All About Necromon feat. James D’Amato

Kyle

Hi, this is Kyle from Quest Friends. The episode you're about to listen to is a recording that we did back in October with James D'Amato, where we did a little world building related to the first episode of our upcoming campaign. And then delved a little bit into some of the magical creatures that are populating that world. If you're brand new to Quest Friends! and you're not listening to this on the day it comes out, I recommend first moving on to Episode One: An Oasis of Ghosts. And then after you're done with that episode, coming back to this one. Because while this doesn't spoil anything, it's kind of a fun behind-the-scenes insight into how we generated all the ideas that we used in episode one. If you are listening to this episode on the day it comes out, first off thanks for listening to this. Whether you're a new listener who just was interested by the premise or one of our existing fans. If the topics in this episode strike your fancy, the adventure where we use all of this we'll be releasing next Monday, April 4th. And we will be doing a live stream of that episode at 7:00 PM Central Time on twitch.tv/QuestFriends. Again, the first episode of Quest Friends! Hereafter, will be streaming on Monday, April 4th, at 7:00 PM Central Time on twitch.tv/QuestFriends. Or you can just listen to it here on the feed that day as well. All right, that's all I've got for you for before the episode announcements. I hope you enjoy it. And let's cue that intro music.

[Music plays, ‘Quest Friends! Hereafter Theme’ by Miles Morkri.]

Kyle

Hello and welcome to Quest Friends! I am your host Kyle. And today we are joined by a very special guest James D'Amato host of the One Shot Podcast and author of The Ultimate RPG Guides. Hello there, James.

James

Hello heroes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on Quest Friends!

Kyle

Of course. Thanks so much for coming on. Before I explain what James is doing here today. I want to quickly introduce everyone else that is here so they're not weird ethereal voices hanging in the void without structure definition. 

James

I hate when that happens to me. I hate when that happens.

Kyle

[Laughs.]

Ari

That's just my natural state of being.

James

[Laughs.]

Kyle

Every episode it's like, uh, before something is observed, we're—we're, shrouding your podcast. We just don't take definition until someone says our name. So, as I said, I am Kyle, he/him.

Ari

I am Ari, she/her.

Emily

I am Emily, she/they.

James

I am James, he/him.

Kyle

Perfect. So now that you all know us inside and out, let's talk about what we're doing here today. In a few weeks from you listening to this episode, assuming you're listening to it when it comes out, we will be releasing the first episode of Our Ghost themed Campaigns, Quest Friends!. And then I'm gonna impose, put whatever our Skyjacks style subtitle is here, 'cause we haven't figured that out yet.

Kyle from the Future

Hi Kyle, from the future here, the name of our second campaign is Quest Friends! Hereafter. I was originally just going to put this segment in and remove the part where I make it pretty clear that I didn't know what the name was gonna be at first, but then I remembered all the times that past Kyle has made weird sounds I couldn't remove out of recordings. Or blurred two sentences together in such a way that it was impossible to edit around. Or, you know, the times he intentionally left something incorrect or left a blank in his recording assuming that, you know, future editing Kyle can just come back in and record that later. And I thought you know what? He needs to suffer a little bit for those crimes. All right, back to the regular recording. 

Kyle

But at time of recording, we're actually really early in the process of developing characters, developing the system, and developing the world. And so, we invited James on to walk us through an exercise from his book, The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide. Because, unlike our first season where we started with the Numenera rule book and flushed it out from there, we're starting from scratch. So, we need all the help we can get [Chuckles.]. So yeah, thanks for joining us, James. And I will hand it on over to you.

James

Well, Kyle, thank you so much for—for having me come in and offer you some help with this. I-I-I might not be one of the Quest Friends!, but I hope to be your quest acquaintance today. [Kyle Laughs.] The reason that I believe I'm going to be able to help this group is the book we just mentioned, The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide. The book with the title that I didn't pick and is way too long is full of exercises, mini-games, and different activities to help you lush out the world for your role-playing games. 

[00:05:05]

So, we talked through a couple different exercises, uh, that we might wanna do to take the setting that we already have and populate it with exciting details that will make fun story hooks for, you know, encounters and adventures or, you know, long term story structures that—that you can return to again and again, and have cool fun, interesting things pop out of them.

