The Last Unicorn
Peter S. Beagle
Speaker A
00:00:08.240 - 00:01:19.670
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club, where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience.
Fables, fairy tales, myths and legends.
They have a language all their own.
And there are few authors better at expressing that language than Peter S. Beagle.
The Last Unicorn is one of his best works.
And today, Sean Murphy, Ian Eller and new GM to the Pod, Chris Sager, discuss this classic of fantasy, discussing systems solutions and gaming styles designed to suit this great story.
Let's get into the conversation and welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where we take great fiction and we turn it into great tabletop role playing experiences.
And we've got some returning GMs and we've got.
We've got a new GM here today as well.
And I'm going to have them introduce themselves.
We're going to be talking about the Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, one of the classics of fantasy.
And so we had to get the best GMs possible.
And as a result, we got these guys and I want to let them talk to you about themselves a tiny little bit about their gaming journey and about the last time they had unicorns in their campaign.
So we'll see how that goes.
So we're going to start off with you, Sean.
Sean, you want to tell the folks a little bit about yourself and a little bit about unicorns.
Speaker B
00:01:20.310 - 00:02:04.270
Sure.
So I've been gaming for quite a long time now, maybe several decades, three or four.
Anyway, I run a variety of games in a variety of different settings and enjoy going to conventions, learning new ones.
I'm not going to give the answer you think I'm going to give, Eric.
In terms of unicorns, you're welcome to take it if you want, but instead I'm going to say my unicorn is.
I have a player that tells me their backstory in advance, that gives me good threads for sort of going some places with their story participates to a degree without sort of hogging the soft light, without hogging the spotlight.
And boy, you know, I've run a lot of games.
That's really a unicorn in the wild right there.
Speaker C
00:02:04.590 - 00:02:08.750
That is the family, friendliest definition of a unicorn I've ever heard.
Speaker A
00:02:08.990 - 00:02:24.510
Wow.
Yeah, definitely.
Well, I'm glad to hear that.
That's fantastic.
I'm glad you have such a player.
I will move on to Chris.
Chris, you are our new game master.
So tell people a little bit about yourself and a little bit about unicorns in your.
Speaker D
00:02:25.370 - 00:03:42.980
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thanks very much for having me.
This, this is a treat.
I'm very excited about this.
I think the podcast is, is great and it's a good idea.
Gratified to be here.
So I'm like a sleeper winter soldier kind of person.
Like I, I didn't, you know, I played as a kid, then went off and became, you know, had a career in a life and stuff and didn't play for about 30 years.
And I, I came back to D and D about five years ago.
But, you know, I did it to, you know, bond with my kids.
Like I thought it was going to be dumb and I wasn't going to like it and I was just doing it for them.
And then I got obsessed and they, they outgrew it and they're all done with it already.
So here I am about five or six years later going to, you know, five or six cons a year running games at cons and running, running a lot of D and D. So I'm mainly a 5e guy.
I've run a million things but.
And play other editions of D and D pretty regularly anyway.
The answer of, you know, as to the Last Unicorn that's been in my game is that I've never had a unicorn in my game and I, I think I probably won't.
It's because the, the games I run tend towards pretty, pretty dark stuff.
I'm a little on the horror dark fantasy side, which, you know, begs the question why did I want to come on and talk about the Last Unicorn?
But we'll get to that.
Speaker A
00:03:43.540 - 00:03:50.580
Yeah, we absolutely will.
I can't wait to hear what you have to say about that.
That'd be great.
Ayin.
That brings us to you, sir.
Tell us about.
Speaker C
00:03:53.920 - 00:04:55.510
My name is Ay Eller.
I am one of the people that started playing in the mid-80s and never, ever, ever stopped.
Started with D and D and, and has expanded to many, many, many, many games.
But in particular, as it relates to this situation, the Last Unicorn is one of my favorite novels.
I think that Peter S. Beagle is one of the best writers we have ever seen.
It isn't necessarily my favorite novel, but it's close to being near the top.
And for the most recent, Unicorn in Games is perhaps the polar opposite of the book we're about to talk about because I ran a Descent into Avernus campaign and there is a moment in that campaign that involves a unicorn that is trapped.
But we were playing fast and loose and we were definitely playing the game in a way that was not family friendly.
And so that unicorn, well, let's just say fought hard and farted rainbows.
It was great.
It was the best.
Speaker A
00:04:56.310 - 00:07:13.570
Wow.
Okay, that is a game transcript I wish I had to review.
That would be awesome.
My name is Eric Jackson.
I'm the host of the podcast.
I've been playing since 19.
Before the Pleistocene, really.
That's really all that matters.
And I also have never stopped playing.
I went out and found.
I found a girl who wanted a game with me and I married her.
And now I'm.
Now I'm here and I continue to do all this stuff.
But more importantly, unicorns.
In my current campaign, one of the exports of the small outpost that my character started in was the fact that there were unicorns there and the unicorns were part of the treaty and that they.
So they were transporting unicorns to be part of, like a unicorn cavalry thing that was happening there.
So those are my last unicorns.
But that's everybody's unicorn experiences or future unicorn experiences.
So let's talk a little bit about the Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle so that everybody knows what this story is about.
If you don't already know what the story is about, now is the time to exit and go read this amazing book, because as I am pointed out, it is one of the best written books in the entire world.
So for today, let's hear about the story.
From the lovely Lilac Wood to the bleak seaside realm of King Haggard, a lone unicorn searches for more of her.
But humans can't see unicorns anymore unless they are magic, like Schmendrick the bumbling magician, or full of longing like Molly Gru.
But as the butterfly foretold, the monstrous Red Bull has chased the other unicorns into the sea, holding them there for King Haggard to gaze upon.
The Red Bull finds our unicorn, and Schmedrick, desperate to save her, turns her into a human, the Lady Amalthea.
Now she battles against memory in order to love Haggard's adopted son, Prince Lear, whose hero's heart loves her in return.
As in all good stories, the hero sacrifices the lady, Amalthea dies, the wizard masters his magic, and the unicorn discovers bravery and regret.
Peter Beagle's the Last Unicorn is a subverted fairy tale in turns both hopeful and melancholic, written in lyrical prose, rich with imagery, poetry and verse, as it deals with regret, hollow obsession, human connection and immortality.
