Ah, the FATHOM Playtest (v0.21) deep dive.... A whole episode where we sit down to do a book report on an incredibly interesting and surreal tabletop RPG that we've been reading, playing, and thinking about a whole lot.
But first, we spend some time talking about similarly weird and surreal media that we've been checking out. Marley's been watching The Truman Show and thinking a lot about the rise of personality-focused media on Twitch, YouTube, and even Podcasts over the past few decades. Turns out, the future is more-cost effective than an elaborate, city-sized film set.
Cole meanwhile has been streaming the absolutely fantastic NORCO by Geography of Robots. It's a strange, Louisiana point & click adventure game that is equal parts melancholy and very funny. In particularly, there is a slimey private eye who utterly rules and a cat you should probably not pet. Cole thinks it has Old Gods of Appalachia vibes, too, and this producer promised to put that in the episode description.
Then, FATHOM by Matthew Guzdial and Brendan McLeod!
Since mentioning the game briefly last episode, Marley's done a twitter thread as he read through the current version of the book, while Cole GM'd a session of the game. They both talk about their feelings playing the game, reading through the book, and thinking about how it exists in relation to games like Blades In The Dark & Heart: The City Beneath. Our feelings are largely positive, but we feel that some things will still need to develop as the book continues developing.
Producer Note: This book is rad. The playbooks in particular are absolutely fascinating (Wanna play as Scooby-Doo? John Wick? Charmeleon from Spider-Man, but also a transformer? Well, now you can!), but the whole thing is worth a read.
Finally, in the closing moments of the Podcast, we give a big shout out to The Indie Bundle For Abortion Funds, which is an upcoming itch bundle supporting The National Network of Abortion Funds, specifically The Collective Power Fund. That bundle is now live as a game jam on itch.io and can be found by clicking here.
Featuring Cole (@icecolebrew) and Marley (@mynar_lenahan)
Produced by Marley, as well.
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