I'm sure they're doing their best

Paul 00:00

Drew, how are you, buddy?

Drew 00:02

Oh, Paul, whoa. Oh, that didn't sound good.

Paul 00:05

Uh oh, my I think I was too close to the mic. Also, my voice, my voice sounds a little uh Like I swallowed a bunch of gravel, so there we go.

Drew 00:13

Oh, were you at a metal show?

Paul 00:15

No, I was not at a metal show.

Drew 00:16

You're just not feeling well or uh I I so

Paul 00:20

I had a cold uh the end of last week through the beginning of this week, but uh the reason I am hoarse is because My company, the IT department, did a little retreat. We went out to the Mehican Lodge in Mehican State Park. for uh a couple of nights and uh had a good time and uh that is why my voice sounds bad

Drew 00:49

Okay. There was probably a lot of like hootin' and hollering.

Paul 00:52

A lot of hootin' and hollering. Uh though I will have to say uh for an IGS vent it was uh subdued. So uh interesting it wasn't it was not it was not crazy Uh but it was a good time. So yeah. Yep.

Drew 01:10

Yeah, some of those um IT retreats, man, there there's still some stories that float around. The number one story I remember is the time that John Kruger cheated at Power Power Guys.

Paul 01:22

I actually shared that story. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 01:26

Yeah. Yeah. We we thought he had we thought we had him till we didn't. And uh b basically pulled a hundred dollars literally from his ass. And that and that's why Robert asked if he can hide money in games.

Paul 01:39

Yep.

Drew 01:39

That's that's that's where the lore that's the lore.

Paul 01:42

It is, it is.

Drew 01:44

How are you? Uh, you know, buddy, I'm good. I'm I'm on a little bit of the road to recovery myself. Okay. Um, which is why we're gonna talk about this first topic. And um Okay. So, you know, I before I get into this, I I need to I need I need you to I need you to come over here. I need you to come over here with me. I just just come over here and sit down for a second.

Paul 02:04

All right. All right. Okay.

Drew 02:06

I I do not have a perfect marriage.

Paul 02:10

Okay. Okay. Who does?

Drew 02:13

Yeah. Um One of one of the things that upsets my wife is that sometimes she hears things about me and my life from this podcast and not from me directly. And and and a lot of times well, first of all, let's let's let's again, we're we're we're all friends here. I'm not a good person. Like I'm just not I'm I'm not I'm I'm I'm A very high functioning like dummy. Like I'm I'm just I'm just dumb. Okay.

Paul 02:45

And like oh okay. All right. Fine. Yeah sure. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You're not dumb.

Drew 02:50

And I'm and I'm not I'm not good and the things that I get excited about Uh we've been married long enough that, you know, we we get excited about different things and sometimes I just feel like I would be boring her if I was telling her about this stuff. Well she w she of course will will will not say that. She will She will say, No, no, no, I wish you would tell me more and I wish you would do this. I'm a big dummy and I don't deserve to be married. Now, having said that, Mandy, you're gonna hear about this next topic because not because I didn't think you would be interested or I'd be boring you, it's because I'm really fucking embarrassed. So here we go. Yeah, here we go. So Paul, uh men of a certain age, men of my age, get specific procedures as we get older. That's true. Yes. Yeah. And I had my I I had daddy's first colonoscopy this week

Paul 03:41

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. And that takes there's a lot of prep involved.

Drew 03:48

Now, I would like to compare some notes before we get into what this topic is really about. Okay. Were you asleep for your colonoscopy?

Paul 03:58

Not completely like loopy, loopy. So like I I was just like extreme. I didn't had no idea what was going on around me. But I was not asleep. But you were conscious. But yeah, yeah.

Drew 04:18

So I again uh in in in the time leading up to this, I was talking to various people and I was, you know, they were like, is this your first one? And You know, I was talking to some different people and I had a lot of different people kind of share their experience. There was one guy that I talked to that didn't get anything at all.

Paul 04:37

Like he had like a yeah.

Drew 04:39

Like I'm like, okay, that's a choice. And I I had come to find out later that there was a specific reason why. Okay. But they had basically given him like Not laughing gas, but they'd given him something in his IV to calm him down. But he was he was cautious and he was actually like looking at the monitor as they were scoping him. And I'm like, I do not want that. I do not want to know what the inside of me looks like. I don't want to be awake for this. There's no part of this that I want. And I was talking to some other people that said that it's like twilight. Where you know you're semi-conscious, you know, conscious sedation is a term.

Paul 05:16

That's exactly how I would describe it. Yes. I was not asleep, but I had I had no idea what was going on around me. Okay.

Drew 05:25

Okay. So uh not to jump ahead, but I was completely asleep.

Paul 05:29

Okay. Okay.

Drew 05:30

Like you know, I they had they had given me like the the IV ahead of time. And they wheeled me back to the little studio, and the anesthesiologist was there. She had me roll on my side. She plugged in the little port. She started to inject it. I felt the spice go into my veins. And I was like, okay, I feel it. And then I don't I and I woke up in the recovery room. And and and if I could do it if I can do it that way for the rest of my life That's the way to do it. I don't want to know. I don't want to feel anything. I don't want to be talking to anybody. I just want to be out. And that's what mine was. So that's interesting. It seems like everybody has a different experience. But You're correct. So for those of you that haven't had the pleasure of doing this yet, there is a lot of very direct preparatory work that you have to do. And Again, we can compare notes here a little bit. So my prep began a full week before my appointment.

