GMBC-ep17- Tabletop Adventures in Corp-Space: Exploring the Murderbot Phenomenon with the Game Master's Book Club
Speaker A
00:00:04.640 - 00:01:01.360
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club, where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience.
Returning game masters Keren Ford, Rob Trimarco and Jason Keighley are reviewing All Systems Red, the first novella and the beginning of the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Slacker SEC Units, Evil Corpse and Alien Remnants are just a few of the topics we'll cover as we discuss this hugely popular series.
Let's get into the conversation. Welcome everybody to. Welcome back to the Game Masters Book Club.
We are here today to talk about Murderbot specifically All Systems Red by Martha Wells. And I have three fabulous game masters here who are going to tell us about not only their gaming experience, but their gaming experience with robots.
And we're going to start off with Rob.
Rob, why don't you tell the people about what kind of a game master you are and tell them about your favorite experience with a robot in your tabletop role playing game, surely.
Speaker B
00:01:01.360 - 00:01:44.990
My name's Rob Trimarco. Avid gamer for a thousand million years, playing all the games that I could get my hands on, which is a lot.
I fill my home with books of games and miniatures. So what kind of GM am I? I guess I very much a player favorable one. Not so much like you're going to win every time, but you know, it's going to be.
I'm gonna present a fun and wacky adventure to you that will have elements of dramatic and fun times. But you know, death is. Is fine in a game.
But what's more fun and crazy is to put your character through some really terrible yet survivable circumstances that. Please let me die. No, I will not.
Speaker C
00:01:47.070 - 00:01:47.790
I will not.
Speaker A
00:01:48.110 - 00:01:50.550
Death is too good for Rob's players, too quick.
Speaker B
00:01:50.550 - 00:02:52.310
But you know, also I like adventure. And like, we did it, everybody, the heroes triumph over a terrifying situation. Like, let's. I want to work toward that goal.
You're not like, we did it and most of us are dead and I'm sad. Let's not, you know, that's not how I roll. And my favorite experiences with robots.
I mean, a lot of the sci fi games I've played some form or another, even the fantasy ones. Jason, when we first started gaming together, ran an Eberron game for myself and a few others.
There's always someone playing a Warforged and Jason played in the game, played in the game with us. My friend Safe ran Tomb of Annihilation using the Eberron universe. And he said, make the character you think can survive the Tomb of Annihilation.
So I did. And it was a Warforged Juggernaut who was barely alive and barely had control of his own reason. Like, you know, mental effects didn't work on him.
Drains and constitution stuff didn't work on him because he was just this thread of life in him that was barely bright. And it was a lot of fun to be a robot in a fantasy world.
Speaker A
00:02:52.800 - 00:02:56.960
Keren, tell the folks about your gaming Persona and about robots.
Speaker D
00:02:57.120 - 00:04:05.960
Alrighty. As far as being a gm, I tend towards very rules light games. I try to keep the experience as much like playing pretend as kids as possible.
Obviously have to roll dice sometimes, otherwise you don't know how things work out. But I prefer to really just have a bunch of friends who come with a bunch of super fun characters that have adventures together.
I love having snippets of character backgrounds and pulling those things in, or having people pull them in in ways that are obviously to help them, but also even much funnier to their own detriment, to cause wacky situations that they have to then get themselves out of when it comes to robot in a game or whatnot. I was looking through all the stuff that I've been running in the past.
I don't know, got five years or so and I don't run a lot of sci fi, but I did do a Doctor who game last year and in one of the adventures, the whole party had to go to a future hospital that had a psych ward in the way that there's like the Napoleon psych ward on TV is like a trope, but it was a psych ward of people who thought they were the Doctor. And it included a Dalek who thought that it was the fourth Doctor.
Speaker C
00:04:06.120 - 00:04:07.040
Favorite Dalek.
Speaker D
00:04:07.040 - 00:04:20.660
Yeah, complete with like scarf and like, instead of, I don't know, it's plunger coming out. Had a little bag of jelly babies and they ended up kind of befriending the Dalek.
And one of the characters went off on its own adventures with the Dalek at the end of it.
Speaker A
00:04:20.660 - 00:04:25.700
There you go. Fantastic. Jason, tell us about yourself and robots.
Speaker C
00:04:25.860 - 00:04:45.710
Yeah, I'm Jason Keeley. I'm a senior designer for the Pathfinder role playing game at Paizo and.
But I've also worked a lot on Starfinder, so I have some robot knowledge, but I'm not gonna talk about that. I'm gonna talk about something. Some other completely different robots.
As gm, I am, I would say I'm paradoxically, I love rules, but I'm also very improvisational.
Speaker D
00:04:45.950 - 00:04:46.510
Very much.
Speaker C
00:04:46.670 - 00:05:30.330
If I can get a rule set that I can improvise within, I'm all for it. Figure it out and work with it. But you know, I like the rules, but also I'll bend quite easily on a lot of stuff over having a good time.
And I was thinking about robots that I've played and two came to mind that were. They were fun. We played one time we played a post apocalyptic game and I was a sort of a version of the one of those fallout Mr.
Handy robots who would, I think had accidentally downloaded a bunch of like weird trivia into his brain as well. Once in a while I would say something just completely random and trivial. And then early days and the imaginoths. I can't remember the.
The Toon game that we were.
Speaker D
00:05:30.650 - 00:05:32.810
Oh God, that was like the second game ever.
Speaker C
00:05:32.970 - 00:05:52.620
It was like the second whatever and it was a tune. But we were Star Trek. So I played a robot that was like. I think I called him Deep Blue South.
He was just a robot with a southern accent, basically programmed to sound as much like a riverboat captain as possible, but also Larry smart. Anyway, yeah, those are, those are some fun robots.