And the exercise that we picked to start with is called Questover Country. Questover Country is about defining a kind of out-of-the-way place. Generally speaking, it's what I think of as like a small town that has like, you know, the world's largest ball of twine or whatever. It's a place that you would never think of going to on purpose, but might find yourself there somehow by accident or because you have no other choices, but it turns out there is, you know, something valuable and fun to be had there. The way these exercise works is it uses something I call the priority system where we are going to assign and rank priorities for different aspects of this place. And once we have those priorities, we'll read kind of what the definition for the place that we ranked it is and come up with what this weird little place happens to be. So, uh, to get started, I will need somebody to volunteer, to have a piece of paper and write down what we rank at what level.

Kyle

I can do it unless you wanna do it, Ari.

Ari

Well, uh, I have a—I always have a piece of paper nearby because I don't have like a mousepad. So, I use the piece of paper as my mousepad.

[Laughter.]

Ari

So, I can do that 'cause I have it right here. [Chuckles.]

James

All right. Perfect. So, the different things that we are gonna be defining about this place are as follows: beauty, culture, amenities, wisdom, and secrets. We are gonna be giving each of these a ranking of one to five with no repeat rankings. So, one of those categories is gonna be, uh, uh, one, which is the highest priority. That means it is the most important to that place story wise. The least important to something story wise would actually be a three it's in between. And the five is important, but probably important in a bad way, in a way that introduces complications, challenges, or you know, other interesting diversions to your group. So based on that, figure out, like, how beautiful would you want something like this to be. How, uh, culturally, rich and interesting should this little place be? You know, there's always wisdom and secrets. Uh, you know, how much do you really want to get out of this place? How much do you want it to affect character stories of the plot?

Kyle

Okay. And then what were the other two?

James

Uh, the other two are amenities. That is how well this place might be able to serve people like, you know, can we find a place to stay there? Is that place to stay nice? [Oliver barks] Are we gonna be able to find stuff that we like there? Oliver, come on man.

[Laughter.]

James

Uh, and yeah. Yeah. Beauty, culture, amenities, wisdom, and secrets.

Kyle

Well, every—you're gonna have to stop me because of the kind of world builder I am from putting everything in the five because that's my immediate default is just fi—and I know we can't do it, which is why I said people have to stop me. [Chuckles.]

James

That is why the exercise is actually structured this way. [Kyle Laughs.] I-I-I find that a lot of people in their world-building gravitate to making something extremely bad or extremely good. And if you make everything extremely bad, you are not going to A, A, it's gonna feel like kind of a slog for a player. And B, the—the—the other thing is that you're not gonna actually be able to inflict all of the terror and horror that you want to because it's too much in one place. You'll never get to the bone demons. And if you don't get to the bone demons, why did you think of the bone demons at all? [Kyle Laughs.] So, yeah, the—the spreads it out, it defines like a couple of these things are going to be important and they're going to be meaningful on your journey, but if they were all meaningful, it would be harder to fit it all in. Yeah. You'd be spending, you know, five sessions in this tiny place, which is probably not what you want.

Kyle

Yeah. So, I'd like to do something in the land of the living, just because with the dichotomy that we're doing with the land of the living and land of the dead, it's not a kind of story where we go to the land of the dead early on and like, then we just stay there. It's more early on we're gonna be exploring how that world seeps into the land of the living and how it impacts that. So, I'd love to have something in the land of the living.

James

Okay.

Kyle

And as a result, I am—I'm very stuck on beauty and I kind of wanna come back to that last because I'm alternating between one and five in my head.

James 

[00:10:05] 

Okay.

Kyle

Our land of the living is largely— it's basically Phoenix to Western California/coastal Mexico crammed into 20 miles of each other. So, we've got, you know, the desert and the mountains and the beach. And in all of those places, there's such a high capacity for beauty, but also a high capacity for, you know, ghost town run-of-the-mill kind of deadness. That I'm—I don't know what I wanna pick. So, I'm— I— this is all to say, I don't wanna do beauty right away. [Laughs.]