Paul 06:25

Yeah, with a diet changes, correct? Yeah.

Drew 06:28

Yeah, mostly diet changes. And it's like stop eating red stuff.

Paul 06:32

Yeah.

Drew 06:33

You know.

Paul 06:33

Yeah, no like no seeds, no nuts.

Drew 06:35

No seeds, no nuts. And I don't need a lot of that stuff anyway. So that wasn't a big deal. So uh my appointment was this past Monday. So the Monday before that was when my prep started. Now complicating things a little bit here is I had to go out of town last week. So yeah. So like group dinners and things like that, you know, uh people noticed that like I I had the saddest plate of ravioli that you've ever seen in your life. It was it was it was it was feta cheese ravioli with olive oil. And when I placed that order, my my partner that I work with looked at me like I was a crazy person.

Paul 07:17

Like, are you okay?

Drew 07:18

I was I I was like, it's a long story. I can't talk. I don't want to talk about it. And like I, you know, I didn't drink any alcohol or anything that was on. And I don't drink that much any anymore anyway, but it was like a whole thing. And then when I got to Friday, Friday was like the last meal. So like I had a feast. Like I went to condados. I had like I literally got tacos with cheese and a tortilla. And that was it. Like I had no salsa, I had no fruits. You weren't supposed to eat like fruits and vegetables all week, you know. Yeah. Or anything that would like, you know, show up in your poop or whatever. Uh and then when Saturday rolled around, that's when shit Literally got real. So you had this like and again, I went to the pharmacy and they basically handed me a jug Yep.

Paul 08:06

Yep.

Drew 08:07

And the and the jug had powder in it, and you had to put water in that and shake it up really, really good. And it basically turned the water into very, very thin syrup. Yeah. Like it definitely changed the consistency of the water. And I started drinking it. Now I had taken a laxative. The instructions that were given to me is I had to take like a laxative and mirror I had to take like a shot of mirrorac every morning. The day before my prep started, I had to take a laxative. And you know You you really have to have an appreciation for what this nasty liquid does to you. Because it basically makes you piss out of your ass.

Paul 08:51

Yes. It's like Like the the the loosest di but it's it's yeah it's basically you you have it's your butt turns into a faucet. Yeah.

Drew 09:01

Yeah it really does. Spraying your nastiness into the bowl of your toilet.

Paul 09:10

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Drew 09:11

And and and you can watch, right? Like you watch your powdery poop come out with the first couple poops. But then it just turns yellow. It's literally like you're pissing out of your ass.

Paul 09:25

Now and and if if you're anything like me Uh that is frequent and urgent. It was.

Drew 09:32

Yes. It was. So anyway. Is when I started drinking this stuff. Um now again, let's compare notes a little bit. They tell you that you have to have clear liquid, no red stuff.

Paul 09:50

Yes.

Drew 09:51

Um you can have jello. And you can have like chicken broth and I ate a lot of jello. I had a I had a lot of jello. I drank a lot of chicken broth. I did my best to drink water and stay hydrated during the day, but I've never been a guy that can just force himself to drink a lot of water. So anyway, so Saturday night we do that. Uh Monday, uh Sunday morning I wake up and I am dehydrated. I have a headache.

Paul 10:14

I don't feel good.

Drew 10:16

I had the same thing happen.

Paul 10:17

Yeah. I I did not drink enough water. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 10:23

So uh again, right? I I'm drinking it, I'm drinking it, I'm drinking it. And you know, I again, like you, it's it's a sudden urge to go. And There have been points in my life where I've had the flu and I've had stomach viruses and I've had other things. And the general rule is that when you know you're sick, you're not supposed to trust a fart.

Paul 10:43

Yeah, true. Yes. There is nothing solid in UN.

Drew 10:50

The slightest, the slightest opening, right? It's like trying to hold water in your hands. The slightest opening. is gonna find its way out. And and again, I had been drinking this stuff and and you know I was getting ready to, you know, call it a day, if you will, uh, on Sunday. And I was downstairs on my computer and I I didn't feel like I had to go to the bathroom, but I felt a fart coming on. And I'm like, hmm. And I just I just let a little toot out. Just just a little tiny toot. And I didn't feel anything in my butt But when I got up, Paul, from my chair, there was a big brown stain on the computer chair. Oh no. Yeah. Oh no. Yeah. And then I was like. Uh-oh. And I and I and I pulled down my pants in my computer room and I looked at the whore of how wet my underwear was. And I was like, I fucking hate this. Like it's it's bad. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And and that's and that's how I pooped my pants. Because there was still there was still enough brown liquid in me that it it uh now I I did manage to get the stain out of my chair Uh we definit we definitely cleaned up the scene of the crime as as best we could. Mm-hmm. But man, that stuff that's and and I I've taken laxatives before and I've drink I've drank like yolk of magnesia and stuff.

Paul 12:29

Not that much.

Drew 12:31

No. No. Yes. Because you're lit you literally have to drink four liters of it. And you have to drink it all.

Paul 12:39

Yeah.

