GMBC ep031 - Kaiju, Murders, and Mysteries: Unpacking 'The Tainted Cup'
Robert Jackson Bennett
The Tainted Cup
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.560
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:08.640 - 00:00:42.620
Welcome to the Game Masters book club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience.
This book has everything murder most strange in a world where massive Kaiju attacks are common and their mutagenic blood the backbone of the empire of Kanum.
Keren Ford, Colleen Nachtrieb and Roger Alex Goudreau examine Robert Jackson Bennett's the Tainted cup with the skill of investigator Delab and her assistant Den. Let's get into the conversation. And there he is, Craig. He's here, he's there, he's everywhere. I just can't see Craig as Roy Kent though.
So that doesn't work for me.
Speaker C
00:00:44.060 - 00:00:49.180
I'm a grown man. I get paid to play a game and I'm mad about it all the time.
Speaker B
00:00:50.060 - 00:01:55.260
Mr. Grouchy Pants. This is not in fact a Ted Lasso review show. This is in fact the Game Masters book club.
And I am here with three game masters who have joined us before but never all together. So this is going to be great. I'm going to have them introduce themselves to you as today we talk about the Tainted cup by Robert Jackson Bennett.
I'm very excited about this book. I'm very excited about this author and I'm very excited to talk with our game masters about the two questions. That's right.
We're going to go, we're going to split this up a bit. We're going to have two questions. That's because this book is a kind of a two part book.
It not only is a fantastic murder mystery but it is also a book with Kaiju in it. And that's an unusual combination. So our game masters are going to talk about either Kaiju or how they've run a murder mystery in their game.
And we're going to start with Colleen. Colleen, you want to introduce yourself to the folks and let them know Kaiju or investigation, which one you're going to talk about.
Speaker A
00:01:56.050 - 00:03:30.740
Hello everyone. I'm Kali Knox re game designer out here in Boston, Massachusetts and I love murder mysteries.
I haven't really gone to play anything with with Kaiju before, but I have done a lot of murder mysteries. I recently run Brindlewood Bay a lot of different conventions that I haunt.
Brindlewood Bay is a fantastic game, has built by the apocalypse kind of set up. So types of playbooks are building your character but you play as an older woman, someone in their golden years.
Very much like Golden Girls meets Murder she Wrote and the end mechanic. After you've collected enough clues in the game, your group gets together and hypothesizes what the murder could have been.
And if you roll successfully, your theory is correct and whatever the table has generated as the solve or the resolution for the murder happens. And then crazy stuff can happen. The actual murder can unfold.
One time I was running it, we're on a cruise ship and everybody just hypothesized and they figured out that it was the butler and the ex wife. But they unfortunately at the time were hanging from rafters, having been kidnapped by the murderer in themselves.
And so the butler came in to reveal himself and put them all in danger. And they had to figure out a way to escape. Ending, ending the wonderful story. So murder mysteries are fun. They're often very hard.
But Brindlewood Bay is an excellent system if you enjoy a little bit of staff and Cthulhu. Because if you do a campaign at Brindlewood Bay.
Speaker B
00:03:30.740 - 00:03:31.300
Wait, what?
Speaker A
00:03:31.300 - 00:03:40.990
Yeah, if you do a Brindlewood Bay campaign, there is a larger mystery arc that is a dark culture. It actually has Greek ties, but it.
Speaker B
00:03:40.990 - 00:04:25.040
Is very like as well, if you like Brenda Woodvine.
And I know, I know we're supposed to save media recognition at the end, but this doesn't have anything to do with the book itself, but it sounds like you would enjoy Kills well with others by Deanna Rayborne. There are two books in the Killers of a Certain Age.
It is about four aging women who are part of a real who used to be like Nazi assassins and now they're in their golden years and the company wants to take them out and they survive. And they do a fantastically amazing job of surviving even while throwing their backs out and doing all the things that older people do all the time.
So I highly recommend Killers of Certain Age. And Deanna Raybourne is an amazing writer, so anything she writes is great, but those are hilarious.
Speaker A
00:04:26.480 - 00:04:31.200
That is perfect. Actually, that book is on my wish list because you recommended it to me before.
Speaker B
00:04:31.360 - 00:04:48.380
I wasn't sure if I had, but I was like, oh my God, I got to say it again because killer's always great.
