The Chosen One: Buffy, Star Wars, Wheel of Time & The Problem with Fate in TTRPGs

Transcript

[Music] You're listening to No Plot, Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we

play them at. Your DMs tonight and every night are Josh and Chris. You can find

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rate and review the show and share it with everyone you've ever met. Welcome back to No Plotonly Lore. This week

brought to you by Jos Weeden. I Oh god. Okay. Sure. You know what?

Hey, I'm not even gonna Jos Weeden sucks. We all know Jos Sweden sucks. Jos Weeden is the worst. Yes. That that much

we can agree on. But apparently, yes, me saying that not only does Jos suck, but

Buffy St. Marie sucks, uh, was a I don't

I know that that's a reference to a thing, but I don't actually know Buffy St. Marie. No, don't worry about it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though. Ass. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Okay, so

we have a lot of discussions about Death of the Author in my house. Yeah. Like a

weird number of discussions about death of the author in my house because a lot of the stuff that I like is made by

terrible people. Mhm. And one of the things that I like is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And apparently you've chosen

today to blaspheme. Oh. Uh, yeah. Buffy sucks and is not good. And you

should be more okay with

not liking it for reasons that have nothing to do with Jos Weeden being a

[ __ ] heel. Right. So, I I would be open to not liking it if it wasn't great.

And it is, but it's not. It's not as great as you think it is. It just hit at the right

time for you to think it's excellent. A lot of this [ __ ] happens when you're in high school and then you think it's like

awesome and then you look back on it 20 years later and you're like, "What the [ __ ] was I on?" Like, case in point, um,

RA Salvator. Oh, no. That's that's fair. I I didn't like R Salvator when I was a teenager.

um like nice enough man, but I I his books just bounced right off me. I uh

for some reason I wound up reading some Dris stuff like later in life and

I found out and I thought like, oh, pretty good. I found out later that all

that stuff was like later sequel trilogies or something. Oh, that are

like better written. Okay. Okay. And then you went back and read some of the the earlier stuff and

tried to really tried to uh Yeah. Not good. See, cuz like Dragon Lance kind of

hits that way for me where like I I have a soft spot in my heart for Dragon Lance

with the understanding that they are the first few books were pretty obviously

written in a weekend, right? And have all of the hallmarks of stories

that were written in a weekend. Yeah. And so, yeah, they're they're they don't

necessarily hold up. I actually came late to Buffy. Um, Buffy started running

in 1997 and I did watch the first few seasons with my parents. Okay. Um, and

then I left and I didn't do anything with Buffy for a long time and came back to it in my mid20s and it is the piece

of media that I have watched more often than any other. That's so wild to me. You should know

better. Like backtoback in the same way that people do like um Lord of the Rings

marathons, I will or I have occasionally done like season

1 through season 7 marathons of Buffy where that's just all I do for the week.

I genuinely just baffled by this choice. as someone who purports to be a taste

maker. [Laughter] I mean, I I don't necessarily purport to be a taste maker. I I am a person who

understands art criticism. And I think that's part of the draw is that it is it is the sort of work is the sort of work

that appeals to people who like to criticize. Okay. I think like it has

a lot of pop appeal for sure. but also has like a just enough fiddly

bits that it keeps you interested even if you've seen a lot of other media,

right? Like doing a musical episode at this point is just the worst. Yeah,

that's true. I can agree with you on that. They were the first to do it though and so it was new and fresh and

nobody had seen it before. And it's also still, in my opinion, the best of the

form. Okay. Right. That might be true, but

that doesn't mean it's good. Okay. I I can see where being the best

musical episode isn't necessarily like hitting the bar for quality. High praise there, Christopher. Woo.

Uh, except that like I I don't I don't know. When did Glee come out? Oh, Jesus.

I don't know. Um, I'm going to look it up on my phone

right now. More recently than I'm comfortable with. I I prefer to think of Glee as like a a relic of the 90s, even

though I know that's not true. I want I want it to be true. But

when did you start Glee? Uh 2009. So like

I don't think that Glee could have existed without Buffy. And maybe again

like not necessarily praise. Yeah, I was going to say like that is a damning indictment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yeah. The reason we have this plague on pop culture uh is because of Buffy.