Drew 12:40

And like you're in and like the night like the night before you have to drink 64 ounces or something, isn't it?

Paul 12:45

Like it's um it's yeah.

Drew 12:46

It's a gallon. It's four liters.

Paul 12:48

Yeah.

Drew 12:48

So you have to drink half a gallon of it. You have basically the instructions that were given to me is like, look, you're gonna mix this up the night before, you have to drink, you do fill it up to this line.

Paul 12:58

That's right.

Drew 12:59

Yeah, you fill it up to this line and you gotta drink half of it the night before. And you're supposed to drink a glass of it every 15 minutes. So like fifty like time like a like lady in the tube alarm goes off, you pour yourself another eight-ounce glass of it. You you basically have to drink it. You set another timer and you just you just keep going until half of it's gone.

Paul 13:18

Yeah.

Drew 13:18

And like I got to almost half, and I'm like, if I drink any more of this, I'm gonna throw up. Like I can't I cannot force myself to keep drinking this stuff. And uh yeah, man, like you just go into the bathroom and just hearing that constant stream of of butt piss come out of you. was was just something, right? Yeah. Oh man. I was like, I was getting sweaty for how like how much like it was like. And and like it's not like you had to press hard. It didn't you have to bear down.

Paul 13:50

And then like when I remember one time I just like, I'm just gonna sit in the bathroom here, like on the floor, because I don't think I'm done. Like I don't trust myself. Yeah, it's not fun. It's not fun. Yeah.

Drew 14:03

Yeah. And then we went to so all of that preparatory stuff started on Saturday and then on Sunday Uh we went to the Columbus Buddy Walk because friends of ours um uh are big into that because they have a daughter that has Down syndrome and we we went to support them and this is the second year doing it. It's a really cool event. It's actually down by you at Fortress Obets there. And uh, you know, the whole time I'm there, I'm just like, gotta walk fast, gotta walk fast, gotta walk really, really fast. And like I I just was so concerned that I was gonna poop as I was walking. Like, oh, so bad It was so bad. Oh but then, you know, you get to the you get to the place and um We were one of the last appointments of the day, so it was it was pretty quick. Like the they brought me back there, they explained everything that was going to happen, they gave me my IV. Uh You know, they wheeled me back. I was asleep. I think I was in and out of there probably an hour and a half. I it w there was a lot of waiting around because we had to show up an hour before the appointments. We got there like at 2 30 and I think we were out of there by like 4 30 But the actual procedure didn't really take that long.

Paul 15:11

Yeah.

Drew 15:12

So yeah, my my first colon oscill is under the belt. I haven't got my results yet. Um So I don't know, I don't know if it's good or bad yet, but to be continued. You'll be fine. Yeah, I mean they they said they did snip a few little polyps out of there. So Cool. Yeah. Okay. So after I had that horribleness, uh, I was like, you know, I need a little treat.

Paul 15:40

You need a treat? Yeah.

Drew 15:42

So we're big fans of Raspberry Pis here.

Paul 15:45

Mm-hmm.

Drew 15:46

Um so I saw something on a YouTube channel.

Paul 15:51

Okay.

Drew 15:52

And as soon as I saw it, I realized that I had to have it. Mm-hmm. And I'm just gonna go ahead and put this link in here.

Paul 16:00

Okay.

Drew 16:00

And I want you to I want you to look at this. What the alright.

Paul 16:05

What the hell is this?

Drew 16:08

It's the closest thing to an actual computer case for a Raspberry Pi that I've ever seen. It's got RGBs. Uh-huh.

Paul 16:18

Is the Pyron Man? Pyron.

Drew 16:22

Pyron 5.

Paul 16:24

Oh, I get it. I get it now. Sorry, there's a pun in there. Boo. Boo on the puns. Puns are bad. Yep. Piron Man 5, NVMa, NVMe, M2, SSD, PCI, 2, 3, Mini PC case, Raspberry Pi 5. Yeah, I'm done. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 16:43

