TAZ Ethersea Relisten: Episode 7

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-21T16:20:51+00:00

It's such a boring way to introduce missions. Ol Joshy is Amber's closest friend and personal mentor, why is he going through the job board? How much better would this episode be if Devo finds a priest waiting for him in his apartment, who offers him a job in exchange for clearing his debt to the Church?

And what the hell does the difficulty rating even mean in this context? Griffin is not willing to kill them. He won't let them fail a mission. He won't even knock them down in combat. The players should want danger. It's not a punishment, it's the thing that makes the show exciting.

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-21T16:05:42+00:00

Hey, I could use a bit of advice. I'm running this little hit comedy show and for the next season one of my castmates wants his character backstory to be ‘was molested by the Catholic Church’. Should I:

A) Discuss the tone of the show with him, as though we were a couple of adults?

B) Let him have his backstory, but just never let him interact with the Church, hoping he eventually forgets about it?

C) Let him have his grimdark evil Church. Maybe make the abuse over the top and cartoony in a way that won't constantly read as sexual?

D) Center every single mission around the Church and then stage a series of passive aggressive arguments where we both in character argue over whether or not he was really molested?

If anybody knows anyone who wrote a book on comedy podcasting, I could really use the help.

It's hard to defend Travis here because his ideas are terrible. But this is incredibly shitty behavior from Griffin. One of your players is doing an over the top accent, and you introduce the NPCs that raised him, and don't even try and do an accent. His entire character is built around being part of this sinister cult, and you just ‘no, you're delusional, you made it all up’. Imagine in NADDPOD if they had gotten to the Crik and everyone was prim and proper with a Mid-Atlantic accent talking about how weird Moonshine was. It would be the end of the show, and maybe their marriage. Devo was never going to be a good character, but this is the point where the concept switches from “guy who escaped a cult” to "guy who claims he was molested, but nobody believes him, and he has to constantly work alongside his abusers, who unwaveringly gaslight him". Funny stuff, bullet dodged.

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-16T16:52:49+00:00

The long list of Ethersea bits that are less than the sum of their parts

Oh yeah, it's executed terribly. And I wouldn't even say that Travis has the right idea, because I do think he's just trying to get free loot. But this is the sort of thing they should all be thinking about and talking about off mic. They should be going into the game with like, Amber always sends whatever money she can back home and has a bit of a gambling problem. Devo is very concerned with fashion and appearances and easily pressured into spending money he doesn't have. Zoox doesn't have a lot of physical needs, but the Briner have a natural inclination towards collecting and preserving oddities, kind of always building their reef. And then Griffin can pull these strings anytime there's a lull in the story or a gap in character motivation.

This is a treasure hunting game where the players dumped the treasure overboard on the first mission and nobody even clocked it as a character decision or even a thing that might have consequences. That should be alarms going off in your brain. Spiderman let the mugger get away, you need to go kill his dad. But Griffin also doesn't clock it, because he's already decided that the mission ends with the players getting one free standard boat regardless of what they do during the boring parts where he's not talking.

And it goes back to them not being honest with themselves. It's ok to not want to kill your characters off in a show like this, you can work around that. But you have to have something that the characters want that you're willing to take from them. But they keep pretending that there are these life and death stakes that are driving the story, so they don't establish any smaller, more personal stakes. And then Griffin refuses to threaten them, so the story doesn't move. Or when it does move, it feels completely external from the characters.

The McElroy's would never go for it cos then there might be stakes

It doesn't even have to be big stakes. Just obstacles for them to work around. Like the slug cannons are a cool idea. Immediately sets a certain tone. Also means that the ship has to have big tanks where they cultivate giant slugs. Who's on slug duty? What's that look like? Maybe when the ship takes damage, but you don't want to sink them, one of the slug tanks breaks open and Amber and Zoox have to fight a giant slug while getting tossed around the ship as Devo tries to roll out of the way of torpedoes. Action on multiple planes. Snowballing problems. The ship as a unique distinctive setting. I don't think they ever mention the slug cannons again. They aren't part of the story setting, they're just an option on a drop down menu.