What would you guys like to add as far as themes and talking about this book?
Ayan, go ahead.
Speaker C
00:07:15.010 - 00:07:37.800
I feel like it's a very interesting thing that you couched it.
As Lydia Malthea dies, that is a super interesting point in the book, and I don't want to necessarily spoil that for potential readers.
Like, a very interesting way to interpret those events in that.
In that book.
Speaker A
00:07:37.960 - 00:08:33.490
I think this is the classic.
You've created a new person.
Like, this happens in science fiction all the time, where, like, something happens and you get.
And there's like the two Vicks thing from.
From Voyager, or like, something happens and you become a different person or like the kind of person who you are changes.
But now we have to rewind that or bring that back.
And most of the time they get rewound and they don't remember.
And they really.
I mean, Amalthea exists and she now exists eternally inside of the unicorn.
She.
But she's dead.
She's the other she.
She.
She can.
That's the person.
That's where the.
I think.
I personally think that's where the real regret comes in.
I think she does regret not loving or not being able to love Lear as a human, but I think she even more regrets the death of the person who she was, which is something I think everybody can get into.
Speaker C
00:08:34.290 - 00:08:53.810
I. I find that this is not actually a podcast about, about the books.
I don't want to go too deeply, but what I would say is that if.
If Amalthea's memory lives on, then she did not die.
She wasn't a real person to begin with.
She was a.
Anyway,.
Speaker A
00:08:55.010 - 00:09:09.550
At some point, you and I shall.
You and I shall shall duel over that.
That point.
But let's go on to.
Let's go on to Sean.
Sean, is there anything else that you wanted to before Ayin and I go to pisticups over the existence of Lady Amalthea?
Speaker B
00:09:09.790 - 00:09:15.230
No, but I am going to get some popcorn to listen to the two of you go back and forth, because I imagine it's going to be fascinating.
Speaker A
00:09:15.630 - 00:09:19.550
Okay.
What about you, Chris?
Is there anything you want to add before we move on to mechanics?
Speaker D
00:09:19.950 - 00:09:31.870
Nothing to say now, I don't think.
I mean, to me, it's like it's a novel of ideas, and it's hard to believe that it's just a story.
That's part of what I think about it, but I don't know that you necessarily need to say that.
Speaker A
00:09:32.710 - 00:10:07.100
Okay.
Another interesting point to be brought up coming up now.
All right, well, let's go down.
Let's go down a different road then.
And instead of talking about the themes of the book, let's take this dark fantasy.
Is it a dark fantasy?
Dark fairy tale, whatever.
This idea, this idea of the Last Unicorn, and how can we channel that into a tabletop role playing game.
What's going to be the appropriate system that's going to help us bring as much of this story to life as possible?
Sean, I'm going to ask you to lead off on this.
Speaker B
00:10:08.780 - 00:10:14.580
Yeah.
So the unicorn you thought I was going to talk about was the City of Mist game that we're in where a character.
Speaker A
00:10:14.580 - 00:10:14.940
Is.
Speaker B
00:10:14.940 - 00:10:18.620
Playing a manifestation of this very unicorn.
But.
Speaker A
00:10:18.700 - 00:10:28.060
Oh, that's so awesome.
I forever live in awe of her almost audacity of playing that character.
It's so cool.
Speaker B
00:10:28.540 - 00:11:26.770
Well, I'm pretty grateful to her too because I had not read the book before she said she was going to play it.
So I had to go read the book.
And when I say I had, I mean I was given the luxury and joy of reading the book.
So I've not.
I've yet to see the cartoon because I hear it sort of pales to the book and I don't want to mess that up.
The good vibe I have.
So I'm going to take that lesson and go and just say that I think the RPG I would look at would be Legends in the Mist.
It's City of the Mist in a more fantasy setting.
There's more magic going on, there's more expectation of the traditional medieval esque type, times and attitudes, etc.
And certainly the idea of a game where you could take on a unicorn who then also took on a human aspect for a while before going back to being a full unicorn again fits in nicely.
Speaker A
00:11:27.700 - 00:11:56.260
Absolutely.
I think that's really just an amazing system to play out not only that character, but also a lot of the other characters who are to a certain extent not tropes, but examinations of tropes.
So I think City Abyss is a great thing to do that with.
Chris, do you want to talk about what system you think you would like to use to play your last unicorn role playing game?
Speaker D
00:11:56.890 - 00:13:02.100
Yeah, sure.
I mean if I were going to do this, I would do my go to, I would just do 5e and I'll say, you know, I'm kind of a system agnostic gamer, to be perfectly candid.
I tend to think, you know, system agonistes, they exaggerate the significance of these things.
If you really had to play it in a different system for whatever reason, you know, one thing that you could try to capture mechanically is there's a lot of humor in the book based on.
On it being a low magic sort of system.
Specifically one one dude.
I mean, if you have a Schmendrick character, it'd be kind of cool.
To have mechanics for how his spells always fail.
So, you know, DCC or like the.
The Warhammer fantasy role playing game to.
To pick an obscure one, you know, they.
They have good mechanics for.
For.
For spells that screw up.
And you know, D and D would be a little hard.
You'd have to make a bespoke thing for.
For screwing up spells if that was important.
But I think 5e would work great.
Speaker A
00:13:02.180 - 00:13:22.720
Agreed.
And interesting that you should be the system agnostic person.
Usually.
Alex, who is here, is usually the first person to say system agnostic.
And so thank you for filling that role.
Exactly.
To a T. That was perfect.
On to you, Ayan.
What is it that you would like to run the Last Unicorn in?
Speaker C
00:13:24.230 - 00:14:56.630
So this story is primarily about stories in and of themselves.
Like, so Svendrick in particular talks about being in a fairy tale the entire time.
Right.
Like, so these people are aware of the universe that they exist in.
So after doing a little research, I decided that Mythic Bastion Land seems like a good system for this because it really wants you to lean in to the idea that there is a mythic story being told here.
And I think the Last Unicorn, there's absolutely a mythic story being told here on top of it also being acknowledged within the fiction that there is a mythic story being told here.
And I find that super interesting.
I don't think necessarily that there is a failure system in the magic.
It isn't that.
It's that the magic in the Last Unicorn is alive and aware in and of itself.
It isn't bad roles.
It's a different thing.