All right. So I saw this in in a YouTube video. It was almost like a it was almost like an afterthought where like And oh by the way, so talk about the use of AI. Have you used the live AI feature when you've been watching a YouTube video? I have not, no. So here so next time you're watching a YouTube video and like there's music playing or there's something in the scene that you don't know what it is, pause it and ask the AI at timestamp such and such what song is playing. Or at timestamp, what is that silver box in the background? Interesting. It's actually kind of interesting, yeah. So that's how I stumbled upon this thing. Now, I have owned many Raspberry Pis in my day. And I have owned many Raspberry Pi cases in my day. And Raspberry Pi cases usually come in two flavors. One, they're like plastic Sometimes they'll have little hit heat sinks that have like adhesive backing on them for like the thermal pad and you stick things on it and you know you kind of you kind of put the case together and there's like holes for the different ports in the Raspberry Pi and you put everything together. And then there's ones where they're like metal and they're in pieces and you gotta like sandwich the Raspberry Pi between it and you gotta like screw it together. Sometimes there's a fan that you plug into like one of the GPIO pins to power it, and you're off to the races. Paul, this thing is fucking legit. Okay. So for so first and foremost, when you buy this, it does not show up in the form of a case. It shows up in pieces. And it is a little kit that you have to assemble. Now, just to give you the highlights here, so this particular model Okay. It it is metal on four sides and acrylic glass on two sides. Mm-hmm. And inside is a space with with like little riser screws to screw in the Raspberry Pi And there are several daughter boards that come with this that enable you to plug in, say, an NVMe SSD, and a daughter board for an actual honest-to-goodness power switch. and a actual CPU fan stack and cooler that go in there and risers that extend the GPU PIO pins far enough away from the back of the case so that you can access it. It even comes with a little OLED screen on the front. that shows like utilization and memory and temperature and all that other stuff that's like, you know, after you assemble the Raspberry Pi and get The OS installed, like there's like just some little scripts you run that enable that to run as a daemon, and then it just bubbles that information up. It has a little LED light on the front that shows what's going on. Um the RGB fans can be controlled and all that other stuff. It is chonky. It it it is it is legit chonky. But it it works. It actually works really well. And this is the first time I've ever used anything other than a micro SD card with a Raspberry Pi. And that alone is kind of a game changer because the the I. O. capability is so much more. So like You know, look, these are these are tiny little computers. They don't have a ton of memory, so they're constantly going to and from swap and all that other stuff. And like When you're using a micro SD card, that starts to add up. So what got me in the door with this was the fact that it was an and it had NVMe capability. But when I started reading about all the other features it had and the fact that it was a fun little kit to put together, I was completely sold. And and and like it it actually looks kind of nice. Um the instructions were not hard. It probably took me like an hour to piece together. The hardest thing to do was screw in the fans because they don't give you fan screws, they give you little machine screws, and getting those things to line up. correctly and screw them in were really we're a little bit difficult. But like now on my desk, there's three computers. I have my main desktop computer, which I'm on right now. I have my Mac Mini Also plugged in, and now I have this little Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu right over there too that lights up and everything. Uh the only complaint I have is that the fans are a little loud. And it seems to be the the RGB fans in the back because look, they're like cheap Timu, like weird ass fans. Like you could very easily swap those out for some Noctuas and you'd be fine, right? Okay. But uh if you are in the market for a little Raspberry Pi case, you can order it directly from this uh link that we're gonna put in the show notes here, and you can actually, you know, kind of configure it. Uh if you want a power supply, if you want a touch screen to plug into the GPIO port, I didn't. Um if you need a micro SD card. Well if if if you need if you want a Raspberry Pi even, like you can order PM. What kind of SSD you want? Do you want a camera? I don't know what an AI accelerator does for a Raspberry Pi.

Paul 21:57

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Yeah.

Drew 21:59

I don't really know what that does. If you need a heatsink for your, you know, whatever, if you need an HDMI cable, like you can buy the whole kit there. These also sell on Amazon, by the way. Uh yeah, so you can just buy the kit on Amazon and, you know, if you have like an SSD and a Raspberry Pi, like It's really all you need. Um, I will say that it was a little bit of an adventure to install Ubuntu on the SSD versus on a versus the micro SD. So essentially what you need to do is you first have to get a USB stick that has the Ubuntu Live installer on it. And then you need to use the Raspberry Pi OS Imager. And in the Raspberry Pi Imager, if you if you've ever used that, it's it's a really good utility for like flashing micro SD cards for Raspberry Pis.

Paul 22:46

Yeah.

Drew 22:47

Once you select the Raspberry Pi device, under OS options, at the very, very, very bottom, they have this thing called MISC Utility Images. And you can basically um you can basically install a bootloader that attempts to boot from the NVMe before trying USB because if you don't do that It will basically just keep trying to boot from the NVMe in like this infinite loop. So it has that capability. So like that's what you put on the micro SD cards. Like you boot into that. You plug your USB stick into one of the USB ports on the back, and then you boot up, you install, and then it just runs off your NVMe. And it makes such a big difference. Hmm. So yeah, very cool. That's the first time I've ever done that with a Raspberry Pi. So uh it was it was kind of cool. I'm I'm really digging it so far. I I'm using it more as kind of just like a little, you know, fuck around thing right now. It doesn't have a purpose yet other than I just think it looks cool on my desk.

Paul 23:46

Okay.

Drew 23:46

But um yeah, and You know, it's a little more on the pricey side. You know, paying $100 and something dollars for a Raspberry Pi case seems a little extravagant, but you know, if you're gonna throw like an 8 gig or a 16 gig Raspberry Pi in there, I I just feel like you could do a lot worse.

Paul 24:01

Yeah, yeah. That's very cool looking. Yeah. I didn't know anything like that existed.

Drew 24:05

I didn't either. Yeah. I didn't either. I had I had previously been walking around the aisles of Micro Center and I had seen like daughter boards for NVMe, but again, I never saw one that like was purpose built for a specific case, which is what I think makes this really interesting. Cool. Alright. So looks like you've played some board games.

Paul 24:25

I did. So at this little retreat we had for work. A lot of people there like like like to play a good board game. And I got to play some board games that I had never got to play before, Drew.

Drew 24:39

Well, I'm looking at your list here, and this first one intrigues me because you and I both were backers of this game.

Paul 24:45

Yes, yes. And this is I finally got to play. I played we I ran two games of Blood on the Clock Tower.

Drew 24:55

All right. I want, I'm glad we're starting here. I would love to get your opinion.