But we we're going to have have to have all hands on deck if we're going to make it to nationals. Jeez,

this is this is actually painful for me to listen to. That is one of my favorite quotes from community actually. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, um we we've been watching a lot of Buffy Vampires

Slayer and having some discussions about how Jos Sweden is a ship egg. And one of the the tropes in Buffy, and I think

probably one of the best uses of that trope in role playing games

is the chosen one trope. Yeah. You have a person who is selected by the

gods or a god or fate or some mysterious force to be cooler and better than

literally everybody else. Yeah. And in the Buffyverse, that is the slayer, the person who is there to hunt down

vampires and kill them. But it is probably the most pervasive trope in all

of fantasy media. Yeah, I would say like if the if the

most pervasive like arc is like the hero's journey, quite often the hero

themselves is the chosen one or whatever. Yeah. And like may maybe we're moving

away from that, but definitely when I was growing up, the most common trope you were going to see for that was the

chosen one trope, right? Um down to like I I recognized that it's

like a chosen group and we'll we'll talk about it a little bit later on, but like Fellowship of the Ring is forming a

group of chosen ones, right? Right. You you have a bunch of people who are chosen to go on this crazy adventure to

take down the big bad and they are the only group of people who can do that

because they have the magic dingus. Like I I really everything about that is I

want to I want to get into the nitty-gritty of this idea of the chosen one because I think to my mind like the

chosen one like I don't I kind of disagree with your assertion there that these are chosen ones. um

except for like maybe Frodo himself, but we'll we'll get into the the weeds on

this soon enough. Um I mean, if we really want to get into like Gandalf being a god-like creature and selecting

this group of people by hand to do this thing, but we can definitely do that. He didn't select those people. That's the

whole thing. Is that Yeah, I guess he did. These are the people that slept that stepped up and said, "Hey, like I I

will go. I will help." Yeah. A group of short people who accidentally became

adventurers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Anyways, um Yeah.

So, yeah, the the role playinging game of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Eden Studios is actually one of my favorite

role- playinging books to read. And has a few systems in it that I think

are really interesting when taking into consideration this chosen one trope

because they bake it into the system itself. Sure. Right. Um, have you read I

I'm assuming because you're such a huge fan, you've absolutely devoured everything to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, yeah. That's me. I got the

the comic books and the Oh, [ __ ] you. No. Okay. So, um, did you ever read CJ

Carella's um, witchcraft?

You remember the house I grew up in? Yeah. No, that's fair. I was not reading a lot of things with witchcraft in the

title. No, that's fair. Uh, so witchcraft, CJ Carella is somebody whose

career I've been following for a long time. Um, the first thing that I am familiar with of his was a Padium

property called Nightbane. Okay. Where you play as like horrific monsters. and

he took like the random rolls charts to some interesting new levels because the

idea of Nightbane is that you wake up one day and you have been horrifyingly mutated into an awful Eldriched creature

of the night and you have no control over what that looks like or how you interact with that. Okay. And so all of

it is random rolls. So, it's just like you've got chains for hair now and like

six foot tentacles that come out of your back and all of your fingers are penises and it's just like everything is a

random roll with percentile dice and you make this abomination. And so, I thought

that was dope as hell. And when he went and started his own studio, I picked up witchcraft right away and it was great.

It did a bunch of things that I thought we should have been doing from the beginning. Like magic is a skill. You

roll for it like skills. You have the opportunity to like prepare for a spell in ways that you would prepare for like

rolling a skill checks. And there are like full descriptions of how you can do research for your spells and the rituals

that you can cast. And it's really interestingly detailed, but at the same time kind of like weirdly cinematic in

the way that it approaches it. It kind of reminds me of like the magic system from the craft.

Oh, right. Right, right, right, right. I only have a vague recollection of that movie.

Uh, yeah. Hot girls doing magic stuff is pretty much the Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah,

that the craft had currency with my friend group because I hung out with a bunch of like baby goths. Um,

yeah. No, that and then they took all of that and applied it to Buffy the Vampire Slayer

and it slapped harder than it has any right to. Yeah. To my mind, anything

with Buffy has no right to slap anywhere. [Laughter] Um,

so one of the things that they did with the chosen one trope that I thought was really cool is um it's a

um a template type character selection that

you're doing. So you have like right the the chosen one slayer type character and you can pick that and then there's like

options and things that you can check off for like how you want to customize that. And then you've got like other

tropes that you can play that you can just pick up. And then you also have the option of like building a character from scratch if you want to. Um but most of

the time you're just going to pick up one of these templates and and start playing right away. And the way that those templates play off of each other

is [ __ ] great. Okay. Um the chosen one obviously the one who has like the

most action stuff to do, right? Like they they are the one that is good at fight, right? But then the others are

good at other things. And two of the things that they're really good at is the drama point system that they have is

really geared towards your secondary characters. So, um, if you do something that is cool and

dramatic, you get a drama point. And if you utilize those drama points, you can get special effects which explains how a

character is able to get punched by a vampire who can normally punch through a truck and they land in a pile of garbage

and after the fight they stand up and brush themselves off and go, "Oh, I think I'm going to be okay." Oh, I see.

