Ep. 26: Questionable Measures, Part 8
Updated: Apr 29, 2019
Like a dog with its tail, our heroes chase down their leads.
Listen as they:
CLOWN around!
HOARD their experience!
FIB a little!
TRANSCRIPT (Downloadable Version)
Previously, on Quest Friends…
[Opening theme, “Friends” by Miracle of Sound, begins.]
Kyle
Uhh, Jesse is like:
Kyle (as Jesse)
Oh, it’s super nice to meet you too, Mr. Hopper!
Kyle
And then they start jumping up and down. They’re like:
Kyle (as Jesse)
Oh, by the way, I’m going to have the pin if you ever need to reach out to me!
Ari (as Misha)
Scotch, Simon Scotch. Speaking of Xoc, I do have a question that has been bothering me. Some ancient disease that seems to be called Love Seasons, and I don’t—
Hallie (as Hopper)
Humans do weird things sometimes. Xoc is fine. I think he was a little flustered, and I think—
Hallie (as Hopper)
You know Elee, if you want to take Soe to the parade, you could meet Tommy Funbuck.
Emily (as Elee)
That’s probably pretty safe, right?
Tom (as Xoc)
Elee, have you ever heard of a lawsuit?
Emily (as Elee)
I’m a pretty tough lady. I’m gonna go in front of the float. There’s our plan. I made a plan.
Kyle
Elee bolts out to get hit by this thing, and you see one of the feet come down and about half a second before it hits you, you hear a massive crash.
[Opening theme intensifies.]
Kyle
So make your way over to room 164, and you’re immediately pelted by a cold wind, because—this is under your name, so this is under your bill, and it looks like Lorraine, or somebody, has just blasted the AC in the second room to just knock that bill up as hard as they can. But it’s relatively—it’s a lot brighter. It’s a lot nicer. Like, there’s one bed. It’s very ornate, very fancy. It’s a small bed. It’s not like Misha and Xoc’s where it’s two combined together. It’s for one person. There’s a desk, pretty empty, not much on it. But when you enter the room, that little walkie-talkie that Mako had made out of your pin goes off, and you hear a voice say:
Kyle (as Jesse)
Oh, Hopper Scotch! I’ve heard you’re investigating?
Hallie (as Hopper)
Uh, yeah! Hey Jesse.
Kyle (as Jesse)
Did you find anything about Lorraine?
Hallie (as Hopper)
Uh, not ye—wait, how did you know Lorraine was here?
Kyle (as Jesse)
Well, I, you know, I’m just your second favorite fan, so I know these kinds of things.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Right. Did you know Lorraine sent us the coupons?
Kyle (as Jesse)
Oh, the coupons? I-I had an idea maybe it was something like that. You’re not investigating the other room or anything, are you?
Hallie (as Hopper)
Uh, why do you ask?
Kyle (as Jesse)
Well, you know, because if you are—
[Jessie’s voice suddenly shifts and becomes…]
Kyle (as Lorraine)
You really should just tell me, darling.
[Lorraine’s funky, bass-driven theme begins.]
Tom
Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
Hallie
I can’t translate this face that I’m making, but Hopper’s face just goes like [Laughter] just, he’s so fucking mad. But it’s like, an apathetic mad.
Kyle (as Lorraine)
Alright, so have you finished talking about your “seasons of love” and found anything yet?
Hallie
Question, really quick. Has my walkie-talkie been on the whole time? Because Hopper is alarmed that she knows that. I mean, surely surveillance cameras exist, but this is still weird and bad.
Kyle
I mean, you haven’t been checking whether or not it’s on, but the pin seemed like it was always on.
Ari
Mmm - ooh this is awkward.
Kyle (as Lorraine)
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know my darling little Hop Moth that if you ever need any assistance, if you ever have any questions at all or want to relay anything over to me, all you have to do is ask, and I will be happy to talk with you more.
Hallie (as Hopper)
[Low, growling noise.]
Hallie
He’s making that sound, in character.
Hallie (as Hopper)
[Low, growling noise.] Why did you give me the key if there’s nothing in this room?