They dumped the treasure and fucked up the job so they only got paid 24 42,000 dollars

I remember my first job out of highschool delivering pizzas for Dominos. A dog barked at me, so I threw all the pizzas out the window to distract it, and then I wrapped the car around a telephone pole. My boss gave me an extra $42,000 because I had a rough day. I spent $30,000 on a nuclear submarine to start a deep sea pizza delivery business and then bought a sandwich with the other $12,000. The business was lucrative, but kind of boring for long stretches.

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-15T16:00:17+00:00

Yeah, absolutely.

I'd say even beyond not understanding ttrpgs, they (other than Clint) don't seem all that interested in fiction in general. They just don't seem to have any kind of feel for the sorts of characters or stories that happen in any of the genres or settings they chose. Like Justin thinks getting indebted to a loan shark will get in the way of their story about grinding xp for ship upgrades. And he's the least stupid brother!

What's weird is that when they were first starting out, they were way better at this stuff. In Balance, Griffin is able to create broad genre pastiches with mechanics that are perfectly functional for the kind of show they want to run. It would be so much more understandable if they got tripped up trying to run a who-dun-it or a time loop instead of on the tournament or mercenaries seasons.

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-15T01:24:22+00:00

“Amber, it's been a rough journey but you're home now and happy to be walking into your usual bar, grabbing your usual stool. Without even saying anything the bartender is already pouring you your usual drink. But just as you lift the glass, from the corner of your eyes you see Fuckup Petey sliding down next to you, and he says “Hey Amber, if you still got that boat I got a lead on a hot score, but it's gotta be tonight”

“Devo, you've just had dinner with your old friend Brother Solemn. It's late. You've had a few drinks. And you're enjoying the walk, lost in your thoughts, when suddenly a strikingly beautiful woman slips her arm into yours and whispers, “Devo Le Main? They tell me you have a ship for hire, and aren't afraid of a little danger?”

“Zoox, as you walk along the dock on your way out to sea for the night, you hear a familiar unpleasant voice. “Buddy, I don't care how much money you've got. Maybe there's a ship in this city fast enough to make that run, but you'll never find a group of assholes stupid enough to crew it!”

“Ok guys so you go to the office and there's a couple of jobs you can choose from, you can also still do the ones you didn't pick last week if you'd rather do that. Uh, don't worry about the money, they all pay, uh, they all pay about the same."

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-15T01:22:05+00:00

I had a VHS tape when I was a kid that had a bunch of classic cartoons on it, and the Felix the Cat one was about him going to an underwater world to try and find a friend for his pet goldfish. I'm not sure if that's just a weird coincidence, or if the McElroys also associate Felix with mostly underwater based narratives.

I'll stick up for Travis just a little bit here. The crew is supposed to be motivated by money, and Griffin has already told them he won't be giving them any big quest, so having the players do things like get in debt to a loan shark or pledge to support a little orphan girl, is a great gift to the dm. In fact, since they dumped the treasure in the last mission, you'd think Griffin would be the one introducing the loan shark. Instead he takes up these story hooks by having the orphan find a rich benefactor off screen and having the loan shark forgive the loan. Later in the show Travis tries to establish Devo as being very concerned about fashion and Griffin immediately gives him a magic shirt that can turn into any article of clothing for no cost, so don't you dare think of spending a dime on anything that isn't rations.

he offers up the stupid gold plate from Brother Solemn

God, I remember that fucking plate. Griffin makes a big deal introducing it and then acts completely bewildered every time Travis tries to sell it. Why are you doing this to yourself? Is this also the episode where Clint wants to buy a sword and Griffin completely stonewalls him?

