GMBC ep42 - Twisted Tropes & the Perfectly Imperfect Young Adult Dystopia, 'The Giver'
Lois Lowry
The Giver
Speaker A
00:00:02.960 - 00:01:01.230
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club, where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop roleplaying experience. We're here with an extra special crossover episode with Twisted Tropes, the actual play podcast with a twist.
Listen for common tropes from your favorite settings and genres twisted into wild and unexpected ways. Three members of the cast, Beau Powell, Matt Litmosa and Evan Kelly, are here to talk about the classic YA dystopia the Giver by Lois Lowry.
We'll talk about dystopia settings like Paranoia Ready Player One and Ender's Game Mechan, like the duality dice in the Cosmere ttrpg and how Vulcan society is really a dystopia. Let's get into the conversation here. We are on the Game Masters Book Club and I am here with a fantastic group of people.
I'm here with Twisted Tropes and they are some fabulous live play actors who are going to be here on the show. And today we're going to be talking about Lois Lowry's the Giver, which means we're going to be talking about Dystopias, everybody.
Speaker B
00:01:01.230 - 00:01:01.590
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:01:02.070 - 00:01:44.000
Yay. Dystopia. All right, fantastic.
Since we're going to be talking about dystopias and with that level of enthusiasm, I'm going to have everybody introduce themselves. So you know who's going to be who's here from Twisted Tropes.
And from there we will talk about the book, and then we'll talk about mechanics, and then we'll talk about cool stuff, like cool stuff from the book, and then we'll talk about stuff that's like the books. And then you'll hear more about their podcast again and then we'll be done because that's the way the show works.
This is the Game Masters Book Club, and that's the whole thing. Let's start with Evan. Evan, go right ahead and introduce yourself.
Give us a little bit of background on your gaming bona fides as well as tell us what your first dystopia was.
Speaker B
00:01:44.160 - 00:02:02.920
My name is Evan Kelly. I am the resident audio guy for Twisted Tropes. I have been playing tabletop RPGs and game mastering for.
Unfortunately, I calculated out 35 years and unfortunate. Yeah. Misspent youth.
Speaker A
00:02:05.720 - 00:02:09.800
Yes. Have you been gaming since you were five? Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker B
00:02:10.839 - 00:02:31.860
My first dystopia that I remember reading vividly was actually the Clockwork Orange. It was for a college class and it was really about exploring the. The sort of language experiment that it was.
But it was such an amazing read that was one that really sort of sticks with me as the. The first one that I could identify as a dystopia.
Speaker A
00:02:31.940 - 00:02:33.460
All right, on to you, Bo.
Speaker C
00:02:33.460 - 00:02:54.030
All right, first I'm going to say that Evan is not just our resident sound guy, he's one of our amazing gms and actors. So all the things. And I'm Beau Powell and I am have been playing TTRPGs for about 25 years. I've only been a game master for about two years.
That's relatively new for me. But I do love TTRPGs.
Speaker D
00:02:54.580 - 00:02:54.980
All right.
Speaker A
00:02:55.220 - 00:02:57.700
Yeah, your first dystopia, that was Animal Farm.
Speaker C
00:02:57.860 - 00:03:06.420
Oh, I'm pretty sure. I went back through a ton of books yesterday to try and confirm, and I think it was Animal Farm.
Speaker A
00:03:06.900 - 00:03:08.340
That's a dark one for sure.
Speaker C
00:03:08.740 - 00:03:10.020
It's a big one. Yeah.
Speaker A
00:03:10.500 - 00:03:14.540
Matt, go ahead and tell us about your gaming and your dystopia.
Speaker D
00:03:14.540 - 00:03:53.580
Yeah. So, Matt Lastimosa, one of the GMs and actors on Twisted Tropes. I'm one of the youngins in the cast and crew tabletop role playing.
It's about eight, nine years. I started off in fourth edition of D and D. It was really though blind leading the blind.
Buddy of mine picked up the book and we tried to figure it out. But it was really when I met Bo and Evan that I truly started gaming in 5th ed. And so slowly branching out from there.
As for first Dystopia, funnily enough, I was the one who kind of recommended this book potentially as a topic. And there was the joke made that the giver is baby's first dystopia. I am the baby and this was my first dystopia.
Speaker A
00:03:54.860 - 00:06:23.200
And thank you for that. This is a really great book. I'm very excited to talk about it. My name is Eric Jackson and I am the host of the show.
And I have been playing since the Pleistocene. And it's hard to remember my first dystopia, but I landed on a Wrinkle in Time.