James

So yeah, what we'll—what we'll do is let's put beauty and I-I think ranking one and five to the side right now, let's actually focus on the things that we don't care about that much put—putting those out there. Does anybody just have a gut reaction of like, Ooh, this is a three? Like, let's—let's put this in the middle. I don't care about this.

Ari

[Chuckles.] Well, I had that for beauty, but...

[Laughter.]

Ari

[Laughs.] ...but my other closest one to that I think for me is wisdom.

James

Mm.

Ari

I don't know. It just didn't stick out to me super much. And the other ones, I gravitate more towards extremes.

James

I-I personally think wisdom, uh, especially because you're just starting out your new campaign. Putting wisdom at a three is a good idea because, you know, if you've just, hey, I-I created this character yesterday. You're not gonna get a piece of wisdom that is transformative to you. You're still figuring that character out. Even if they did change, nobody would be able to tell because they just met this character. So that— that feels— that feels right.

Kyle

Yeah. Wisdom— I mean, it was because it was the hardest for me to wrap my head around that I was happy to put it at a three, but because of what Ari said and what James said, I—I'm happy with that at three.

James

All right. Right. Wisdom down at a three, and we'll find out what that means for us later. But now, now we get to the second best and second worst things for us. And this is interesting territory. Emily, I'm curious. Do you want to—do you want to go high or low? You're looking for the—the two or the four slot here?

Emily

Let's—let's start with a four.

James

All right. All right. So, this is gonna be, you know, unpleasant or challenging in some way. What—what category would we like to be challenged by?

Kyle

My thought is culture or amenities.

Ari

I-I was thinking amenities actually.

James

Yeah.

Kyle

Yeah. 'Cause I'm—I-I just—I love the aesthetic of the ghost town. And I feel like you're not gonna find good amenities. Well, maybe in our world, the ghosts do have beautiful like ghost amenities, but my, yeah, I'm—I'm leaning amenities too, so.

James

Let's do amenities. That—that is—that is always a fun challenge. I mean, especially, I-I don't know what the age range of the PCs for this campaign are, but, like, if they're younger then boy, howdy, is it always gonna be a disappointment to have bad amenities somewhere.

Ari

They are definitely younger.

James

Yeah.

Kyle

They're definitely younger, but I-I don't know if it would be them or our 40-year-old character or our—honestly all of them would be very likely to complain except for the youngest one. No. Well, the second to youngest one. [Chuckles.]

James

We don't have Dr. Pepper here. We have Dr. Chris...

[Laughter.]

James

...and it tastes like licorice.

Kyle

Don't say that Emily likes black licorice. [Laughs.]

Ari

Black licorice is great.

Emily

It's not bad actually.

Ari

Yeah. Thank you.

James

I-I am a fan of black licorice. It actually tastes like, uh, uh, Nordic tradition salted black licorice. So, it's a very salty soda [Kyle Laughs.] that we have here. Um...

Ari

It tastes like my soul.

James

[Laughs.] Souls, anus forward. All right. Well, then, uh, let's—let's get to—let's get to two. You know this is pretty good. This is something that is gonna be like pretty alluring. It is not like legendary or singular, which that will be the one spot. Like the one spot is almost nothing else in the world exists the way it does here. The two is just like, hey, this is—this is pretty good. This is better than pretty much anywhere else that I have been or can think of or is on par with the best.

Kyle

I like secrets.

Ari

Yeah.

Kyle

Especially because I know there is one secret that comes up in one of the first episodes that I've been trying to figure out where to put it, so.

Ari

I have secrets with two as well. 'Cause I think that like, even, you know, if it's—if it's in the land of the living, I feel like the characters that are from the land of the dead would still like be interested by the secrets of the land of the living too. 'Cause they are not, like, as used to them.

Kyle

I just imagine Ari's character. [Mimics.] You don't get it. It's the world's [Ari Laughs.] second largest. But why don't we go to the world's largest? It's too long of a drive.

Ari

Yeah.

James

[00:15:00] 

All right. Yes. Secrets is good. Secrets is good. Which means that between culture and beauty, one is the best. And one is the worst.

Kyle

I feel like we should leave this in Emily's hands. Emily hasn't ranked yet.

Emily

Yeah. Um, this is...

James

It's a lot of power that you have, Emily.

Emily

I know.