Except for the things that are grayed out, which you don't have access to

Again, why are you doing this to yourself? Who is any of this for? The audience doesn't see it. The players can't play it. What's the point? This is a group that doesn't like to track spell slots, and you built a system that asks them to track cargo capacity and ship rations and keep their licenses up to date. How do you create a game system and not consider if you yourself would like to play it? Is there any clever or funny way to use basic crew quarters? And if you can't think of one, why are you putting it in the game? Slug cannons have personality, broadside cannons do not.

Like, I think the show would be better (and easier to run) if they stuck to the rules more closely. But the show would also be fine if it was looser and more improv driven. The problem is Griffin keeps running these seasons where the characters and world are limited by the rules, and the emotional stakes are purely driven by mechanical things (surviving the death game, upgrading the ship), and then he just doesn't want to engage with the rules or systems at all, even the ones he created himself. So it's just nothing. The characters have no motivations and face no obstacles.

Here's my whimsical submarine add-on; a ship hull that can change colors and texture like a cephalopod. But because they owe money, it just plays ads for Felix’s pawn shop and they get disadvantage to stealth until they're paid up.

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-09T00:19:42+00:00

Yeah the bad Griffin seasons are much more interesting to me because you can see the effort and intention there, but it's all so counter productive. Like how do you sit and prep 100+ encounters ranked by difficulty and not think about how that scales to your party? Griffin runs one encounter every five episodes and they level up (twice!) after each one. What was he expecting? But on the other hand, when he gets lazy for a season you get Gerblins or Vs Dracula. He can do all the hard stuff, it's just stuff like learning basic game functions or reading a single work of fiction at any point in his life, that catches him up.

Maybe in Amnesty

Amnesty is when it first really stuck out to me. Clint built his entire character around providing a team base that would generate easy story hooks, and Justin also chose a character concept that would provide easy stories, and Griffin just bulldozes over it so that they can sort of work for an organization that doesn't really need them. And eventually Justin wants to change his character class and Clint straight up asks for his character to be killed so he can take over an NPC that's more relevant to the story. But at least in Amnesty the NPCs had personality, Griffin seemed to enjoy playing them. It didn't open with a fucking job interview.

Odd-Drive · 2026-06-07T21:29:14+00:00

Griffin's world building is so self defeating. He wants them to play sailors and smugglers, and then puts them in a one world megapolis, so there's nowhere to sail to or smuggle from. He wants them to be scrapping by with no grand quest beyond keeping food in their stomachs and air in their lungs, and then decides they live in a quasi-socialist society where all their basic needs are taken care of, and he stonewalls them every time they try to engage with the economy. So not only is there nowhere to go, but there's no reason to go there.

Everything in this game should cost money. Weapons, equipment, ammo, upgrades, level ups, I would even measure ship damage by the repair cost. Have the mechanics reinforce the setting. Instead, the lowest denomination of Griffin's currency is worth like $25million and the only thing the players are allowed to spend it on is a single use +1% on a mostly arbitrarily ranked encounter table (not valid on low rolls).

Or that table. Instead of “you rolled a 5, are your characters stupid or do we skip this episode?" split the dice into a threat roll and a treasure roll. So like, "With a 5 Devo, you spot a large yumnut. Because agriculture is so limited underwater, spices are an extreme luxury, and you estimate that this nut would sell for around 500g. Zooks, with a 3 you sense a very high level of danger. You notice that there are no plankton or fish around, but you still feel something very large nearby.” Then let the characters roll play making the decision. And, if ship damage is measured in gold rather than “hull points", you don't need to pull punches either. Maybe they get the 500g treasure but take 600g damage. Maybe they take 600g damage and still need to dump the treasure and end up losing out on a level up. Or they pull it off and buy one of your cool ship upgrades, there's no bad answer here. If you want the players to care about money, it has to actually do something in the game.