Kyle (as Lorraine)
Hop, you jump to such large conclusions. At this point I thought you’d learn not to. Anyways, I’m here if you need me. I do want to know though, did I do it well? Did I get that little, uh, that Jessica’s voice right?
Hallie (as Hopper)
Jesse. Their name is Jesse. And yes, you did.
Kyle (as Lorraine)
Oh, well I’m glad to know. I’ll practice another one and get back to you soon.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Yeah, don’t do that. Don’t do that.
Kyle
And you stop hearing things from the other end of the—
Hallie
Alright. I inspect the pin immediately for a button that makes it so that no one hears me all of the time.
[Die rolls.]
Hallie
Ten.
Kyle
Yeah, no, you don’t see anything there. After all, Mako—it’s only a communication between you and everyone that Mako and Mauve trust. Why would you ever need it off?
Hallie
[Indignantly] Well why does she have a pin then?
Kyle
Who says she has a pin?
Hallie
What? I don’t know. I just thought that it could only communicate with another pin.
Kyle (as Lorraine)
Hopper. You’re not going to find anything there.
Hallie
Is she still talking to me through the thing?
Kyle
Um, yeah, I’m going to say that she’s still talking through.
Hallie
Oh my God, I’m so confused. Um, okay.
Kyle (as Lorraine)
I mean, it was relatively simple, darling. I knew about it the second you entered town. Just an artifact here, a cypher there, and there we go. A non-stop hotline to my bestest buddy in the whole wide world.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Great. Yeah. [Groans in anger and frustration.]
Hallie
Hopper considers just taking it off and like, breaking it. But in case someone actually needs to get in touch with him, he doesn’t want to do that.
Kyle
You can remove the pin if you want. Like, the pin can be removed. Because there’s the walkie-talkie, there’s the connecting cube that connects any input to any output, and then there’s the pin. So you could finagle it so you could get the pin out, but that would be a roll.
[5:04]
Hallie
Alright. He’s not going to bother. He’s not going to respond to Lorraine. He’s just going to mutter
Hallie (as Hopper)
[makes muttering noises]
Hallie
Just to himself, and then open the door. The door isn’t open yet?
Kyle
No, you went inside the room. You’re inside the room.
Hallie
Okay, we’re inside.
Kyle
So yeah, you have a little bit of time to look around. This time you can investigate. The room is, unlike the other one, it’s alarmingly plain.
Ari
Um, and then I do want to help Hop investigate things. I want Misha to get a skill for my day, which is, I want them to get detective skills. I want them to look, like, how to be a detective.
[The familiar static and rush of information of the datasphere begins.]
Kyle
You’re kind of used to it at this point, but this rush of information enters your mind. Images, smells, sounds. The first thing you hear is you hear this phone ringing.
[A phone rings.]
And from the other end, someone picks up.
Voice
Hello?
Kyle
But you just hang up immediately afterwards.
[Phone hangs up.]
Ari and Hallie
[Laughter.]
Kyle
You smell all these elements. All these elementary foundations of our reality. And then finally, of all this cacophony, something becomes clear—
[Accordion music begins.]
Kyle
And you see this old, unfinished book that is soaking wet, and it’s surrounded by the deep, agonizing creeks of metal underwater. And the book just says, “of enclosed spaces and crime.”
Ari
Okay. So after all of that, Misha is going to turn—they are going to stand like a little bit straighter, and they are going to look at Hop, and they’re going to tilt their head a little bit forwards and they’re just going to—they’re going to take out their kazoo and use it like—you know like they’re blowing smoke, occasionally just like, put it next to their mouth.
Hallie
It’s so good!
[Accordion music resumes.]
Ari
They’re blowing smoke.
Ari
I’m going to say:
Ari (as Misha)
Oh, uh, Simon Scotch. I happen to now understand the art of the detective.
Ari
And then they are going to look around the room and say:
Ari (as Misha)
Well, I believe we should split and look for clues, partner.
Ari
And I want to scan the room.
Hallie
Hopper looks genuinely pleased, and the impressed the way you do when your kid is like, I got a good grade on a test. So he’s just like:
Hallie (as Hopper)
Alright, let’s do it, Misha
Kyle
Alright, give me rolls for investigation.
[Dice roll.]
Ari
Oh boy.