But we can talk about that a little bit like in another part of this podcast where we talk about what we steal.
But like, the idea is that there's a story here.
Everybody knows there's a story here.
So we need a system that acknowledges story and allows players and characters in the fiction to acknowledge the story.
And I think, again, based just on some research, that Mythic Bastion Land is a place where you can do both of those things.
Speaker A
00:14:56.870 - 00:16:40.110
Right.
That is another great system recommendation I'm going to go with.
If we wanted to go a little more story ish, I would recommend.
I'd recommend Perils and Princesses, which is an Outrider.
It's by Outrider Creative.
It's an OSR game.
But there's another OSR game that I think gets to a lot of the cool stuff that's here, and that's Dolanwood.
Dolanwood has four types of magic, but the one I'm most concerned about is the fairy magics because it has that sort of living, breathing, free flowing, kind of has its own thing happening with its glamours.
It's got a lot of quick, competent D6 skill checks because lots of things just happen if you're good at them and if you.
And that's great.
And then my favorite thing, of course, is that they have a bunch, they have races that are specifically designed to reflect some of the dark, whimsical folk horror British Isles kind of folk, folk creatures that are there, which the.
I think the Last Unicorn plays into that whole traditional European magical tradition.
And so you can play things like a Grimalkin, which is a fairy cat, which we also have in there.
And we'll talk about that later as well.
But you could play.
It's set up so you can play magical creatures as player characters.
So I think that makes it just like the half step slightly better than like say, perils and princesses or a straight up dcc.
So that's my recommendation.
We've alluded to it already.
This book is just chock full of stuff that can and should, I think, be used in lots of role playing games.
So Ian will go right back to you.
What is it that you want to take from this book and drop right into your current campaigns?
Speaker C
00:16:40.910 - 00:18:27.150
There's a lot of amazing stuff here.
One basic idea is the fact that like, our player characters seem to cover quite a wide swath between Molly Gru, who like, would be an NPC in almost any game, but like she has as much impact on the story as anybody else.
And then you have Schmendrick, who is like a clown and useless until he's not right.
And then you have Prince Lear who is a hero and you have the unicorners among all of those things.
I think what is really interesting and what I think has value across campaign ideas is this idea that magic is a aware thing.
Like it chooses things and it is also a decider in the story.
And the way that that would most easily translate, I think to most people listening to this podcast, would be like, what if we built a DND5E Warlock that was dedicated just to magic?
That's what Schmendrick would be, right?
Like he talks continuously in the book about, about if the magic would only let this thing happen.
And I think that's a cool idea.
The idea that magic itself is an aware entity and it makes choices of its own and it operates through wizards, right?
And so when Schmendrick finally achieves his goals and spoilers, he.
He gets to Be a wizard.
What he really talks about is the fact that he is able to use magic, not control it, not command it, but be in conjunction with it.
And I think that's a really cool idea that I can imagine using across games and across.
Speaker A
00:18:27.710 - 00:18:40.170
That's a, it's really great to have magic become, Become a.
To become a, Become an NPC or a character in your game because it's, you know, because that is one of the things that makes fantasy fantasy is the magic.
Speaker C
00:18:41.130 - 00:18:41.930
Absolutely.
Speaker A
00:18:42.490 - 00:18:49.370
Sean, do you want to talk about what you would like to beg, borrow or steal from the, from the last unicorn?
Speaker B
00:18:50.570 - 00:19:23.390
Yeah.
So I, you know, when we normally think about fantasy games and we hear about somebody looking for immortality in general, we look at them and we say, oh, they're probably evil, they're probably a lich.
They're probably someone who couldn't, couldn't stand the idea of the world not having their presence.
And I just.
The idea that someone, that mortality is, you know, we all sort of say, oh, well, we're humans, we're.
We're finding joy and living every moment.
And the unicorn being like that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
You know, mortality.
Speaker C
00:19:23.390 - 00:19:23.710
Is.
Speaker B
00:19:24.190 - 00:20:33.970
Not a gift.
It's a painful.
It's, It's a heavy state of being.
I, I'm not going to give up my immortality for loving this guy here.
I mean, that's crazy.
And we, you guys haven't got to your.
Does the.
Does the princess exist or not?
Or lady exist or not?
But you know, she has no problem making that choice.
Like, oh, no, no, I'm going to be a unicorn.
I'm.
True love means that that's not what you're thinking.
And I just think that alien perspective to the way we think things should be going is interesting.
And I would say the same about the butterflies.
Like, we normally think about animals communicating and it's sort of a chirpy version of what we imagine from having watched too much Chip and Dale growing up.
And I just think that, you know, the butterflies communicating by stories and songs and poetry they've heard before, they're essentially, you know, parrots or Maya birds just reciting back something they've heard.
They have.
It's appropriate to the occasion, but it's not.
It's not their thoughts, it's their, oh, what's the best quote to use in this situation?
Moment.
Speaker C
00:20:34.690 - 00:20:57.460
Right?
But then there's a moment of clarity.
There's a moment where the butterfly likes us.
Something super important, right?
Like as if their position in the story Is, is demanded.
Right.
And again we're talking about a fairy tale, not a novel.
Like if that makes sense.
If, if it makes sense, what I'm saying, like.
Speaker B
00:20:57.700 - 00:20:58.100
That.
Speaker C
00:20:58.100 - 00:21:03.820
Butterfly doing that isn't a plot hole, it is a part of what it is.
Oh.
Speaker B
00:21:03.820 - 00:21:04.460
No, I love.
Speaker C
00:21:04.460 - 00:21:04.980
It.
That's super.
Speaker B
00:21:04.980 - 00:21:51.880
Interesting.
I want to be clear.
Like I love the idea of the butterfly doing that and it's an interesting way and you know, the, the I just sort of had this vision of characters being like wait a minute, isn't that a poem we heard?
Like you have to sort of be smart about it.
You have to make sure that the next time they're in a tavern they certain song that has some lyrics that you know are going to relate to what's coming up ahead.
And then they meet the butterfly and the butterfly says the same thing.
They're like wait a minute, did the song come from the butterfly?
Is the butterfly just repeating it?
But yeah, no, this butterfly has their own purpose and their own to give the players interesting information.
But rather than doing the traditional data download that we normally expect from our animals with some weird, weird accents to how they're saying, it's.