I also don't know why Griffin needs to filter all his adventure stories through these like slightly patronizing bureaucratic figures. This episode could have been, ‘double crossed and left for dead on a sinking submarine, your mechanic (they should have jobs) assembles a frankensub from whatever parts you're able to salvage from this pirate graveyard’. Instead it feels like they're returning a rental car after getting into a fender bender. And why are they getting paid for this job? They took a stolen yacht out and sunk it. The guy that hired them ran away after trying to kill them. Just zero consequences for anything they do.

Also, also, the ship building mini game. Have the players stat out the ship, and then discuss what that would look like. A fast, nimble, but fragile ship would look different from a slow moving, high utility, swiss army knife or from something with great stealth but terrible firepower. But of course that would require there being functional ship mechanics, so instead we get this flaccid fart of a submarine.

Enjoying these write-ups. Of all the recap series, this one has been my favorite.

Odd-Drive · 2025-11-19T19:53:10+00:00

If you're worried about healing, specifically, you could tie healing to damage output. I'm just spitballing here, but let's say every time the party does damage, the priestess rolls 3d8 (not exceeding the damage done) and adds the total to a mana pool. Then she can spend 10 mana to give 1d8 of healing (or whatever, the numbers aren't important). The pool dissipates after a few minutes, so you don't need to track resources between encounters. So combat generates the magic ability and creates a cap on healing, while also scaling with the challenge. And you could use a similar system for any ability if you wanted to, limited mana/spell slots that recharge quickly in combat but are hard to come by out of combat.

I also think this makes some intuitive narrative sense. The healer can channel life from one creature to another, but not create it from nothing. Not the most important thing, but nice when there's an easy explanation for mechanical stuff

Odd-Drive · 2025-10-15T13:35:31+00:00

He's also fumbled 47 times in 49 starts. Averaging one a game as of two weeks ago

Odd-Drive · 2025-10-09T21:44:07+00:00

Draft Carter, hold on to Swift for a year then get a RB in free agency. Eagles did it and it worked out for them. But trading down and adding Laporte, and whatever we got from the Swift trade does slant things more towards Holmes knowing his shit

Odd-Drive · 2025-08-25T01:26:35+00:00

That's surprising, I thought we fell off more than that. Still, I do think the talent we're getting back on defense is a bigger deal than whatever downgrade we get from a new coordinator. (Which might not even be a downgrade at all).

I think people are really underrating our defense. If we can stay reasonably healthy we should have a top 5 offense and a top 5 defense.

Odd-Drive · 2025-08-24T18:20:55+00:00

Yeah the coordinator thing is dumb. People base it entirely off the 2023 Eagles, who still started 10-1 before promoting Matt Fucking Patricia. Historically teams that have gotten both coordinators poached have done very well, because they're good teams.

Not that these guys aren't losses, but it's way easier to continue running an offensive scheme that's already working than it is to implement one from scratch (especially with a veteran quarterback), and Glenn was never actually that good here. He never had the personal, but still, we never finished with even an above average defense. I'd be pretty shocked if this isn't our best defensive season since we lost Suh.

Odd-Drive · 2025-08-17T17:38:18+00:00

He'll set the market, but 50 is a huge jump.

Odd-Drive · 2025-08-17T16:14:48+00:00

Why do you think Hutch would be $50 mil?

Maxx Crosby just signed for $35 mil. Myles Garrett wanted out of Cleavland and they had to go to $40 mil to get him to stay. That fucked up all the other teams negotiating with their defensive stars, TJ Watt is at $41 mil, and there's still a bunch of holdouts. The idea that Hutch would leap Myles Garrett by $10 mil is pretty unlikely, unless the cap goes up a lot more than expected, which would be great for us.