Speaking of someone who is definitely not an old lady and possibly not a killer, Roger, do you want to talk to the folks about your gaming journey briefly and about whether you're going to either Kaiju or investigation?
Speaker C
00:04:48.460 - 00:06:59.550
I can confirm that I am neither an old lady nor a killer. Unless you count spiders and stuff like that. Yeah, I've been gaming for 40 plus years.
Most of that D and D. In younger days, I dabbled in a lot of other things.
I guess at the time, you know, would be the equivalent of like the indie game scene nowadays, which sadly I don't dabble in nearly as much though I have been dabbling as a result of this podcast. So thank you Eric and everyone for inspiring me to do that. So I'm going to go with the Kaiju.
Being a long time player of D and D, runner of D and D. I have of course used the Tarrasque. Everybody's got two at some point or another. And I've done the whole like living island thing. I had a mimic village. The entire village was mimics.
That was a great deal of fun. The looks on the players faces were just to die for.
But I think my favorite Kaiju or Kaiju adjacent encounter was of course the Titans of the Sea, right, the Kraken. And in fourth edition, fifth edition rules like Kraken are, they're demigods basically.
They're incredibly powerful, they're intelligent, they have magic and so on and so forth. And I'd been running a game with a bunch of aquatic elements and there were, you know, evidence of.
It was almost like I had not quite deep ones, but I had that theme, had that feel. There was a lot of elements of sort of Cthulhu about it. And in fact Dagon was a force in the game.
And the PCs are down in the lightless, crushing depths of the ocean. They're facing this Kraken that they've been tracking and trying to thwart for some time.
And the reason I remember this so well is that I was in the full on grip of my role playing and the Kraken was shouting at them, you know, mentally of course, because they use telepathy. And he goes on and on about how worthless they are and how insignificant they are. And he says, because I am the left tentacle of Dagon.
Thinking of course, you know, being the left hand of the villain, right. The position of honor. I said left tentacle. The table broke out in laughter because they thought I said left testicle. And I have never lived it down.
Speaker B
00:07:00.110 - 00:07:02.030
Nt, NT very important.
Speaker C
00:07:02.670 - 00:07:06.430
Yes, we still, we still talk about it years and years later.
Speaker B
00:07:06.510 - 00:07:11.500
Okay, Karen, I don't know, it's gonna be tough to follow that one.
Speaker D
00:07:11.500 - 00:07:13.620
But yeah, I don't know if I can follow it up.
Speaker B
00:07:14.420 - 00:07:15.300
See how you do.
Speaker D
00:07:16.500 - 00:08:57.989
Hey, I'm Karen Sock, designer by day, GM by night. I've been role playing since the early 90s. I guess maybe that does qualify me as an old lady. Who knows. And I am gonna go with the mystery track here.
I love a good murder mystery.
I started running a game called Birder Murders, which is sort of based on British cozy mysteries where it's a group of people in 1920s Village of Egginton, England that are birdwatchers and then of course come upon murders and have to solve them. I've been running it for a few years now. We started in 1928, it's now 1931. I run it like once a year or something like that.
My players have all come up with the classic archetypes. We've got like the shy village vicar, the eccentric old socialite and her best friend, the sort of nanny OG inspired granny.
They have their sort of rivals in the next village over, the Leighton Buzzard Ramblers, they've got village fets and then on top of that have to solve the weekly or bi weekly murder.
When it comes to running mysteries in general, I've before, you know, cribbed from stories I know other people haven't read, but also created my own which generally results in a lot of sort of extensive flowcharts and diagrams with suspects and clues sort of pasted up all over my desk.
But I always, always make sure that people find clues even if they're not in the correct room or place because it really kind of stinks mystery not finding out who done it.
My favorite part of this whole thing is that the first time my players created characters, everybody sort of came up with what British actor was playing them. So now every single time I create a new mystery, I get to, you know, pick which British actors are playing each of the guest stars on the show.
Which is fun because I have absolutely no budget and I can grab whoever.
Speaker B
00:08:57.989 - 00:11:45.370
I want to and it's awesome. You can have anyone. It's fantastic. My name is Eric Jackson and I'm the host of the show.
I've been playing since the Pleistocene and I absolutely adore Kaiju. I think having a giant, giant, giant monster is the best way to go. A really fantastic set piece. They have all kinds of really cool powers.
