End Notes, Episode 1

SEAN

OK, we’ll do the debrief, then we get to have snacks.

MIKE

There’s snacks.

MARISA

Somebody already has a snack…

CARTER

I was told it was break!

ANNOUNCER (ELI)

The End of Time and Other Bothers: End Notes. Episode 1.

SEAN

So hi everyone, welcome to the first aftershow—we’re going to come up with a name for that at some point.

My name is Sean Howard and I am the GM.

MARISA

I’m Marisa and I play Darcy the human.

CARTER

And I’m Carter, and I am playing as Blat the half-demon.

MIKE

I’m Mike and I play Eggerton.

SEAN

So this is our first debrief or—we don’t know what to call these yet. So this is for fans, for us to just talk about any questions you had, moments—blah blah blah, and also so we can just talk about what I’d planned versus what happened, which is sometimes really funny, drastically different… or anything else we want to talk about.

So I guess I’ll start it, but anyone can start these debriefs, but basically, I was blown away by the three characters, because we’d never really done this format of shared story where everyone could just start telling a story, so I thought that was really cool.

MIKE

I had nightmarish flashbacks to Grade 11 Creative Writing, and the teacher saying, “Michael, can you give your presentation on that Shakespeare reading?” and getting up in front of the class and having no idea. So I had to make up Othello.

MARISA

That’s very good. That takes talent.

MIKE

Yeah, and you know what, I did not have a teacher that agreed with that sentiment.

MARISA

(laughs)

Did you just say he was a fellow? “Well, there was a fellow…”

MIKE

“There was a fellow. And he was named Othello. Yo.”

No, I just rambled for five minutes, which is what I did today.

SEAN

So you had a question.

MIKE

I did have a question. And I think it’s the question that everyone’s wondering: Marisa got this beautifully laid-out interaction, and there’s a minotaur that she rides, and there’s Centurions and battles and time freezes… and I got shot in the back with food on my face.

MARISA

(laughs)

MIKE

And I just feel like that’s a little unfair! I dunno.

SEAN

I don’t see a problem. Anybody else see a problem?

MARISA

I think Sean just played to our strengths.

MIKE

I… I… I need an emotion break.

MARISA

(laughing)

It’s true. Marisa did not show empathy.

SEAN

Yeah.

MIKE

She had fun without empathy.

SEAN

So it’s really funny. I actually, when I was trying to think of the structure of the show, I was like, OK, it’s going to be a little bit of character-building. We’ve got to start you in a world where then we’re instantly transporting you out of. It’s like the end of that world. And so I was like, is this going to be enough drama?

My plan was to hunt at least one of you, and I’m pointing at Carter/Blat or Michael/Eggl… I’ll use your character name…

MARISA

(laughing)

Eglinton!

SEAN

So I’m pointing to Eggerton and I’m pointing to Blat. I was hoping to hunt one of you down in the street, right, like it’s a post-apocalyptic…

MIKE

(laughing)

I thought this was a fantasy comedy! And your secret plan all along was to hunt me down and murder me in the street.

SEAN

Well, not murder you…

MIKE

Oh, not murder, sorry.

SEAN

He was going to tranq—I kept calling it, when we were designing this, it was called “tag-and-bag”. He was going to tag and bag one of you.

MARISA

Well, you did bag the fairy in the end.

SEAN

Because it’s like a world where everything’s gone and… and there’s this strange minotaur following you. I thought that might trigger some of your abilities or… I didn’t know. That’s what I thought was going to happen.

CARTER

I’m a file clerk.

MARISA

We used no abilities.

SEAN

Yeah. The demon clerk’s abilities… your file clerk abilities really did come up, though. They were good.

CARTER

But now that the file room’s destroyed, he’s basically a useless member of this post-apocalyptic society.

MARISA

Yeah. He’s rudderless.

SEAN

He’s rudderless. What’s he going to do for meaning now that he doesn’t have his…?

CARTER

His life didn’t have much meaning before. He alphabetized files.

SEAN

And Marisa, you were saying you had a whole thing in the line that you wanted to do.

