New Glass Cannon Energy ...
Channeling that new Glass Cannon energy, aka questing for a fresh start!
You think your gaming group is slow to play through a Pathfinder Adventure Path? Well, a bunch of guys who began their Giantslayer campaign in June 2015 are finally getting around to kicking off their subsequent AP today … more than eight years later.
OK, to be fair: the Glass Cannon Podcast crew has since dabbled in multiple other APs and modules, run various other TTRPG systems, and toured a live show across America. But their flagship weekly actual play podcast has been on hiatus since May 2022, when they defeated the Big Bad Evil Guy and concluded their original Giantslayer campaign.
Hey, everyone needs a little break from time to time. Or did you not notice that I failed to deliver a newsletter edition to your inbox last month?
Whoops.
Regardless, the Glass Cannon Podcast is debuting their “Campaign Two” at midnight Eastern Time tonight aka Thursday September 14 wherever you get your podcasts (or 8pm ET for those who prefer their podcasts in video form on YouTube, which I do not … although the trailer is like nothing I’ve seen in actual plays before).
So to mark the occasion — and in an attempt to rekindle my own Pathfinder mojo, which I mentioned back in July has been limping along on life support — I thought I’d take a spin in the way-back copter and reflect on my own wide-eyed introduction to those five naive gamers from Queens: Troy, Joe, Skid, Grant, and Matthew.
I started playing Pathfinder in January 2015, but I didn’t discover the Glass Cannon Podcast until July 2017 when I heard the group’s GM give an interview on a TTRPG news show. (The rabbit hole runs deep, my friends.)
Yes, at this point I was already aware of the existence of the OG D&D actual play show, Critical Role. But their sessions ran super long, and they played 5E so their combats made no sense to me. Plus, I found that watching professional voice actors play D&D left me feeling more intimidated than inspired. My goblin voices will never be that good.
Ah, but here was a new, upstart group of regular dudes recording their Pathfinder sessions! And they were playing around a table in an apartment in New York, not on a professional sound stage in Los Angeles! And they followed a pre-published adventure instead of homebrewing according to the Dungeon Master’s whims! And they edited their sessions down from 4 hours of actual play to a tight 80-minute podcast episode!
Even though the podcast feed was already up to Episode 112, I started from Episode 1. I bought a copy of the Giantslayer AP so I could learn from how the group’s GM, Troy Lavallee, adapted a pre-published adventure to a home game. And I chewed through something like 200 hours of content in 2 months, catching up to the show’s weekly schedule.
It was a wild time in my life, let me tell you.
On the topic of wild times, please earn yourself a Hero Point by walloping that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, but it’s worth a shot!
I remember being in New York that November, wandering the streets of Manhattan while listening to the podcast episode where they battled the Book 3 boss, Urathash the stone giant high priest of Minderhal.
The guys who were making this show lived and gamed just across the river in Queens. And boy was their adventure humming by then! Here’s how one of the players, Joe O’Brien, described the group’s ethos in the “Session Zero” podcast episode they recorded for their upcoming relaunch:
“The other thing that drew me to this game, and brought me back to it as an adult, is I just remember laughing my ass off with my friends. I don’t know what it is about these style of games and how they lend themselves to amazing levels of creative silliness, but I just love that aspect.”
I must have re-listened to that episode a half-dozen times. And I stand by my expert opinion that this end-of-book stretch from Episode 125 to 131 was the creative height of the Glass Cannon Podcast.
Here’s another thing: given that I’d sent my debut novel out to literary agents in New York that same week, the subplot of five scrappy guys making their own big break happen through sheer force of will never meant more to me personally than it did in that moment.
Ah, but the dice of life are fickle.
The Glass Cannon gang became enamored with growing a broad entertainment business, expanding into new shows and monetizing their cool thing on Patreon. But their Giantslayer sessions began to bloat and drag in later books (as high-level play in First Edition has been known to do), and then Covid hit and ground their in-person recordings to a halt.
After an eight-month cliffhanger aka hiatus, they brought the flagship show back and continued pushing forward towards the final battle. But some of that original magic felt like it had been lost forever.
Meanwhile, my debut novel found an agent but never found a publisher. And my own gaming groups splintered as friends moved away or had kids or got important jobs.
As I said: the dice of life are fickle.
So, when one of the original Glass Cannon players decided to leave the group/business and ride off into the sunset, and then the GM’s plan to write and produce an original adventure for their follow-up show didn’t pan out, I recognized the feeling of plans gone awry.
But what do we do when one of our characters dies?
We give them a ridiculous eulogy, and then roll up a new one.
So the Glass Cannon Podcast’s weekly flagship show is back! They’ve got two new players at the table (finally, some gender balance). And they’ll be playing through the Gatewalkers AP for Pathfinder Second Edition.
It’s a very different thing than it was back in 2015: check out the slick Campaign Two character creation videos, professionally filmed and edited for YouTube to evoke something more like “No Reservations” than “Nerds in a Basement.”
The siren’s song of pivot-to-video can be tough to resist.
But it’s still the Glass Cannon Podcast, or at least it will be in my headphones come Friday morning. And for that I’m thankful.
Through thick and thin, we fight on.
THE MINI AND THE DICE
Those handsome monochromatic d20s surrounding my critical podcast-listening earbuds are from the Classic series by my favorite Polish dice manufacturer, Q Workshop. They’re all flipped to the natural 1 position to honor the king of fumbles, the Glass Cannon’s own Joe “Natty One” O’Brien. Some guys have all the luck. Not Joe. But some guys.
NEW FROM THE WAREHOUSE
The next Battlezoo Bestiary probably won’t be out until sometime in 2024 at the earliest (the dice of publishing are fickle), but I am pleased to announce that my original monster submission — the Kunthalaka rakshasa — advanced through the public round of RPG Superstar voting and made the competition’s final shortlist!
Thank you to all the readers who voted — now it’s in the hands of the expert judges, who will unveil their final winners on October 29.
Stay tuned to this space next month as I run my monster through a round-by-round playtest combat, in order to double check that I haven’t accidentally built an overtuned TPK machine.
PARTY DYNAMICS
Here’s your chance to build a Substack commenting empire that you can eventually monetize for glory and fame, and it all starts in the comments section below.
This month’s prompt:
What’s your can’t-miss idea for creating a hit podcast? Because let’s be real: we all know you’ve daydreamed about it. Bonus points for a catchy title!
That’s it for this month, Naish. And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time.
Adventure!