I really like them as a particularly when you start getting up there in levels, but also for low level characters because it's really obvious that you should run away from Godzilla. So it takes a little while for them to get brave, powerful slash, stupid enough to be able to stand there and fight them.
I recently current gaming group from college who I'm running with on roll 20 and they recently had a giant coral monster that came into the bay and they had to fight it off and it like spawned off little creatures and those creatures changed people into other little creatures and then it like had just it was just. They're just so versatile. You can just do so much with a Kaiju and they're just this. This giant thing.
And it's something that everybody always likes to talk about. So I'm a big fan. One of the reasons why I love this book, I really enjoyed this book.
I had a great time with it and I'm gonna tell you guys a little bit more about it. The world fantasy and Hugo award winning book by Robert Jackson Bennett.
The tainted cup takes place on an earth that never was one where specially bred mushrooms are air conditioners, flesh eating vines are restrained by alchemical reagent keys, and the power widespread empire of Kanum imbues its servants with bio implants that greatly enhance strength, senses and skills while simultaneously defending against Kaiju attack from massive seawall defenses with massive cannons. All of this world building takes place while a series of byzantine murders which implicates the powerful noblers of this empire take place.
The eccentric investigator Anna Delabra and her newly minted memory modified and secretly dyslexic Din Cole. They are our fantasy Holmes and Watson and they are set out to solve a case in a city that is currently being threatened by Kaiju attack.
This book has as many mysteries do, a great deal to say about justice or the illusion of justice. The existence of one set of laws for the rich and the other set for everyone else.
The epic level of corruption that can occur in large empires, and most importantly, what it would be like to live in a world that actually had Kaiju. All those things get addressed and I really like this book. How did you guys feel about it? Karen?
Speaker D
00:11:45.370 - 00:12:11.390
I really, really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much I immediately read the second one and I'm very much looking forward to the third.
I feel that calling it a Sherlock Holmes mystery is kind of selling it short because it does have the investigator and assistant. But it's not the like bumbling Watson sort of following around being like, good God, Holmes, I can't believe you figured that out.
I really liked that both Anna and Din were very competent in their own ways and also incompetent in their own ways. And they complemented each other really nicely.
Speaker B
00:12:11.550 - 00:12:12.830
It's the symbiosis.
Speaker D
00:12:12.830 - 00:12:13.230
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:12:13.310 - 00:12:29.120
In the original, the Holmesian thing is Holmes doesn't seem to be able to keep himself stable without having someone to sort of watch out for him. And in this case, in this one, that's also the case. But our Watson also needs help. More codependence than dependent in this.
Speaker D
00:12:29.510 - 00:12:30.950
Yeah, but not in an unhealthy way.
Speaker B
00:12:31.270 - 00:12:34.630
Not in an unhealthy way, no. Roger, anything you want to add about the book?
Speaker C
00:12:34.630 - 00:13:40.560
I loved it. I mean, I had heard about it and then I selected it. I read it because it was a Hugo winner, which I make it my policy to do that all the time now.
But I agree with what Karen said, right, That I love that Cole was not Watson. The relationship is there, sort of the mentor, mentee. But I really loved that he was a very driving force in the story.
And I loved watching the magic system, magic in quotes, because it's really biopunk. But I loved watching the magic system unfold and how the nature of the magic system played a part in the unfolding mystery.
Not only did each individual character's gifts shape how they contributed to the investigation and what was going on, but then how each character's gifts shaped their motivations and what they did. And your strengths and weaknesses were very important.
That was a way of bringing the world building and the magic into the plot in a way that I don't think I've seen done quite this way before. I really enjoyed it, Howie.
Speaker A
00:13:40.560 - 00:13:50.020
I too went and bought the second book right after reading this book because I loved it so much, and then pre ordered the third book and then just started devouring everything this author writes. I kind of have a problem.
Speaker D
00:13:50.900 - 00:13:53.060
Not a problem. We're all like that. It's cool.
Speaker B
00:13:54.260 - 00:13:58.820
A problem of time or shelf space, really. That's really the problem.
Speaker A
00:13:59.060 - 00:14:25.010
I definitely enjoyed the mystery. I loved the augmentation mechanics. I loved the world, how everything was described.
I also truly enjoy that in this world of augmented people, where everyone has some kind of special gift, there are still these neurodiverse people to like.
