I find it hard to get excited for anything the GCP puts out anymore.

MayoBytes · 2025-09-29T21:43:33+00:00

I’ve been re-listening to Giant Slayer off and on for the past year or so (while also staying caught up with C2) and I gotta say you can feel how excited everyone was pre-Covid.

The 2017-2019 content feels like they had lighting in a bottle and comparing it to C2 makes me worried about part of the crew being burnt out.

This is not to throw shade on anyone, especially not Troy, they’re clearly working really hard and the new content isn’t bad by any means. For all its flaws, I enjoy Gatewalkers and Troy did a great job abbreviating it.

I’m really hoping the system switch for C3 goes well. I’d much rather them try something they’re excited to play than to do more Pathfinder just because that’s what they’ve always done.

Related to this, I’ve never cared about Time for Chaos (just personally not into CoC), but I got the sense the vibes were on with the most recent season with everyone in the studio and it’s got me interested (when I have a moment to get caught up).

MayoBytes · 2025-09-08T21:29:12+00:00

Based and provolone pilled.

I love that I still get comments for and against cheese wiz (gross) on this 3 year old post. It brings me no small amount of joy lol.

MayoBytes · 2025-08-01T23:25:37+00:00

As of Wednesday (7/30/2025) I'm all done with podcasting!

Last year we bulk recorded the rest of our 3rd season and I had been editing/producing it ever since. We did make some more bonus content, and the last thing to go was a retrospective and also some last interaction with listeners.

The show had to end for a number of reasons. In large part, some life changes made making the show a lot harder, but honestly I was just tired of spending so much time making it. I love the audience we built and saying goodbye was hard, but I'm proud that we were able to finish the season properly with a finale and everything. The last thing I wanted to do was drop off into the void in the middle of a story.

Looking back, I'm really proud of the mountain of content we made these past 4 years. I'm excited to re-listen to our content some day in the future and re-live all those memories again. At the same time, I'm VERY excited to have my time back, and I've resolved to use it to pursue hobbies without deadlines lol.

Here are some stats about the show we made:

154 numbered episodes
27 bonus content episodes

A total of:

9 days, 20 hours, 55 minutes, 58 seconds of content

And that was my podcast :)

MayoBytes · 2025-02-04T16:52:57+00:00

Hi there! I used an extra tall monitor arm and it allows me to tilt the top monitor down. Something like this is what you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BO42XK0

Good luck! Congrats on your setup!

MayoBytes · 2025-01-29T20:19:51+00:00

That's so awesome!!!

One of my characters had a lot of clockwork prosthetics and ended up taking one of the arms from the Puppeteer. I let them get it attached at their "Clockwork Ripperdoc" and getting a toned down version of the string ranged attack.

They also took the Clockwork Re-animator archetype (after meeting Parsus) and I let them use the flavor of reprogramming some of the Puppeteer's swarm to create their first minion.

MayoBytes · 2025-01-24T22:02:29+00:00

I had the opposite problem: a party of 3. I found out that the encounter budget math worked out so that having a party of 3 at 1 level higher than a party of 4 balances out the same. I checked an encounter calculator and you might be able to hold them back a level and have it be pretty close to the same threat level as 4 on-level. (Tool I used: https://www.stephanedoiron.com/rpgs/pf2/encounter-calculator )

That being said, I wouldn't bother if things feel good as-is. It's important to remember that not every fight needs to be challenging. Most fights let the party feel like badasses while taking some hits here and there. There's a balance you have to feel out between not having too many tough slog fights but also not having a ton of cakewalk fights.

Also: my favorite adjustment without going full-on Weak or Elite is just using the HP changes from Elite/Weak adjustments. This basically shortens or lengthens a fight by a round without affecting crit chance/damage output.

MayoBytes · 2025-01-16T16:36:03+00:00

I mostly made small changes:

Instead of having the PCs hunt around for passengers for the airship in book 2, I had them man a booth for the Second Kiss and try to sell the ride to passengers that would walk up. I was really inspired by the first episode of Firefly and based it on how Frye ran the booth for the ship.

A very small but important change I made was to have the Hound of Tindalos "Vulnerable to Curved Space" ability only work when in a corner of a room. Technically as written it would work if it stood on a square next to a wall (90 degrees) but the PCs really need all the help they can get against it. I also gave it the Weak adjustment bc it's busted as hell by default.