MARISA

Yeah, I thought you were going to start me serving people in the line, and you did not! So I was going to have a whole spiel about how I offered the food, and I was going to chat with someone I had a crush on, but nooo. You just compressed that to like, fifteen seconds. And I did have a moment when you told me there was this fantasy door and I could go in, and I was going to be like, “Eh, whatever,” and just continue…

SEAN

I thought that’s what you were going to do!

MARISA

But then I thought, no, you have to take offers—you can’t do that. So then I took the offer. Yeah.

CARTER

“Yes, and”—“No, BUT.”

MARISA

“No, but I’m late.”

SEAN

It would have been harder, yeah.

MARISA

For my imaginary job.

CARTER

Oh no, I’m going to lose my imaginary job.

SEAN

I loved—I wish I’d let you spend more time on it—I loved your experience of the museum, where it was the Something 1000, the Something 2000…

MARISA

Yeah, it’s all just the same stuff but slightly different.

No, I’d made all sorts of notes from what they had discussed, like, “I’m going to work all this in!” But nooo. Never had a chance.

MIKE

I wonder how that feels, Marisa—to not have a chance to explore your character and ideas.

SEAN

I thought you did a good job exploring your character.

MARISA

You did. You did a great job. You’re not good at presentations!

MIKE

(laughs)

SEAN

The exclamation point was a brilliant move. I thought, how’s he going to turn this around?

MARISA

Yeah, that was so great.

MIKE

Yeah, I was pleased with that.

SEAN

Because I did not—yeah.

MIKE

(laughing)

The bodies on the next slide! I think we all had that same idea the second you said there’s another slide. “Yeah, that’s going to be a bad one.”

MARISA

You spun that very well.

CARTER

Well, I think the best way to spin it would simply be “Hey, we’re showing that the city can withstand a massive explosion! We’re all still here! Well, maybe not those people. But the rest of us are still here.”

SEAN

It’s the “Rest of Us Survived Celebration”.

MARISA

Yeah. And there’s more resources for all of us!

SEAN

It’s the NIMBY celebration! “It wasn’t me!”

MIKE

(laughs)

Yeah. It was fun.

SEAN

Yeah. So my plans to hunt you guys down did not…

(laughing)

And we have this—Eli has this—we have spent weeks building this map of this world…

MARISA

And now you’ve just exploded it.

SEAN

We didn’t visit any of the monuments…

MARISA

But why? You had the control to do all that. Why didn’t you do the hunt down in the street thing?

SEAN

I know. I know. Well, that’s what’s interesting. Part of it is… when you’re just working on paper, you’re like, “Ah, this is how I could structure it…” but then when you’re in the moment, and you’re like…

I also didn’t know 100% where your characters were going to be until you showed up.

MARISA

Yeah, that’s true.

SEAN

Everything—well, except you. Blat was… like, it was your initial idea. Right?

CARTER

Yes. Yes. Yeah, from the beginning I thouhgt, this would be interesting if he was a half-demon, but basically lives like a person and has the world’s most boring office job, and is actually a pretty nerdy guy. Except he looks like Satan.

SEAN

But in this world that’s just accepted.

CARTER

Yeah. It’s just another race. Yeah.

SEAN

Yeah. Whereas, where you’re going to go…

CARTER

…I will be hunted for sport.

SEAN

Yeah, so your idea stayed pretty much the same, from your initial—and I loved it immediately, and I went and found a Neph… a Nephilim or whatever thing, and modified it. It’s like, a place to start with for your player book.

CARTER

Right.

SEAN

And then we modified it. So you, Blat, though I didn’t know your name, I knew what you were going to be coming in. But I wasn’t 100% sure what you guys were going to be bringing in. So when you were like, “Yeah, I’m a flightless fairy…”

MIKE

Yeah.

SEAN

“…flightless, portly fairy, in a PR department,” and then you described your dress, like what you were dressed in all the way down… you were Corporate Guy.

MIKE

Yeah.

SEAN

Like, it was corporate all the way down. And in that moment, I was like, I can’t just throw him… Part of me wanted to do, what is it, Michael Douglas with the briefcase, trying to get home… what was that movie?

MARISA

Oh yeah, I don’t remember the movie, but I know which one you mean.

CARTER

Oh, Falling Down.

MIKE

Ohh.