Speaker D
00:05:52.700 - 00:05:53.900
I forgot all about that.
Speaker A
00:05:54.220 - 00:05:57.500
Wow. I mean, and Toon too. There's a callback I haven't played too.
Speaker C
00:05:57.500 - 00:05:58.980
In a long time. Oh yeah.
Speaker A
00:05:58.980 - 00:07:53.230
So my name is Eric Jackson. I'm the host of the show and I've been playing again since the Pleistocene and I don't play as much science fiction as I'd like to.
I have run a couple games at Cons and I've really enjoyed them.
I especially enjoyed running Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space game, which should tell you kind of a little bit about the kind of GM I am given this particular podcast. I pull a lot of my stuff from the pop culture that I ingest and I love to throw it back out at people and have them experience it.
I love a good game with great people and great improvisation. And I am not a party killer by any stretch of the imagination. And I let characters do weird things.
Like my robot thing where in my current campaign one of my characters got a part of a horde. He found a broken chess playing robot. Was this little tiny robot.
And so he focused on like every time he would go to a magic person, have them fix it a little bit and it would get better at chess. This guy was like a barbarian and couldn't play chess at all. So like was the robot couldn't beat him. So it was not a smart robot.
And then eventually the robot was captured and the bad guys implanted bad software into it and it was going to be a Betrayal. And then after that, an ancient demigod of fixing things, including things like tears in the elemental planes, caught up with the party and.
And took the robot under its wing and fixed it and gave it more sentience. And it kept building up and building up. And the. The guy who was playing the character who owned the robot realized that his. His. His characters.
His dwarven character for something. But he's like, but wait, I have a robot.
And so the robot took over and became the player character, which I thought was just a ton of like, basically this little tiny chess playing robot who had done a whole bunch of things eventually became a member of the party and that arc ended and he just picked up the robot as the next arc. So I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker D
00:07:53.230 - 00:07:53.670
Love it.
Speaker C
00:07:53.670 - 00:07:55.950
I'll get a quick poll. I'm a quick poll, everybody.
Speaker D
00:07:55.950 - 00:07:56.430
Yeah. All right.
Speaker C
00:07:56.430 - 00:07:59.670
Do you. How bad do you feel when you kill a player character?
Speaker D
00:07:59.670 - 00:08:16.930
I don't know if I ever have. I try my hardest not to. I don't like it. I really can't understand the GM versus the players attitude.
And I only really play with my friends that I absolutely adore. So I don't mind when I. Ray gets in like weird situations or gets hurt, but if someone died, it would.
Speaker B
00:08:19.330 - 00:08:33.410
Every character death I have either been a part of in dying or not so much causing has either been complete chance. Like, oh, I rolled. Oh, you rolled. This failed. Like remember when.
Speaker C
00:08:34.090 - 00:08:37.130
Yes, I know what you can say. Yes, yes.
Speaker B
00:08:37.370 - 00:08:44.090
I think, look, I have such a great deck save. I just can't roll a one. And I did. And I was liquefied. Right. The.
Speaker C
00:08:44.090 - 00:08:47.210
The funny thing about that is that that was the fault of another player character.
Speaker B
00:08:47.450 - 00:08:48.010
Yeah.
Speaker C
00:08:49.450 - 00:08:51.610
Yes. You're like, no, I'll be fine. I'll be fine.
Speaker B
00:08:51.770 - 00:09:34.760
A very powerful. Like, you had such like a powerful elemental area spell effect. Like, I have to roll two saves. I'm like, I just had.
I'm just not gonna roll a one at all. Right. It's just hard to roll once. I'm like, she's like, no, you're in the area. Just do it. This thing is terrible. Just do it. And she did it.
And I rolled a one. And that is how that guy turned to juice.
But like, for the most part, I have like, I worked with a gm like Jason when I had a character that was like a. I wanted to build like a wizard fencer. And like he'd. All the spells would be cast on himself to make himself better at fencing. Right. But that character didn't work out.
I again rolled a one twice. It like scares you to death.
Speaker C
00:09:34.840 - 00:09:35.920
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A
00:09:35.920 - 00:09:37.200
Psychic killer or something like that.
Speaker B
00:09:37.200 - 00:10:06.690
Yeah, yeah. Fantasmal killer. Fantasmal killer. And I, I rolled the one like, oh God, I'm dead. And then one dead, dead. But that's okay.
I came back as the best character ever. Making a pack with a devil and becoming a full on sorcerer. It was, I loved it. Like, that sort of thing. I'm down death.
Like, you know, there have been games where a run down a hallway, a guard randomly shoots a crossbow bolt. Oh, you died like, you know, Cody and Jason.
Speaker D
00:10:06.850 - 00:10:07.969
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B
00:10:07.969 - 00:10:14.370
Like that is unsatisfying. But if you have a cool story thing happen along with the death, then it's fun.
Speaker C
00:10:14.370 - 00:10:14.730
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:10:14.730 - 00:10:23.600
And in that, in that vein, if somebody actually like sacrifices themselves for the party or if it is a player generated self death, no problem. Amazing. Love it.
Speaker A
00:10:23.680 - 00:10:29.120
Yeah, absolutely. When death is only the beginning, you can pull something like that. That's always good.
Speaker B
00:10:29.360 - 00:10:30.960
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A
00:10:31.600 - 00:11:14.380
Instances in my regular game where characters have been like, okay, well this is how I'm going out. And again, if there's an agreement between the DM and the player that this is the appropriate death, then that's okay.
Like, but I don't think I've ever, not since the very early 80s in my teen years have I just been like, nope, you're dead. As a mature game master, I don't just wipe somebody out because, you know, oh, you rolled too bad. Oh, well, too bad.