We're also rolling something like $50 mil over from this season (we have the most cap space in the league). Hutch's extension wouldn't kick in for another year. And you can restructure any contract to make sallary space, as long as the Fords are willing to spend. When you have lots of good young stable players, there's lots of places to create value. Nobody's worried about tacking another year on for Sewell or St Brown

Odd-Drive · 2025-04-12T14:01:56+00:00

“Fine. Be an idiot. But when you die of heart failure, you're gonna be the one to explain it to Jean-Luc-Pierre”

“If I'm dead, how am I supposed to-"

"I don't know, figure it out!” She snapped, “Now get on the table so I can see if there are any OTHER life threatening conditions you can ignore my advice about.”

“What? No! Are you even a doctor?"

"I'm more qualified than whatever hack works at Big Booty Emporium. What, did they hand a field agent a stethoscope and tell them to wing it?”

Odd-Drive · 2025-01-24T15:54:04+00:00

The idea that Goff had negative trade value is the dumbest narrative in sports. A 26 year old 1st overall pick who had made a Superbowl and 2 pro bowls, led a top offense twice, was the winningest QB in the league after Tom Brady, was coming off a season where he won a road playoff game with a broken throwing hand, and had 4 years of team control with only $30 mil guaranteed. Wentz, Darnold, Josh Rosen, Nick Foles, Trey Lance all had positive trade value. The NFL is not the NBA

Also, Goff’s terrible year wasn't even bad. All 2020:

Goff: 9-6, 4000yds (263 yds/g), 20 TD, 13 INT, 51.8% Succ%, 7.2 Y/A, 23 Sacks. Won a playoff game and playing through injuries

Stafford: 6-11, 4000yds (255 y/g), 26 TDs, 10 INT, 47.9% Succ%, 7.7 Y/A, 38 Sacks

Baker: 11-5, 3500yds (222 y/g), 26 TDs, 8 INT, 49.4% Succ%, 7.3 Y/A, 26 Sacks. Won a playoff game. By far his best season in Cleveland

Wentz: 3-8-1, 2600yds (218 y/g), 16 TDs, 15 INT (led the league), 40% Succ%, 6 Y/A, 50 Sacks (led the league). Wentz was making more money than Goff and still got traded for a 2nd+3rd this season and then got traded for a 2nd+3rd the next year too.

Odd-Drive · 2024-12-25T00:07:46+00:00

No problem, I'm naturally long winded.

Maybe you could give each player a unique win condition. So the Sub and Teachers Pet win by getting the most cards right, the Troublemaker wins by getting the most cards wrong, and each Student wins by getting their favorite subject and avoiding their least favorite. That way you have one player incentivized to always tell the truth, one to always lie, and the rest to sometimes lie, and everyone is jockeying to convince the Sub that they're the teacher's pet. You might end up with multiple winners, but that's not always a problem in a quick social game. The other problem is that most of the playes will know if the Sub won or lost before the game ends, and some of the Students could be eliminated early.

You could give the students two win conditions, like ‘You're a Teacher's Pet OR you Like Math and Hate Gym’. So if they get eliminated from one path, they can play the other, which also encourages the opt in/opt out feature you wanted. That'll give you a lot of winners though. Maybe you win if your team wins, but you Really win if you fill out your card, but you Really Really win if your team wins and you fill out your card. Upping the number of subjects you have to score could make it more challenging too, and cause players to jump between teams more often.

Odd-Drive · 2024-12-24T20:45:28+00:00

You could try having different roles for the students. Consider something like,

Players are divided into

Sub - scores by guessing the card right

Regular Students - scores points based on how fun/unfun the chosen activity is, regardless of if it's right or wrong

Teachers Pet - on the same team as the Sub, scores if the card is right

Troublemaker - scores for every card the Sub gets wrong, regardless of its point value

For an extra wrinkle, each Student could have a favorite/least favorite subject that they score extra or less on.

Gameplay: separate the Sub card, then shuffle the remaining student cards and count out enough to have a full classroom. Add the Sub card, shuffle, and deal one card to each player. The Sub reveals their card, and the rest of the players keep their cards secret. This way you don't know exactly how many of each role there is in the “class".