Right. And so like you have an out for when you die. Right. And like um you can

spend the points on like a uh a generous turn of fate occasionally where like

you're looking for a thing and you're just like cool can I just like spend a couple of fate points to have that like miraculously fall into my lap somehow?

Um and you can do that. I don't know why you and it's really good spend points on anything other than just like not dying.

Um not dying was actually pretty cheap. Oh, okay.

Like I think I'm okay was I believe the name of the ability and it only cost one point.

That's Yeah, that's shockingly cheap. But the thing the thing about it is that it took you out of the fight for the

rest of the combat. Sure. But if you were already going to die should Yeah. Right. If you were already going to die,

you just spend your point and you're good. And then otherwise you get like the big uh dramatic sendoff or whatever.

Right. Right. Right. Right. But that balancing act between like the

the person who does all the fight doesn't get as many of those freebies. Yeah. Means that you actually have like

good reasons to keep those people around and to like hang out with them and help like have them help with troubleshooting

and uh like problem solving and stuff because they are able to do those things

when you're really good at punching stuff. I'm good at punching stuff. You are good at punching stuff. pretty good

at troubleshooting, too. It's a fictional device. It isn't supposed to accurately reflect real life. That's

true. You're good at all sorts of things, Josh. Thanks. I need validation almost constantly.

[Laughter] Um, have you ever seen other game

systems that handle that well? Nope. Uh, my experience with narrative game

systems is extremely limited. Um,

I like I've said before, if it's not made by Voices of the Coast, I probably haven't tried very much of it. Um,

that's fair. I Let me think here.

Played some Paranoia. Mhm. I played some

um I am not known for the like chosen one

trope given that you're going to die and you're going to have clones come out. No, I'm trying to think of like

so, funnily enough, the the narrative systems that I've played in have been fairly like board game based, which is

like it's it's narrative, but it's not really like a a vehicle for expression

or whatever. Okay. It's just like playing through the the plot beats in like a board game

style. Yeah. like it'll be like a closer to like a choose your own adventure type

deal, you know. Um what was the most recent one I played? Uh I played um uh

Tainted Grail and Okay, Tainted Grail uh

has a large book that comes with it. You go you you or your party leave from a central town. Um you're given excuse me,

you're given a vague sort of like hey everything sucks. maybe you should go fix it kind of mission and you explore

from there and and make choices as you go and your like ability scores in

certain areas will affect your options sometimes or your success chances. Um

but other than like making some very simple like yes or no type decisions, you

really don't get much by way of like narrative input. So

yeah, I I want to derail this very slightly just to like express my appreciation for the everyone everything

sucks. These random strangers who just came into town should definitely fix it trope cuz like most adventure games and

fiction kind of leans on that. Yeah. And and it's ridiculous cuz in real life

that would never happen. Well, and that's so TTR specifically was really nice about that because they

specifically pointed out like, "No, no, no, you live here. Like, this is where you're from." Okay. Sometimes you need to go home and sleep in your own bed.

Um. Right. Which was a welcome change of pace. But yeah, I I totally understand

the uh Slug Blasters did that and I thought that was cute. Yeah. And the the town

was based on like Hannah, Alberta. Oh man. of all the places.

Well, it's where the the author is from and uh Well, I'm just saying the the irony of that and Nickelback coming out

of the same location. [Laughter]