Hallie
Ten.
Ari
Sixteen!
Tom
Ohh!
Kyle
Sixteen, and you get a bonus for that. So let me figure out how I’m going to do this. So I’m going to give you a couple of things that you find, and then I’m going to ask you for information you’d like, and I’ll show you objects that kind of give you that information.
Ari
Okay.
Kyle
So you see in one of the drawers, relatively easy to find, a pamphlet for the Tenth World Exhibit and Auction. And it has a map laid out of the entire space and you can see a couple of side-passages have been marked in red on it. You also see that the list of things to go on auction, which starts with a mystery item, which you presume is Q-BO, have a bunch of timestamps next to them. And you see that these numbers of each object are aligned to different things that are going to be on the exhibition hall. So you can presume that these are somehow relating the times of these auction items to things in the exhibit hall. And what you see for one, for the mystery item, you just see this very large stage for an item called the Argent.
Ari
And what are the other items? Like, do they seem like a normal kind of thing, or is there any that look—
Kyle
I mean, they’re weird-ass shit, but like there’s nothing that really sticks out as weirder than normal things, except maybe there’s locks of Tommy Funbuck’s hair, and that one seems to be on sale by an L. Stiles.
Ari
Gross. Whyy?
Kyle
But for the first item, you see a mystery item. And that’s on sale from JET.CO. And from what you’ve heard about Lorraine about Q-BO going on sale first, you presume that that’s Q-BO. So in summary, and this is Kyle from the future, because I kind of bungled my explanation of this in-game, the Tenth World Exhibit and Auction includes, appropriately enough, both an exhibit and an auction. So during the exhibit portion when all the cool things JET.CO has made are being shown off but not sold, on the appropriately named Argent stage, an item called “Argent” will be shown to the public. Or at least the public that is considered wealthy enough to be part of this celebration. Meanwhile, in a separate auction house that is just a room right next to the exhibit hall, things are actually going to get auctioned off and sold. And the first of those things is a mystery item that the party knows to be Q-BO. So the sheet that Misha and Hop found is drawing a correlation between Argent and either Q-BO or the time that Q-BO is getting put on sale.
[9:55]
Ari
Okay. Well, Misha’s going to relay this information to Hop and be like:
Ari (as Misha)
Oh, Simon Scotch, I have found a clue to this mystery.
Ari
And they’re going to point to that.
Ari (as Misha)
If you please come here and observe.
Hallie
He’ll look at it and be like:
Hallie (as Hopper)
Oh, I guess we know where Q-BO is being auctioned off.
Ari (as Misha)
We do, indeed.
Kyle
Before we continue, do you pocket this or do you set it back where it was?
Ari
I pocket it.
Kyle
Okay. So you pocket it, and now because you rolled a five and a sixteen.
Hallie
Ten.
Kyle
Because you rolled a ten and a sixteen, Hallie, you get to ask me two pieces of knowledge you want to get, and Ari, you can ask me four pieces of knowledge you want to get.
Hallie
Okay.
Ari
Also, I want to retcon and when I say that I pocket it, I want to say, Misha pockets it and says:
Ari (as Misha)
[Imitating Nancy Drew] I should hold on to this.
Hallie
[Laughter.]
Hallie
Uh, so can mine just be the correlation between the timestamps and the stages are?
Kyle
Yeah, it looks like there’s another piece of paper you see underneath that, which is signed in a very weird, specific handwriting.
Hallie
Okay.
Kyle
You can see in this noticeably bad handwriting, something stating along the lines of, the exhibit’s going to start getting taken down when the auction starts, and that’s going to be the order in which things are taken down. When the mystery item goes up to auction, the stuff on the Argent stage is going to get taken down.
Ari
I guess it could be that maybe the person that wants to steal Q-BO that isn’t us wants to use that as a distraction to swap Q-BO and like—I don’t know if there’s a way like if there’s something similar to Q-BO in that stage, if there’s a way to swap them out or something.
Hallie
I mean, can I just ask Lorraine what’s on the Argent stage? She said she was going to help me.