And the scene, particularly the scene in the Wrinkle in Time where they're on Camazotz and the little everybody's ball is bouncing exactly the same. And it's this really terrifying thing where every, like somebody does something wrong and they're instantly whisked away.
And I was like, wow, that was pretty frightening for me. So, yeah, my first experience of that kind of scary. Which is going to bring us to the book today. And the book is about a boy named Jonas.
Jonas lives in a perfect community. People are polite, families are supportive and Talk about their feelings.
Crime is exceedingly rare and pain is always treated immediately with medication. A committee matches people to their spouses. Families are dissolved when children are grown.
The old and sick are released to elsewhere and differences are minimized to avoid conflict. This is the philosophy of sameness that is in the Giver.
When children turn 12, their apprentice in a field chosen for them by the committee is chosen to apprentice the Receiver, a single person in the community who holds the memories from before. The community adopted sameness so that no one else need hold the pain and worries of loss, poverty, war and death.
But Jonas also gets to feel deeply experienced. Experience color and music and know the warm glow of love. All experiences his friends and family have never experienced.
The old Receiver, who is now the Giver, and Jonas form a plan to return the memories to the community. But that means that Jonas will flee the community and never return. The Giver will stay behind and help the people cope with their memories.
When Jonas final does leave with a small child who's about to be released, which Jonas now knows means euthanized, he takes the child with him on a bike for his escape. The story ends past despair and hunger in a memory of golden light.
The Giver is a dystopia that is driven by the loss of memory and emotion and is replaced with ritual and conformity and the resulting sameness, creating ease and peace, but without the full experience of the human experience and is only for those who can conform. It's an almost bloodlessly clean dystopia with a suffering so hidden it almost doesn't exist. And that's what's really frightening about it.
And that's my review.
Speaker C
00:06:24.640 - 00:06:26.080
That's it? Yes. It's great.
Speaker A
00:06:26.080 - 00:06:33.280
That's the book. It's as much as I can tell about the book right off. But, Matt, this was your book. So how close did I get?
Speaker D
00:06:33.680 - 00:06:36.320
I think you nailed it. Put that on the back of the book.
Speaker A
00:06:36.320 - 00:06:38.480
What were the themes that really drew you to this book?
Speaker D
00:06:38.480 - 00:07:30.710
I think definitely the feeling of sameness. Just how dystopian that can really be. I think it's a very interesting juxtaposition. We all want to fit in into our social groups.
And so what does that look like when you take it to the extreme where there is no uniqueness and there is no different? And this book does.
One of my favorite things that in written media is the reader doesn't know something that the characters obviously know because it's part of the world or it's just a small detail to them, but it's Mind blowing to us as the readers. So one part of the sameness that this society's broad is the lack of color. And it's one of those fantastic moments in the book when.
When you get there and realize that Jonas is special because he's starting to see hints of color in the world, you have to go back and realize this author never used color as a description, and somehow you miss that for half the book.
Speaker B
00:07:30.790 - 00:07:36.870
I have never felt dumber reading a book than when that was dropped. And I went, oh, my God, how did I not notice that?
Speaker A
00:07:37.510 - 00:08:08.950
They don't describe anyone. They don't describe any of the characters. Like, they talk about, like, how they sound smart, like, sometimes a little bit.
Like, there's a little bit about, like, how they sound, I think. But not even. Not but. But no reference to anyone's appearance. And it is.
And we'll talk about this later, the bias with which we constructed that world. And then all of a sudden, we realize, oh, I've been building this world exactly as I see what the standard family is.
And now I have to reckon with the fact that I have a standard family.
Speaker C
00:08:09.110 - 00:08:10.710
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A
00:08:10.790 - 00:08:15.590
So, yeah. Bo, any other themes that you want to address before we talk gaming?
Speaker C
00:08:15.590 - 00:08:42.770
Yeah, I just want to talk about how delicate and gentle the storytelling is. It feels, as a reader, like we are taking some of the medications or have been genetically altered in some way as we're reading along.
Because it's the way, like you said, it's totally bloodless, and it just feels so soft and gentle as a society, until the reveals start coming in and you realize how. How dark it really is. Yeah.
Speaker A
00:08:42.770 - 00:08:52.450
That you're. That you've been kept in this warm, soft cocoon, and all of a sudden you're. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait, I'm trapped in a cocoon.
You know,.
Speaker C
00:08:55.010 - 00:08:56.610
I don't want to be in here. Hold on.
Speaker A
00:08:57.410 - 00:08:58.410
Anything you want to add?
Speaker B
00:08:58.410 - 00:09:10.940
Well, it's just sort of the idea that we, as the readers are growing up with Jonas, and, like, we are moving into this loss of innocence the same way Jonas is seeing it.