You know, there's always a reason.
Like even if you died in a thing, I might have had that character come back as a ghost character, you know, or, or he possesses a squirrel and he has to walk. He's a squirrel for like an adventure. And then we transfer to like a robot body. Right. You know, something like that.
Speaker D
00:11:14.840 - 00:11:15.720
What about you? Hers?
Speaker B
00:11:16.760 - 00:11:17.920
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker C
00:11:17.920 - 00:11:18.680
I feel real bad.
Speaker B
00:11:18.840 - 00:11:20.280
I'll tell you a story, but go ahead.
Speaker C
00:11:20.600 - 00:11:56.390
I feel, I feel awful when it happens and often it does happen because I, because of random chance. I don't ever try to play it. But I, you know, like, like Robin said, like, I think it's. In certain games it is.
You must definitely threaten death to make it the game interesting. But you never really, really try to. A lot of games have the, the buffers there.
You, you know, spells and magic and stuff that you can really just sort of like, well, I'm gonna hit you for a 150 hit points. Oh no. And then. But I've got, We've got a healer. And it'll be fine. Right. I've put just like fairly recently, right, Rob epi.
I put EPI down twice in a fight, but he's fine. He didn't. His character didn't die. So, you know, again, that I think.
Speaker B
00:11:57.190 - 00:11:59.190
Is there for sure. Yeah.
Speaker C
00:11:59.190 - 00:12:16.830
The tension is there and that's the makes excited.
But then when you do something, the thing that I. I think you're thinking of, Rob, is when I coup de gr Someone because they were, you know, had the paralyzed focus. I felt bad about that after because it was like, oh, oh, this is impossible for you to survive. Oh, I didn't realize that.
Well, I said I'm doing it, so it's happening.
Speaker B
00:12:16.830 - 00:12:28.750
So also was on us because we knew it was happening and it took an extra round. So everyone took a shot at trying to kill the guy killing our friend and we all either missed or did shitty damage.
Speaker A
00:12:28.750 - 00:12:29.190
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:12:29.430 - 00:12:30.190
So sorry, John.
Speaker A
00:12:30.190 - 00:12:42.720
And actually I think that ties us really well into the. The Murderbot thing.
I know because that is one of the things about Murderbot very much a throw themselves at it and even if they don't survive, they kind of survive.
Speaker B
00:12:42.720 - 00:12:43.000
Right.
Speaker A
00:12:43.000 - 00:14:23.820
Like that death is not necessarily death. And that's one of the cool things about playing robots.
I'm going to give a quick brief of what this Murderbot book specifically All Systems Read, which is the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries. It's the first installment of the Murderbot Diaries, which is told through the voice of a cybernetic being who's the property of a galactic creation.
It is used to provide security as a SEC unit for human clients. Normally, SEC units have a governor module which prevents them from acting independently from their orders.
But this SEC unit has hacked its governor module which regulates its behavior. Now it's capable of free action, knowing it's going to be destroyed if this fact is figured out. It continues to do its duty, though.
It slacks off at every opportunity, watches fictional media whenever it possibly can.
In this first installment, the SEC unit, which calls itself Murderbot, hence the Murderbot Diaries, is sent with a team of scientists to a world to research for mineral and other types of resources, only to be targeted by operatives from an evil corporation, Grey Chris, which have discovered illegal alien remnants and they are eliminating the survey teams on the planet to keep this secret.
Murderbot, at first, in order to protect its secret of the hacked governor module and later, genuine feelings for the scientists who actually treat it like a real person, protects the groups from Grey Chris operatives, gets them off the planet, and as the novella concludes, the Murderbot goes off on its own to figure out what it wants to do next. And there are another six or eight novella and full length novels that talk about that did what I miss. It's. It's such a dense little novella.
But what other themes did I not hit? Because I know I missed.
Speaker C
00:14:23.820 - 00:14:47.240
There's a little bit of themes of found family, I would say. And, and the Murderbot group of people that Murderbot is working for are kind of hippies and they're like, we, we don't like this, this practice.
And they try to befriend Murderbot. But Murderbot is also like, I don't want to talk to you.
I'm just, I'm trying to pretend to be a robot here and whatever, but then it ends up basically liking them and saving their lives. Keren.
Speaker D
00:14:47.240 - 00:15:05.120
Yeah, also themes. I mean, there's themes in there of like trauma recovery. It's also very funny and adventurous and exciting on top of all this other stuff.
So if you, you haven't read Murderbot, don't let all of this like, deep philosophical whatever turn you off because it's a fantastic and quick read and the whole series is one of my favorites of all time.
Speaker A
00:15:05.120 - 00:15:08.080
Keren, I believe when prepped for this, you reread everything.
Speaker D
00:15:08.320 - 00:15:15.340
Yeah. You can't, like, I can't stop. So good. Including the new short story that came out like two days ago.
Speaker C
00:15:15.340 - 00:15:15.900
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:15:15.900 - 00:15:19.500
And Rob, this was your first time through with Murderbot. Did I miss anything?
Speaker B
00:15:19.500 - 00:15:24.700
No, I enjoyed the story. I am looking forward to reading more in the series.
Speaker A
00:15:24.700 - 00:15:48.040
Fantastic. All right, speaking of more in the series and more things to do. We are all game masters. Is a fun story.
So now is the time to step forward and talk about if we wanted to run a Murderbot game, how would we do it? Rob, why don't you start us off and tell us what game system and mechanics you think would help evoke Murderbot into your ttrpg.