Kyle
She’s going to respond:
Kyle (as Lorraine, over walkie-talkie)
Oh, the Argent stage, that one, so exciting. After our encounter with the Dotwave—you’re familiar with that—we understood that the Dotwave was a wonderful way of adjusting time. You know, the way it let that town move in that timeless space? So the item on the Argent stage does some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey nonsense.
Ari
Fuck you.
Tom
Go right to hell.
Kyle (as Lorraine)
I’m not sure exactly of the details, but they are showing it off today. It’s actually done in conjunction with time crisps. Could you believe that?
Hallie (as Hopper)
No. So you’re just not going to tell me what’s on the Argent stage?
Kyle (as Lorraine)
Well I can’t spoil the whole surprise.
Hallie (as Hopper)
No, no, of course. Of course you can’t. [Annoyed noises] Okay. Fine.
Hallie
He’s just going to hang up, and then—he’s gotten a little bit paler since the mention of this horrifying technology that is apparently on the Argent stage, and he’ll be like:
Hallie (as Hopper)
Misha, after this I think we should go look at the Argent stage.
Ari (as Misha)
After you.
Ari
Are we done with this?
Hallie
Oh, you still have four questions.
Kyle
Yeah, you have four clues you can find.
Ari
Oh, but I thought—okay, that’s true. I thought, it’s just that I’m not sure what necessarily to ask. I guess I can ask—I’m wasting a question, but how similar is Q-BO to V-Bo?
Kyle
They’re very similar, except V-Bo [kicks voice up a few notches to resemble a 1990s cartoon mascot] has a really annoying voice! They tried to make him cool and radical! He’s like 90s cool.
Ari
But like, physically they look the same.
Kyle
Physically they look the same, except V-Bo has this giant, flaming V. Fucking, who is the—
Hallie
Guy Fieri!
Kyle
Yeah, it has like a giant Guy Fieri flaming V emblazoned on it. You also learn that V-Bo is a very unsophisticated robot, to the degree that it doesn’t really have a personality. It’s more it than a he, whereas like Q-BO is a sentient creature.
Ari
Yeah, I figured.
[Accordion music begins again.]
Ari (as Misha)
I have a theory—
Ari
And then they’re going to put their hands on their chin like a very deducting detective.
Ari (as Misha)
I believe Q-BO and V-Bo might potentially be swapped or something during the auction. And I believe that whatever is on the Argent stage will help this happen, and whoever wants to steal Q-BO that isn’t us will use this stage to do so.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Huh.
Kyle
Do you want another—
Ari
I don’t. I don’t know what to ask.
Kyle
No, I can give you another one.
Hallie
Can I say my thing, and then maybe that will give Ari a jumping off point?
Kyle
Okay, because I have something I can give to her.
Hallie
Okay, well Hop’s going to jump in with that:
Hallie (as Hopper)
I think they have something on the Argent stage that can mess with time. And I think they’re going to try to take something from the Argent stage or do something at the same time.
Ari (as Misha)
Yes.
Hallie (as Hopper)
I think you’re right. I think you’re on the right track.
[Accordion music cuts abruptly.]
Hallie
I guess I wasn’t stating anything new. I was just really excited that I finally realized it was a times thing.
Ari
Oh yeah, no, it’s fine.
Hallie
Time travel!
Ari
I think I’m going to save my two other questions for when we actually know what it is.
Kyle
Cool. And then you see one last thing.
[Whimsical music begins.]
[15:00]
Kyle
Hi! Welcome to the announcement break for Quest Friends Episode 26, Questionable Measures Part Eight. I am Kyle, your GM, and today our intro and outro music are “Friends” and “Hitoshio,” both by Miracle of Sound. We are officially halfway through the Questionable Measures arc, which means that we’re going to encounter a bit of a lull. You know, with eight episodes in our most recent arc and no real finale to point people towards, it’s going to be a bit harder for the casual listener to just pop in. And that’s where you come in for today’s call to action, which is just, I mean, talk about us. If you really like the show, leave a rating or a review on iTunes, talk about us to your friends, and also talk about the show on social media. Specifically, a reminder that if you use the hashtag #QuestFriends on Tumblr or on Twitter, you’ll be added to a name pool, which I’ll use to name some of the things in the universe. For example, Argent is named after one of our first real followers on twitter, Mark Rachel Argent. So if you want to have a random NPC, a location, or a MacGuffin named after you, be sure to tweet out using those hashtags. Or just, you know, tweet out anyway, because it’s nice; it makes me feel nice. Anyway, that is all I’ve got for you today. The next episode is going to be released in two weeks on Monday, November 19. I will see you then.