Speaker C
00:09:10.940 - 00:09:11.340
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:09:11.580 - 00:09:25.900
Because that reveal of color became the. Oh. Oh, my God. What else don't I know? Oh, no. So it was. It was very powerful. And the fact that everything seems so. So appealing.
Speaker C
00:09:26.540 - 00:09:28.620
Yeah, I was in. I was fine with it.
Speaker B
00:09:29.340 - 00:09:39.150
Having. Having no chaos, no conflict. You're like, this. This actually doesn't sound terrible.
And then you start peeling away some layers, and you're like, oh, oh, that's the cost. Oh, that's awful.
Speaker E
00:09:39.150 - 00:09:39.670
Absolutely.
Speaker A
00:09:39.670 - 00:09:42.230
Then the dad uses the cute voice.
Speaker B
00:09:45.110 - 00:09:45.790
Don't love that.
Speaker A
00:09:45.790 - 00:10:32.430
Well, that was terrible. So here we have a dystopia.
And I would say I did a decent review of a lot of the games that were out there for Dystopia and a lot of them are these, you know, raw, violent, cyberpunky, you know, mutant kind of things. And this I'm curious to see. Like what? Because if you say dystopia, that's what you usually get.
Like if someone types in, I would like to do a TTRPG dystopia, you're not going to get something that at least initially or at least off the top is. Feels like it's going to fit this. So I am terribly interested to hear what you guys have to say about this. So I'm going to start with Evan.
Evan, do you want to hit us up with how you would interact with evoke this, this kind of dystopia in a ttrpg?
Speaker B
00:10:32.670 - 00:12:52.040
So two impulses. The first one is based on the actual setting.
The idea of having everyone being preternaturally calm and pleasant and really just wanting to keep everything harmonious. And that made me feel like paranoia. The classic, you've got everybody, you know, being medicated and trying to appease the grand program.
And as, as players in this, you could begin to learn about, you know, what is under the surface. And then you get basically a side mission from the Giver to, you know, do something that goes against the program. That's one impulse. The other.
Because there is a focus on trying to get rid of certain traits.
There's a mention of one of Jonas's friends having red hair and the Giver saying, yeah, they've been trying real hard to get rid of that and they haven't figured it out. I was trying to figure out how mechanically the ability to transfer memory would work. And that felt psychic.
So I went to Palladium's old Beyond the Supernatural. Everyone plays as psychic investigators.
So they have a really pretty well kitted out system to have people with everyday, normal, basically modern skill sets and the ability to have some sort of contained, low level psychic abilities. That was my first impulse and I had to prove that it could work. So I went back and dove into it. And there are two powers.
Mind bond, which allows you to literally link your minds and share your memories, and automatic mind block, because Jonas has to accept and prepare and allow the memory to be passed to him. So a combination of those would mimic the actual mechanics of the transfer of memories.
And then I expanded it to, well, what about the other genetic markers that they haven't been able to eradicate? Are those also possibly markers for other types of powers? The powers in beyond the Supernatural are pretty low level and pretty subtle.
So it could be something like, oh, the people who are given over to take care of the elderly may have some kind of a empathy or a small biofeedback to, you know, make them more comfortable. Something like that.
Speaker A
00:12:52.680 - 00:13:00.280
All right, I love it. That sounds awesome. Matt, what's your solution to the the Giver as a ttrpg?
Speaker D
00:13:00.280 - 00:14:30.010
Yeah, it's definitely an interesting one to try to come up with a solution for.
For me, like I kind of mentioned the theme I really hooked onto was having the reader not understanding quite what the character is going through in that moment and something I've wanted to do so bad to my players and the stories we tell.
It's really in a tabletop role playing game, but one way I've seen newer systems get close to it, things like the Duality Dice in Dagger Hearts or Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere rpg which has a plot die specifically on the Cosmere RPG that is one that is invoked by the dm, a way to communicate to your players really of I am invoking this die. You are adding it to this role because this is of utmost importance to the plot.
But then to be able to bring that out during what would normally be a mundane thing like tossing an apple between friends can start to have that similar feeling as oh, there is something going on that I am not aware of but is happening to these characters was an interesting one there. And then even a little bit further mechanics wise, specifically with the Giving and Receiving, the Cosmere rpg.
For those of people who read any of Brandis Hansen's work, one of his magic systems has a power called Light Weaving, which is illusions made real. And then some of that is literally taking your memories and making them reality in this moment.
It's much more physical and more akin to like making a construct of in like a D and D type thing, but could easily see that being reworked into a Giver receiver type situation.