James

And I will point out that the choice almost does not matter because no matter what, it's gonna be fun, so. [Laughs.]

Emily

It's true. Um, this is very difficult for me to imagine a place without beauty as an artist.

James

Hmm.

Kyle

As an artist, the world is beautiful.

Emily

But it is this beauty in a field of empty dirt.

James

Yeah. But there's not beauty in a field full of used diapers, which that being the worst we could be there. [Laughs.]

Emily

Though, to be fair. As far as an emotional image, a field of diapers is actually very striking. Oh my God.

James

Well, uh, you know, like when I—we—you and I will take a little trip to a field of diapers.

[Laughter.]

James

And while we are there sort of experiencing it, I will ask you how the striking image, uh, has affected you vis-à-vis beauty. Uh. [Laughs.] Um, what a—what a field trip, but no. Like honestly, I-I can see it going either way because it is also really difficult to imagine, like what does bad culture look like? And especially ironic considering whatever landscape we are going to be in. If we end up with culture at a five, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Literally one of the most beautiful places in the world and the culture is garbage. [Laughs.]

Emily

Which is kind of fun. Like—

James

You have— you have the power to give us that fun.

Emily

Yeah. I-I think I want that.

James

All right. All right, Emily, that was the secret correct decision that—that has always existed.

[Laughter.]

James

You've made a genius move. And had you made the other decision, it would've also been a genius move. But we're here and this is the genius decision that we have. Okay. So, I kind of wanna actually move middle out here with our choices. So, what—our three was wisdom?

Emily

Yes. Wisdom was three.

James

All right. So, uh, that wisdom is this place reinforces almost all of your PC's best assumptions. It underscores all of the lessons your party has learned in the world outside. They will leave here feeling that they are on the right path without answering any critical questions. So yeah, this is like, you know, a-a town where your characters are gonna go in one way and they're pretty much gonna leave the way that they came in. More likely than not, they will affect the location than have the location affect them, which is a pretty good thing to have, be one of the first things that you do in a new campaign because it allows everyone to settle into those characters. So, moving from there let's go on to... What was it? Oh, amenities is the second worst. Um, okay. Yeah, the—this one's pretty straightforward. There is nothing here. PCs will have to scrape and search for any amenity they seek. So literally anything the players want in this place or are looking for when they come to this place, they're gonna have to work hard to get it, which is really interesting. Um, uh, that I-I can see—I can see a couple different ways of that going down, but let's see how that falls together with the other puzzle pieces that we have here. Let's come to our second best, which is secrets. And it says somewhere in this sleepy place, there is a key to a major scandal or a missing artifact that is critical to the world's history. It hides in plain sight and only careful eyes we'll be able to spot it. Here we go. The blue eyes, white dragon. Gosh, I-I do love that that is here.

Um, I wanna make sure that we've got like the look of this place before we jump in and define more things. I-I-I'm actually interested in culture, uh, to do that last because I do want it to be kind of a direct response to beauty here. This place offers singular beauty unmatched on the planet. If folks knew that it existed, they would flock here in the thousands to bask in its splendor. So yeah, there—there is something here that you are going to be able to see or experience that literally, probably nowhere else in your setting, you're gonna be able to do this, which is a fascinating opportunity as we think about culture being the worst thing here. And it says the culture here exists in hushed whispers that never reached the ears of an outsider.

James

[00:19:59] 

To almost all folk, this place feels like a corpse shaped like a living thing with no heart or soul to make it move. Yeah. Gosh, I-I did have an idea, like half of an idea, just thinking of the juxtaposition of that and the beauty. What if this place is, like, a little bit scary predatory? What if this place is so beautiful that people just sit here and bask in its beauty and never leave? 

Kyle

Ohh, I like that.

Emily

Hmm. That's fun.

Kyle

'Cause when I—when I saw all of these put together, I was like, I've seen the movie Up and this is just every rank is that movie to a T [Laughs.] of like the very high beauty. There is a secret there that only one person cares about, the amenities are terrible because it's just jungle. And then the culture is dog man, man with too many dogs. That one doesn't match up as well. But that, uh—

James

Yeah, a dog-based culture would be pretty good.

Kyle

[Laughs.]