[Whimsical music resumes.]
Kyle
Misha, can you give me a quick perception roll, actually? Another one?
Ari
Yeah!
[Die rolls.]
Ari
A five.
Kyle
Yeah, you see a dude with a giant knife sticking out of his head fleeing for the window, like with his foot outside of the window.
Ari
What the fuck.
Kyle
And you can see that that pamphlet, that information that you pocketed, you can see it’s in his right hand.
Ari
What?
Hallie
Wait, wait, we just turned away, and suddenly this guy with a knife is running through and he just snatched the papers, in the room?
Kyle
Presumably he was—you were looking for clues.
Hallie
Yeah.
Kyle
Which is why I had Ari do another perception. He was just hiding in the room the whole time. He snuck in, stole the thing from Misha’s pocket, and now has, like, his leg caught out of the window.
Hallie
Oh my god.
Kyle
Just like frozen, staring at you as you turn around and you just see this man about to leave the window.
Hallie
Can we do something? Can we try to stop him?
Ari
Yeah!
Kyle
Yeah, you can run if you want.
Hallie
Uh, I want to make a flying leap to grab his jacket and like, yank him back in.
Ari
Yeah, I want to try and tackle him.
Kyle
Alright. Give me initiative rolls.
[Dramatic music begins as Tom laughs ominously. Die clatter to the table.]
Ari
Ew. Eight.
Hallie
Eighteen.
Kyle
Uh, Hallie, give me a speed attack roll.
Hallie
Okay.
Tom
Is this our first initiative in all of Roulettia?
Kyle
I think it is.
Ari
I think so.
Hallie
Oh my God.
[Die rolls.]
Hallie
Nine?
Ari
Nooo.
Hallie
[Laughter.]
Kyle
You go to grab him and just, like, you know when you take that leap to grab like a baseball and you slide? And you just slide across the room.
Hallie
Noo!
Kyle
You just flop on the ground, and he jumps out of the window and you can see there’s a little drain pipe, and he starts sliding down it into the parade below. And now I’m going to explain to you the chase rules, because this is a chase.
Hallie
Yes!
Emily
Ohhh.
Kyle
So that was to determine—the initiative was to determine which goes first, your team or his. So in a chase—
[The kind of music that plays during an intermission or interlude begins as Kyle explains the rules of the chase.]
Kyle
As the rules are defined, there are five degrees of separation. If it gets down to a one, that means you have completely caught up with him. If it gets to a five, he has completely gotten away. Right now it’s three. He’s in the middle.
Hallie
Okay.
Kyle
Each turn, he is going to be able to take two actions to stop you. So he might like, knock over a barrel or something like that. And each turn, you can do two things to catch up with him. Like, you can throw something at him and stuff like that, right? Here’s the thing. If he drops a barrel, you can take a turn being like, I’m going to smash this barrel, right? But if you’re just stopping all the things he’s trying to do to stop you, if you’re like, knocking him out of the way, you can never do anything to catch up, right?
Hallie
Right.
Kyle
So you could also be like, I want to just take a speed defense roll to see if I can jump it.
Hallie
I’m super hyped.
Kyle
So he’s going to run down the drain pipes, and he, as he’s sliding down, is going to throw two knives, one at each of you. Actually no, it’s a boomerang knife.
Hallie
[Laughter.]
Kyle
So he’s going to throw it and try to catch both of you.
[20:04]
Ari
Oh man.
Kyle
So you can either do something to stop that as one of your two actions, or you can try to dodge it.
Ari
I want to see if I can hit it. Can I try and hit it? Or I don’t know if that’s an action, like if I can hit it like a baseball kind of thing with my bat, like bah!
Kyle
Yeah, you can try to do a reversal with that. I’d say you can try to hit it and knock it back at them.
Ari
Okay.
Kyle
Give me a might roll for that. Are you going to put any effort in?