Speaker A
00:14:30.090 - 00:14:35.530
I'm loving this. Beau, what is your solution to the Giver and its unique dystopia?
Speaker C
00:14:35.610 - 00:15:41.500
Well, in our group I am known for having a unique relationship with mechanics in which I'm constantly arguing with them. So I love a low mechanic system.
And even as a gm, if you ask me a question, I tend to give you the answer rather than making you roll for it because I automatically I'm like, you're already thinking of this, so you're on the trail. All right, here it is. So I would probably go with something like Kids on bikes, which number one is low magic.
And this world doesn't feel very magical to me. It's very science based. All the genetic alterations and things like that, the medications that they're taking, all of that feels very sciency.
And then with kids on bikes, the way you divvy up the dye types for stats, it feels like you could make some really simple characters but still be able to pull from those stats. Well, okay, so you might end up being a laborer.
So you could do the whole year 12 selection process with your players and get them to their apprenticeships and start right from that selection.
Speaker A
00:15:41.580 - 00:17:31.740
Yeah, that'd be a cool session. Zero. Yeah, we're doing the selection. That'd be fantastic.
This is going to be a surprise for the people who are here because I changed my mind from yesterday. I am going to go with the Veil, which is a Powered by the Apocalypse.
Just like most of the Powered by the Apocalypse games, it has the playbooks and moves and skills and all that stuff. And it also, like all powered Apocalypse, has the obligation link to all the other players.
That's part of your creation that you are obligated to certain other characters in some way or another. Yeah, but the main reason why I wanted to pick this was because in the Veil, people live in a matrix like digital world, which isn't like this.
But one of the moves is to lift the Veil, which allows the characters to get at the truth with their real senses. So very much like Jonas Seeing Beyond. That's like a standard move in the game.
The other thing is that all of the stats in this game, and this is where it really differs from most of the Powered by the Apocalypse stuff, is that all the stats are emotional states. They're not like strength or intelligence. It's like fear or joy or something like that.
And the idea that you'd be developing those stats as you went through this game, that sounded very like something I would do with the Giver if I were going to run it as a group.
But if I were going to run it as a story and like a simple rpg, I would run it with Thousand Year Old Vampire, which is a game that is all about like what memories you keep. You can keep five memories. Each of them have three experiences that go with it.
Based on the prompts from the book, you roll and acquire new memories and decide to keep them and eliminate them. And you keep forgetting things and you keep gaining things.
And that really gives the march through time kind of feeling, which isn't present in this book. But the whole memory system sounded very much like something you could do for the Giver.
Speaker C
00:17:31.740 - 00:17:32.500
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker A
00:17:32.500 - 00:18:06.740
So I hope either one of those are. One of those would probably work. I think both, maybe we could combine them together for sure.
That's all of us talking about how we would do this mechanically if we were going to run this story, which we all accept is, like we said, a very bloodless, unique kind of story. But there's stuff in here that's really cool that I'm fairly certain we all want to steal, that is make portable into our campaigns.
So, Matt, you've already talked about a little bit, but what is it that you want to make? What do you want to port from the Giver into your campaign?
Speaker D
00:18:06.740 - 00:18:43.500
You know, I'm going to sound like a broken record at this point, but it was my favorite part of the book is that pulling the wool over your players eyes, finding some way to do that. Everybody loves a good plot twist. And then two.
I think the most effective ones are the ones where people, they didn't even realize they were being fooled till it happens.
And I think let alone just that aspect of it, but being able to build a world, as we've been kind of talking about, where your players feel comfortable, but to always have that sense of like that eerie. It's too perfect. What's the catch? You know, why am I not seeing it until boom, it hits you?
Speaker A
00:18:43.500 - 00:18:54.020
It's like once you introduce a mimic into the campaign, it's all over. Mimic. Everything's perfect from then on, like everything is a mimic. It's terrible.
Speaker D
00:18:54.820 - 00:18:57.620
Yeah. In this case, everybody's asking, what color is the sky today?
Speaker C
00:18:57.620 - 00:18:58.660
Yep. Exactly.
Speaker A
00:18:59.060 - 00:19:07.700
Yep. It's like, yeah, tell me what color the sky is. Can you tell me what color the sky is not gonna get me again? What would you take from the Giver?
Speaker C
00:19:07.860 - 00:19:38.810
I love a plot where you are sort of bound within a framework. Whether that is a particular space that you, your players are trapped in.
It's usually for me, it's usually a place where they're sort of trapped in some way. And I love the discovery of you think you are one thing and then you slowly over time find out.