Emily

I have also a place that I thought of, which is a very specific town up in the mountains that we would pass by that was not quite a ghost town because one person lived there, one person.

James

But it was just literally one person. [Laughs.]

Emily

Yeah. And then they died and then it's a ghost town. [Laughs.]

Kyle

[Shocked.] No.

James

Okay.

Emily

But it's like you look across and there are these gorgeous views. And then in the actual town, it's like broken down houses and this one old department store. And that's what I thought of.

Kyle

So now I'm just thinking of a way to...

Emily

A culture of loneliness.

Kyle

Now I'm just thinking of a way to fuse those. And my thought is what happens if we have a place where the stories around it are, you go there and you never leave. And it's so beautiful. And yet you've still got one guy, one person who is just living a life there and just didn't get consumed by the ocean or whatever. They're just there. They are the singular culture.

James

Oh, that's interesting. I like this a lot 'cause I-I-I sort of had the idea that like, what if, because we were talking about being emotionally affected by stirring images earlier. The idea of art being something that like compels something within your soul or—or—or personality that moves you in a way. And like what if the beauty that is here is like a natural act of art? It—it—it's—it's not that, oh, this is a beautiful, like place that exists within nature. You know, art can be made from it because it inspires you. What if nature itself is like doing an art here? Nature is coming together to express something. And therefore, like, the beings who see it or experience it are tremendously affected by it and—and moved by it to the point where they kind of lose sense of themselves. Except this one guy, because this one guy sucks so much he doesn't get hurt. He's just like, "I'm not moved by anything. I'm a curmudgeon."

Kyle

[Chuckles.] This is Ari's character's home.

Ari

I know. I was going to say, that's just my character. I was—I was— [Laughs.]

James

[Laughs.] Oh good. I would like you to get along with this person.

Kyle

But that is something that I really love though, is 'cause it'll make—not only does it make for a fun NPC, it will make for a fun dynamic in which case all of the characters would be consumed by the beauty.

Ari

Except for mine.

Kyle

Except for Ari's.

Ari

Yeah.

Kyle

Which works even better because Ari's character is the kind of character more than anyone else who would just get up and leave the party if given the opportunity. So going to this kind of place, and I—and I know we, you know, said we put a wisdom three, but going to this kind of place would force Ari's character to actively intervene...

Ari

Yeah.

James

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

...when he claims, he doesn't want to.

Ari

Yeah.

Kyle

So, I-I do really like that idea of, unless you're at curmudgeon who just can't appreciate beauty it—it sucks you all in 'cause it—it interacts well with our party dynamics we've got set up and then we have this fun NPC who is a terrible twisted reflection on Ari's character. Like, this is me.

Kyle and Ari

Oh no.

[Laughter.]

James

Yeah. I—like this is just the person who, like, lives nearby rolls through here every so often because the people like, you know, get entranced by this place and steals their wallets, uh.

[Laughs.]

James

I-I—so, okay. Then this, to me, if, like, that is the scenario set up, then the thing that I think we need to do to give ourselves a robust story is we need to make the experience of the beauty of this place somehow dynamic.

[00:25:04] 

Either sending players into dream sequences or—or—or something like that. Like, because we've got this contrast between land of the dead, land of the living. And we have the idea of moving between and them bleeding into each other. I think putting you in a space— what—what if, what if it's your soul that's experiencing the art? Like it's not really your physical body. Like you have a literal out-of-body experience where it's so dang pretty that like you get knocked out of your body and maybe you have the wherewithal to feel horror of, like, oh my God, I can't move my body. I'm not gonna be able to like drink water or eat unless I do something. But also, you're like, I've never experienced anything like this. So, I'm just gonna sink into it for a little bit because then our GM can walk through the players, talking about what their character thinks of as you know, unmatched and unparalleled beauty of creation because that will help us learn a lot about those characters and give us some really cool, fun images while our curmudgeon goes around and finds blue eyes, white dragon gets to save the day.

Emily

[Chuckles.]

Ari

I also like building on that, going back to when Emily said that beauty can be found in many different places and like many people can find different things beautiful, I think.

James

We can just paraphrase that to diapers are beautiful.

[Laughter.]