Ari
Uhhhhh, sure. I am putting one level of effort.
[Die rolls.]
Ari
Eleven.
Kyle
You go to hit it, and it just knocks it off in the distance. And then it start flying back towards both of you.
Hallie
[Laughter.]
Ari
God, no. Well that was one thing.
Kyle
You can try to dodge it, or you can spend your other action trying to stop it.
Ari
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I have another action, right?
Kyle
Yeah, both of you. So combined, you two have two actions.
Ari
Ohhh…
Kyle
Because I don’t want it to be like this guy has two and then you have four.
Hallie
I got you, okay, I’m glad you specified that. I was going to just try to do the same thing with my shield instead of the bat .
Kyle
Okay, you try to reverse it with your shield.
Hallie
This is my only idea, so if you have a better one you should say something.
Ari
I don’t know, like, my other idea was trying to catch it, so really.
Hallie
To catch a knife boomerang.
Emily
[Laughter.]
Ari
Yes. Because I don’t think Misha would be that hurt by it.
Hallie
I guess you have robot hands. That’s true. Okay, I’m going to use my shield, that thing that’s been so successful every time I’ve tried to use it to do a thing.
[Die rolls.]
Hallie
Seventeen.
Ari
Ooh, yes.
Emily
Woah.
Tom
Woah.
Kyle
It reverberates off your shield. You might not be able to Captain America your shield around, but you can Captain America other objects around with your shield.
Hallie
Yes!
Kyle
It goes, and it flies, and it just nicks him in the ankle. And he falls into one of the bands, into a bass drum.
Hallie
[Laughter.]
Kyle
You just hear a [imitating bass drum] boom-boomboom-boom boom! As he like, stumbles into a band, into the parade, because you are facing Gamblestrip Navarene out of your window.
[Slick, bass-driven, version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” begins.]
Hallie
Okay.
Kyle
So he is now in the parade, and he is going to spend his turn, he’s going to do two things. So you are now two degrees away from him. Because one thing I should mention: I assume you automatically run.
Hallie
Yes.
Kyle
So like, what are you two trying to do? Are you going to like, go down the drainpipe? Or how are you going to get to him? I want you to explain how you get from window to ground.
Hallie
I would do the drainpipe, unless Misha is also going to the drainpipe.
Ari
I was going to go over to that—
Hallie
We were both going to the drainpipe. We’re just sliding down it, right? Can we just slide down it one at a time?
Kyle
Yeah, you can both slide down it one at a time.
Ari and Hallie
Okay.
Kyle
So you each slide down it, and you start running. And so he’s going to spend his turn doing two things. He’s going to like, knock into the drum major for the band and start like, double-timing the music—
[The music goes to double-time.]
Kyle
So that the band starts marching faster away from you.
Hallie
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Kyle
So the band is now moving faster. And he’s also—you can see that while he’s doing that, he’s trying to grab at one of this gloves with his tongue—not his tongue. Ew. He’s trying to grab at his glove with one of his teeth, and take it off.
Hallie
Okay.
Kyle
If you look about 50 feet in front of them, you see like a couple of small floats for the band, and about 50 feet in front of them, you see this giant Tommy Funbuck.
Hallie
So is it our turn now?
Kyle
Yeah. He is two degrees away from you. I’m actually going to say no, he took his action, he was two, but now he’s back to three, because instead of attacking you he just did something to make himself go faster.
Hallie
Right.
Ari
Are there other—like, because I mean, he’s directing the marching band, but are there other things in the parade? Like a car? Like a thing that we can like, hijack and like, [Laughter] make that go faster in a parade chase?
Kyle
There is...The Beetle of a Million. Painted. Faces.
Hallie
I hate it.
Kyle
And it’s just a massively filled clown car.
Ari
Well, how close is that to us?
Hallie
Go for it.
Kyle
It’s right next to you.
Hallie
Go for it, Misha.
Ari
Alright. I’m just going to just jump into this car.
Hallie
Just push anyone who’s in there!
Kyle
So you’re going to—are you going to open up the car?
Ari
Yup. And try to take whatever, whoever the conductor is fucking in there and drive it myself. I don’t know how to drive! This is going to be fun!