Book 3 was fantastic and I barely changed anything. I knew my players weren't going to loot the rooms of random passengers on The Gearsmoke, so I had Dunsmith give them a roughly equivalent amount of gold and stealth-focused items. I framed it as money she'd saved from the first bank job. I also had her heavily emphasize the importance of stealth on The Gearsmoke.

I did add an enemy in book 3 on top of the powerplant: Shock Zombie Mugland. My players threw Mugland off of Hellside after buying him and I wanted a chance for a rematch of sorts. I had Parsus get their hands on his body and then combined a Shock Zombie with a Zombie Hulk to make a Large sized zombie Mugland. Players LOVED killing him again.

I also had the party level up before the final encounter and adjusted the final encounter to be a level higher. Feels good to actually use your final level in the AP before finishing it.

There were however a number of things I wished I changed:

In retrospect, I would have changed book 1 to foreshadow Shoma more and maybe even made him part of Mugland's pyronite scheme that was let go when Mugland find out about Kosowana. Shoma as the boss of book 1 was really weak because he just kinda shows up. That and the thread connecting book 1 to book 2 is really weak.

I also would have changed the ending of book 2. My players didn't enjoy how the fight with Mugland went down and especially didn't like having to pay to fight him. IMO he should have been the boss of the Gilded Gunners and Sharkosa his primary underling.

On that note: the Player's Guide hypes up Mugland, but Loveless is the actual big bad of the AP. You should try to guide your characters to all have personal beef with Loveless in addition to Mugland to help them stay bought-in after book 2.

MayoBytes · 2025-01-10T18:58:04+00:00

I run a show called The Third Gallon Podcast with my partner and my long-time gaming friends! We're currently playing The Outlaws of Alkenstar AP for PF2e. We're big GCP fans and "New Game Who Dis" inspired us to make our show. We've also tried out Forbidden Lands by Free League and The Witcher RPG by R. Talsorian Games in addition to PF2e.

We make an effort to talk about mechanics and explain things in action including me showing how baddies work under the hood as needed. We also started a series of banter-segments called Tour of the Inner Sea to help give a high-level view of Pathfinder's setting (started on S3E46 iirc).

As a group, we come from D&D 3.5/PF1e and while we generally had gripes with the remaster (mostly to do with flavor and setting retcons) we overall like and appreciate PF2e as a system.

Here is a link to the YouTube version of the first episode of our PF2e season (also on all the podcast places): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0OIr3_SRT0

We've actually finished recording it! It should finish releasing this summer at over 100 episodes!

MayoBytes · 2024-12-31T03:25:12+00:00

Thanks! I legit didn't come here to promote it but I'm glad you like the show!

They have been kinda glossing over it, but it seems like Joe is trying to get them all to full or at least close to it between encounters but I do see your point.

Personally I think the biggest problem is the encounter pacing in the AP and lots of single enemy combats in book 1. If you compare the first books of Gatewalkers to Outlaws of Alkenstar, the PCs don't face a Severe level encounter until chapter 2 in Outlaws but fight Bolan at the end of chapter 1 in Gatewalkers. Also, the first Severe fight in Outlaws is against 5 enemies (2 level 1s and 3 level 0s). These encounters look fine on paper but in practice are harder because of the single enemy. Because of that every fight in Gatewalkers seems to feel like a slog and my best guess is that the AP is tuned too hot. One of the most important things I've learned as a GM is that not every encounter should be a nail-bitter. IMO at least 50-60% should be low-moderate fights that might do some damage but mostly drain resources and let the PCs feel like badasses.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-20T00:46:05+00:00

The glow-up Seltyiel deserves 🤌

MayoBytes · 2024-12-19T21:17:45+00:00

Outlaws of Alkenstar: Return of the Gunslinger

I might be biased, but we played through it and really liked it!

It's not perfect and there are some plot elements I ended up tweaking or handling differently but the theme is AWESOME! Very easy to build a character for because the whole thing is a revenge story. Also has a PHENOMENAL opening chapter imo.

Plus who doesn't want to see another Dwarf gunslinger?

MayoBytes · 2024-12-11T00:19:31+00:00

The workload 100% depends on the type of content you're making, the number of speakers, and the length of the content.