Paul 25:00

It is it's okay, not to bury the lead, it's fantastic. Okay. It is the king of social deduction games. Okay. King. Or queen, whatever you want. Whichever one you like better. It's it's the best. It is the best Yep. So for those of you at home, uh social deduction game is basically like a hidden roll game. There are people that are good, there are people that are evil. Everybody has a role. You're trying to figure out who everybody is and like eliminate the evil players before the good players die. Uh these are games like Werewolf or Mafia or Secret Hitler or whatever. Okay. What makes Blood on the Clock Tower, I think, so unique is uh one, everybody has an ability. Everybody. There is nobody who does not have an ability. Your ability may not be quote unquote useful, but you have one. So basically, so if you think about it, there are four categories of of roles. The good roles are townsfolks and outsiders. Townsfolks have useful abilities that gather information. They may get a dump of information on the like at the beginning. They may get a slow trickle of information throughout the game. Then there are outsiders. Outsiders are good, but their abilities are unuseful. For example, one of the outsiders we played with is called the drunk. You do not you do not put a drunk token in the bag for them to draw. You put a different role in the bag. They draw that role and they believe they are that role. They have no indication that they are the drunk. But being the drunk makes your power not work. So that means it's the game is facilitated by a storyteller. Uh the drunk the drunk player as the storyteller can give can basically lie to the drunk player. Interesting. Which is fun. Okay. Then there are minions who are evil who help the demon. And the demon is who the good team is trying to kill. And typically the demon has a power that eliminates players. Uh there's like a night cycle where people wake up, get information, the demon kills somebody. And then there's a day cycle where people talk and then eventually people start nominating people to vote and get executed. There are three scenarios that come in the box ready to go. I only ran the first one. I ran that twice. The second time, a friend of the show, Jacob, did help me run the game. Uh I ran the first one at 15 players and the second one at twelve. The first game took about two hours, the second one took about an hour. Uh It is real, real good, Drew. It's good. And it that is literally why I'm so hoarse, is that game. Oh wow. Yeah. You know, so I I I, you know, I'm I like being the center of attention. I'm not I'm not too proud to admit that. So I enjoyed being the facilitator and being the storyteller. Yeah. And though I would have played if someone else wanted to run, but you know, whatever. I I I I I enjoy that. And uh A it was fun as because like people can have private conversations and get up and move around. So I'm kind of like walking around the room, listening to people, listening to conversations and seeing my little like, you know, the little wheels I started spinning, you know, like bare bare fruit, the other seeds I planted. And it also feels really good when like the game ends and you know every you know there's like you know some of the people are excited, some of the people are like, oh uh you kind of you know uh As a storyteller, you kind of give everybody like this is what was going on, this is what happened, and uh you hear people talking about the game an hour after the after it's over. You hear people talking about the game the next morning at breakfast. Uh you know, it's just it's that it's just gives you that that little mmm. It was it was it was so good. Again, it is hard. You can play the game with five plus a storyteller. I think you really need at least seven. Though we had like 12 and 15, I think those are probably really good uh player counts. The higher number, I just think there's more information in the game. Uh there's more stuff going on. Uh Had a really good group of of individuals both nights. People really got into it. And uh yeah, it was just it was just so much fun. Again, if you like social deduction games. You know, I again it's hard to pull that many people together for a board game, right? But it is it is really good.

Drew 29:56

That's what stopped us, right? Because again, you and I have had this game for a while. It's sitting on my shelf. I've been dying to play. Mm-hmm. But yeah, pulling together a group large enough for something like that to really make it work is really tough. And yes, and again, I think I think that's you know, a a a retreat like what you go on there is perfect for that.

Paul 30:13

Yes. Yeah.

Drew 30:14

I mean, I remember we the first couple of times we played werewolf at lunch and we would have a group of like 15 people in a conference room.

Paul 30:21

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Those were fun times. Okay, so it's good. It's really good. Really good.

Drew 30:26

Uh now how much preparation did you do for it?

Paul 30:29

Uh more than I care to admit. Uh

Drew 30:32

Yeah, because you want to get it right. I'm like that too. Like the first time I run that, I want to make sure we completely nail it, right?

Paul 30:39

Yeah. I also, if I could find the ones I watched, I'll put links in there. I'm not a big fan of actual plays. But I did watch a couple at like 2x speed just to get an idea for how things were running. Now obviously like these These the the let's plays were done online. Uh they have a they have a website that you can run blood on the cocktower online with like voice chat. And I do think that is a little easier because when you're playing in person at night, you have to be silent and you have to give everybody information with hand signals. There's metagaming, right? So if you know someone wants to metagame and listen to my footsteps and figure out who I'm stopping by, so I had to account for that and try to lead people off. I had like a soundtrack going. Uh there's a Blood on the Clock Tower official playlist. I had that playing at night. So uh my I hoped hide my movements. Online, you can just pull someone into a private chat and have a conversation as long as you want. Right? There's there's none of that. You can just tell everybody with words. But it was good for me to get into the headspace of uh, you know, especially at the beginning when they had like the there was two storytellers working together and they were going through and explaining the roles because how uh oh this is another interesting thing okay so There are roles that can be available, but not all of them are. So you never know which roles are going to be in the game. And you show the demon three roles that aren't in the game so they can bluff. And listening to these actual plays and listening to them talk about, like, okay, these are the roles I picked. And this is why, and this is the interactions I expect, or you could see. I thought that was really helpful. So it it made everything just go a lot smoother. But uh yeah, it's

Drew 32:37

So let me so let me ask you a question. How many people there prior to playing Blood on the Clock Tower had played a social deduction game before in your in your group?