Speaker B
00:15:48.040 - 00:16:03.560
I think there's a lot of really good sci fi and cyberpunkular games that I would like. And, you know, one of them would be like a real word. You know how language works. You make up a word and people go, that's not a word.
And then it becomes.
Speaker A
00:16:03.560 - 00:16:06.160
Cyberpuncular is now my new favorite word of the week.
Speaker B
00:16:07.250 - 00:16:40.510
Thank you. Thank you.
And I would probably use the tech and stuff from the cyberpunk world and, you know, skew it a bit so it's a little more space, like cyberpunk meets the expanse sort of a thing. It was advanced technology, but still had a lot of that Explorer vibe to it.
So I think that would be one of the base systems I would try to run it in. You know, there would be one person being Murderbot, and everyone would be like the support team crew. Like the Doctor who game.
Someone's a Doctor and then everyone else is like, there's never a party of Doctor who's. Right.
Speaker A
00:16:40.510 - 00:16:42.590
Well, if there's a special and I.
Speaker B
00:16:42.590 - 00:16:44.550
Don'T watch the show, don't at me.
Speaker D
00:16:45.750 - 00:16:46.950
There is a party of Doctors.
Speaker A
00:16:46.950 - 00:16:50.030
Yeah, there are a couple of episodes where they get a bunch of doctors.
Speaker B
00:16:50.030 - 00:16:56.870
Together, but it's not like the standard everyone fly your tortoises tardis.
Speaker A
00:16:56.870 - 00:17:00.160
No, that's. That's only for the season finales. Keren, why don't you go next?
Speaker D
00:17:00.390 - 00:19:01.280
Okay. I thought of two games. First, Shadowrun, near and dear to my heart, is the first role playing game I ever, ever played.
And if Murderbot is not corporate, hell, like, nothing is. It's just in space and not on Earth. It also translates directly with all, like, the cybernetic and biometric enhancements, all that stuff.
And you can approach Murderbot universe from like so many angles.
Whether, you know, you're creating people to go on missions, to save people from corporate indenture, or like raid corporate facilities, et cetera, et cetera. Character building with this would be super fun.
When Shadowrun, I know, is like, clunky to run, but their character building has always been top notch. It just has so many fun things that you can pull from.
I absolutely used to adore those, like supplementary source books like Shadow Tech and the Rigor Source Book. See Rob's thumbs upping me. Because shopping is the best part of all of that.
Actually, in one of the Murderbot short stories, it's just a little brief one. It's minor spoiler, but murderbot is sending Dr. Mensah all these pings being like.
It's looking through all these catalogs being like, like, will you buy me this? Will you buy me this? Will you buy me this? But I really want this. Will you buy me this? And it just. It's exactly what Shadowrun is.
And also maybe playing this way, you could make the hacking and. Or drones actually fun, because those tended to be the most tedious parts of playing that game.
The other thing I thought of is Alien the Role Playing Game by Free League. In my brain, Murderbot always calls it the company that owns it, but it never actually says the name of the company. So in.
In my head, it's just Wayland Yutani because they're terrible.
So what I liked about the alien role playing game is there's this mechanic where as the player characters you get these secret agendas per each act of the game that are supplied to you by the gm. And you don't necessarily like, you don't know what's going to happen and it'll throw things off and make it chaotic.
In the game itself there's things like oh hey look, you're the secret robot that wants to kill everybody. Haha, it's alien. But especially if you're playing in like a corporate rim. I think that would work so, so well in this universe.
They also have things like stress dice and panicking which 100% works because a lot terrible garbage happens out here in space.
Speaker A
00:19:01.360 - 00:20:55.810
Jason.
I'm going to jump on top of this only because I just realized that the alien game is made by the same people as one of the games that I'm going to talk about also to plug. Jason. My first thought would be to run this in Starfinder just because everyone's very comfortable with Dungeons and Dragons basically.
Dungeons and Dragons in Space or Pathfinder in space, that D20 sort of feel. And I think it's a great system for building characters as well and you could get something really cool out of it.
But if you wanted to push it a little bit further, freely Publishing also has a game called Coriolis the Third Rising, the setting of which is completely useless. But the. It's. It is, it's, it's. It's set in a much further future. Supernatural stuff involved in it.
But one of the things that it's really good about is building ships and crews. So instead of building like a murderbot and a bunch of supporting characters, this is all about building a crew.
So you could get that hippie crew with their one weird sec unit as a whole thing. It also talks a lot about loans and financial practices.
Got a little bit of that, that shopping thing that happens character building that you were talking about. Keren. It's also got dice pools, which makes it like Shadowrun. And one of the things I like about that is it has an optional bit that.
Where they have darkness points which is if you kind of like what game is it that has. I think it's Blades in the Dark that has Deal with the Devil where you can say I missed. Okay, do something horrible to me later. I need succeed.
So it allows you to get another roll and another shot at something and then you get these darkness points. So like guns jam at exactly the wrong moment or along those lines which given the slapstick nature of Murderbot.
The idea that the most terrible thing could possibly happen now you have to deal with it. Feels like a mechanic. You'd want to have ditch the supernatural and the most of the setting stuff.
You could probably rework anything that's supernaturally into the alien remnants if it. If it was necessary.
Speaker C
00:20:56.290 - 00:20:57.370
I have an honorable mention.
Speaker A
00:20:57.370 - 00:20:59.570
I really like to try.
Speaker C
00:20:59.730 - 00:21:03.810
You mentioned the Expanse and all that. And there is an Expanse.
Speaker A
00:21:03.890 - 00:21:04.890
Jason, wrap it up.
Speaker C
00:21:04.890 - 00:21:16.130
I've had it and I've read through it, but I've never played it. And I don't know much about the Expanse is why it's just an honorable mention.