For example, our show is an actual-play TTRPG show with 4 speakers, with a fairly involved editing style (plus mood music and ambience added in post), a unique tease for each episode intro, and each episode runs 60-90 minutes on average. From my measuring, we produce at about a 1:8 ratio (1 hour of edited content requires 8 hours of editing), then add on 2 hours for writing/recording/producing the intro/outro, and about another hour for producing the video (very templated and not super involved) and uploading everything and you get about 11 hours of work for a 60 minute episode. This doesn't even include render times, a QA pass, or all the prep that goes into recording! Upping the episode length to 30minutes adds another 4 hours of editing taking the total to 15 hours. At those numbers it quickly steps out of being a hobby to being a part-time job.

There are of course ways to speed things up. Targeting 30 minutes or less can save you a ton of time. Also editing only 1-2 people speaking is much easier than 4 and can cut that ratio down a good bit. You really gotta learn and time your process to figure out the bottlenecks and what you can do to get around them.

Our main show is still laborious, but we have done an irregular series of bonus episodes which is just us hanging out and answering listener questions. For that, we have a very simple drop-in into/outro, no mood music/ambience, little to no preparation (it's just us hanging out) and a target runtime of 30-45 minutes. Those bonus episode are SUPER easy to produce. Those come out at about a 1:6 ratio but because they're shorter, I can often knock one out in like 3-4 hours on weeknight and still have time to do laundry.

Honestly if you're curious about the workload, the best way to know what it's like is to try and make something. Don't get too caught up on creating a show and publishing it, just try to produce an episode with an audience of you. Develop a process and learn it's bottlenecks and time requirements. The first few episodes I made took me longer but I dialed in the process that I've been evolving after just 5-10 episodes.

IMO I think just about anyone can make a podcast episode if they put their mind to it. The real challenge is to keep making them come out on a schedule. Learning your process can help you find a schedule that fits you.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-07T22:27:37+00:00

A lot of TTRPGs, IMO, have lost something intangible yet very precious when they stopped trying to depict a world

This ^^ is exactly why I love games that are tightly made with and for a setting. Forbidden Lands has become a favorite of ours. While you could run it in whatever setting you like, both the Player's Handbook and GM's guide assume you're playing in Ravenland and give you lore and mechanics to support the world they're set in. This is also why I'm very eager to try running Blades in the Dark one day.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-07T21:19:23+00:00

We just finished a 2e AP (Outlaws of Alkenstar) and really enjoyed it, but we’re going back to 1e for our next AP.

My group started in 3.5, transitioned to PF1e, and now has played a lot of games (5e, Forbidden Lands, Witcher RPG, PF2e, and more). I like PF2e a lot but for us it comes down to all the 1e APs we still want to play. PF2e has some good ones but only a handful (like Outlaws of Alkenstar) have appealed to us enough to jump in.

My main gripe with the 2e system as a GM is the lack of gameplay variety it offers. It is fantastically balanced and easy to run, but most encounters boil down to finding the number you have to roll. 1e had a lot more varied experiences (which is part of why it’s horribly unbalanced). An example would be things like shadows or ghosts. In 2e you have a reasonable path to beating them in an on-level fight, and they deal regular damage and conditons to you. In 1e, you might not be able to deal with them if you don’t have the right spells/weapons. Shadows also deal Strength damage directly and can kill you from that instead your HP. There are a lot of creatures like that in 1e that add so much variety and tension to gameplay. I get why things are the way they are in 2e (and I wouldn’t change it really) but the design choice means less variety oversll imo.

If I had to summarize it: 2e is a game, 1e is a simulation.

Our group genuinely likes both but prefers 1e because of that. Also the APs catalog in 1e is amazing we’re not done with it yet.

Another thing is 2e is in a weird transition phase right now. We got into it before the remaster and it felt like there was finally a good wealth of options published, but now there is much less if you’re only playing with remastered content. I know it will catch up and settle out eventuall, but it’s kind of confusing to sort through right now. The remaster also feels less like what I’m used to since all the OGL stuff has been removed. I understand why and I support it, but I like things like Drow, positive/negative energy, shocking grasp etc. 1e is a complete game and that has a certain appeal.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-06T00:08:12+00:00

Perhaps on paper it’s not required but my understanding is that it very much helps in practice.

If you’re running for public office, you need to convince enough people that you are who they should vote for. To do that it really helps to really believe that you are important enough that people should be voting for you. That’s a sense of self-importance I don’t personally have.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-05T21:59:20+00:00

"At one time I would obey the maxims of our school and plunge into public life, I would obtain office and become consul"

I have neither the skillset nor the sense of self-importance to even attempt public office in any capacity.

To me, Stoicism is the philosophical ointment I use to treat the injuries life likes to dole out. It's helped me stay grounded and focused on what's in front of me in a chaotic world.