Both Anna and Din have something additional to themselves outside their augmentations that make them feel outsider to the world, yet give them advantages in their investigation.
Speaker B
00:14:25.010 - 00:14:49.350
It is a very well developed world. It's very, very, very well built.
Well, speaking of building worlds, if we were going to take a look at this particular story, if we wanted to bring the tainted cup to our tabletop, we'd need a system to do it in. I'm going to start with Karen. Karen, do you want to talk to the folks about what system you would use to best evoke the feeling of the tainted cup?
Speaker D
00:14:50.070 - 00:15:54.310
Absolutely. I feel that I would run this in the Gumshoe system. It's my favorite one to do mysteries in.
I actually started doing my burger murders in Gumshoe until I got lazy and pared it down to my roll two dice and Add bonuses and I guess we're doing that.
But what I love about Gumshoe is the game is focused on interpreting the clues, not just missing them because you spent the entire night having bad rolls. You know, obviously no fun if everybody's floundering around because of flub trance rolls.
It also relies on sort of the character abilities that they come up with so you can create these specialized investigators and then feel really cool when you're like, hey, I know everything about Bones. That over there is definitely a pile of patellas that are only from left legs. Isn't that weird?
I think it gives the characters lots of moments to really shine and come up with, you know, their individuality to make the game more fun.
Especially since one of the people I've been playing with for like 20 years, somehow, always in the past few years, inadvertently, in a way, makes a character that, like, loves to take soil samples and do that kind of forensic study. So it's sort of a perfect niche for her.
Speaker B
00:15:54.790 - 00:15:57.830
Everyone's got to have their favorite forensic thing that they enjoy.
Speaker D
00:15:58.150 - 00:15:58.950
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B
00:15:58.950 - 00:16:00.310
Roger, thoughts on the system?
Speaker C
00:16:00.720 - 00:18:17.800
Well, of course, cipher system can do anything. Although in the. The magic system lacks overt magic. One could take that to suggest that there's no adept in the world.
But I think with some proper reflavoring, right, you could tweak the skills. The apotheticals are absolutely your adept class.
And then I think the warriors and explorers and speakers that are the four core classes of the Cypher system, you know, all have good fits in. I'll let of the setting, but I think I would be tempted to try.
My new crush in terms of gaming is Daggerheart, which has a much more kind of fantasy and whimsical feel to it.
But one of the things I love about it is that they have this whole section in the back of the book about creating campaign frames where you can devise a setting for a game with pretty much any flavor that could. You could reasonably plug these characters and abilities and stuff into.
And in fact, they have one campaign frame in the back of the book called the Dry Lands, which has rules for colossi, which are essentially mechanical Kaiju. So the book gives you great starting point to create a Kaiju flavored game.
But they also provide a bunch of guidelines for how you might choose to constrain classes, character races. But anyway, so you might choose to eliminate the ribbits, for example, which are anthropomorphized frogs and what have you, because they may not fit.
Or you might decide they do Fit. Right. This is a biopunk world, right. So in a world where an entire region is swampy and overgrown, you might very well have frog people.
So I think a lot about it fits. The classes are a little more kind of classical and would need some. Some reskinning in the more urban and biopunk direction.
But the system is very collaborative. Right. And it's got this action economy mechanic that keeps the story bouncing back and forth between the players and the gm.
And it's got this great mechanic for building up this fear pool for the GM as things go wrong and you build up this tension and then the GM dumps a bunch of fear in a big encounter and then the PCs have to sort of pivot it around.
That gives that really powerful narrative swing back and forth that I think lends itself very well to some of the high stakes, high action moments that we saw in the book.
Speaker B
00:18:17.880 - 00:18:27.670
That sounds like a great use of the system. Colleen, what system do you think is going to best serve the Tainted cup game that you are someday going to run?
Speaker A
00:18:27.670 - 00:20:52.190
So I actually have two systems.
Don't fit them perfectly, but I can take different parts of the book and kind of apply them or at least use the world setting and just apply the mechanics from these systems. I had Blaze in the Dark. Blaze the Dark. Usually you have a crew. There's a big part of your crew.
And I don't think that really works with what's in the book. But I do think that some of the settings in Blaze in the Dark gives you that walled off world that you have.
You have these circles and these intrinsic rings that go deeper and deeper into the Empire. You can have that in Blaze of the Dark. You also have Leviathan, Kraken, octopi that have the ink.