Fair enough. Um All right. What's your favorite version of The Chosen One Trope? Well, anyone who's listened to

this podcast for more than five minutes knows already that it's Star Wars. Um, yeah, even though

um I think Anakin's arc. Uh, that being

said, I like I saw you got different types of chosen ones and I think you you

need to um differentiate between like this. I I

think there there deserves to be their own category of like messianic chosen ones, the the prophesied chosen ones,

right? Um Okay. That's to me that's significantly

different from like chosen by the fates or chosen by a

specific you know we mentioned um we mentioned Lord of the Rings like chosen by uh Gandalf or or whoever right to do

the thing I think it's like the person that like there's been that has been spoken of to come soon I mean like Dune

has the their leis on Algai and you know even the

I mean the the the the namesake of the messianic you know idea like like Jesus Christ being the the prophesied one

whether you know the Hebrews choose to accept it or not like that's he never

actually killed Satan though and I feel like that like missed opportunity on the

story beats I think that like having a a big battle towards the end of that would have would have really sold it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, there's there's the later fanfics

that kind of spell out what happened in those three days in the tomb, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I I don't know. I I tried to keep it kind of broad. Yeah. Um, and like kind of based on the the fiction that I

am most familiar with, I guess. Um, and so like the faded one, the the one that

has all the prophecies. Yeah. and is going to be like has has been foretold by God or the gods to come and save the

thing. Um, definitely has its place and like I I guess Anakin kind of fits into

that 100%. Anakin is interesting. H I said 100%. Anakin is like, you know,

Obi-Wan even says it like you were supposed to be the chosen one. You know, they talked about someone who was

supposed to bring balance to the Force, but what the arrogant Jedi didn't understand was that balance was actual

balance and not just wiping out the dark side of the Force. I mean,

I I don't know. I I think that there is room for

a couple of interpretations of that in that like the the Jedi see

the light side of the force as balanced. Mhm. Where everything outside of the

light side is imbalanced, right? And that the prophecies were close,

but it was actually Luke. interesting. Um, right. Like Anakin is

an interesting inversion, like a subversion of the trope in that he's supposed to be the the one that does all

of these great things and actually he turns out to be the villain sort of or okay,

getting too philosophical about Star Wars and like not a trope of ours at

all. It's ironic that you bring this up because I was literally thinking about this earlier this week on my own while driving around. Uh, but the idea between

was was Anakin the chosen one that actually brought balance in the way that the

prophecy foretold since the Jedi misunderstood it or or was he the true chosen one but was

corrupted by uh Palpatine and turned from his fate?

like did the other possibility go ahead is that he is the chosen one and that he

brought balance to the force by proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could turn away from the dark side.

So, okay, you know what? We have homework. You need to go watch the You need to go watch the the animated

episodes where Anakin talks to the mother, father, and son or sorry, the

the the daughter, father, and son. Uh the force gods and okay, understand the

wild places that force lore has gone with Star Wars specifically.

I already watched your six movies in a Mandalorian. Come on. I'm sorry. It's mandatory for the pod.

All right. Uh, let's talk about a couple other options. Okay. Um, so one one of

my favorites and one of your least favorites is from The Wheel of Time. Yeah, that show sucks and uh it's been

proven in its cancellation, but also I yeah, I could not get into the first book, so I don't know anything about the prophecies. I don't know who's supposed

to be whatever. The the interesting thing about that one

for me is that like Randall Thor is the

dragon reborn. Okay. So he he is the the messianic

uh chosen one that is prophesied to return and break the world and make it a new and defeat the dark one at uh Tarang

Ghoul. What does that mean? But uh it's the the final battle. It's Armageddon.

Oh, so it's it's Jesus, but he fights the devil. Um, okay.

And then his buddies, Matt and Parn, are also chosen ones.

They're just slightly smaller. What? So like the the way that the

wheel of time uh chosen system works I guess is like every once in a while somebody is chosen

by the pattern that like the pattern of time the pattern of existence to be a

focal point that things are going to swirl around. Okay. And Randall Thor is the biggest of

those focal points. He's the biggest distortion to the pattern. But his two

buddies are also distortions of the pattern. And they are slightly smaller,

but they're also like still huge, right? Like it's a difference in scale between like three stars of roughly the same

size, but one of them is a little bigger. Um Oh, it's a castle run. It's a

castle run. And so they run into some interesting problems

because of their proximity to one another occasionally. Okay. where like

the entire universe is warping itself around these three people in weird ways.

And when all three of them are in the same place, it warps real bad. Okay.

And it's easy to tell where they are if you're paying attention to it and like weird things start to happen around

them. Like there's a a town where um suddenly a bunch of the dead start

walking. They're not alive. They're just walking. What? um just wandering around. Yep. Just like puppets. They're just

moving around like puppets. Um I I can't remember all of the It was like the

eighth book and I was already delirious. Um, that tracks, but like the

huge warping of the universe around these like this triple star system of

chosen ones, okay, is interesting to me in the way that that

can play out. And like having the world warp itself around multiple chosen ones

was interesting. Okay. They're just chosen for minor tasks.