So there's so much more to know about you, yourself and where you are. So I think that I would pull that for a game.
Speaker A
00:19:38.970 - 00:19:46.330
The idea that you, you cease to be a perfect citizen and find out that you. That your life isn't Perfect. All of a sudden.
Speaker C
00:19:46.330 - 00:19:49.050
Yeah. Wait, what happens if I stop taking these drugs?
Speaker D
00:19:51.250 - 00:19:51.450
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:19:51.450 - 00:20:13.410
And I have to say that I assume the puberty blockers, which is all I can think of, or rather the emotional puberty blockers that they put this person on. The taking them off happens at the end of the book.
There is a slight shift in tone, but that's so close to the end of the book that we don't really even see that happen as much as I think I would have liked. But yeah, you could really dive deep into that.
Speaker D
00:20:13.570 - 00:20:23.870
Jonas got really into Linkin park right at the end. It's not a phase, mom, and you're.
Speaker A
00:20:23.870 - 00:20:24.950
Not my real dad.
Speaker B
00:20:26.550 - 00:20:27.590
Technically correct.
Speaker A
00:20:28.310 - 00:20:39.110
And yes, absolutely. Please get us out of this spiral. Tell us something else before. Before we all start playing Black. Black Flag parade or something.
Speaker B
00:20:40.390 - 00:21:34.520
I love the idea of a group of PCs from elsewhere, like, just not part of this community, stumbling onto it, because this would be one of those things would be so intensely creepy for your players because obviously there's something wrong here. Yeah, there is something. Like, clearly this can't be working this harmoniously without some kind of nefarious intent.
But as they explore and talk to the, like, the people in the community, what that kind of reveals to them about themselves, about what they think is normal and what will happen if they mention a color and they're looked at. Like, that's an interesting word you just said. What does that mean? And how creeped out that would make your PCs.
I would really dearly enjoy just sort of watching the players dance.
Speaker C
00:21:34.920 - 00:21:51.440
I think I would freak out as a player if over the loudspeakers someone announced that someone in heavy air quotes had taken an apple today from Snack and knows they shouldn't have it. And I had an apple. I. What? What?
Speaker B
00:21:51.520 - 00:21:58.720
Oh, passive aggressive big brother. Just. And what that means, like, where are all these sensors? Where are they watching? How many people are watching?
Speaker C
00:21:59.040 - 00:22:01.040
And why do they care so much about this apple?
Speaker A
00:22:01.520 - 00:22:10.770
Yeah, so they remember the early, early Star Trek Next Generation where they're playing ball on this planet and Wesley falls into the flowers and they're going to kill him.
Speaker C
00:22:10.850 - 00:22:13.130
Yes, that's what it felt like.
Speaker A
00:22:13.130 - 00:22:15.650
I'm like, he stole the apple. Is he gonna die?
Speaker C
00:22:17.730 - 00:22:18.290
Exactly.
Speaker A
00:22:18.290 - 00:22:33.010
But no, that's. That's what I think makes it even more sinister that, like, at least on that planet, it's like everything. You break the rule, it's death.
And that's ridiculous. Like, everybody. But, like, you're just gently corrected. Right? It's. Oh, no, it's. You Know, we're not mad, we're disappointed.
Speaker C
00:22:34.130 - 00:22:35.330
Guilt, yes.
Speaker D
00:22:35.490 - 00:22:38.250
Okay, just kill me for stealing the apple.
Speaker A
00:22:38.250 - 00:22:46.050
Just this deep obligation to make everybody feel comfortable. The constant apologize is, oh, that's so.
Speaker C
00:22:46.610 - 00:22:51.970
And that you're expected to immediately say, I accept your apology. That's part of it.
Speaker A
00:22:51.970 - 00:23:04.810
Because that's this whole. That whole idea of. Of ritual and how the ritual is used to control everybody.
Like you're going to say you're sorry, and if you don't say you're sorry, then that's almost as bad as the thing that just.
Speaker C
00:23:04.810 - 00:23:05.450
Exactly.
Speaker A
00:23:05.610 - 00:24:06.300
So on my end, I like the sameness, but I think that the sameness is very much about that eradication of emotional depth. And that's already done, as already mentioned, Star Trek. It's already done in Star Trek with the Vulcans. And we already have this.
Like, what would happen if you eliminated emotion? Well, you'd have these incredibly technologically advanced people. They go the other way.
They, like, go completely complete knowledge based, as opposed to comfort and peaceful based.
But it's kind of the same thing where you have that, like, if your goal is always comfort and no conflict, what kind of a culture do you build and what are the results of that? Yeah, this is the perfect study for that.