SEAN

Part of me was like, do we do a Falling Down thing? But I was just like, no, I think it’s going to be too much fun to not do just the PR.

MARISA

Yeah, it was great.

SEAN

You’re in the end of the world, in a horrible corporation, and you’re trying to do a horrible PR spin.

MARISA

And Karen was just nasty.

SEAN

Plus when he just started going…

MARISA

Oh, it was great.

SEAN

Michael, when you started eating the thing and just talking, and I was like, “Cut to ten minutes later,” and then you kept going… I was like, yeah, he’s just gotta be—

MIKE

That was a good comedic way to—because—one of the things that’s weird about this is that there’s no structure, there’s no “you’re going to do this and then you’re going to do that.” Like, in a Dungeons & Dragons-type format, typically it’s, yeah, we need to accomplish this thing right now.

MARISA

Yeah.

SEAN

Right.

MIKE

And you do what you need to do to do that. With this format, you don’t have that specificity. So I sort of started going a direction… and no one stopped me. And I just kept going.

SEAN

Well, that’s the thing though. That’s an offer, right? So if you make that offer of just rambling… I actually was picturing you just standing at the window as the world had stopped…

MIKE

Yeah.

SEAN

Just eating your cookie, going on and on and on. And I was like, Greg’s just going to walk up and be like, “Well, this was an easy one,” and just, you know…

MIKE

I like that you name-dropped Greg at one point. Did you catch that?

MARISA

No, I didn’t. He name-dropped…

MIKE

No, I was nodding at—I chin-nodded, ’cause I’m a dude, at Marisa—when Sean was talking to you, he said “Greg”.

MARISA

Yes.

MIKE

Just out of nowhere.

SEAN

I know, I messed that up.

MIKE

I thought that was kind of funny.

MARISA

Yes. I just assumed it was the minotaur.

MIKE

Minodaur?

MARISA

Minotaur.

MIKE

Matador? Is that where that comes from?

MARISA

Wait. Are you saying that Greg was the one who took them down? But he was nice to me!

MIKE

Well, that’s what I’m saying!

SEAN

Yep. Greg is the one who bagged and tagged you.

MARISA

I thought they were different minotaurs!

CARTER

It’s just rampant favouritism.

MIKE

You got to interact with him, Carter.

SEAN

Yeah. And I felt we could have done more with your scene, but it was the first thing we did, so that went well…

MIKE

Yeah, it was fun.

SEAN

But we could have built that up more, even more, I think.

CARTER

We’ll just cut to the chase…

MIKE

I liked the “You shot me!”

SEAN

Yeah. Like, cut to… we probably could have done a cut to… that would have been funnier. You with the thing stuck up there and… yeah.

MARISA

I enjoyed the pneumatic tube explosion. That was great.

MIKE

(laughs)

How did you come up with all those names just…

(snaps fingers)

right off the top of your head?

MARISA

Yeah.

CARTER

Through the power of… knowing some names.

MIKE

Because I wrote down a bunch of them. We’ve got the… I wrote down “pneumatic tube” which isn’t a thing—it is a thing…

MARISA

It is.

MIKE

And that’s why it’s not a thing.

CARTER

It’s a thing. Well, when I was told that this was the 20th-century office…

MARISA

Aren’t you doing Brazil?

CARTER

Yeah, it is Brazil, but a lot of 1950s offices, that’s all they had, pneumatic tubes. And I will honestly say, I’m jealous that I’ve never worked in a place that had pneumatic tubes.

SEAN

Me too.

CARTER

Because it just seems like super fun.

MARISA

So much fun.

CARTER

But I’m sure… It’s gotta be highly dangerous. Like, people are probably getting their hands stuck up there and…

SEAN

It’s loud! It’s like shhhunk!

CARTER

It’s loud. And I’m sure that if like, exposed skin hit a pneumatic tube, it’s like getting the world’s worst hickey.

So that’s probably why they stopped. Because they were like, why have we got this air compression system when people could just hand other people things?

MIKE

I think email might have had something to do with it.

CARTER

Email, yeah, emails. But just getting a little “bing!” on your computer isn’t the same as “THUNK. THUNK.”