I don't know how much, like, robot stuff is in the Expanse, but I think. I bet that you could probably take the core of something like the Expanse.
Speaker B
00:21:16.130 - 00:21:33.940
Role game and AI Monster robot Y things for the most part. You would have to build the future up in that. But it does a very good job of real space is a problem. Like, you know, you don't.
You don't hand wave, no gravity, you. You know.
Speaker D
00:21:35.700 - 00:21:36.740
Yes, exactly.
Speaker B
00:21:36.820 - 00:21:37.380
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:21:37.860 - 00:21:40.180
Something explodes, you're screwed. It's not Star wars.
Speaker C
00:21:42.540 - 00:22:57.240
But the. The main game that I would use to go back to the cyberpunkular entries on our list previously is a game. It's called.
I'm gonna pronounce it Cyberpunk, but it's spelled CBR +PNK.
It is a small game, and it's literally just like a pamphlet of a game that takes the blades in the dark engine and just kind of strips it down into bullet essentially of an engine. Again, it's cyberpunk. You're playing runners going on essentially like a heist to do that. And the classic.
The classic stuff that you would do in blades and has a lot of similarities of blades of. In terms of like stress and wounds and whatnot. But you can also, like, your dye can get glitching and you can have augmentations and stuff like that.
So I think that would be, you know, you could be like, oh, well, I'm just. I am mostly augmented because they had, you know, in the murderbot world, they're, you know, you're sort of regular meat humans.
You do have augmented humans who have some data jacks in their neck and stuff like that. But then. And then also you have the full murder bots who look like they have. They have some organic elements. Right. Because they.
They're supposed to look. They look people to make people comfortable or whatever. They. Whatever that reason was.
But yeah, and I think that just for that, it would be good because Again, it's. It's sort of like a little rules light ish. And you can really just sort of decide stuff, add stuff like alien remnants and stuff like that.
Speaker A
00:22:57.400 - 00:23:02.040
So anyone have any final mechanics, last minute things after the discussion we want to throw in?
Speaker B
00:23:02.040 - 00:23:08.390
I mean just like the blades in the dark, like the clocks thing, like for heists, like there's a. The heisty stuff in the book was fun.
Speaker C
00:23:08.390 - 00:23:08.670
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:23:08.670 - 00:23:09.190
Oh yeah.
Speaker B
00:23:09.270 - 00:23:12.590
So I would have to do something for that. Yeah. Plan at the end.
Speaker C
00:23:12.590 - 00:23:14.390
Oh yeah. When they did the plan at the end.
Speaker A
00:23:14.390 - 00:23:35.030
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So on to next part where we maybe not necessarily want to have Murderbot itself be the main goal, but just what are some.
What's some cool stuff that's in this book that we want to throw into our own campaigns, B Day, Sci Fi or other. Keren, do you want to give it a shot and lead us off?
Speaker D
00:23:35.110 - 00:24:18.090
Sure. A couple things in here spoke to me.
First of all, as you mentioned, the alien remnants, which are so bizarre and so only hinted at that there is such a world to build around them.
They're just so completely alien, for lack of a better word, and different that I don't know, it just seems like such a wonderful little like playground. And also just in general, I love a spaceport.
I don't know if it's from seeing Star wars when I was like three years old and just I love miscellaneous aliens.
And I know there's not aliens floating around in here, but just these liminal spaces where all sorts of people are like coming and going and there's shops from all over the galaxy, universe, whatnot, and how to like sneak around and get past security. Just seems like. Also another like wonderful setting to like take players through.
Speaker C
00:24:19.210 - 00:25:11.960
Hint on a little bit is the.
You talked about the media that Murderbot watches and there's essentially like this whole other thing that is called the Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon where we get sort of like ideas of what's going on in it. And it seems so such like a ridiculous space soap opera nonsense that the Murderbot is like, well, this, in this. In this episode, something.
Oh, I'll be as brave as fight Commander Koji or whatever. Right. Like I would love to, you know, probably take something like this.
And this is something similar to what Keren and I have done in our group a couple times where you have the players play two different groups of characters, essentially one sort of their main characters and then like secondary times like oh, let's. At the end of the session or at the beginning of the session.
Let's do a scene from this media within your world plays a different sort of like, you know, probably there wouldn't, wouldn't be like mechanics involved with that. It would just, you know, messing around.
At one point we played like a Greek heroes style game, but we also played all of the Greek gods in between those.
Speaker B
00:25:11.960 - 00:25:12.160
Like.
Speaker C
00:25:12.160 - 00:25:29.570
And I think at the beginning of every or every session we, someone decided to put like something into the story that the gods have just sort of planted in there that we as the players would have to do to with basically we were gods for everyone else's players. So like, like I gave a boon to Keren's player for instance, because I was, you know, you were playing some archdeacon.
Speaker B
00:25:29.570 - 00:25:29.690
Right.
Speaker C
00:25:29.690 - 00:25:32.290
Or Artemis was your. Was your God.
Speaker D
00:25:32.530 - 00:25:33.930
I don't remember. I remember playing.
Speaker C
00:25:33.930 - 00:25:35.930
Or Athena might have been.
Speaker D
00:25:35.930 - 00:25:40.890
I remember the later one where Hephaestus was mine. But I feel we've done this like more than once. But yeah, it was super fun.
Speaker C
00:25:40.890 - 00:25:41.330
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:25:41.330 - 00:25:46.130
I think we could do bad stuff to each other too. Right. If you got mad at the other gods. Not terrible yet.
Speaker C
00:25:46.930 - 00:25:53.970
We did that a little bit too. Yeah, yeah. Like put, put some, put the. Oh, I think the Minotaur is going to show up in this, you know, whatever in this episode.