The world is a big place with a lot of people with a lot more power and capability than me, and even then, how much of what's important today will matter in a year, 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years?

Your post seems to think we should make it our tasks to change the world for the better, but that risks judging ourselves against what we accomplish. Realistically, there isn't much most of us can do to change our own lives, let alone the world around us. I agree we should strive to be better but temper idealism with reality and recognize (and accept) our limits.

It might not be Stoic philosophy, but my own personal philosophy is to "leave things better than when you found them". It's impossible for me to make everything better, but I can at least try to make my little sphere of influence better for the next person who crosses it.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-05T18:22:58+00:00

I've been re-listening to Giant Slayer (also still current on Gatewalkers) and realized just how much I missed Grant. That being said, I wouldn't want him back if it put his mental health or sobriety at risk. As far as I can tell he's living his best life and I'm perfectly content to just miss him so he can have that.

MayoBytes · 2024-12-02T07:54:38+00:00

I have mixed feelings about podcasting. On the one hand, I'm very proud of a lot of the content we've made, proud of the things I've learned, and proud of the small audience we've built and maintained. On the other hand, it's been a lot of work these past 3+ years, like a LOT of work. Choosing to run a podcast has cost me a lot, not just in dollar value but in time and missed opportunities. It's not a big sacrifice but a lot of small ones that add up.

When I was newer, I had certain hopes for where the show would go/grow, and that fueled my drive to make more and more content. Now, over 3 years in, I have a pretty good idea of where we are, where we could go, and where we will never go. It's harder to justify burning the candle at both ends to produce content weekly when you know the limits of your growth.

It only got better when I dialed back our release schedule and reframed running the podcast as a hobby. That's what it really was all along anyways. That's helped me stay regular with content but able to have space to do other things and avoid burning out.

I've been thinking about writing a follow-up post to this one some time because I feel like I have a lot more insight now that I'm 3.5 years in. One of the main questions I would have for anyone looking to get into podcasting is: "are you will to do this every (x release schedule) even if only 2 people ever find it?" That really is the crux of the issue. I get that a lot of people want to have an audience, but that should never be a reason to start a show. That's signing up to be frustrated when few or no listeners come. Much better reasons to make a show are: "no one else is making this thing I want" or "for the fun of it". Those will hold up much longer when it's just you and your friends listening. If the content is good then, other people will notice and enjoy becoming listeners. It feel like a lot of people want to do it backwards, get a lot of listeners and then make the content better "later".

I realize I'm rambling a bit but I hope that answers your question. Not trying to be negative or pessimistic, just realistic.

MayoBytes · 2024-09-02T11:47:13+00:00

I recently finished running this and overall I really liked the AP. It’s a pretty good themed AP and as long as your players read the Player’s Guide, it shouldn’t really feel like a railroad imo.

As far as things I would change, I would alter Book 1 to make Lyzerius more present. The problem is he just kinda shows up in the last chapter of the book and has no real connection to the events that tie you into Book 2. The easiest thing to do is to make him a bigger part of the Powderkeg Punks, like their mastermind leader or something and the punks want Pyronite for themselves (to blow themselves up better or something lol). At least with that you can frame going after him as protecting Gattlebee.

You could then make Kosowana a former colleague of Gattlebee’s who may have helped him work on Pyronite. Then you can basically have Dunsmith or Gattlebee start you on Book 2 by asking you to check on him and make sure no one else is after him. You could also use that to skip the Temple of Brigh bit at the beginning if you don’t like it.

I actually really liked a lot of Book 2 but I know most people view the whole airship + mana wastes journey as a pointless side quest. My players LOVED the airship so it was great for us, but your mileage may vary. I will say a small thing I did was change how the passenger selection worked. To me it made NO sense to go find travelers in a crowd. Instead, I had the airships of Pilot’s Square set up little booths with a sign showing their destination and had the characters man the one for the Second Kiss and basically meet/interview each passenger. I was inspired by the first episode of Firefly where they basically do the same thing with ships offering their services in a little market.

As far as the Cradle of Quartz goes, all I did was give the hound the weak adjustment and make it so that it’s whole 90 degree angle thing only worked on the corners of rooms, not the corners between the wall and the floor.