(laughs)

MIKE

That’s my favourite.

MARISA

And what I enjoyed was when it was exploding, he kept ramming the broom up there instead of… I would have stopped that, had my pneumatic tube been…

SEAN

Yeah, Carter, that was a good lean in.

MARISA

Yeah, Carter doubles down, as they say.

CARTER

You have to save the files. Because that’s literally all that I do.

SEAN

So yeah. So we have spent weeks. We have these beautiful maps which we’ll put online… I literally have—I think Eli wrote a 17-page file of the history and culture of Balgomarian Steadfast.

MARISA

And we embraced none of it, right?

SEAN

No. We invented things like the Speechifyer.

CARTER

Well, I think the problem was, you guys worked too long on it.

SEAN

Yeah.

CARTER

And then, in the moment, when you’re doing the adventure, you’re like, “Wow. I am so bored of this. We’re not going to talk about any of it.”

SEAN

No. And plus trying to recall it all. But the good news is there still may be chances to move back and forth between the two times, so it’s not like it’s all for nothing.

CARTER

Well, like flashbacks.

SEAN

Yeah. Flash-forwards, I think you called them.

CARTER

Right. Because it’s happening in the future, even though this is something that happened when our characters were younger.

SEAN

Yes.

MIKE and MARISA

Wut.

SEAN

What’s that movie of a movie in a movie? If we’re going there…

MIKE

Serendipity?

MARISA

No, he’s talking about the one beginning with I, aren’t you.

SEAN

Yeah.

MARISA

The one that Carter—Inception.

SEAN

Inception.

CARTER

Inception, yeah.

MIKE

Ohhh.

SEAN

It was a very Inception kind of…

CARTER

Yeah.

MIKE

As long as it’s not Memento.

MARISA

I like Memento.

MIKE

How do you… how do you know it’s a thing?

I think someone filmed a movie and then went and cut it literally in pieces and glued it together without looking.

MARISA

And it was brilliant.

MIKE

Yeah. No, that’s the empty canvas. I mean, like “It’s brilliant art!”

SEAN

But that’s still brilliant!

CARTER

I always wanted to own a physical copy of Memento because I heard that the DVD, there was a special feature that the movie was played backwards. So they took every scene and just rearranged them in the other direction so that the mystery is ruined, but everything’s played forward in real time.

SEAN

Yeah.

CARTER

So you could just check and see if the story actually makes sense.

MIKE

Ahhhh.

CARTER

But that’s only on the DVD and well, it’s a Blu-Ray world now, my friend, so I’ve missed that chance.

MIKE

(laughs)

SEAN

So, what did you guys think about, the two of you that are playing characters that don’t really have any moves. That wasn’t a big deal, right?

MARISA

No.

SEAN

Like, you were playing… Yeah, okay.

MIKE

I didn’t have a chance to do anything, so… you know, got shot in the back…

MARISA

I had a sick dive roll, I might remind you.

SEAN

You did have a sick dive roll. You forward tumble-rolled into a room.

MARISA

That’s right.

SEAN

Yeah, because like, I don’t know if I’d ever do that again, because having to create versions of all the sheets that are—because basically, I don’t know if we can explain it now: everyone is like a level 0. Right, like you’re a level 0 character. You’ve chosen a race but not a class.

MARISA

Yeah, can I just read one of the starting moves that Sean has provided us with? It’s called Navigating Bureaucracy. “You take +1 on any rolls involving paperwork, bureucrats or waiting in line for something.” And none of us got to use it.

CARTER

Literally never came up.

MARISA

But it’s a pretty great starting move.

SEAN

OK, cool. So the basic idea is that in the next one, we’ll see how it goes compared to what’s planned. But yeah, at some point we’ll be choosing classes. With the exception of Blat, who is something very special.

MARISA

(laughs)

He’s a class unto himself.

CARTER

I’m a class unto—that’s just the fanciest, nicest way to put that.

MIKE

I thought he was just kind of a jerk.

MARISA

(laughs)

I think he’s delightful.

SEAN

So thanks to everyone for listening, and we will see you guys in about a week with the next episode if all is going as planned.

MIKE

Woo!

CARTER

(leaning in close)

And then things didn’t go as planned.