Paul 32:49

Probably half. And a couple people had actually played Blood on the Clock Tower before. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But everyone everyone got it. Like the the game is. Uh I mean it they have so obviously the components are beautiful, you know, uh everything is so well made, but it's also well designed. Uh every player gets a basically a cheat sheet of all the roles and like a two-sentence explanation of what they do And the game also comes with a one page that you can just read at the beginning. It takes maybe about five, ten minutes to read through it. And it explains exactly what is going to happen. Uh, you know, if you're you know obviously playing in person, the hand signals that the storyteller is going to use. It gives them some guidelines, you know, is basic things like generally good people tell the truth, but they may have to hide some information or lie. Bad people, evil players generally lie. Uh, you know. Uh it it it's done really well. So you can get somebody who doesn't know anything and get them up and playing real quick. So Yeah. Oh. Ten out of ten, no notes.

Drew 34:08

Okay. Yeah, I'm I've been dying to play. Hopefully we can we can get some group together for that in the near future. So you think you think seven people can make it work? Seven people and a storyteller?

Paul 34:17

So I have seven people and a storyteller. Yeah. Okay. I'll keep that in mind. Yep.

Drew 34:23

Alright. So this next one I've never heard of.

Paul 34:26

Okay. So Drew, uh, you've heard of pandemic, right?

Drew 34:30

Yes.

Paul 34:30

Okay. You ever thought to yourself, man, I like pandemic. But disease cubes just don't do it for me. I wish pandemic had orcs and a fantasy theme And the busiest map in the world. Well, I got good news for you.

Drew 34:53

I'm looking at a picture. I'll be honest. I don't I I hope there's a twist to this story because this does not look like I would like this.

Paul 35:00

Okay. Uh Z-Man Games has taken the pandemic rule system. Tweaked the living shit out of it and made it a Lord of the Rings game. Tweaked the shit out of it. Yes. So, uh obviously a lot, I mean, if you don't know a pandemic, it's fine. Whatever. It's a cooperative game. You're working together to basically cure diseases.

Drew 35:30

One of those games everybody should play.

Paul 35:32

Yes, it is. It's good. It's absolutely good. Oh my moder just turned off. Fuck. Okay, there we go. Cut that, cut that, cut that. So what how Lord of the Rings takes the pandemic system and and tweaks it is actually very clever. And I'm gonna I'm here not to barely lead it again. It's a good game. Okay. It plays up to five, which is a weird number. Like five play games that play five are pretty rare. Uh so it's it's it's interesting in that fact. Uh so some of the big differences, obviously there's no disease cubes, there are orcs. Uh so as you draw so in pandemic you're drawing cards and to where to put uh you know, disease cubes in Lord of the Rings, your your cards are either putting more orcs on the board or moving orcs. So the with all those, there's the board if you look, there's hundreds, the basically there's like 12 different colored routes that come that basically start in Mordor and work their way throughout the rest of uh uh It's Middle Earth. So your card could basically say, hey, find this route and move all of the orcs up one. Then there's like a little fighting mechanic. Everybody plays a character from Middle-earth, and you don't just play one character, you play two. Uh, which is interesting because there's a lot of board to cover, and how it works is essentially Uh you can do four actions with one character and one action with another character. Uh so it gets both characters in in the play going. And it's objective-based. There's a big deck of objectives Uh you always get three. Two of them are random, and the last one is basically get uh uh Frodo to Mount Doom and toss the the ring in the fire. Uh But it's uh it has this so if you look if you look at the picture on the BoardGame Geek, there's a lot of components of there's there's these nine Nazgul And uh there's this little disc which represents the eye of Sauron. And essentially uh the Frodo and so obviously uh Sauron is looking for Frodo and Sam. So it makes moving that character difficult. You either have to have certain resources to be able to move them silently, or if you don't have that, you invoke a search. Which is basically a bunch of dice. You roll one dice for every Nazgul in the region. Uh and uh and basically so instead of like oh what Uh the the the tracker that goes down and when you hit zero you lose in pandemic. That's called hope in in this game. Oh. And so searches. If you get basically as he gets as Proto gets spotted, you lose hope. If you lose all the hope, the game is ended. Uh so in pandemic, obviously, you you have those cars that basically uh make things worse. The discard pile gets shuffled and gets put on top. There's those cards in there as well. But essentially if what happens is if if Sauron is actually looking in the region that Frodo is in, you lose another hope, and you move that by having battles at other regions to distract Sauron to look into that region. Uh You know, it is it's like pandemic. There's a lot of setup, there's a lot of components, there's like lots of cards you have to shuffle, and then shuffle these cards into there and then draw four and then take this the the deck and put it into five piles and shuffle the one card from each into one. There's just a lot of lot of a lot of prep. But at the end of the day, I think uh they really took the pandemic system So like if you understand pandemic, you probably understand 60% of the game.

Drew 39:30

Okay.