Speaker A
00:25:53.970 - 00:26:01.300
That's fantastic because the Murderbot obviously draws inspiration. You know, you could almost see that as like, like a game mechanic, right?
Speaker C
00:26:01.300 - 00:26:01.700
Yeah.
Speaker A
00:26:02.020 - 00:26:16.260
Right.
Like if you ran the Sanctuary Moon about bravery at the beginning of your thing, then maybe for that episode the Murderbot is, you know, to use the D20, the 5e sort of thing advantage on anything where bravery saves or something.
Speaker C
00:26:16.660 - 00:26:36.160
100%.
What I probably try to do is maybe like have a couple index cards if I was at a actual table, which I haven't been to in ages, but be like, okay, we just throw around and do a scene and that'll other media or whatever.
And then like someone writes down the theme of the episode and then you put that in front of everyone and they're like, okay, this is the theme of today's sort of adventures. And anyone can point at you remember that.
Speaker D
00:26:36.480 - 00:26:38.640
You remember to do that. We do that.
Speaker A
00:26:39.040 - 00:26:40.840
You should totally do that. That's a great idea.
Speaker D
00:26:40.840 - 00:26:41.240
It's.
Speaker C
00:26:41.240 - 00:26:48.400
It's vaguely taken from epi's Swords Without Master too, where you write down most themes on, on, on index cards and then you can come back to them later.
Speaker A
00:26:48.400 - 00:27:07.900
Which is kind of the opposite of.
I played the Firefly role playing game that has a flashback mechanic, like a heist thing where like you and I remember Budapest very Differently, you know, remember what happened in Istanbul? Yes, let's do. And then you get a flashback and you play that out and then that impacts the game going forward. That's.
This is the opposite of that where.
Speaker C
00:27:07.900 - 00:27:18.940
You'Re foreshadowing instead of flashbacking. I do love a flashback mechanic. I just have to like have people remember to use it sometimes because players will forget that they. You can flashback.
Have a flashback and fix this.
Speaker A
00:27:19.500 - 00:27:21.620
Rob, what do you got for us? What are you gonna steal?
Speaker B
00:27:21.620 - 00:28:15.750
Pretty much touched on a lot of the ones like if the flashback stuff, the blades in the dark clocks like the heist aspect is always a fun thing because it's. It changes the way you play. The pressure is more intense rather than player created pressure. We have to go rescue that woman from hell.
But let's go shopping first and get stuff and then load up and get better weapons. Then we'll go. But the heist is like oh shit, oh shit. I didn't heal. I didn't have that. The clock is ticking down. I have to do something desperate.
So you, you make decisions you normally wouldn't. Maybe in a fabricated pressure. Not that this isn't fabricated, it's a game.
But the clock is like if you don't do it on this time, bad stuff is definitely going to happen that you're going to have a real problem mitigating because you didn't deal with it in the time limit. So that's always been a big like a fun thing to incorporate that prevents.
Speaker A
00:28:15.750 - 00:28:17.550
The completely over prepped player.
Speaker B
00:28:17.710 - 00:28:20.350
Right. Which I love to be. I love to be.
Speaker D
00:28:20.350 - 00:28:24.870
The fear of imminent failure leads to the best creativity.
Speaker A
00:28:25.110 - 00:30:04.370
My thing that I like about it is the overwhelmingly more powerful big bad evil guy. In this case Grey Chris or one of the corporations I like. You can't just walk up and punch the corporation in the face.
Although Murderbot is very good at punching and it does punch a lot of its problems. I'm not saying that that isn't part of what's happening here. Murderbot is forced buckle down when it's own.
When it doesn't have the resources of all of its friends. And it sort of just keeps like hides and pretends. Even in later books he's still trying or it's trying to.
It's trying to just like skulk around the outside of this because it's just so big. That makes for a really great sort of campaign in an aspect.
Because if you can't just take down the big bad evil dudes of Grey Chris and that means you can't do a frontal assault, which means you've got to plan around it and build up. You've got maybe the opposite of what we're talking about on the clock in that you're up. You have to build up these resources, even get there.
There's 10 different stories in the Murbot thing and they're not even close to taking down Gray Chris or if they are, they only wounded it slightly. And there's this whole other thing that they're still working on.
So it's anything that'll make you come back 10 times over, that's a campaign that'll keep players clearing their schedules for you, they'll keep coming back. And we all know that's the real trick, right? People don't want to take their Saturdays off and come hang out for a couple hours and play.
So that's what I would take for this ultra powerful bad guy that you can't just punch. Then on to media.
Jason, why don't you talk to us about what sort of media fun stuff that was similar to Murderbot that you would use for inspiration in a tabletop role playing game.
Speaker C
00:30:04.690 - 00:32:26.430
I want to talk about the video games Citizen Sleeper 1 and 2, which have come out in the past couple years. They're pretty recent. I think Citizen Sleeper 2 came out in like January, February, something like that. Anyway, it is a not quite a visual novel.
It's got a lot of text to read, it's got.
It's very story based, it's very much a narrative game and it has an almost board game, role playing game like mechanic to it where at the beginning of the day you roll a bunch of dice and then you apply these six sided dice to the things you can do and that determines whether or not how well or poorly you succeed. But the setting is very much similar in a lot of ways to Murderbot because it's got corporate debt and stuff like that.
But you play as a sleeper and a sleeper is a robot who is an exact copy of someone who's been put into cryogenic suspension. And the sleeper does the work, works off that other person's debts while they're just sort of there. So that's it.
They're a completely fabricated entity and they are tied to corporations and they have to inject themselves with serums so their bodies don't completely break down. But you're in both these games, you're basically playing a one of these sleeper robots that has been gone rogue, right?