As Evan said, if you wanted to put a village or like a community or a, you know, a culture somewhere in your world that had this, you'd have these people who look incredibly passive, and yet they kill babies on the regular, like, and have no problem killing the adults and have no family of ties. And it's like, huh, they're very scary.
Speaker C
00:24:06.300 - 00:24:07.060
Very scary.
Speaker A
00:24:07.220 - 00:24:38.650
But it could be really fun to play a character who broke free from that, like, again, taking from the 5e sort of thing. If you were an outlander from the community and now you live in this world with all of these emotions and all this stuff, you get that.
You have that whole cool Spock thing where you're like, you know, you're fighting your. Your upbringing to be an emotional person. You want to be an emotional person because that's cool. But you also don't know how to control it.
And that would make for a really interesting PC character, I think if you wanted to do something like that as well.
Speaker B
00:24:38.650 - 00:24:52.650
Going the opposite way, a wildly hedonistic bard that is just like going way overboard. Like, oh, hey, we're going back. You said you were from around these parts. And the bard suddenly gets real quiet.
Speaker A
00:24:52.980 - 00:25:11.300
Oh, no, I am not coming back from Roomspringer. I am not. That's not what I'm Doing that would. Now, that would be kind of interesting. Wouldn't it be cool if you had, like a room, Springer.
And people left and came back and then they gave their memories to the giver and then they would have new memories that they could keep adding in.
Speaker C
00:25:11.540 - 00:25:12.020
Wow.
Speaker A
00:25:12.260 - 00:25:25.700
Oh. And so the whole point of adventuring is to, like, have the most intense experiences possible.
But, you know, it's at the end, you're going to go home and you're going to be able to get rid of it. Like, no ptsd. We're going too far. Too far.
Speaker B
00:25:27.060 - 00:25:30.180
That's taken me to a media thing that we just rewatching.
Speaker A
00:25:30.180 - 00:25:32.380
Yo, go ahead. Let's start. Let's start talking about media.
Speaker B
00:25:32.380 - 00:26:14.790
What is it that brings to mind sort of the Dorian Gray story, where the idea of, yeah, sure, you're going to probably hold the physical consequences of your action, but the ability to have these wild experiences come home, pass on those memories to someone so you don't have to deal with the trauma or the guilt or like, I mean, adventurers are war criminals. They, like most adventurers, if you break down exactly what they do, Questionable, at least. Best case scenario, very questionable.
The idea that you could then go and impart that, then what would that mean for your experience? And, like, would you actually be learning? So that spirals.
Speaker C
00:26:14.790 - 00:26:19.590
Does the character develop? Do you level up? I'd love it if you don't level up.
Speaker B
00:26:19.590 - 00:26:20.830
Or do they just reset?
Speaker A
00:26:20.990 - 00:26:38.030
Imagine if you had someone from this area and you had them go out and they did terrible, terrible things. They were like the villain of the story and the characters don't catch up to them in time.
They go back to this, the community, and now they have no memory of what they did.
Speaker C
00:26:38.190 - 00:26:39.230
Oh, my gosh.
Speaker A
00:26:39.930 - 00:26:55.610
But the receiver does. And they didn't do it, but they feel, oh, man, what a horrible way to deny the characters and ability to kill the big, bad evil guy. That would be so.
That would be so mean and cruel. I have to do this.
Speaker D
00:26:55.690 - 00:26:56.250
Wow.
Speaker C
00:26:57.370 - 00:26:59.450
Yeah. Like, also awesome.
Speaker A
00:26:59.930 - 00:27:01.370
I'll be good. I will.
Speaker D
00:27:01.770 - 00:27:02.130
All right.
Speaker A
00:27:02.130 - 00:27:07.610
Anyway, we've already started talking about media, and Dorothy Gray is great, but, Evan, I know you had other things in media you wanted to talk about.
Speaker B
00:27:07.970 - 00:28:12.170
The other thing that sprung to mind again because of the setting was the old British show the Prisoner, not.
Not a perfect analog, but you've got an individual who wakes up in this idyllic seaside holiday community, has been stripped of his name and is only referred to as Number Six. And he rebels against it.
He's trying to hold on to his individuality, while everyone around him is perfectly content to be referred to as a number, he can't get out because they send Rover the capture sphere to go bring him back. And he's constantly under surveillance. The idea in the book that you could just say pain meds, please, and they will be automatically dispensed.
How many people do they have monitoring every single building in this community for, you know, requests and for monitoring minor infractions? The idea of the constant surveillance that is sort of pervasive, just. It's kind of threw my mind over to that. Plus, it's a great show.