Speaker C
00:21:52.910 - 00:22:37.850
One of the things that the, the animated movie does really well.
Is that it, it shows you that the, the sing song like, like talking about random nonsense that the butterfly does suddenly changes when it says something important.
And I think that the book wants you to understand that where like there's a thing happening here, right?
There's a, there's a, there's a force moving the universe at this moment that is super interesting and also valuable both from a, from a, like how, how should I transfer information to the PCs and make it sound important as opposed to merely being flavor but also just from a fictional perspective.
Right.
Speaker A
00:22:38.410 - 00:23:19.420
I think, I think this is actually another great, also a great solution to the, the druid casts speak with animals and now all of a sudden you know everything that's happened in the area for the last like 24 hours and all of your plots and schemes are gone.
If you can have them have a kind of like flighty, sing songy kind of creature that they attract, you can use this as a way to pass information along, but maybe not directly.
So I think not only is it interesting and lyrical, but it is also useful in a game sort of way.
Yeah.
Chris, you want to take a shot at telling us what you think would be good to drop into your next campaign?
Speaker D
00:23:19.900 - 00:25:20.190
I would like to do that, yes.
And let me say I, I, I loved all of that like the butter.
I had sort of forgotten about butterflies.
You know, Like, I, Ian and Sean both mentioned how much they like this book, and I, you know, I, I was in awe of this book.
I, I basically knew nothing about it or anything about this writer before I read it.
It was a recommendation this summer.
And, you know, the butterfly scene comes up pretty early in the book, and I, I was already liking the book and then the butterfly came up and I, I was in awe, like, because as Ayn and Sean said, it's kind of silly, it's whimsical.
But then you realize, oh, wait, I mean, it's like, it's not bad that it's silly.
Like, I, I loved that it was whimsical.
It was beautiful.
But then you realize, oh, for one thing, this is like the Dharmak and Gelat at Tanagra episode of Star Trek, right?
Like, these poems are actually gonna say something important.
Like, this is cultural lore that's gonna be important to this story.
But I just thought it was amazing storytelling.
And other glimpses of exactly that same little trick come up later.
There's a lot of talking animals, and I think they're all awesome.
Anyway, so my takeaway, though, like, I think there are like, dozens of great little DM tricks, inspirations for DMs sprinkled through this book that are just like those, like the, the talking animals.
Fantastic.
Maybe you could use it to talk to your druid.
Whatever.
So, I mean, my takeaway would be tolerably manageable things to take from this that are good.
And then I also have an aspirational thing that I. I don't know if it would work or not and probably wouldn't.
It'd probably be foolish to try.
But like, the, the tolerably manageable kind of things that I want to try to take out of this book are lots of sort of miscellaneous tricks like that I'm gonna have an animal or a fairy creature or something that talks in poems.
It's.
It's going to happen.
And I love, like, a major theme in the book.
Again, this is a big spoiler, but I guess we've said spoilers are okay.
Speaker A
00:25:20.190 - 00:25:20.590
Yes,.
Speaker D
00:25:20.590 - 00:28:40.120
A major theme in the book surrounds.
Surrounds a village, a cursed village in the story.
The.
The village of.
I believe it's called Hags Gate.
Hags Gate is cursed with prosperity, but with the knowledge that the prosperity will end precisely when a specific thing happens, which is a.
A person born in Hagsgate will kill the evil king who put the.
Put the curse on the town.
And so like there's this, there's this nasty little tension built into the, the nature of the, the townspeople and they do awful things.
And like I want to have PCs.
Like, you know, it could be like a five or six session arc basically dealing with a little town like that.
And the slowly unraveling horror as the PCs realize what these people have done.
Like they've killed their own children.
They've decided not to have any more children so that nobody can kill the king and they lose all their, their material well being.
Okay, so that, you know, that's something that seems kind of easy.
And there's, there's a dozen things, dozens of things in this book that are, that are at least that good that I'd like to use the aspirational ideas that I would like to try Someday in D D. And I don't know if I'll ever do it, but I was inspired by this book to try Sean or Ian said, this is, this is a fairy tale, it's not a novel.
I, I know what, I know what he means.
Ian also said, I think somebody said this important thing, which is the book is about stories.
It's like, it's a, it's a meditation on stories.
Right.
I happen to think that by meditating on stories, it's really about much bigger philosophical ideas.
Like it meditates on stories because it's like about the existential nature of human life and the difference between understanding your life as a story with heroes and villains versus trying, you know, the day to day reality that we now live in that doesn't feel like that.
I mean, I would like to try someday to make a D and D campaign be a campaign of ideas, I think a way to do it, you know.
Okay, so the Big Bad in this book, I think it's a fairy tale.
It's a, it's a story about stories.
I think the Big Bad is an allegory.
You know, King Haggard is this Big Bad who is, he's obsessed with something.
He's consumed by his hunger for something and he can't get it in the rage of his disappointment with not securing whatever it is that he's after is causing him to like destroy everything around him and, and make sure that no one else is happy either.
So I think a way to make D and a campaign about ideas could be like come up with a Big Bad who is as psychologically rich and deep, exists with a built in allegory as King Haggard.
You know, I think everybody intuitively understands that we face sort of a, an existential dilemma by being alive.
And so I think players would get.
Or I think they could, if you make an interesting villain, they could get, wow, this guy is consumed by a longing that's like an allegory for the human condition.
You know, we're longing for something and we can't have it.
And real life isn't like stories with, you know, heroes who find justice and get the girl.
Speaker C
00:28:40.600 - 00:30:09.000
I might argue that what this story shows is that you don't need a Big Bad in order to have a good story, because I don't think either Haggard nor the Bull are a Big Bad in the way that we would sort of define that in a traditional tabletop rpg.
There are certainly obstacles and they are certainly interesting characters, but they are not the.
The success you're looking for.
The, the success we're looking for in this story that can be translated to the tabletop is that there are choices made within the player character allegory.
Like, in other words, the PCs in this book, Schmendrick, the Unicorn, Molly Lear, make choices because of their desires and their needs and their wants and the things that are important to them.
And.
And this actually points to why Sean's choice of game is actually really, really good for this.
Right?
Because that, that, that game is built around this particular thing is that, like, it isn't about the fact that Haggard is the Big Bad in a way that D D would define a Big Bad.