And you're out there trying to just survive yourself, trying to make menu. You know, you, you make friends and you.
And you maybe help them out or you try to get off the space station and you hack into stuff and, and do all sorts of stuff, you know. But you're also like, while your body is deteriorating, you've got to figure out a way to get it back.
That's sort of the plot of the first has a little more stuff in it that has like you get the. A crew of a spaceship.
You take your crew on jobs and you do these jobs and they, the crew also have some dice that you apply to stuff and those jobs are all very often timed. Try to get them done before that. But again, you also have this threat of these big bad corporations. They're both great games.
They're both so well written, fantastically realized. If you want to like read a bunch of fiction where it is very intentional that there is no gravity anywhere.
So you never see like the words like he stood or he walked over there. They're always people pushing off bulkheads or just sort of floating, you know, just sort of twisting that detail alone one is.
Is almost worth the price of admission. And it's a fun game. They're also fun game. It's one of those games that just sort of keeps you like, oh, do one more day.
I roll the dice and see what kind of, oh, I got like four ones. Shoot what the I'm doing with these. I'm gonna have to just waste the day. And then all these other clocks are ticking down.
It has that role playing game feel in a lot of ways.
Speaker A
00:32:26.430 - 00:32:27.910
Rob, you want to continue on?
Speaker B
00:32:27.910 - 00:34:56.400
There's a show that was on Netflix and also isn't a role playing game now too called Altered Carbon. And there's a whole section of, you know, it's very far in the future. There's definitely cybernetics and things like that.
But also you can re sleeve your consciousness into someone's body because there is like this technology that I think either developed by aliens or they found it or whatever it was. It's a spike that's in your brain stem and it allows you to download into a body. So you could essentially save your grandmother.
And then every year on her birthday, she downloads into a willing person in the show.
It was this big beefy biker guy who all of a sudden had a abuelita accent and she was cooking for her family and she's been dead for many, many years, essentially physically. But also in there there's a big AI component. So there was this sentient hotel. His name was Po.
And it was very Garland Poe looking and it was, it was a fun watch in that aspect. Like season one, I think was the best one. Like there were. There was like maybe a season two that was okay, but season one for sure was the fun one.
Also, want to make a special shout out to Warbot in accounting, a webcomic from maybe the earlier 2000s. There was a war fought with these AI behemoth dreadnought looking square machine gun toting claw robots. And they. The war stopped. They were declared.
WMDs were deactivated, but the AIs in them were given rights so they can integrate into society. So now this war bot works in an accounting department. The only thing that's changed about him is a tie glued to his chassis.
But he still has a minigun and a claw. Episode one, he's just trying. He's like, okay, you fax these. And he's standing over the fax machine unable to do anything because he will.
He cannot press the button to dial or feed the paper. He is a war bot. And he's there the whole night. And someone the next morning comes in and says, oh, you got dial nine to get out.
Early start today, huh? And he looks at the fax machine and he crushes it.
And the whole series is his failure to integrate, but no one really knowing that they still involve him in like employee rallies and things. But he's. And he goes on dates to meet people, but, you know, he can't eat soup or participate in conversation. It's sad and horrifying, but hilarious.
Speaker A
00:34:56.560 - 00:37:12.950
I'm going to jump in and there's plenty of really great robot books that are out there. Bobiverse by Dennis Taylor and Ancillary justice by Ann Leckie is another great one.
But because you brought up accounting, I have to bring up my favorite one of these, which is the Queen of roses by Elizabeth McCoy, which is where an indentured AI program ends up being a security bot on a space cruise ship and a murder happens. And that accountant and the AI ship have to solve the murder together.
And they do a lot of really cool mystery solving things that are not traditional mystery solving things because they're AIs and they have different ways of approaching the problem. And I really think that Queen of Roses by Elizabeth McCoy does, you know, does that really well.
And the accountant Seraphina even hates people like Murderbot. Like, it's an accountant, it wants to sit in a room and do accounting things. And it now it has to talk to people in order to solve this. And it hates.
So it really does have a lot of the same beats as Murderbot. It also came out a full five years for Murderbot. So it's not a derivative.
It's not on the other side of it, the creatures becoming more or different than what they're supposed to be.
I think the Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle is a great piece of that, because that is a creature that is meant to be one way, and it becomes something different. We have the butterfly that comes and talks to the unicorn, which is sort of like the hacked governor module.
You're going to leave the place that you're at and you're going to go and do this. Now you have this other purpose that you're working on. And she has transformations like Murderbot does, and she becomes a different kind of a person.
Like Murderbot does. Yes, it's a fantasy. Yes, there's immortals and giant flaming red bulls. It is not a robot. I think it has a lot of same elements.
And finally, similarly, Susan from the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels is this odd duck of a person who's the granddaughter of death, and she really doesn't get people the way Murderbot doesn't get people.
So if you just want snarky commentary like Murderbot, read anything with Susan from the Discworld and you can get all snark because, you know, Pratchett is the master of snark. Keren, do you want to wrap it up for us?
Speaker D
00:37:12.950 - 00:39:45.140
As we can kind of see, Murderbot is so many different things of a book. It's not anything you can kind of pin down. So it's kind of hard to be like, oh, if I like Murderbot, what else should I read?
But I've got a few in here if you're into the whole alien remnants thing. May I recommend one of the most bizarre books, but amazing books I've ever read, which is Roadside Picnic by Arcadian Boris Drugatsky.
If I pronounce that right, it's from the 70s. They're Russian authors.
It's essentially about sometime, I guess, in their future, aliens came to Earth, didn't really encounter anybody, and left a bunch of crap there that nobody understands. What it does, it's being studied by scientists. It's also being kind of plundered by people to sell off on black markets.