Ari

Right. Right. I think—

Kyle

Found the title for this episode. Diapers are beautiful featuring James D'Amato.

James

[Still laughing.] No. Oh no. No, no, no, no.

[Laughter.]

Ari

Um, but I think it would be fun that like the place in of itself, maybe like it is beautiful when people look at it, but like from afar, it maybe doesn't look like it. And it's just when the people are approaching it, that they each find it beautiful for different reasons and they see different things in it. And that, like, ties to what you said of like they have different visions of different things and stuff like that.

Kyle

Another fun dynamic with there is because our curmudgeon is our one character from the land of the dead, the one dead character. And they're going into an out-of-body experience.

Ari

Oh yeah.

Kyle

This is just Tuesday for him. [Ari Laughs.] Like, he's just living in his soul. There's nothing new or unique or special about that. And I think that could—I think that could be fun like the idea that this is—this isn't the ghost airport, the place where there is a clear divide between the world of the living and dead. But this is a place where there is—there's a little more overlap with not only the land of the dead, but maybe some secret parts of it, which could be not only why people have an out of body experience, but if we do want to have our ghost Pikachu, our ghost blue eyes, white dragon, that could be why there's more of those ghost Pokémon. The Necromon is what—what—what we call them could be more of them hopping around in this area is because it is kind of—it's not a full link, but there's a little more of an energy or overlap there.

James

So, this is bringing a follow-up question to me. And the answer can be, I don't know yet, but what are Necromon? Like we've talked about them a little bit, but do we know what they are?

Kyle

Kind of.

James

Okay.

Kyle

Necromon are essentially ghost Pokémon. They're not the kind of things you see on Halloween where it's like, what if we made a Pokémon real scary and horrifying? It's more like bug snacks where they're like, what if we made food into Pokémon? Ours is what if we made ghouls or ghosts into cute little Pokémon friends, but they're not dead animals. They're not like there's a squirrel. And then the squirrel dies and now it's a Necromon 'cause that's a bit too dark for our show. Instead, they came from the depths of this death space.

James

Okay. Since we've got this crossover with the land of the living and the land of the dead, what if this place just happens to be a place where one of the deepest parts of the death world crosses over and the things that pour forth are extremely primal and abstract, you know, forms of beauty, but also lots of little Necromon are there because this is kind of one of the places where Necromon would "come from" in the world of the living. It's a very deep, you know, fisher of the dead world where Necromon are usually hanging out. And sometimes they approach like a portal or whatever and go, "What's the deal with this?" And they hang out here for a while, like playing or whatever. And then they roam on to hopefully cause mischief.

Kyle

I really like that. There is a wrinkle in the world-building that I haven't told you about that I think is a complexity that should be explored.

[00:29:58] 

And that is each season of this campaign, which we're calling a layer is gonna be like a season of a TV show. And our first layer is focused on a Necromon tournament, essentially like the Pokémon tournament, but also like the Olympics.

James

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

So, because of that, you're gonna have massive businesses in the Necromon industry and you're gonna have a whole bunch of people who suddenly have Necromon fever. So, everybody's gonna wanna find a mon either for profit or pleasure or something else. Why with the exception of random chance by our PCs and this random curmudgeon has nobody else found this place? And it—it—and we have talked about how they get there there's an out-of-body experience where maybe, maybe they just all die. Maybe that's what happens. But...

James

I do kind of think that's what happens.

[Laughter.]

Ari

Yeah. That's what I was thinking too. Like it's not that they haven't heard of it is that they just haven't left after that, so.

Emily

[Laughs.]

James

Yeah. And it's not like, "Oh, I came back and there's a bunch of Necromon over there." It's like, "Hey, some people said they were going there to look for Necromon and they're gone."

Kyle

I love it. So, this is a place that is on the radar of random people. And especially, probably locked deep in some file somewhere, but every person they've sent there just has not come back.

James

So, I—I'm wondering if it's possible, uh, 'cause like I'm thinking of Necromon and do—do you—do Necromon, just like hang out with people is—is—is like that the thing? Are there, like, Poker ball type things, like...

Kyle

We haven't figured out the details yet. Uh, what does everyone else think? 'Cause I know I talked about how I want it to be Yu-Gi-Oh! And then before the recording, James mentioned cardcaptor Sakura, so there's a whole lot of directions we could go.