It's about there are these choices and there are these needs and like, characters need to achieve the things they're aiming at as opposed to do X points of hit point damage to.
To the monster.
Right?
Speaker B
00:30:09.640 - 00:30:29.960
So one of the things that's interesting about this whole series of podcasts is that I think, Eric, you probably started this with the idea that like, oh, here's an area, you know, here's a setting, and let's.
Let's see what it takes to run a game in that setting, in that thing.
This isn't a very interesting setting per se.
I mean, it's pretty.
Speaker C
00:30:30.820 - 00:30:32.660
It's wrote as vanilla.
Yeah,.
Speaker B
00:30:32.980 - 00:31:30.680
It's super.
It's been trot on many, many times before.
But that's what makes it, as Ian sort of point out, like, the thing that's interesting is it's.
It's got a folk tale type quality to it.
And none of the players, none of the, none of the characters are doing.
There's no Big Bads.
There's just people doing things because they want to do things.
And we'll see where that takes the story and I think that would be interesting to change the way because we're all thinking about the Big Bad, and most campaign scenarios are built this way.
And I've restarted watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and realize, like, oh, they do the Big Bad all the time.
Like, that's what it's all about.
Like, somewhere in there, we kind of lost the notion that sometimes you can roleplay to play quiet stories.
And this is a quiet story with rich characterization and rich characters who make choices based on their own personalities, as flawed as they may be.
Speaker C
00:31:31.160 - 00:32:02.270
Those end scenes with Lear about how angry and bitter he is about not being able to be with Lady Amalthea are super, super deep, right?
And he eventually figures it out and he's gonna go be king and blah, blah.
But those bits where he is at odds with the other characters tell you so much and tell you what this story is actually about, right?
And I think that's, that's super important.
Speaker A
00:32:02.670 - 00:33:03.580
And I think a lot of what, A lot of what makes this really interesting, like you guys have already pointed this out, is that this is a fairy tale.
And people are playing roles in the fairy tale.
The bumbling wizard, the, or rather the wizard, but a bumbling wizard and the maiden who is no longer a maiden.
It's almost as if someone said, we need a thief, we need a thief, we need a healer, we need a tank, we need the traditional party.
But this is a traditional fairy tale, and we put people in it, but we actually made really cool characters to put in there as opposed to just carbon copies of what's been said before.
I think it's rather to take it where Chris was going.
I think this is a rather aspirational goal for players to have such interesting characters when they're.
You're in a role, you're in a story, you know how it's supposed to go, but your choices change the story.
And that, of course, is everything that role play was about, right?
Speaker C
00:33:03.740 - 00:33:06.420
And a giant pain in the ass for the G.
Speaker A
00:33:06.420 - 00:33:33.640
Yes, absolutely.
A pain.
Yes.
That's what makes it a real brave game.
I always had cool things that I wanted steal.
They tend to be smaller than what you guys have got into.
Some really deep stuff.
I just think I love anytime I can get a talking cat, I'm super excited.
I, I, I'm just a fan.
And again, one who doesn't speak like a regular, per, you know, no cat ever gave anyone a straight answer.
That's a great way to make that character more interesting.
Speaker C
00:33:34.520 - 00:33:35.720
He is such a.
Speaker A
00:33:35.960 - 00:34:30.750
He is.
But then so are most cats.
So that's fine.
I like the curse on Schmendrick.
That is like, you get to.
I.
The curse is.
There's another.
More immortality, right?
Like the idea you.
You can practice as long as my boy.
Oh, my God.
What a curse.
And I love the Red Bull.
I think the Red Bull is a very interesting plot device.
It's not a character.
It is, in fact, the furthest thing from a character.
It is like a kind of weird extension of obsession, which is.
Which, again, very, very taily.
Very, very representative, very metaphorical.
But I like that beast who seeks out the thing, you know, can.
You know, comes and works for you and seeks out the thing that you want, even that you think will make you happy, but obviously doesn't like.
That's just amazing,.
Speaker C
00:34:30.990 - 00:35:11.200
Right?
There was a brief flash where I was gonna pick Daggerheart for.
For this game only because.
And the reason I didn't is because it was.
This was.
The only reason was like, the Red Bull is not a monster.
It's.
It's an environment in the.
In the parlance of.
Of.
Of Daggerheart.
Right?
Like, it.
Like, it breaks every rule all the time, and it does whatever it needs to do in order to make the plot move.
It doesn't have stats.
It doesn't have hit points.
Right?
Like, the Red Bull is a thing that.
That exists in the fiction, that moves the fiction.
And I was like, no, you know what?
I am not gonna do that.
I'm gonna.
I'm gonna talk about what the characters can do.
Speaker A
00:35:11.200 - 00:36:35.990
I agree.
Yeah.
No, I think.
I think if you wanted to.
If you wanted to represent the Red Bull, if this was the Red Bull story or you wanted to utilize that kind of thing, I agree that Daggerheart would be a great place to use that environment, those environmental rules.
All right.
We've talked a lot about this book and how awesome it is, and we've talked a lot about all the cool things that are in it and all the cool things that we want to take from it.
So now the question is, what if you wanted more of something like this?
The question, you know, let's.
Let's take it out there.
What kind of media do you think?
Vibes with the Last Unicorn.
I'm gonna go first on this one, because first I'm just gonna sing the praises of Peter Beagle and all of his other books.
A fine and private place.
Folk of the Air, particularly those of you out there who are LARPers.
I think you'll really enjoy Folk of the Air.
All of his books are amazing.
I would also Read almost anything by Diana Wynne Jones, most famous currently for Howl's Moving Castle.
But she's written a whole bunch of other things.
I think the book that she wrote that is closest to this is Fire and Hemlock that has the most fairy tale and subverting fairy tale things that are going on there.
Besides Howl's Moving Castle.
I'll wrap up with the King of Elfilin's daughter by Lord Dunsany, 1920s master fantasy writer.
As far as transformative works that change the basis of modern fantasy, I'd put him right up there with Tolkien.
So.
Speaker C
00:36:36.390 - 00:36:39.750
Cool.
And he was one of Tolkien's major influences, right?
Speaker A
00:36:39.750 - 00:37:11.710
Yes.
At one point he had three best selling books and four plays on Broadway like this.
He's talk, talk about an amazing person who no one's ever heard of most of the time.