And the ink fuels everything in Blaze in the Dark and the Lore. So you could apply.
You could take that and alter it to be the Leviathan's blood, which also is used for all your augmentations and what they do to what they use to make reagents, reagent keys. It all comes from the big giant Kaiju creatures, but there would have to be any. And you can still use the playbook.
You just probably wouldn't have a crew unless you change the game. Instead of being like a two person mystery solving, you could make it about any kind of the groups inside the Empire. So you could make it Diodex.
You can make like you're a part of the Iodex. And so now you're. You're doing judgments like with other Iodex officers or any of the other officers in the military.
You could do like a Blaze of the Dark Crew like that. The other system was cyberpunk.
So just like Roger saying biopunk, you could take your cyber tech and the augmentations that you have in cyberpunk and make them more bio based and just change the world. Instead of cyberpunk, make it into this bio biopunk world. Because a lot of the themes in cyberpunk are also going up against the larger corporations.
But in this case you could just make it the corruption that's in the empire, which is exactly what Anna and Din are going up against. It's a little spoiler in the book, but there's a secret agents happening. But I do like the cyberpunk tech.
Oh, the other interesting about cyber attack in cyberpunk is that it makes you slowly go insane or it slowly has negative effects, which is the same thing that happens to you and you get augmented too much. So eventually like Din memory starts to bleed and he starts seeing things. Well, he hasn't seen them yet, but other engravers do.
So someone who has engraving starts to have their memory kind of hallucinate things. Same thing can happen in cyberpunk. So I thought that was a good mashup.
Speaker B
00:20:52.590 - 00:23:15.910
Absolutely. I think that's great. As we've already said, this book feels like a two parter.
There's this whole Kaiju thing that's happening and the world that's built around that. And then there's this Byzantine empire that exists as well. And that's sort of where I ended up. I did what Karen did in that.
I was looking at gumshoe hat called Trail of Cthulhu, which is a combination of gumshoe and Call of Cthulhu. So it's got a lot of those great elements there and it's got that great problem solving aspect to it.
And the other thing that I have, I wanted to put in there because as I've already said, I'm a big fan of putting Kaiju in my game. There currently exists a book, Ryoku's Guide. It's made by this guy named Will. He runs a YouTube channel called D and D Shorts.
I really enjoy those too, by the way. And he has a whole section on Kaiju and how you can have those in your game.
In that game they have what's called a chaos threshold, which is unless you hit the Kaiju in its particular vulnerable spot, it just basically gets madder and matter and then it eventually rampages. That does happen at One point during the story.
Also this idea that they have these huge complicated powers, that they're all different, that they have these weird effects when they die, these death throw abilities, all of those complement what's happening in the book. And they have a really excellent crafting system which includes using a lot of the parts of the Kaiju to do magical things.
So a lot of the biopunk stuff that we've been talking about is laid out for a D D audience, at least in that regard.
So I'd probably take in a lot of the problem solving from Trail of Cthulhu and then run the rest of it in D D mostly because one, it would be most people know it and two, I'd probably get more players that way. So that's the systems. But let's be honest, we don't always get a time to sit back and go, you know what, I'm gonna run a tainted cup game.
But boy, wasn't there something super cool in that book that I'm totally going to put right into my game for the next time around. And that is going to bring us to our next section, which is where we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about the portables, things we can take right out of the book. Roger, do you want to start and tell us the thing you'd probably want to take right out of the book and drop into your current campaign?
Speaker C
00:23:16.310 - 00:23:58.130
Sure. I would absolutely steal the reagent keys idea. I just, I love the concept, right.
Of basically carrying around this little vial of a particular reagent that triggers a particular action in a plant.
And the fact that the book has keys of various complexities means you can have essentially like easy to break in to, more hard to break in to, impossible to break in. And finding ways for PCs to like fake a key or do something like that.
The other aspect of the this idea that I really like but I didn't see in the book is the idea of short term keys. You can create a reagent key, but the reagent is going to break down in the vial.
And so you got to use the key within a certain time limit so you can add time pressure to an adventure. And that's what I would.
Speaker B
00:23:58.130 - 00:24:08.930
Fantastic. I'm already got three places I'm going to put that. So that's going to bring us to you. Karen, what did.
If you were something you're going to take on and drop into your current campaign, what would it be and why?