James

I do have a-a, maybe a solution for this. We've got Necromon potentially coming from deeper, dead worlds. It—it sort of makes sense to me that they wouldn't be able to exist in the world of the living or maybe even higher levels of the land of the dead without some kind of assistance. Like the idea that you have to link yourself or—or—or do something to sustain a-a Necromon's presence in the world of the living is kind of interesting, which makes the idea that a Necromon who comes from like the deepest levels of the world of the dead, really being a-a great difficulty, no one would be able to sustain them for very long because they need so much of—of whatever they're taking from you to do it. But like, you know, more playful and less abstract Necromon from higher levels. Like it doesn't take much effort. So, a Necromon trainer, like if we want the cardcaptor/Yu-Gi-Oh! aesthetic taking like the idea that in a sort of Shinto lore, you can write out spells and—and, uh, like calligraphy and—and letters being a part of a spiritual ritual of significance that can, you know, ward or seal spirits. The idea that you can like create some sort of card that bonds a Necromon to you where you can like draw your Necromon and put it in some place of ritual significance and be like, now the Necromon can exist here with me and be like kind of fully formed. Otherwise, it'll be an abstract shade that is slowly fading back into its natural place in the dead world where it belongs. So, when people have this out-of-body experience and hang out with all these Necromon, they're not just having a playful time with their fun abstract friends from the deepest dead worlds. They are unwittingly draining their life force in order to have this experience. So that's—that's what kills them.

Kyle

[Chuckles.]

James

That's what gobbles them up.

Kyle

Too much playtime. Puppy therapy to death.

James

And our blue eyes, white dragon Necromon, for whatever reason, it is just a Necromon from like one of the deepest ones that knows how to not overeat and can, like, hang out with you for long periods of time or whatever, without there being much worry. Because we don't know why. And we haven't asked that question because it's our friend. [Chuckles.]

Kyle

I-I really like that for two reasons. So, the first one is I have mentioned off the air multiple times and it probably mentioned to the folks listening or reading multiple times that Necromon is just Pokémon. But since everyone got me and Emily really into Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, I've wanted to make it Yu-Gi-Oh!

Ari

And now it's just cardcaptors. [Chuckles.]

Kyle

Yeah. If we do Yu-Gi-Oh!, it's—it's a fun fusion because they sell like these blank cards. So, they're like Pokémon balls. But then when you connect with a Necromon, you know, captured or something like that, then it has the Necromon on it.

[00:35:03] 

So, it becomes a Yu-Gi-Oh! card, but it functions like a Poke ball. But the other thing I really like, even if it's Clifford the Big Red Dog Rules, actually, especially 'cause its Clifford the Big Red Dog Rules, is that the thing you said originally, James, was that they originally bond with people's souls and then they need a little bit of help, especially deeper on. And so, the card helps kind of facilitate that. But for those who really make very strong connections with their Necromon, they maybe have the card, but they don't need it. They can just have them hanging out like Pikachu on their shoulder.

James

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

Which adds a fun wrinkle for Emily's character, the—without spoiling anything, considering Emily's character's role in the story the fact that her character of all characters is able to maintain this bond is real fun to me.

James

That—that is—that is super, super cool. And like thinking about it in terms of like the—the Necroman tournament/Olympic things, like, you can also pull in more of that cardcaptor stuff. And not only were the Clow actual beings, like spiritual beings that got sealed in these cards, but they could lend Sakura their powers. So, the idea that like, oh yeah, not only am I bonded with my Necromon but like a little bit of that cool spiritual energy passes the other way to me, which means that people can do cool—like, can you imagine the rad, like Necromon ballet that people can do of like, yeah, we're all bonded with these Necromon. And I can do cool spiritual things and the Necromon can be in the world 'cause we're working together as partners and friends in this fun tournament.

Kyle

It's really fun. It's—I don't know about anyone else. It feels like it fits exactly in the kind of aesthetic that we're going to for season two where it is something that is beautiful and wholesome and pure. And using things like the cards, mega-corporations could easily exploit it for easy profit.