Like if you're not a fantasy historian, you may not have checked out Lord Dunsany.
The King of Elfin's Daughter is the closest to this one.
My personal favorite is the Char Woman Shadow which does magic really well.
I'm going to pass it on to you, Ian.
What media of your experiences Vibes with Peter Beagle's the Last Unicorn.
Speaker C
00:37:12.190 - 00:38:30.500
So I'm going to move away from prose fiction and I'm going to say that like because I grew up.
So here's an interesting factoid.
I watched the Last Unicorn cartoon probably a hundred times as a child.
Like it was my favoritest thing ever.
But I had not read the book until probably 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago.
I'm old now, so whatever.
In that process it was about like multimedia and films and things.
And so my pick is actually Legend, which is probably more famous now because unfortunately Tim Curry has passed away and so his darkness looks like the devil character has.
Has sort of appeared.
But like this is like a Tom Cruise movie from like 1985 but it is about unicorns and more importantly it is about myth and story.
And as much as it is a B movie from the 80s, it actually has a lot of value and I would, I would implore anyone who cares about fantasy to watch this, not watch this movie and really absorb what it's about.
So in the vein of the Last Unicorn, I think Legend is the perfect choice.
Speaker A
00:38:30.820 - 00:38:39.220
Some of the best scene chewing by Tim Curry in that.
Chris, do you want to go and tell the folks about your media picks?
Speaker D
00:38:39.220 - 00:38:43.610
Yeah, I mean my go to would have been Dunsany, which you already said.
So the books.
You, you.
Speaker A
00:38:43.610 - 00:38:44.330
Oh, sorry.
Speaker D
00:38:44.330 - 00:38:44.930
No, that's okay.
Speaker A
00:38:44.930 - 00:38:45.170
Sorry.
Speaker D
00:38:45.170 - 00:39:18.920
The, the books you already said, you know, plus like lords of gods of Pagana and 51 tales and stuff.
But in that same vein, you know, Lovecraft's Dreamland stories are a lot like this.
And TH White's the Once and Future King, especially the first part of it, the Sword in the Stone are.
Are a lot like this.
Like the whim.
The whimsy is just.
It's beautiful.
It's a lot of talking animals that are very funny and useful and stuff and a lot of.
A lot of big picture ideas written into what feels like kind of a silly kid's story.
Speaker A
00:39:19.160 - 00:39:59.770
Yeah, no, there's.
There's more of those animals that have lots to say about things that aren't necessarily things that animals are talking about.
Right.
Like it's.
There's a whole bunch of like really great life lessons there that show up.
That feels a lot like what, this.
You mentioned this, Chris, when you said it.
There's lots of little bits that you would take from here.
I absolutely would totally put.
Allow characters to escape a very, very powerful creature if they walked and didn't run.
Because you never run from anything that's immortal.
It just attracts their attention.
Like if they knew that, if that I would, you know, I would put that factoid out there and then wait to see if somebody tried it and absolutely let them get away with it.
So,.
Speaker D
00:39:59.770 - 00:40:00.850
I mean, that's really brilliant.
Speaker A
00:40:01.090 - 00:40:03.450
Sean, you want to wrap up the media for us?
Speaker B
00:40:03.450 - 00:40:07.530
Let's see.
I had Howl's Moving Castle, but you took that one too.
Speaker A
00:40:07.930 - 00:40:10.490
I did.
I was a terrible human.
Speaker B
00:40:10.650 - 00:40:13.010
We spend time in the pre game.
Wait,.
Speaker C
00:40:13.010 - 00:40:14.250
Don't.
Don't give away this.
Speaker B
00:40:16.250 - 00:40:49.490
So my, My.
My other choice that I was thinking about was the Princess Bride.
The book, not the movie.
Although the movie has its own sort of charms.
The book I appreciate because it.
The characters are a little bit less perfect and there's a lot more winking to the reader going on there, a lot more sort of talking to the reader.
And then I'll also throw in.
I. I know the author is problematic right now, but Neil Gaiman's Stardust is another one that we could look at as a, As a more modern folktale.
Speaker C
00:40:49.650 - 00:40:56.690
Absolutely beautiful story.
Like, I agree with you that, like, there's issues there, but that story is gorgeous.
Speaker B
00:40:56.930 - 00:41:02.060
Go to a used bookstore and buy something or buy something on ebay to get it.
That's great.
Speaker C
00:41:03.100 - 00:41:06.060
Pirate it, whatever.
Like, don't give him money.
But yeah,.
Speaker B
00:41:06.140 - 00:41:30.840
Whatever it takes.
Like much of his, Much of his books, he takes a really good job of taking fairy Tale type feelings, but gives them a nice modern edge without being.
But still feels grounded.
So it's, it's.
It's a.
Doesn't have a real age to it in terms of, like, you can read it when you're 11, you can read it when you're 22, you can read it in your 50s and still get something out of it.
So,.
Speaker A
00:41:31.080 - 00:41:56.950
Okay, so that is.
Now that Sean has revealed the secret sauce, I am going to have to dispose of him once this show is over.
So let's get to it.
Now that we've had a chance to talk about the book, we should go back to our Game Masters and see if they have fun stuff for us that maybe isn't necessarily related to the book.
So we'll go to our promotion section.
And I know for a fact that John does have something to say.
So let's get that.
Let's get that on the table.
Go, Sean.
Speaker B
00:41:57.190 - 00:42:12.430
Well, I mean, as always, I think many people are on the podcasts.
The whole series of podcasts end up going to Total Con, which is in Marlboro, Massachusetts in February.
Good times of great Game Masters there.
And I wouldn't be surprised if Eric did some sort of recording while there.
Speaker A
00:42:12.430 - 00:42:24.850
It's happened before, so it could happen again.
Last year, we did a recording from there where we talked about Origins of Adidas superhero by Jeff Bernheimer.
So don't know what we're going to do this year, but decision.
Speaker B
00:42:24.930 - 00:42:27.010
I think that was at Rising Phoenix.
But.
Speaker A
00:42:27.410 - 00:42:33.650
No, no, we did the superhero thing at Total Con with Scott Lynch.
Speaker B
00:42:34.770 - 00:42:38.290
It was.
But it's hard to keep track of these things after a while.