Kyle
Alright. You go to open it up, and a literal wave of clowns starts pouring out. And I’m going to need you to roll might to force yourself through this crowd to get to the seat.
Ari
That’s fine. You know, I’m pretty healthy right now, so I think I’m going to spend two levels of effort.
Hallie
Do it!
[Die rolls.]
Ari
Aww, shit. I rolled a 19.
Tom and Hallie
Ohhhh!
Kyle
You get a minor effect. So I’m going to describe to you what happens and then you can describe what little bonus this gives you. So you grab the guy and you just throw him out.
Ari
Oh my god! Uh, yeah, I do. Like I grab it and I say:
Ari (as Misha)
I do apologize for this, but we are in a mystery situation.
Ari
And just like, throw it at, like, far away from the parade.
Kyle
Okay, so you throw away—it’s actually a lady—you throw away this clown lady, and she seems to be like the nexus for this wave of clowns.
Ari
Oh my god.
[24:59]
Kyle
So as you get in, the rest of them fly out and just congeal in like a puddle around this person.
Ari
Can I throw the clown at the front of the parade?
Hallie
Do it!
Kyle
Yeah, I’m going to say that can be your minor effect.
Ari
Okay. I want to do that.
Kyle
Um, so you’re going to throw it, and it’s just going to wave over the band, and you’re going to hear so many—it’s all trombones somehow. Just a lot of [imitating trombone notes that indicate failure]. And I’m going to say it starts terrifying this guy, and your minor effect will be that he can only take one action next turn.
Ari
Okay.
Tom
Yeah!
Hallie
Yes!
Ari
That sounds good.
Kyle
You are also—you have made an action to get yourself closer to him, so he is now two degrees away from you.
Ari
Okay.
Kyle
Hallie, what is your turn?
Hallie
I am not in the clown car. Um.
Kyle
You are not in the clown car.
Hallie
But like, this is happening while I’m doing my thing, right?
Kyle
Yeah.
Hallie
So I am also trying to book it to the front of the band. I’m going to—because it was successful once, I would like to try throwing my shield at his ankles to trip him up.
[Die rolls.]
Hallie
Hey. Hey, Kyle.
Kyle
Yeah?
Hallie
What does a two get me?
Tom
Oh no!
Kyle
A two gets you a very echoey tuba.
Hallie
I just want to throw this shield successfully. Agh!
Kyle
The shield throws, and it just serves as like a muffler for a tuba. So instead of going [imitating tuba sound] it’s just like [tuba note goes lower and flatter] and eventually it falls to the ground in front of you.
Emily
Do you have XP?
[Whimsical music begins.]
Hallie
I do have XP.
Kyle
Hallie has a million XP.
Hallie
I hoard it.
Kyle
What do you have to hoard it for? It’s like re-rolls and instant successes.
Hallie
I know. I’d like to use one to re-roll. I’m not going to horde it anymore. I have five XP now.
Kyle
Okay, I have not given away that much XP this—
Hallie
Four from February session, one from March session, one from GM intrusion.
Kyle
Hallie, you spent all of those things on money.
Hallie
No, I had more XP than that.
Tom
Has Hallie ever re-rolled with an XP before?
Kyle
She never fucking uses it, even though there’s nothing to hoard it for.
Hallie
No.
Tom
You put in anti-hoard mechanics and Hallie still hoarded everything.
Hallie
[Laughter.]
Kyle
Yeah, I don’t—okay, so Hallie.
Hallie
Yeah?
Kyle
How does this XP let you re-roll?
Hallie
Can we say that it like, even though it reverberates off the tuba, it just reverberates back to Hopper? And he like catches it in like the perfect re-throwing gesture so he’s like, I’m going to go for it again?
Kyle
Okay, give me another throw.
[Die rolls.]
Hallie
Sixteen.
Kyle
Alright. How do you trip this guy up and get him down to one so you can catch up to him?
Hallie
I aim at his ankles. So this shield just like, whips under him, like flying saucer style, and suddenly he is on his back.
Kyle
Okay. He falls on his back, and like kind of actually hits the knife that is now back in his head. He just knocks it and it like, kind of hurts him a little bit.
Hallie
[Sympathetically] Oh.