Patrick McGoohan. Awesome.
Speaker D
00:28:13.050 - 00:28:13.490
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:28:13.490 - 00:28:16.970
Really ahead of its time as far as TV is concerned. It was really quite good.
Speaker B
00:28:16.970 - 00:28:17.450
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:28:17.690 - 00:28:20.570
You want to talk about your media and what you think would go well with this?
Speaker C
00:28:20.650 - 00:28:46.880
Yeah, absolutely. I've got a couple of book, I would say first, TJ Clunes in the Lives of Puppets.
This one has a main character that is discovering both who he is and what the wider world around him really is, because he hasn't experienced any of that for the first part of his life. So it has some similarities there.
And then Ernest Cline's Ready Player One for more of that surveillance state energy that Evan was just talking about. So those would be my suggestions.
Speaker A
00:28:47.200 - 00:28:50.160
Yeah, those are fantastic. Matt, what about you?
Speaker D
00:28:50.880 - 00:29:11.640
Yeah. So again, the. The joke about the Giver being Baby's first dystopia.
I have to go to my second dose of dystopia I got as a reader, which was Ender's game. Bo's making me feel unprepared. I did not have the author's name prepped and ready to go. So I apologize for that Orson Scott card. Thank you.
See, this is why we keep Bo's.
Speaker A
00:29:11.640 - 00:29:16.800
The credible hulk of your. He always has the reference. This is what you're saying?
Speaker D
00:29:17.120 - 00:29:17.600
Yes.
Speaker A
00:29:18.080 - 00:29:18.640
Okay.
Speaker D
00:29:19.360 - 00:30:44.770
A lot of similar themes and ideas pop up. The constant surveillance, that is something that is prevalent in Ender's Game much as it is in the Giver.
Children having to go, you know, lose that sense of innocence and growing up way faster than they should be or how we feel they should be. Big theme across both of them. Ender's Game is a little more upfront with the fact that this is a bad place and a bad situation.
It's not gonna fool you in that regard. But without giving away the twist, there is still a twist and there is still an aspect of the things are not how they may seem at first glance.
And then moving away from literature, specifically, one of my not one of. Probably the video game that has affected me the most in my young adulthood was Final Fantasy 10.
Again, similar themes of there was an ancient time where things were very bad, and it's caused a lot of issues for society at large.
Again, I don't want to give away the big twist, but now people have adopted a religion and there's a big focus on ritualism and keeping everything the same and rejecting the things that we started to move away from the teachings of this religion and we brought upon destruction upon ourselves. So now let's all try to be the same, practice these same rituals so we don't ever err on that side of destruction again.
Speaker A
00:30:44.850 - 00:30:54.140
A very tempered society in that they know that bad things have happened because before. And their whole ethos is, we want to avoid the bad.
Speaker D
00:30:54.780 - 00:30:55.420
Absolutely.
Speaker A
00:30:55.500 - 00:31:12.780
When I was talking about it yesterday, I had a whole bunch of recommendations and I actually went back and revamped all of them because I was like, there's better stuff.
The first thing I'm going to recommend as far as any dystopia is concerned, is the current hit book of all time, apparently, which is Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Speaker D
00:31:13.100 - 00:31:14.540
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A
00:31:14.620 - 00:33:25.340
Dungeon Crawl Crawl is a fantastic dystopia where everything is bad. If someone said, would you like to read more dystopia? Here are now eight books of it, and it is great.
So also, it happens to be episode 11 in our catalog of episodes. So I wanted to get at least one good plug in before the show was over. Second one that I would recommend is a movie.
It's the Truman show, which I think is the opposite of this, in that there is one person who doesn't know and everybody else knows. And what that ignorance means.
It deals with the same concept, which is that there are people who are unaware of what the world is and how do they deal with that. And in one case, there's a whole group of people who have all said, we don't want to experience this.
And in this case, they're like, okay, we want to tell this guy what's going on. So it has. It's got that same sort of deception moving things around, trying to keep them from finding out, and someone bearing the burden for that.
And last but not least, the book that I should have thought of from the very beginning, or rather the short story that I should have thought of, which is the Ones who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is the story of a utopian city whose perfect happiness depends on the perpetual misery of a single neglected Child. It is. Yeah, I know, it's terrible. They describe the utopia to you.
They tell you all the great things that are happening, and then they tell you about the room that is in the bottom of this one place.
And they tell you about the child who it who had no choice in the matter, much like Jonas, and is put into this space and is tortured and feels terrible. And unlike the book, everyone knows about it. You have to go and see the child.