Paul 39:30

Uh and the rest of it, it's just a really interesting take. on a system that we are all very familiar with. And it's a cooperative game. So, you know, even if someone's a little weaker or or doesn't, you know, it it's easy as you can carry them or help them out throughout the game. So uh It's it's good. The box is shit. I'm sorry, but uh the it the the game is good, yeah.

Drew 39:54

Okay. So uh I am a pandemic purist, with the exception of I think that The uh I I mean Pandemic Legacy One is still I I still think about the time we played through that. Uh-huh. Pandemic's a good game. The other thing I like about Pandemic is the games aren't very long. How does this compare?

Paul 40:17

Uh the we played for about 90 minutes before we lost. Yeah.

Drew 40:23

Yeah, because I feel like I feel like once you know how to play pandemic, you can knock out a game in less than an hour.

Paul 40:28

I I think if you had a group and you played it twice, the second game would definitely go much faster. Yes. And in fact, it was even it was really picking up as everybody was getting more comfortable and we got a feel for like what bad things could happen and how we could predict them and you know and you're talking as one player is going the other players are talking strategy and you know like I gotta get you this resource so how do we get over there? Uh yeah Okay. Yeah, it's good. I liked it. It was really good. Yeah. All right. In fact, I liked all these games, so just just yeah. Okay. Uh the last the third one is rebirth. Uh I saw this on a shut up and sit down review. Uh it's a just easy, breezy, easy to teach, quick to play. tile laying game that is set in Scotland, I believe. You know, there's really not much to say. It's it's one of those, so if you look at the pictures You see these like big pieces that are like castles and cathedrals, and you see all of these crazy tiles, and it looks really the game looks bigger than it is. If you're looking at it across the room, you see, oh wow, that must be a really complicated, heavy game. No, no, not at all. No, you you draw a tile, you place a tile. Easy. Done. It's a maybe it would be a good like appetizer for like a larger game. But I I it's good. It's what 7. 8 on 7. 8 on on BoardGameGeek, which is pretty good. Uh Yeah, it's just a nice in it. It's beautiful. The components are nice. It's brightly colored. Is it easy to teach, quick to play? It was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Drew 42:13

The little castles and components look nice.

Paul 42:15

Yeah, they are really nice. It's so like what do you do? Like what what's the object? Okay, so it's it's you know you're trying to collect points, right? So basically, if you look, if you're looking at the board, right, if you're looking at maybe like that second picture there, everybody has a color and you have a collection of like 20 or so of those little cardboard tiles. And uh you draw one every turn, you only can pick from one and you have to put it somewhere. And essentially, like, there's three types of tiles. There is Uh energy, energy and food are basically the same. As you place them, you get points. So like if you place one by itself, it's one point. If you put one by another one, it's two points. If you have a cluster of three, that third one is worth three points. So you're trying to get these areas. Uh there's also this little area control game uh over the there's like pinkish purple spots, which are castles. And essentially whoever has the most uh Like tokens around it controls the castle, and those are worth points at the end of the game. And the other spots are yellow, uh, yellow tiles, those are for cathedrals. The first time as a player you put your color by a cathedral, you you basically make the cathedral bit bigger with your little color. And that allows you to draw a card, which gives you the ability that if you meet a certain condition, you get more points. So it's it's yeah. But it goes extremely fast because like you have you only have one tile to pick from. So you draw this tile you look at it and you have to put it somewhere. And because you draw that tile at the end of your turn, you have everyone else's turn to think about what you're going to do. So it is one of those games where you're like, oh, is it my turn already again? Because it just goes so fast. Okay. Uh the last game I played is not a new game, uh, but it was a lot of fun. Foundations of Rome. I think you own this or the other the found there's also like another version of this with different pieces. Uh no, I don't think I do. Okay. So this may be the biggest board game box I have ever seen in my life. Looks big. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh basic but it is uh extremely nice because every player gets a tray with all of these big pieces in it. And uh all the components you need, you just hand it out, and then you start playing. Basically, what it is is uh there is a board Uh every it's kind of like you know, like uh letters and numbers, right? So the board is broken up into a bunch of squares, like a chess board, and there's like a a1, a two, a three, all the way to like G10 or whatever. And uh every round there are certain uh squares that are available for you to purchase And it's kind of like a little bit of uh kind of like an auction, well not really an oxy mechanic, but like one of those where like there's a board and the one on the left costs two and the one on the right costs ten. And if someone buys two, all of them shift down so everything gets cheaper over time So you can really buy what you want for a lot of money, or you can wait and buy it for cheaper. So you're basically blanging up all these plots, trying to get plots that are beside each other, because you have these trays of buildings. And all these buildings are different shapes. So if you if you have enough plots in that shape on your turn, you can build and basically put a building down. These buildings do everything from uh generate money more money for you so you can buy more plots. A lot of them generate some of them just generate points by themselves. Some of them generate points based off what buildings they are beside. Uh this is another game that looks bigger than it is. There's lots. I guess there's a uh Foundations of Metropolis or something, which is the same game but in flat cardboard. Uh so if you don't have to buy it, because this game found Foundation's Room had really big, like ornate painted Roman buildings. Very, very ornate. Uh, very nice Uh, but just absolute big box. But uh the game was also very quick, I think, with uh we played with the max player count of five. And we got it through it even with the teach in probably like an hour and ten minutes. Uh very but it looks beautiful. Uh it's fun. But the this is definitely a game, I think, where uh It would be the the more equally skilled the players are, the fun more fun it will be. Uh you know. So

Drew 47:01

You don't own this game, right?

