03] Star Master Jeff: I wasn't sure what was coming next. I'm not going to reveal what happens, but immediately I knew they weren't going to get anywhere because they were just too dang crazy that night. It's like everyone had three cups of coffee. So I was like, the plot is you're going to get teleported to a hill, you have to walk to the bottom of the hill, that's it, that's the fucking plot. And I don't think we made it off the hill the entire time. You made it off the hill in the last 10 minutes, and then you walked down the hill and did the met-the-last-NPC thing. The entire adventure takes place on the top of a hill with various centaurs. And you guys are just like, now we're staying here, we're just taking centaurs one after the other.

  [01:57:50] Haleyy: Just one centaur after another. About this whole thing, just in all caps: I have Jessa Triska, went to Margo's 13th birthday party, and she is a bitch, and she always has been. All caps. I gotta listen to it. I am gonna edit it down. It's gonna be Patreon only.

  [01:58:11] Star Master Jeff: It's too horny. Oh my God. But we're going to do, during the break, we're going to do Mouse Ritter. We have like four Mouse Ritter episodes we're going to put out. And then we have a Knave episode or two that are going to come out. And then we're back with season two.

  [01:58:25] Robert: Those episodes are only slightly less horny.

  [01:58:29] Felix: The Mouser ones are very neutral. I play a weird Boston-accented mouse in that one, so stay tuned for a weird accent from me.

  [01:58:38] Thorne: Yeah, I was the Dungeon Master, so the horniness was a goose egg. I think that Scott did a good job with his Boston accent, I will say.

  [01:58:45] Haleyy: I can't wait to listen. Wait, is that out already?

  [01:58:47] Star Master Jeff: No, I'm working on it. The Mouse Ritter one is the next one to come out. And Brian both GM'd it and he's going to edit it to free me up so I can focus on planning season two. So thank you, Brian. I'm going to try to, anyway. And then after that, we have two episodes of Knave coming out, if you guys even remember playing that one 10 months ago. And that's going to be two episodes, and I'm editing that one, but it should be pretty quick. I think we should close this up. So I don't know what you're going to do with this recording. Good luck. I am going to just publish it wholesale. Perfect.

  [01:59:24] Haleyy: Oh, God.

  [01:59:26] Star Master Jeff: So before we go, thanks to all four of you. We've played for 20-odd months now. We've had one soggy Froggy, we've had missing orange juice, we've had a lot of Discord calls and one very stubborn sand chucker that Haley eventually figured out. I think that this show really succeeds for me because it's the five of us just getting on a call and having a bunch of fun, and then we find it in the edit. And I think that's been working out really well for us. So I'm grateful for every single session that we've done. And thank you so much for coming on this really crazy journey with me. And I know that it's not so simple of just sitting down and playing a game, because I'm asking a lot. And we have a very high bar for how we record these, how we edit them, how we release them. And thanks for coming along with my crazy demands to do this hobby. So just thanks for that.

  [02:00:19] Haleyy: Thank you for having us.

  [02:00:20] Thorne: Yeah, thanks for having us. I don't think we would have gotten through a whole season if you weren't getting out and pushing them.

  [02:00:25] Star Master Jeff: And for everyone listening at home, thanks for, I'm assuming, listening to 33 episodes. Yes. And 33 Star Master Logs. And I think eight Rules Explained. If you haven't listened to all of those, then you are not cool, you are lame, you're fired. Don't be a completionist. If you haven't listened to every episode, you definitely shouldn't have listened to this SML. Recommend this to all your friends, please. And come back for season two, because — without you, actually, fuck that — without you, we're still going to keep making this show.

  [02:00:53] Thorne: We'll probably still do it.

  [02:00:54] Star Master Jeff: It's too much fun, we don't care about you, but listen to it if you like it, it makes us feel happy though when we see number go up. Smash like and subscribe. We're not getting any money, so it's not like — make sure you smash that like button. We're not going to get canceled by, like, I don't know, what TV channel would be on, like TNT? TV still happens?

  [02:01:15] Thorne: Are we like a TNT?

  [02:01:16] Star Master Jeff: Is that a thing? Are we a Fox vibe? Are we like right after the X-Files?

  [02:01:21] Haleyy: CW. I want to be a CW show.

  [02:01:23] Star Master Jeff: I want to be a CW. I'll buy that. And Sexy Battle Wizards was on the Scramble channel.

  [02:01:31] Felix: That's FXX. That was FXX.

  [02:01:33] Star Master Jeff: Skinamax.

  [02:01:34] Robert: That's just the CW, like, late night.

  [02:01:37] Star Master Jeff: Yeah, late night CW, baby. Well, that's it for season one. Brian, Scott, Doja, Stephanie, thank you so, so much for playing.

  [02:01:47] Robert: Thank you, our Star Master, Jeff. And thank you to all of our fans. We wouldn't be here without you.

  [02:01:53] Felix: Thanks, Star Master Jeff.

  [02:01:55] Haleyy: Thank you, Jeff.

  [02:01:56] Thorne: And thank you, crew. I love you all.

  [02:01:58] Star Master Jeff: Next time on the Dark Star Adventure Cast, the feed is going to keep going in a two-week rhythm while the crew of the Scapegoat takes a long-needed break. During that time, we will be putting out Mouse Ritter parts one, two, three, and four, and Knave part one and two, and check the Patreon feed, apparently, because I'm doing this now, for Sexy Battle Wizards. Heavily, heavily caution you to not listen to that one without headphones in.

  [02:02:25] Haleyy: It's going to end up being like five minutes long. Season two.

  [02:02:29] Star Master Jeff: Season two is going to premiere on Patreon January 19th. And then two weeks later, on February 2nd. So the Patreon date was top of mind for me, because everyone should be joining the Patreon. Come on, guys, what are you doing?

  [02:02:48] Thorne: Yeah, come on. Get in there.

  [02:02:50] Star Master Jeff: I had to pay for Audition, that's an expensive license, come on, give me some Patreon money. And if you want to get the episodes, I'm following the script now, and I'm going to tell you, if you want to get these episodes two weeks before they drop publicly, head on over to Dark Star Adventure Cast's Patreon at patreon.com/darkstaradventurecast. Easy to remember. It's the name of the show, and we really appreciate each and every one of our patrons, especially Brad and Holly, who have been Scapegoat Syndicate supporters since practically day one. Thanks so much to both of you, you mean a lot to us, we'd love to shake your hand sometime, send us your addresses, we'll show up in the middle of the night and shake your hands. And for everyone out there, thanks so much for listening, we'll catch you on the next one. And in the meantime, keep following that signal. And to my wonderful and beautiful cast — Scapegoats forever. Scapegoats forever. Scapegoats forever. Scapegoats forever.