Speaker A
00:42:38.690 - 00:42:39.050
We're.
Speaker C
00:42:39.050 - 00:42:41.410
So us now, Eric, that we can't.
Speaker B
00:42:42.210 - 00:42:42.530
We.
Speaker C
00:42:42.530 - 00:42:43.330
Can't keep track.
Speaker A
00:42:43.970 - 00:43:09.490
I.
It's been to that point where we are fast approaching episode 50.
Like, it's coming soon.
I'm so excited.
Like, that's good.
This is act.
This episode is more than episode 50 because we're recording in the future, or rather this will be published in the future.
But like, episode 50 is coming down the pike any week now.
So I'm super excited that that's gonna happen.
Chris, you.
You had stuff to tell us, so go ahead and tell us about stuff.
Speaker D
00:43:09.810 - 00:43:27.110
Let me say first, I love that you guys go to Rising Phoenix.
I.
Even though I'm from far away, I go there too.
And even though it's tiny, because I have a good friend there, friends with Scott Legault, but also just have a good buddy there.
So we go in game at that thing.
Maybe I'll see you Guys in the spring.
Speaker A
00:43:27.990 - 00:43:29.990
I think you will.
Yeah.
You'll find us.
Speaker D
00:43:30.230 - 00:44:21.930
Awesome.
Yeah.
But what I got to plug is I'm very excited about a new gaming group that's getting started called Caliber Experiences.
There's a lot to say, and we're doing a lot of different things.
We're basically a DM group that arranges games at cons, but we're doing a lot of other stuff.
We're preparing some.
We're helping to organize some.
Some larger events, concierge gaming sort of opportunities, possibly some destination gaming, and it's really exciting.
The folks can learn more about it, though, by going to the.
The website, which is.
It's calibrexperiences.com and it's spelled in a funny way.
It's K, Aliber, K, A, L, I, B, E, R, and then the letter X.
So Caliber Experience IsAll1Word.com.
Hope to see some people soon.
Speaker A
00:44:22.890 - 00:44:26.890
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Fantastic.
Ian, did you have anything you wanted to add?
Speaker C
00:44:26.970 - 00:45:06.360
I have talked previously on this podcast about how, like, writing fiction is important to me, and I.
And now that I have, I have achieved my entire set of professional and educational goals.
I am going to refocus on fiction.
And so I hope to have a second volume in my.
My.
My novel series soonish.
And we'll talk about that as we get closer.
That thing being a true thing that exists in the world, but otherwise, yeah, I'm gonna work on writing.
I'm gonna.
I'm gonna.
I'm gonna tell some stories that people desperately want to turn into RPGs.
Speaker A
00:45:07.570 - 00:45:11.490
That sounds like a great thing.
I.
Would you tell everybody what the title of your book is?
Speaker C
00:45:12.130 - 00:45:25.330
Right.
So my first novel is called Elder and the Moon, and it is awesome.
And everybody should absolutely go to Amazon and find it.
And its sequel will be called Elder and the Machine.
There's a reason for that.
Speaker A
00:45:26.930 - 00:45:55.320
Spoilers already.
This is so.
A rather more teasers than spoilers.
Teasers already.
So exciting.
All right, fantastic.
Thank you.
Thank you all, gentlemen, for being on the show and reading one of the best books in the world and coming to talk to me about it, because this was great.
I think we covered a lot of ground and we gave a lot of good information out to our game masters out there.
So thank you so much for being here.
Thanks, guys so much.
Once again, this was a blast.
Speaker C
00:45:56.360 - 00:45:57.160
Thank you, Eric.
Speaker A
00:45:57.960 - 00:45:58.920
Thank you, guys.
Speaker D
00:45:59.800 - 00:46:00.600
Thank you, guys.
Speaker A
00:46:01.560 - 00:47:18.720
And that was the Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
Thank you.
Thanks so much to Chris, Ayan and Sean for their interpretations of this Great work.
To hear more speculations about how to use the Red Bull in your game, stay tuned after the credits for bonus content and tune in for our next episode when we engage in more steampunk shenanigans with Retribution Falls, the first book in the Tales of the Kenny J series by Chris Woodring.
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion, as well as links to all of our podcasts at K Square Productions gmbc.
You can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media on bluesky@gmbookclub, bluesky social, on Facebook at Gamemasters Book Club, on Mastodon at Gamemasters Book Club, and on Instagram @GamemastersBook Club.
If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space and be sure to share share those episodes with your gaming community.
You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Later, gamers, and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Speaker C
00:47:21.760 - 00:48:14.380
Way before you, before you sign off and before you turn off the.
The recorder.
We have like five minutes.
I want everybody.
And I mean this.
I, I mean, I mean everybody.
Like, we should literally.
And this could be like a, a bonus thing that, like, only people.
Okay, what's it going to be like the.
The Bull as a thing to put in a game?
I wanna, I actually want to talk about this from a mechanical perspective from different games.
Games.
Like, what is the Bull?
Like, what would you do with it?
Because when I was rereading this book, which I've read multiple times, and I absolutely love the.
When it was doing its thing, it was a presence that was both massive and local.
It was both magical and absolutely physical.
Like, what is that thing in a game?
Speaker A
00:48:14.540 - 00:48:45.320
So you're asking.
Because this brings us back to what you were talking about when you were saying that it's an.
You said it was an environment, which I, I definitely agree with.
With.
But if I were gonna, if I were gonna, like, if I had to pick something like straight out of 5e, I'd probably pick some sort of.
I'd probably pick an elemental.
Like, that'd be my, that's my.
That.
You know, if we hadn't talked about anything, if you had come to me on the street and had asked me that question, I'd be like, oh, he's some sort of like fire elemental or something, which would be my first thought, not saying it's the best.
Chris, what are you.
What do you think?
Speaker D
00:48:46.440 - 00:49:43.470
Yeah, yeah.
Again, I, I mean, you know, mechanically, it would definitely be something bespoke.
I, I would make up for it.
But I, I like the idea that it's, it's essentially like an environment or something.
I mean, again, I read this book as like a philosophical allegory, and I think the, the king and the bull are conjoined.
Like, you guys make the good point that he's, you know, big bad is kind of the wrong word.
And like, if you were really going to capture this book in a game, it would not culminate in a fight where they kill the Big Bad, because that's not a story.