It does weird, dangerous things and sometimes just weird things, period, that nobody understands.
And throughout the entire book, you don't really understand, but it definitely has that same, like, weird mystery of the alien remnants and of things being like, truly, truly Alien. Also the Orbital Children, which is an anime. You can watch it on Netflix.
It's sort of set in my mind somewhere between like 100 years from now and when Murderbot would be. It seems to be the, like, early space station era. There's corporate logos everywhere.
It's based around a trip for kids up to this new space station that's been sponsored by their Google, which is Deagle. They have like, spacesuits that they pull out of plastic that have the Uniqlo logo on it.
Like, it's all very corporate and it's all a bunch of people having to deal with a bunch of space nonsense that's going on. The main character is a kid who's hacker who kind of hates everyone in the Murderbot way, but comes to understand friendship.
It's really, really good. Also, I think a parallel can be drawn between this. If you like the sort of found family Motley Crue vibes and if you like cozy things.
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It's a little too cozy for me, but I know a lot of people that do love it.
But if you do like that found family vibe and also questions of personhood and what makes a person. And where do we draw the line between, like, robot and whatnot? The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, which are a series of fairy tale retellings.
The first one is Cinder, where the twist is the Cinderella character. You know, her. Her foot. She's. She's part cyborg. So the whole cover of it is like a cyborg foot and a heel and whatnot. It's fantastic.
It's fairy tales all flipped on their head.
Space cyborgs, biomechanized people, what it means to be human, how people are treated when they're not perceived as human, no matter what they are, whether they are actually human or cyborg or whatnot. And they're absolutely fantastic.
Speaker A
00:39:45.380 - 00:39:53.100
There's a whole thing with like werewolves on the moon in that one. That complete. Like anytime you get werewolves on the moon. Yes.
Speaker B
00:39:53.100 - 00:40:01.360
Also, I also like a Motley Crue vibes, but the band Kickstart My Heart is a good combat video combat song.
Speaker A
00:40:01.360 - 00:40:17.360
You are all awesome game masters who do awesome. Do you have anything that you'd like to plug for our audience? They should go find. Go sue can find your workplaces. What do you think?
I'm gonna go with obvious choice first with Jason. He's the definitive professional among us.
Speaker C
00:40:17.760 - 00:40:43.000
We mentioned Starfinder a couple of times and by now Starfinder 2nd Edition is out. So go check it out there's a the core rule book and stuff.
There's a deluxe box set adventure called Murder in Metal City which has a lot of robot stuff in it and is very noir. So hopefully that is cool. I might be running that at some point.
I had not a whole lot to do with the second edition creation just on support Keren I don't have any.
Speaker D
00:40:43.000 - 00:41:06.740
Role playing specific anything but in case you didn't listen to the last episode I was on I do volunteer work as a crisis counselor for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence and I work for the Crime Victims Treatment center are a wonderful organization who provide tons of free services. So if you want to donate or help you can go to cvtcnyc.org Rob.
Speaker B
00:41:06.820 - 00:42:00.500
I too am not professional nor do I do anything publicly. Good. But I do want to say support your local gaming gathering groups and stores.
There's a store you know, not too far from me in Glendale, Queens called Cook's Crafts Shop with a S H O P P E. It's been around since like the 70s and like the owner's grandma started it when her husband stopped he had a fix it shop and it became he stopped doing the fix it stuff and then they made it a craft store for knitting and painting and then it also got into you know to in the modern age Warhammer and card games and Marvel Universe all the miniature painting stuff and role playing games. So I go there as much as I can. I pre order all the stuff from them and it's support your local nice people.
Speaker D
00:42:00.820 - 00:42:04.820
Is that where you got your 3000 now beautifully rainbow ordered paints?
Speaker B
00:42:04.820 - 00:42:20.080
Yeah, a little bit of them, yeah. Some online and did a bunch from them and I if you see behind me it's beautiful. Sorry, not on this podcast you can't see.
This is a podcast audio only but audio media. I have a rack of a lot of miniature paints that I have rainbow order to approved.
Speaker A
00:42:20.080 - 00:42:21.120
Approved. Absolutely.
Speaker B
00:42:21.920 - 00:42:28.080
I was very nervous. I was very nervous to to show Keren because what if the one paint was out of order? I would be whipped.
Speaker D
00:42:28.080 - 00:42:30.880
Yeah. If anybody knows anything about me, I love a good rainbow order.
Speaker A
00:42:31.200 - 00:42:46.720
Wow. There we go. I will wrap up and say that not only should you support your local game store but support your local bookstore.
I live up the street from a great local bookstore called Lala Books in Lowell, Massachusetts. I buy as many of my books as I can there. So support your local bookstore.
Speaker D
00:42:46.960 - 00:42:47.440
Yay.
Speaker A
00:42:48.880 - 00:44:15.010
And that's our discussion of all systems. Read the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.
Stellar thanks to our game Masters Jason Keeley, Keren form and Rob Trimarco for their wit and gaming mastery wisdom. Thanks so much for being on the show. It was a ton of fun. Be sure to listen again when they return to discuss the City of Brass by SA Chakraborty.
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-squareproductions.com GMBC.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media on bluesky@gmbookclub, bluesky social, on Facebook @gamemasters book club, on Mastodon @gamemastersbookclub, and on Instagram @gamemastersbookclub. If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe.
Subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space and be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community. Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Be sure to check out our next episode when Ian Eller, Alex Jackal and Sean Murphy take us into the psychedelic post apocalyptic sci fi of Jeff VanderMeer's novel Born. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions. Thank you so much for listening.
Later gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.