Paul 47:03

I do not. Someone else I the the all the the previous games I own. I own Blood of the Clock Tower, I own Lord of the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship, Rebirth, Foundation of Rome was someone else's game. Yeah.

Drew 47:15

So I'm looking online, right?

Paul 47:18

It's expensive.

Drew 47:19

It's like three hundred dollars. Yes, yes. I mean it looks like there is a Let's see here. Arcane Wonders. Yeah, it looks like it's anywhere from $230 to $310. Eh, you're right. That is a big ass box.

Paul 47:35

Yeah. So there is also, I'll put a link into here. There is a version of it called Foundations of Metropolis. It is the exact same game with a different theme, and it's all cardboard.

Drew 47:52

No, no. See, I want I want the buildings.

Paul 47:55

Yeah. It's Drew, this game is this game is nice. It's real nice. Yeah, it looks looks fucking nice. We did not play with he had the expansion, but we did not play it. Uh Yeah, it was. And but and in fact, even some of these pieces look a lot. He must have had a deluxe or Kickstarter version because all the buildings he had were like Painted.

Drew 48:17

Yeah, I'm looking at that now. It looks like there's a couple different editions of the game and the it looks like there's like a fifty to seventy dollar difference if you want like the painted pieces or something.

Paul 48:27

Yeah. It looks yeah, and like The organization is great. Like I said, everything, all of your buildings, all of your little markers are in a tray. It's got a nice cover on it. The trays just go in the box. You just say, I want to be purple. You get your purple, you take the lid off the tray, and boom, you're ready to go. It's like the setup and teardown is extremely easy. Uh it's extremely easy to to grasp. The scoring is extremely straightforward. I had a lot of fun with it. I don't know whether I'd buy it for three hundred dollars, but uh if someone else bought it for three hundred dollars and and uh and uh wanted to play, I would certainly sit down.

Drew 49:03

It is definitely it definitely looks interesting.

Paul 49:06

Yeah, and it play again, this also plays five players, which is a unusual player count.

Drew 49:12

So uh five players. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Mm-hmm.

Paul 49:18

Cool. It's good. It's good. Yeah.

Drew 49:20

I didn't realize you had bought so many board games recently. I really need to play a board game. I just haven't had time.

Paul 49:25

I've been collecting them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well

Drew 49:33

Yeah, it sounds like there might be one on the horizon, which I would I would love that. I haven't I haven't actually sat down and played a good board game in it's gotta be Shit. Yeah. Four or five months? Yeah.

Paul 49:46

I also got heat to the table, but we've already talked about heat.

Drew 49:49

So heat's a good game.

Paul 49:51

I'm terrible at it. I'm getting better. I have both expansions now. Uh and a doozy of a box organizer. It's so nice. But yeah. Cool.

Drew 50:05

Well, it sounds like you had a good time. How many nights were you at the retreat?

Paul 50:08

Uh two nights. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. But we had to leave early this morning, so yeah. Yeah, yeah. We we had to we everyone had to be out by ten because there was a wedding wedding party coming in and they did not want the wedding party and us to be in the same building together. Which I understand.

Drew 50:27

So yeah. Well cool, man. I'm a little bit jealous. That sounds like that's a really good time.

Paul 50:33

Yeah. Well, hey, we gotta get together and uh heck we can I we we can play Lord on the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship. It's actually pretty good

Drew 50:40

Okay. All right. I'm skeptical. I yeah. I don't I don't like reshades of games that are classics. I don't know. I'm weird like that.

Paul 50:48

I th it's worth it it's worth a try, Drew. Yeah, yeah. I'll keep it open mind. And it's well reviewed. It's what it's an 8. 3 on uh BoardGameGeek. Currently uh 432 overall and 55, 55th in thematic games.

Drew 51:06

So I don't know if that's good or not.

Paul 51:10

It's good. It's board game geek. Anything anything any game that's a seven or more is is really good. Okay. So At least that's how I've interpreted Board Game Geek, because pe the people on there are brutal with their raid. They really are. Yeah.

Drew 51:25

Turn turn turns out in in many hobbies, but board games especially, people are really big fucking snobs. And gatekeepers, yeah? Turns out.

Paul 51:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, I do want to give a preview for next week.

Drew 51:38

Okay.

Paul 51:38

My 1X sugar was delivered. I got my hands on it today.

Drew 51:42

Oh, you did?

Paul 51:43

Mm-hmm.

Drew 51:44

Okay. Okay. All right. All right. I'll be a good boy.

Paul 51:48

I'll be a good boy. I do not I have not used it enough to form an opinion. Next time I record, I will have an opinion.

Drew 51:55

Alright, fair. Fair enough. Alright, well let's let's let's do this. Let's wrap it here. This has been a jam-packed episode. Uh, let's get out of here.

Paul 52:03

Yeah, doing their best. com. You can find all of the links to all these great games we talked about, Drew's crazy Raspberry Pi case. And hey, thanks for listening.