Speaker D
00:24:09.570 - 00:25:04.920
Sure. Well, I have the luxury because I'm In a group where we don't run long campaigns. So I don't have long running ones.
I just run a game for, like two to three weeks and then it goes to the next person. But what I would love to steal from this in general and sort of base a whole campaign around are the apotheticals. I absolutely adore the biopunk csi.
I really love any forensic element in a mystery. Maybe because I'm sad I never finished my master's in forensic anthropology. But who knows?
I just really like all the tech based on the plants and the organic matter. The dangers of maybe breathing in threatening debris.
If anybody read diamond age, it's like the nanites that are sort of floating around medically threatening everybody. But it's with biopunk spores. And how all these things have crazy unintended consequences, collateral damage.
And just having a group of people that are scientists having to figure out just what is going on with all this crazy nonsense just sounds like so much fun.
Speaker B
00:25:04.920 - 00:25:09.360
Anytime you can throw in a little bit of extra science, always going to be a fun time. Colleen.
Speaker A
00:25:09.360 - 00:25:29.870
I just want to try running something with a Kaiju. I love the idea of the Kaiju, and I love the idea that their blood forms the world around them and transfers the people.
So people are symbiotic with this giant creature that also comes by every season and murders everyone. I think that's fascinating. But also, giant monsters are really cool. And I can't believe I haven't run.
Speaker B
00:25:29.870 - 00:26:03.890
A game yet without some sort of giant monster.
They talk about how the Kaiju, before the empire was there, they would come onto the land and they'd be there and weird, cool, giant deposits of magic, really good farmland would appear. So it reminds me to be kind of like El nino la nina kind of a thing where you have, like.
It's an upwelling of material from the depths that comes onto the shore. What an interesting ecological way of redistributing material from one ecosystem to another which is always really kind of fun.
Speaker A
00:26:03.970 - 00:26:16.150
I think it's so fascinating, and I feel like it's an overarching mystery on itself. What where the Kaiju come from, 100 who they are and how they evolve and how everybody keeps taking their resources. It's so good.
Speaker C
00:26:16.390 - 00:26:20.230
Wasn't there something in the book about how they've been getting bigger and more violent?
Speaker D
00:26:20.230 - 00:26:20.710
Yes.
Speaker C
00:26:20.790 - 00:26:29.630
So clearly there's a bigger story there. And maybe in book two or three, we'll hear more about that.
I mean, obviously you all know I don't yet know what's revealed about that in book two, but I'm.
Speaker B
00:26:29.630 - 00:27:23.250
No one will know until book three. A Train of Blood will be out on August 11, 2026. So everyone set your calendars as far as portables for me.
We've already talked a little bit about the cost of magic, and this has developed certainly a bit more in book two, where the idea that you have these powers and that you get from this material, but it all comes at a price, usually a little later down the road, but not always from just a straight up. Want to take it right now, drop it into a game? I loved the locked sword scabbard. Boy, that was a tongue twister right there.
The idea that there was like something that would lock it in there that would prevent you from using the super cool sword that's in there. So even if you stole someone's magic sword sword, you couldn't get it out because you'd have to know the combination to get it out of the scabbard.
I was like, oh, that's so cool. I don't know how useful it is in a campaign, but it just felt like an interesting detail that I'd want to put into my game.
Speaker C
00:27:23.250 - 00:27:25.490
You know, someone is going to ask how they destroy.
Speaker B
00:27:25.490 - 00:28:01.970
Yes, of course. That's why you have to make the scabbard magical too. Right? You've got to have to make that just as.
Just as badass as the sword or else it's never going to be a thing. So that's our portables. We are fast moving through this. And now we are moving on to the media portion of our discussion here.
If folks really liked this book, if you thought the Tainted cup was great and you wanted to get more inspiration like it for your campaign, for your games, or just had the right vibe, where would you want to go with this? Colleen, do you want to kick us off and tell us what has the right vibe and what is like the tainted cub?
Speaker A
00:28:02.770 - 00:28:28.190
The thing I grabbed at was Attack on Titan, which is both a manga and a show. You've got the whole. There's these giant Titans, Kaiju that attack.
They have intricate circles, walls that they bust through, protected people, and there's a giant mystery around them. So I don't want to spoil the show or the manga, but it's very. It's very similar.
It's got very biological, weird science vibes and deep mysteries that alter how you think about.