Not minor. Like again, it's it's three huge things. Like one of them becomes

one of the greatest generals that has ever lived. One of them becomes the king of the new like shining kingdom of

Avalon or whatever. And the third one goes to and fights the devil in a duel to the death. Oh, those seem

significant. They're really significant. [Laughter]

So yeah, and then uh the TV series [ __ ] it up. Yeah. Well, because the TV

series didn't have 14 books to get it right. So they didn't need it, though.

Like disagree. The concept is baked into the te like is baked into the story

where like you have three kids that are like hugely chosen and they need to

escape their odunk little town so that they can go do big things with like the

horrible machinations of the witches behind them, right? Like it's it's it's good. And

then in the first book, it's pretty clear that the guy that can like channel

the one power, the magic guy is the big one, right? But the other two are still

[ __ ] [ __ ] up. And so there's a little bit of like a hey, what's going on here, right, with those guys?

But the TV show decided to try and make it a who is the dragon reborn mystery.

Oh, I see. between those three guys and two girls who were never in the

conversation, right? Those two girls are incredibly important, right? But they're not the

Dragon Reborn. They are very not the Dragon Reborn.

And like none of the prophecies from the books even suggest that it could be

them. And there is no indication about why or how they would break the world

and like reshape it a new like all all of the [ __ ] that like leads to like who

is the dragon reborn cannot point to those two. Okay. But were those prophecies sexist?

Yes. Because the entire world is sexist. And that's exactly where the problem

comes in because you can't have that on modern TV. So

it was Yeah. So, like Robert Jordan is

somebody that I would hold up as like a shining example of 1990s feminism, right?

In that there was a whole lot of talk about the difference between men and women and you had like comedians

standing up and being like, "Oh, I hate my wife." Right? like yeah, that version

of feminism was trying to better understand the

differences between men and women and like show women in positions of strength and authority. And he did that and it's

deeply problematic if you look at it for more than 30 seconds. Yeah. But like it

he he he [ __ ] tried. But the world itself is a sexist world.

Yeah. Right. Like the the magic system is sexually divided between the good one

and the bad one. And the good one goes to women. Yeah. The bad one drives men crazy and they

kill everyone around them. Yeah. Like testosterone.

Hey, I have that.

[Music] All right. Couple other ones. Uh, being the chosen one sucks, right? Uh,

speaking of problematic people, um, Harry Potter Yeah. is, I think, a really

good version of this where like he is the chosen one. Everyone treats him like the chosen one. He's

mediocre. Yeah. And he's got a big old target on his head, which is not fun. He's just a dude. Yeah. Literally just a

guy. Just just a guy. Not a spectacular guy. He's pretty good at a couple of

things, but like not so good that you would look at him and be like, "That guy is clearly chosen by the gods." Yeah. To

fight the biggest, baddest wizard of all time. Yeah. Like he's failing a lot of his classes.

Listen, this kid's got a lot on his plate, you know? He does. He does. The chosen one who has to fight like literal

magic Satan. Yes, he he has to go punch magic Hitler

in the face. Yeah. And nobody's given him a choice about that. And it [ __ ] sucks. And it's got a big target on his

head. And I I appreciate that approach to it of just like he's he's just a dude.

Yeah. Right. Like sometimes being the chosen one is you're just a dude. Just just happen to be a guy. It's okay. You

you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and now you've got prophecies. Yeah, like it's some sort of disease.

Ew, prophecies. Ew, he's got prophecies. Um, everyone is

chosen. Yeah. Is also one that I I like. This is an example of everyone is

chosen. Oh, Percy Jackson. Power Rangers. Oh, well, okay.

Isn't Isn't Power Rangers more like your chosen few type thing?

Power Rangers is um Zordon decides that he needs teenagers with attitude to go fight the

moon crazy [ __ ] and so he just picks some.

You are so oldful. [Laughter]

And like I I think it would be the chosen few if it wasn't for the fact that there's like 37 different teams of

Power Rangers now. Yeah, you the the Listen, you're chosen. You're not immortal. There's generations.

They always need a fresh crop of kids to throw into combat.

Yeah, they they need a steady stream of ch child soldiers to fight the cosmic wars. Um what a what a horrifying Again,

like a you spend more than 30 seconds looking at it. I I have not deep dove

Power Rangers lore and I frankly don't want to, but I have the weirdest fascination

with the Power Rangers in that like there is something about that iconography that really grabs me. Yeah.