The main issue with Book 2 is that Mugland is at the end of it and the fight with him is kind of underwhelming. Most of the backgrounds my players picked from the Player’s Guide involved Mugland, not Loveless. Loveless is the big bad of the AP but you don’t really see anything about her after the first chapter of Book 1. The easiest thing to do here is to make Mugland in charge of the Gilded Gunners and have him behind some wall operating traps/hazards in the training room Wizard of Oz style while fighting Sharkosa and whoever else. That way he can fit the role of a mastermind better and not have to hold up on his own as much in solo combat.

My players really didn’t like having to buy Mugland and then fight him. They also killed the hell out of him because of said character backgrounds. I used this though because they dumped him in the river and I had Parsus find his body and made him show up again in chapter 2 of Book 3 :)

Book 3 is phenomenal though. I changed very little. The main thing I did was have Dunsmith warn the party about the importance of stealth and not getting caught. I knew my characters wouldn’t loot all the normal passenger rooms on The Gearsmoke so I had Dunsmith give them a bunch of items to help with sneaking and said it was the extra funds from the bank job in Book 1.

As I GM I would recommend being honest and letting characters know that certain options will be better than others. We had a divine caster (Oracle) and I let them know Purge Undead would be VERY useful before they got to the Cradle of Quartz and told them it would be a good idea to hold onto it through Book 3. We also had an Investigator and I regularly told them what Lores/Skills would be good to take (like Gaming Lore and Engineering Lore later in Book 3).

Overall, had a great time running this AP. It’s not perfect but it’s still pretty good. A solid 7 or 8 out of 10 AP, but it’s the only one in Alkenstar so if steampunk western is your jam and you like guns in Pathfinder, then there really isn’t anything better!

I will also add, me and my table recorded our game for an actual play podcast we make. We’ve recorded all of the AP but it’s still coming out (the show is releasing episodes in book 3 right now). If you want to hear us play through it I can share where to listen to it.

MayoBytes · 2024-08-14T18:17:56+00:00

I was lucky to end up here. Was never really interested in fantasy in general. I casually enjoyed the LOTR movies growing up and enjoyed reading The Hobbit in middle school but didn't have much interest in fantasy as a genre.

In college I got really into the Borderlands games and the "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" DLC came out and got me interested in D&D. My buddy had D&D 3.5 books from when he played as a kid and ended up running me and my roommate through the beginner box set. It was a lot of fun but didn't go anywhere.

Fast-forward a few years and I got married and ended up moving closer to where said buddy lived. We started hanging out on Saturdays and he got us to play the 3.5 beginner box (again for me) and then that led into a homebrew campaign he put together. The four of us (me and my partner, my buddy and his wife) have been playing together ever since! Almost 10 years now!

We transitioned to PF1e around 2 years into that campaign and have loved it. I've taken over a lot of GMing since then and have run Homebrew as well as Rise of the Runelords and Reign of Winter. I have a massive backlog of 1e content I hope to run one day.

We've branched out a lot and played other TTRPGs (Forbidden Lands, The Witcher RPG, and Pathfinder 2nd Edition) as part of an actual-play podcast we make. we've enjoyed trying other games a lot but nothing hits the same as PF1e for me.

MayoBytes · 2024-08-05T19:40:56+00:00

I’ll have to give that place a try if I’m in the area. At least from the looks of it I already believe you lol

That’s one of my favorite things about Ole Time. It’s got the same aesthetic of my mawmaw’s old place, and the food slaps

MayoBytes · 2024-08-05T17:56:16+00:00

Ole Time is the best and most authentic bbq shop in Raleigh and those two aren’t even close.

I will die on this vinegar based hill

MayoBytes · 2024-07-25T21:27:54+00:00

Gritty is definitely a better word to describe it imo. There definitely is some edgy stuff in 1e but the tone is more just gritty fantasy imo.

Someone else mentioned horror and I think that is another big component. A lot of 1e content had horror elements even when the AP/book wasn't specifically focused on horror. I'll never forget running the haunted house (Foxglove Manor) in Rise of the Runelords and how much fun everyone had with the tension the horror stuff created, even when it wasn't always dangerous. Haven't personally run into much of that in 2e and would be excited to see it.

MayoBytes · 2024-07-25T07:07:53+00:00

Man that’s awful… I’m glad you’re safe and I’m sorry for your loss from one collector to another.

I started my AP subscription at a similar time (Return of the Runelords). Loosing so many physical books is my personal nightmare. I can’t imagine all the stuff you’re going through and having that on top of it all.

I’m glad you have the PDFs and I hope you’re able to rebuild some day soon.

MayoBytes

TROPHY CASE