Speaker B
00:28:28.190 - 00:28:35.790
That's great. Roger, do you want to take on the second spot and tell us what books and media you think have the same vibe as the Tainan cup, sure.
Speaker C
00:28:35.790 - 00:29:38.910
So I have a few suggestions all in the books area.
For readers looking for something else by Robert Jackson Bennett, then I would recommend Foundryside, which is the first book in an earlier series that he wrote. It's an again very strong, strongly built world, complex fantasy setting, cool mystery and so on and so forth.
If you're looking for a sort of apprentice master arrangement or mentor mentee arrangement in an investigative sense, Rivers of London is a good one. That's however got a very lighter tone, much more comic in spots.
And then I went looking for some fantasy that showcases neurodivergent characters, right, who are handled respectfully given characters in the Tainted cup you know are neurodivergent. And a couple of options there I think include Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett.
It's a cozier fantasy, but does have a main character that many reviewers say is autistic coded.
Or if you want something darker, the Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White as an autistic and trans main character, but again handled very well.
Speaker B
00:29:39.310 - 00:29:45.470
Excellent. Karen, do you want to tell us about the things that you think are tainted cup adjacent?
Speaker D
00:29:46.270 - 00:31:52.490
Sure. I pick a few different things because there's so much to like about the book and it depends what you like about it.
Do you like Kaiju or mystery solving or politics, corruption and class disparity or the cool magic or the biopunk? So first off, I'm also going with an Anime Kaiju no. 8. This is set in modern day Kyoto.
It's also got Kaijus showing up for reasons unknown, but it also has the, you know, post killing Kaijus using their body parts or powers for weaponry and armor, people randomly getting Kaiju powers for what reason we don't quite know yet. So that's a fun one. Also, when it comes to animation, this gave me a lot of the same vibes as arcane.
It's got the authoritarian government, the poor versus rich, mysterious technologically or magically advanced precursors that hold delving too deep with powers you don't understand. But this is just, you know, biopunk and whereas arcane is steampunk.
Also, the entire time I pictured Din's uniform as that enforcer uniform that they wear in arcane.
When it comes to books, this kind of vibed also with the Will of the Many by James Islington or Islington, not sure how to pronounce it from the beginning of the Tainted cup, which also had these sort of faux Latin military rankings in the beginning Will of the Many Also has mysterious and possibly dangerous ancient civilization and tech. It's got interesting and complex sort of magic system.
Imperials conquering other peoples and what's left, their cultures, inequality with the general population. And definitely a lot more going on than meets the eye.
And we'll have a bunch of like, holy crap, what is actually happening here type moments that are fun.
And then finally I was trying to think of a mystery that, you know, wasn't just a Sherlock Holmes or an Agatha Christie, something people might not have read. And I thought of the Cadfell series by Ellis Peters. It's set in medieval England.
It's based on Cadfell, who's a previous crusader and now a Benedictine monk who has a huge knowledge of like herbs and plants. And he uses that to sort of be the medical examiner slash forensic anthropologist of the 1100s.
And if you want to watch it instead of read it, it stars the very talented Derek Jacoby and Sean Pertwee, son of.
Speaker B
00:31:52.650 - 00:34:41.250
I didn't know about the Pertwee connection, but my mother was a huge fan of the Captain mysteries and I didn't realize that that was the same per Tree. Okay, fantastic.
I too wanted to give folks a choice to look at a mentor mentee Holmesian kind of thing that was taking place in a land that never was. This one's a little historical and definitely more magical. This would be the Master lee and Number 10 Ox books by Barry Hewart.
These books were written, written from the mid to late 80s. They are the Bridge of Birds, eight skilled gentlemen, and the Story of the Stone. These are amazing mysteries that are filled with Chinese myths and.
And with some magic, but also with bureaucracy and also with corruption. So these are pretty close. They are lighter and they don't have the biopunk aspect of it. It's much more magical.
As far as the neurodiversity rep, I couple things here. Jeffrey the Very Strange has an aphasic spellcaster that's by Angel Martinez.
For great autism rep, I would recommend the Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. Really one of the best ones I've seen with that. And very recently I read a book called Sorcery and Small Magics and that's by Myga Ducey.
And this is a really great thing with the dyslexic spell caster. In that world, the spells can only be one. Can be written by somebody, but they can't cast them. And so you have to have a pair. It's a male.