But it is like one villain, a conjoined villain to me.
And the bull, I think.
I don't exactly know what the bull is, but it's something like his longing, his insatiable longing.
And it's related to, again, the difference between a fairy tale and real life thought of as stories.
So how the fuck do you capture that?
Speaker C
00:49:44.590 - 00:50:13.650
But if you had a fighter, a thief, a wizard and a cleric in the party, and you were building an encounter to deal with the bull, knowing that also Haggard is watching from the parapet, as he does in the novel, and you gotta, you gotta create a win condition.
What I'm curious about, just from a purely, like, like, how would we do this in a game perspective is like, if you were running that in 5e, what would you do?
You.
Chris?
Speaker D
00:50:13.650 - 00:50:41.090
Yeah, so the, I mean, that's good.
That's good.
Like, the win condition has to be something that, that, you know, reveals something about the philosophical answer to the philosophical question, which is, I think something like, well, you know, in real life, like, happiness isn't actually longing for a story.
That, that is a philosophical argument.
Hell, if I know how you capture that so that the players actually,.
Speaker A
00:50:41.250 - 00:50:57.310
Maybe you do something like.
Because really the, the relative, the way that the creature is played, at least in that you would play it is.
The creature is basically indestructible.
Like, it's not you.
You don't kill this creature.
Like, it's got damage reduction up the.
Up the, you know, crazy like that.
Speaker D
00:50:58.350 - 00:51:29.970
They're not going to kill it.
So.
But I like the, I like the thought experiment of what's the win condition.
So I think the win condition is something like they win not if they do enough hit points of damage, but if they figure out something like, like, I love what you said before, this Isn't quite the same thing.
But I loved what you said.
You walk, you don't run from something immortal.
So it would be something like figuring out a puzzle like that where the solution to the puzzle is the answer somehow to a philosophical.
Speaker A
00:51:29.970 - 00:52:04.600
I think, I think you could do something along the lines of like a consecutive set of fear saving throws.
Because that's what drives this.
That's what drives the unicorn away and makes her run.
And so if you could, if you could make enough saves, I wouldn't.
Obviously I wouldn't do it.
Like it's just one save.
Not like a save or suck kind of thing, but like if you could do some sort of series of fear roles and if you could finally, if you could maybe somehow inflict fear upon the bull in, you know, for the same number of times.
So I don't know how or, you know, or use intimidation or something like that does that.
Speaker D
00:52:06.670 - 00:52:12.430
Somehow they realized they're supposed to stop doing something that's self defeating.
It seemed like the right thing to do, but that's actually not.
Speaker A
00:52:12.510 - 00:52:15.630
A.
Do we pass the test?
Sean, do you have something to add?
Speaker C
00:52:16.830 - 00:52:22.990
I want to hear what Sean has to say.
Actually, there is no test.
I. I am just curious how people would handle it, that's all.
Speaker B
00:52:23.710 - 00:53:28.780
So I think it.
The two ways to go is elemental, yes, but sort of an emotional element.
Like what it's doing is it's creating fear.
And even though they're immortal and they can't die, the unicorns still run away from it.
And then it sort of stops when the last unicorn sort of turns around and faces it with, you know, grief and anger.
It doesn't know what.
It doesn't know what to do with that.
It builds on the fear and doesn't know what to do with this other set of emotions.
Which leads to my second idea of you could make it some sort of Fae that just thinks this is funny and then doesn't know what to do when faced with.
Because if she was immortal, she wouldn't know how to fight it.
But as a mortal, she knows how to fight it.
And that throws off the fae that she has that sort of twin duality of being.
And that's what throws off the fae.
Speaker D
00:53:29.340 - 00:53:31.820
This is not one that you wing at the table.
I think.
Speaker C
00:53:32.620 - 00:54:39.080
Based on the way it's written, it feels like there's sort of a emotional stamina drain that it does because like she fight like in the, in the first encounter before Schmendrick has to turn her into a human.
Like she fights him and.
But it's just.
It's not enough and gets weaker and is going to be then pushed into the sea.
And then Schmendrick is like, oh, wait, no, no, let me help you.
And, like, turns you into a human.
And then we get all the drama beyond that.
Like, it's almost like there's some sort of drain.
Right.
Like, it.
Like, it's not hit point damage, but it might as well be right with regards to that.
And then in the.
In the climax of the story, like, the rules are the same, except that the bull kills Lear and that empowers her.
Right.
In its own weird way.
And, like, it's just an interesting idea of, like, how do you make that work in a game?
Like, how do you.
How do you build a.
A system that enables a story.
Speaker D
00:54:39.640 - 00:54:40.120
Yeah.
Speaker C
00:54:40.120 - 00:55:00.290
For this particular thing without, like, just hand waving and say that like, in the end.
And like, this is what's gonna happen.
Because that's not a fun game.
Like, that might be a cool story, but it isn't necessarily a fun game.
Like, if there was always preordained.
Right.
And I just thought it was interesting question to like, ask, like, what would you do in order to make that thing occur?
Speaker D
00:55:01.410 - 00:55:06.130
It's fascinating and, you know, talk about give narrative significance to a PC death.
Speaker A
00:55:06.610 - 00:55:07.090
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:55:07.090 - 00:55:11.130
Like, if you kill Lear, that's the solution or something like that.
Could be.
Speaker A
00:55:11.130 - 00:55:49.810
Really one of the solutions.
Yeah.
Actually, you know, I was just thinking about it only because the TV show is running right now.
What if we use something from, like, D.C. heroes from the.
From the Yellow Lantern Corps, like, whatever.
You know, that idea that they get power from being from fear.
Like, is there maybe there's a mechanic.
I don't know the DC system very well, but maybe there's a mechanic out there that could, like, that.
We could use that.
We could, you know, graft onto a story like that to make this fear elemental or this.
This fear fae of.
Of Sean's.
All right, bonus.
Bonus material achieved.
Speaker C
00:55:53.410 - 00:55:56.170
We've got bonus.
We got bonus content.
We.
Speaker A
00:55:56.170 - 00:56:11.340
Got bonus content.
People.
I definitely put this at.
After.
After the credits, just so people see people stick around and I'll.
I'll let them know that that's coming.
If you made it this far, you're a true member of the GMBC Guild.
Thanks so much for listening.
Later, gamers.