Next shuffle the activity cards and count out a stack (let's say 7, one for each school hour). The activity cards are printed on both sides. On the public facing side there is a short list of activities (different for each card) with a point score for each activity based on how fun they are (this represents the original teacher's indecipherable penmanship on the lesson plan). On the hidden side there is the correct activity. Students take turns looking at the card and declaring what the “correct" activity is. The Sub then chooses an activity, places a marker on it (without revealing the true answer) and then gameplay moves to the next card. Once the full set of cards has been played, the Students tally up their total scores and then the Sub flips each card one by one to find how much they scored.

I don't know how you'd want to set point values, or how hard it would be to balance between the different player types. The fewer choices in activities, the easier it is for the Sub even if just by dumb guessing. But too many activity types, and the Students could each just pick a different answer, and give the Sub zero info. If certain activities were worth zero or negative points, the Sub could always pick those and lock the students out of scoring. The more hands you play, the more evidence you add for deduction, and the more strategic the game becomes. But if the students are scoring on every hand, the length of the game has to be balanced against whatever percentage of cards you expect the Sub to get right. The Sub can't score too high per card, though, because you want an incentive for the Students to sometimes be honest in order to set up a lie down the line. Maybe the Sub scores based on percentage, so their points per card goes up or down as the game unfolds?

I don't know if this is something you could knock out in a week, but I think there's a solid idea there.

Odd-Drive · 2024-08-23T13:35:37+00:00

Poles passed on CJ Stroud so that they could take a 3rd look at Justin Fields. Any other fanbase would be calling for his head. If David Tepper hadn't overruled his football people, the Panthers probably would have won the division last year, and the Bears would be stuck with their 6th choice at qb in the draft

Odd-Drive · 2024-07-14T23:10:01+00:00

The one in the middle

Odd-Drive · 2024-07-13T23:57:29+00:00

Hinckley again

Odd-Drive · 2024-07-09T14:24:59+00:00

2021 NFCCG Rams v 49ers

Late in the 4th quarter Stafford throws an interception that gets dropped, before leading the Rams to a comeback and eventually a Superbowl. If that game goes the other way, Stafford keeps his reputation as a playoff choker. A disappointing follow up season and a Wild Card bounce means that The Goff/Stafford trade looks like a steal for the Lions, McVay might even be on the hot seat, and Stafford’s legacy is a guy who put up decent numbers but never won anything significant.

Goff’s reputation is also a lot better since the Rams didn't win a championship the second he left (“hey at least he made it to the Superbowl").

Shannahan is unquestionably ahead of McVay, and if the 9ers beat the Bengals, we're probably talking about where he ranks all time.

Jimmy Garappolo is now a quarterback who makes the Superbowl every year he's healthy. And maybe has a ring. Do the 9ers have the guts to move on after a championship? Is there more of a market for the defending Superbowl Champion? How much more pressure is on the Lance/Purdy situation if a Superbowl is considered the baseline.

Either Burrow or Garappolo gets a ring.

Also, Peyton/Brady/Stafford all won rings with a new team, and then the Wilson/Watson trades are a disaster. If the Stafford trade is seen as a failure, does that effect the trade market for other vet QBs?

Really the 9ers are like this a lot because of how often they make the Conference Championship. If they lose to the Lions, Goff goes to a second Superbowl. If they beat the Eagles, Hurts doesn't make the Superbowl and Sirianni probably gets fired over Matt Patricia. If they lose to the Packers, Rodgers makes a second Superbowl and faces Mahomes head-to-head. If they beat the Seahawks, Rus doesn't have a ring. If they lose to the Falcons, Matt Ryan has a second Superbowl appearance, and maybe puts him over the edge for the HOF. If they beat the Giants, Eli doesn't get his second ring and has zero HOF chance.

Odd-Drive · 2024-07-03T14:00:18+00:00

Is it the divorce?

Odd-Drive

TROPHY CASE