James

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean like that's the thing because they're feeding on like your life force or whatever, I imagine that you can only do it for a limited period of time. So, if you are Seto Kaiba and you figure out a way to allow people to bond with their Necromon for longer without dying, that's money. That's money right there.

Kyle

Yeah. And it—it fits the Seto Kaiba aesthetic well, 'cause the cards make profit while also it treats them like collectibles as opposed to unique, wonderful things. I'm glad we've gone on a Necromon tangent. This is really helping me figure out how they function. [Chuckles.]

James

Hey, this—this is all—all—all hits. All hits. Nothing but hits all the way down. Well, it sounds like we have an extremely good scenario that should have something for everyone to do and be really interesting. And also, doesn't break anything about your game setting of wondering why people haven't already tried to exploit this place. Eh, it's because they're dead.

[Laughter.]

James

It's because they did die. [Chuckles.]

Kyle

Yeah, I really like it. I really like it.

Emily

It's very fun.

Kyle

All right. Well, thank you so much, James, for joining us today. If you really like this exercise, you can check out The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide, which is in the description below. I'll also link One Shot Podcast as below. Well, James, do you wanna talk a little bit about each of those?

James

Sure thing. Uh, so the—again, Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide is part of The Ultimate RPG Guide series. We have lots of different books in that series, really there to be accessories to you to enhance your experience of role-playing games. We already knew that the setting for the next season of Quest Friends! was gonna be fun. We already knew that it was gonna be cool, but using the tools in the book, we made it just a little bit more fun. Just—just a little bit sweeter. And that's what I hope this guide can do for you. If—if you are building a setting of your own, I recommend going out, picking up the book, it's divided into sections based on genre. So, it should be able to help you with whatever role-playing game you're playing. But we also have things like The Game Play Guide, which, uh, I-I talked through my ideas about, uh, narrative technique in role-playing games, especially if you're somebody who likes actual play and would like your games to feel more like actual play.

Uh, that's a cool book to pick up. They are sold anywhere books are sold, including all major brick-and-mortar retailers, all major online retailers. And, of course, your friendly local game store and your favorite indie brick-and-mortar bookstore. I always recommend picking books up there. And, you know, if you're interested in these books and you don't wanna pay for 'em, [Whispering.] go to your library because they're there too. That said, I don't just write books. I also do podcasts. I-I do a show called One Shot where we explore as many different role-playing games as possible. We do self-contained one-shot adventures that we release an hour-long episode every week.

[00:40:00] 

We usually go through about two games a month. We've got like over 400 episodes now. So, there are a lot of games for you to discover. Head over there. I-I also do a ongoing campaign called Campaign: Skyjacks. The current setting for that is a anti-colonial air pirate fantasy setting, inspired by the music of the Decemberists and, uh, some of my favorite folk tales. So, there's lots of cool stuff there. And I sincerely hope that you check it out. And I also sincerely hope that you enjoy the new season of Quest Friends! from your quest acquaintance.

[Laughter.]

Kyle

Yeah. So, if you enjoyed today's episode and you're intrigued by the setting, there is a 90% chance, a hundred if I keep this in, that this is actually going to be our first couple of episodes, are going to take place in this place that we've built. So, if you've liked the idea of this ghosty world, and you want to explore more of that fun, silly episodic adventure taking place in the ghost world, check out Quest Friends!. Our second season name Hereafter! will be releasing on April 4th. But don't just wait for that. If you want more of a sci-fi aesthetic, our entire first campaign Flashback Future, which takes place in the Numenera system is available right now. And we've just done a series of one shots over the past six months, which if you are coming into this as a fan of the One Shot Network, we do a lot of stuff related to what they do. We've got a clone high-themed adventure in the system school days; we've got a choose-your-own-adventure mission accomplished story. And if you really like world-building back for Halloween, we did a, all my fantasy children's style world-building episode called: All My Daemon Children. [James Laughs.] So, an incredible amount of things to check out. So, if you're new to James, check out all his stuff. If you're new to us, check out some of the stuff I mentioned and which one strikes your fantasy the most. Yeah. But thank you so much, James, for joining us. I don't think I—we have anything else to say except for be it in books or in one of our shows, we will see you later.

[Music plays, ‘Quest Friends! Hereafter Theme’ by Miles Morkri.]