And of course, and the title of it is the Ones who Walk Away from Omelas, which is there are people who can't do it and they walk away. Right, Those ones who walk away from Omelas. Although every English class in America is dependent upon sad, sad, sad stories and.
Speaker C
00:33:25.340 - 00:33:26.860
They never read anything fun.
Speaker A
00:33:27.580 - 00:33:51.960
This book, all the sad stories that you can bring into a classroom, this one at least talks about like it makes you think about this idea of utopia and what you're willing to pay for it. And it's a great story to work with young people on and to and adults. It's free online.
Just type in the Ones who Walk Away from Omaz by Ursula K. Le Guin. It will take you 20 minutes to read it and it will change your life.
Speaker C
00:33:52.520 - 00:33:53.640
Wow. Okay.
Speaker A
00:33:53.960 - 00:34:29.550
Much like Matt said that he had life changing experiences with Final Fantasy 10 and the Giver. This is my. This is my, my big one. It didn't happen early, but it did happen that it was like, excellent.
Now that we've taken a look at our media and talked about what's portable and the mechanics and talked about the book, we've sadly come to the end of our time here. We still have incredibly talented people here who are doing other things other than being on the Game Masters Book Club. And that's you guys.
Twisted Tropes. Tell the people all about yourselves and where people can find you and what's coming up next.
Speaker B
00:34:29.550 - 00:34:42.010
All right, so we are Twisted Tropes. We're a actual play podcast. You can find us pretty much anywhere you can find any podcast. We're. We're on YouTube. We're on Spotify. We're on.
Speaker C
00:34:42.010 - 00:34:44.370
We're on what you're listening to right now.
Speaker B
00:34:44.450 - 00:34:50.210
If you found this, you can find us. That is the easiest way to find us. Yeah.
Speaker D
00:34:50.530 - 00:35:33.040
In terms of what we're doing next, you know, timing wise, things are always interesting.
But I will actually reach back into our catalog and say if you want some feelings of dystopia and things luring you in with a sense of comfort and then really pulling the wool from your eyes, we have a season called Finding Family I would highly recommend. And then on a more jovial and fun part, things not quite being what they should be.
Our very first season, Scandals and Scavengers will always have a soft spot in my heart. So if you like the Giver, I think you can pick and poke at those and you'll find stuff you're interested in.
But our whole thing is taking tropes of stories, mashing them together and seeing what comes out so we have something for everybody.
Speaker A
00:35:33.200 - 00:35:35.520
Fantastic. Bo, how are you going to wrap it up?
Speaker C
00:35:35.520 - 00:36:19.940
I'm going to throw in there that Evan is the GM for Scandals and Scavengers and we also have a season out that is called Grand Theft Galactic where Matt is our gm and that is also a fantastic one that's got a lot of space themes in it. And then they each have another season coming up.
I think when this is coming out, Saturday morning Cyber wars is going to come out, which has not been announced. I might might be announced by the time this comes out, but that one is based on Saturday morning cartoons in a fight for their existence still.
And then after that there are two more seasons that we've already got recorded and ready to go. My first GM on the podcast and then another one from Matt as well. So we got a lot of fun stuff coming up and something for everyone like Matt said.
Speaker A
00:36:20.410 - 00:36:36.329
Well guys, it's been a super awesome time to have you guys on here. You are amazing game masters with great ideas and you're just fantastic at this. So anytime you want to come back, I'd love to have you guys.
We'll pick another book and we'll do this again.
Speaker C
00:36:36.410 - 00:36:37.130
Excellent.
Speaker D
00:36:37.130 - 00:36:38.890
Thank you so much for having us, Aaron.
Speaker A
00:36:39.690 - 00:37:17.200
And that was the Giver by Lois Lowry. Thanks so much to the cast of Twisted Tropes, Evan Kelly, Latmid Mossa and Beau Powell. For a podcast that was anything but sameness.
You can hang out with Bo, Matt and Evan and the rest of the Twisted Tropes cast on their live Play podcast and all the places where you can get podcasts as well as at their website twistedtropes podcast.com I'm looking forward to their new season, but if you like an action packed romance, be sure to check out their first season Scandals and Scavengers, a post Apocalyptic Regency Romance and join us in two weeks with George Krupsky, Eric Drix and Marshall Smith return to discuss Sebastian de Castell's young adult fantasy Spellslinger.
Speaker E
00:37:17.200 - 00:38:09.260
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-square productions.com GMBC.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media, on bluesky, at gmbookclub bluesky Social, on Facebook, at gamemasters Book Club, on mastodoc gamemasters Book Club, and on Instagram amastersbookclub.
If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space, and be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music. Later, game gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.