Right. Like I I really deeply appreciate the iconography and the like symbolism and the um like the the costume design

and the stupid rubberface creatures. There's so much about it that I love. I can't stand the [ __ ] acting. Yeah.

I don't watch Power Rangers, but I'm really into the idea of Power Rangers more than anything. Um, but yeah, Percy

Jackson, I think, is maybe a better choice. Okay, that makes sense.

Everybody in the series is What have I watched? I' I've watched a TV series of it with my kids. It's good. Yeah. And

something else I don't remember. Oh, you read the books? Nope. I watched a movie. Uh I that stuff came out so late after I

was reading books, you know. Uh do you read with Grant? Uh yeah, we read Dog

Man and Cat Child person.

Cat Kid. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Uh and uh the would be kid.

Try the first book. Okay. Thor glumped onto it real hard real early. He

absolutely adores those books. Okay. But your child is a glamper. He is a glamper. That is true. Um but yeah, like

out of all of the things that we've read, Percy Jackson is the one that he responded to the best. And like he's also a dogman, cat kid, uh Captain

Underpants type kid. Okay. So, yeah, we did a lot of underpants for a while.

Yeah, we read all the underpants until there wasn't any more underpants. Yeah, we uh my my younger brother

had so many underpants as a kid and so we got like OG underpants releases. I'm

kind of a hipster when it comes to underpants. Really? You were into Captain Underpants before?

Way before it was cool. Um that that is actually one of my least

favorite versions of a chosen one trope. Captain Underpants. Yeah. Why?

cuz he goes through the first bunch of books without superpowers.

Correct. And it's great. Yeah, that's true. And then as soon as he gets superpowers, he is now an actual

superhero. He has actually been chosen to Yeah. Like Well, accidentally chosen

again like one of those people that like he he's the only one who can because he

accidentally the whole superpowers. Yeah. Um, and it's not as good after

that point. I really preferred uh Harold and George having to chase after their

half- naked principal and keep him out of trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Because he is

going to get himself killed in these ridiculous situations. Um, that was

great. Yeah, we we had those. Yeah.

Problems with prophecies, problems with the chosen ones. But when does chosen one stuff suck?

Um, I think chosen one stuff sucks when

chosen one is too [ __ ] good at everything.

And so like the Bellis Swan type thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like just prednaturally

good at just about everything. Um, and what else sucks about chosen ones?

Uh, I kind of hate that in like chosen ones, too, though. Sacrificial best friend.

Sacrificial best friend. Yeah. Like fridge stuffing a best friend. Yeah. Oh,

okay. Yeah. Um, cuz I I was just thinking like as far as Mary Sue characters go, like the first one that I

always run to is kind of Katniss Everdine, but she wasn't really chosen by anything. No, she volunteered for

that shitty job. and was just the bestest at it instantly because she everything she did in her

life up to that point was perfect for the job. And I mean that's fine I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. It worked I suppose but like Yeah. Just a a little little too good. Yeah.

Mostly by accident. Yeah. I um I mean she definitely I think I I feel like she

got married soon, but that's just me.

I find it really difficult to deal with chosen ones both in like fiction and in

role playing games and especially in role playing games because um it begins to impact the the group dynamics when

the chosen one is the most important character and nobody else can be as important. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was going

to say like everyone at that table wants to be the chosen one.

Not necessarily. Like again, going going back to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer thing, I've much preferred playing a

side character really because the dramatic options available to me with

the like uh fate points or like story points or drama points or whatever the [ __ ] they called them um were more

interesting to me. And there there was something about having like some fragility and not being

the like main beat him up type character that I really appreciated. And like

getting to do a lot of the problem solving stuff and having that be like my main role was actually a lot of fun.

Huh. Interesting. And it also meant that like we could play off of the chosen one role

a little bit and do some of the the being the chosen one sucks. Yeah. because like I'm able to go off and like

do stuff that the Buffy character can't because the Buffy character has to go fight vampires.

Um but yeah, like the when you have a situation where there is only one

important character in your game, just play a one-on-one game. Yeah. Oh,

never mind. I'm deeply traumatized by some one-on-one D and D or whatever the

[ __ ] was being played at that table. That seems like a can of worms we're

opening next episode. Yeah. Hey, thanks for making it all the

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