Male fantasy romance. It's really just quite an enjoyable book. Sorcery and Spell Magic by Mike Aducy.
So all those are great books that if you were looking for things that are close to what's happening in the Tainted Couple, definitely do that. I. I didn't come up with too many Kaiju books, but I'm gonna have to work on that for the next time and see if I can't come up with some Kaiju books.
All right. I'm just gonna put in a quick plug for in April or May of 2026. So that means you've only got a couple of months before the third book comes out.
So go buy the second book, which is Drop of Production and. And of course, a Trait of Blood, which is the third book coming out.
But besides that, I wanted to mention ablegamers.org this helps people who are disabled who like to play games, hang out with people, and gives them the tools and the. The ability to continue to hang out with folks.
So if you want to combat social isolation through play and possibly set up a fundraiser to help people play games by playing games, they're a great group. So I recommend AbleGabers, AbleGames.org and over to you, Karen, for your promo.
Speaker D
00:34:42.210 - 00:35:10.680
I'm going to do my usual plug for the Crime Victims Treatment Center. I volunteer as an advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence with them.
They have a ton of great services, from counseling to legal help, et cetera, all of it free.
If you want to donate or help, or if you live in the New York City area and perhaps want to train as a volunteer advocate yourself, you can go to cvtcnyc.org Roger does have a quick plug.
Speaker B
00:35:10.680 - 00:35:11.320
Go ahead, Roger.
Speaker C
00:35:11.800 - 00:35:26.720
Well, now after the two of you with your social call outs, I feel a little selfish. It's been a long, long time. It feels like struggling to get this episode scheduled.
And it occurred to me that in between the last time we recorded an episode and this time. I published three short stories in anthologies last year.
Speaker B
00:35:26.720 - 00:35:27.400
Oh my goodness.
Speaker D
00:35:27.480 - 00:35:28.280
Oh, awesome.
Speaker C
00:35:28.920 - 00:35:51.740
Yeah, August, September and October. It was interesting how it all played out. Three short stories, two fantasy, traditional fantasy, one urban fantasy. And they were published last year.
And I've gotten heard good things from people who are close to me, admittedly, so maybe they're biased, I don't know. But if you go to my website@www.rogeralexcardo.com, there's information about those stories there. And someday I will be publishing my.
Speaker B
00:35:51.740 - 00:35:54.220
It'll happen. It will. Don't worry. It's gonna happen.
Speaker D
00:35:54.940 - 00:35:55.700
You can do it.
Speaker C
00:35:55.700 - 00:36:04.470
I'm redrafting it now. I did a deep read and you know, did my revision plan and now I'm. I had to change so much that I'm redrafting it, but I'm, I'm moving.
Speaker B
00:36:04.550 - 00:36:10.710
That's good. That's the best way. Before we go, I just want to tell everybody thank you especially for Karen jumping in.
Speaker D
00:36:11.910 - 00:36:15.270
Oh, thank you, man. I love being recommended new books and talking.
Speaker B
00:36:15.270 - 00:36:23.110
As Colleen has mentioned several times, I am very good at recommending more books that people need to read and our TBR is completely booked.
Speaker D
00:36:23.670 - 00:36:24.110
Yes.
Speaker C
00:36:24.110 - 00:36:30.680
Honestly, Eric, I'm retiring from work so I can have as much time to read as to be able to read all the books you read.
Speaker B
00:36:30.760 - 00:38:09.900
And it's definitely the way to do it. I think we all should. I think I'm on board.
Let's just get, let's get basic income in for everybody and we can all just become professional book readers for the rest of our lives and on board.
But thank you all for coming and doing this again and hope you will all come back and we'll do something else and we'll be something else cool and we'll bring it to the gamers and they'll think it's cool too. And that was the Tainted cup by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Thanks so much to Colleen Noctre, Roger, Alex Goudreau and Karen form for sleuthing out all the mysteries of this book with me. It was, as always, a pleasure to talk books with such great game masters.
Join us in two weeks when Tom Watkin, Martin Wilson and Rich Davies join us from the continent of Australia to discuss the amazing dark fantasy graphic novel series Monstrous by Marjorie Liu. You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts at 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 Mastodon at Gamemasters Book Club and on Instagram Gamemaster Book Club.
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Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music. Later, gamers, and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.