Episode 49

full
Published on:

17th Jul 2023

Lonely TTRPG EP 49 - The Librarian's Apprentice by Dan Bronson-Lowe

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Transcript
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Greetings Weary Wanderer, and welcome back to another edition

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of Lonely T T RRP G, the Solo Actual Play and Review podcast.

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This week we are playing the Librarian's Apprentice by Dan Bronson Lowe.

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So Librarian's Apprentice is based off of fire lights, which some of you

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may remember is the same system as.

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Our friend Croaker did queen list based off of, so we're gonna breeze

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through the rules on this one real fast.

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Once again, just a reminder, you're gonna need some type of journal, a

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place to build your map, a deck of cards without the jokers and 2D six.

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Anytime you need to perform an action, you're gonna draw

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two cards from your deck.

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The value of those cards will be Ace one, two through 10 their value,

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and then Jack King, queen will be 11.

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After that, you're gonna roll your two D six.

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Add 'em together.

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If your two D six is higher than both cards, congratulations,

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you're in the light.

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If the dice is higher than one card, then you're in shadow.

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But if it's lower than both cards, you're in darkness.

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Now a twist on this one is you will be getting and discovering resources.

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You can spend those resources any time.

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Five resources will automatically find any document that you're seeking.

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Three resources will find you a safe place to rest, which will then

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allow you to clear all your fatigue.

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And one resource will allow you to add plus one to any action.

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But you have to decide before you roll, and you can do this

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as many times as you want.

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So you can spend five resources to get a plus five on your action, but it is

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not the best use of those resources.

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For the game, you're gonna start out by drawing one card and placing it face up.

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Now, if it's a face card, shuffle that back in the deck and draw again.

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You're gonna take a token and place it on the card to indicate

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that that is where you're at.

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And this is your librarian's office where you begin.

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To add a new area to the map.

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What you're gonna do is you're going to draw two cards from the

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deck, and you are going to roll plus navigation if you are in light.

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Then you get to play either card and then you can keep the other card for trade.

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We'll talk about that in a minute.

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If you're in shadow, you can play either card and discard the other card.

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And if you're in darkness, you play either card, discard the other card and discover

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a complication at the new location.

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And then as far as where to put the card, if your new card is higher than

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your current location, it will go above.

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If it is lower, then it'll go below.

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And if it is the same value, it'll go to either side.

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Now we did mention that we were searching for documents.

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All right.

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You are a librarian's apprentice, tasked with finding six documents, hoping one

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day to become a librarian yourself.

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So anytime you add a face card to the map, a document you

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seek is present in that area.

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You can describe the document using the provided tables,

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but then you need to get it.

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So hopefully you rolled either light or shadow and you can just get it.

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But if you rolled darkness, then you are gonna have to overcome your complication

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for overcoming complications.

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Your complications will have a certain value.

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Or difficulty,

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and you are going to have to build a stack of cards that will equal that value.

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So when you're addressing a complication, you're gonna roll plus lore.

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And you're gonna repeat until you stacked enough cards to match the

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complications, value or difficulty.

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So once again, you're going to draw two cards, roll plus lore, and if

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you're in light, you get to stack both cards against the complication.

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If you're in shadow, you stack either card and discard the other,

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but you're gonna mark one fatigue.

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And if you're in darkness, you're gonna mark one fatigue.

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And finally, the last thing you can do in an area is conduct research.

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Once again, draw two cards and you're gonna roll research.

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And if you're in light, you can trade in both cards.

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Shadow, you can trade in either card and discard the other.

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And darkness, you'll discard both cards and discover a complication.

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Now for the trade, if you have a red suited card, you can trade

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that in to clear one fatigue.

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If you have a black suited card, you can trade that in for one resource.

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Finally, the last big thing is character creation.

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So you're gonna fill in a name and pronoun.

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You're going to assign a plus two to the skill you are best at a plus

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one to the skill you're good at and a plus zero to your remaining skill.

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And remember, it is dangerous to go alone.

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Take a familiar, pick the type, pick the skill.

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And it will add a plus one to that skill.

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. But by doing that, it absorbs one fatigue in your stead, but then

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no longer provides the skill bonus until the fatigue is cleared.

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Finally, there are certain truths to your background, community

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and library that you can answer.

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We will not be going over those here as that is definitely

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for a longer play session.

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And I do encourage, if you're gonna play this for quite a bit and really

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explore out that library, then start paying attention to those truths.

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But for a one shot, not necessary.

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All right, so we're gonna go ahead and transition to our gameplay,

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and I have already taken the liberty of rolling up all my stats and maps.

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Now here's the thing, like I know this designed to be.

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A little fantastical, a little whimsical, but I've been getting

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a lot of war Hammer, 40 K lore.

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So

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ours is gonna be set in space.

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All right?

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We're gonna be set in space.

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We're gonna be in one of the Imperial Archives doing that, which means that

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our familiar is going to be a servo.

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A nice little servo skull floating around beside us.

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We have a plus two in navigation, a plus one in research and a plus zero in lore.

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So I seem to have spent a lot of my time in the library preparing

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myself, but not a whole lot on the actual practical applications.

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So we're gonna see how this goes.

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Immense ever shifting and sometimes dangerous.

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The library exists in a space between worlds and times.

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Among the many who call it home are the librarians and only those who truly

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understand it may join their ranks.

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Steel Stash seeks to do so.

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The path of the librarians of apprentice is a long one.

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Their current task is designed to test their skills at traversing the

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library and finding information.

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. Retrieve the six documents requested by the librarian before the day

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is out and he will have completed one more step on his journey.

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Now steal stash.

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Within the archives are six documents that must be found.

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Go, go forth and seek them.

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All right, so to start off, I am going to

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immediately pull a face card.

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So now I need to recall that we're gonna reshuffle.

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All right, and we got the six of clubs for our librarian base.

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So first thing we need to do is we need to draw two cards and.

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Roll our navigation.

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Draw two cards and roll our navigation.

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Luckily I got a three and a four, so this should be a pretty good navigation.

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So rolling two D six plus two.

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Also, I'm gonna apologize if any of these barks get through.

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This is what I get for trying to record while everyone is awake.

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All right, so I got a total of nine, which does handily beat both.

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We're gonna keep that four because we only have four fatigue before we end up.

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In a situation where we have to come back.

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So moving down to the first area of the library.

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So we're gonna roll two D six three times to get our descriptor.

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And we got 4, 12, 12.

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Actually we got 2, 2, 6, 6, 6, 6.

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So two, two is decorative.

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Six.

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Six is work, be or so.

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The descriptor is decorative.

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The feature is workbenches and the category is written by the undead.

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Even in death, we will continue to serve the God emperor.

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So,

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so this feels like a place of high valued, high skilled.

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Books Cause we have, we have the workbenches, so obviously there's a

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place, there's a place to try it out.

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The, the written by the undead feels very masters of the past,

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so that is what this place is gonna be.

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All right, and since things are going well for me in this room, we're gonna go

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ahead and conduct some research as well.

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So again, first thing we need to do, draw two cards.

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Mm.

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And we got the five of hearts and the nine of spades.

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So this one might be a little more tricky, especially as we

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only have plus one to research,

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but we got a nine.

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Which means only one card is higher, so we can trade one and discard the other.

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So we're gonna keep that nine and that is going to be one of our tradable resources.

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We'll go ahead and discard.

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We'll go ahead and discard the five.

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So continuing on.

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Continuing on, we got the eight N Queen of Clubs for our new

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area, which is very fortuitous.

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We might find our first document that we're looking for.

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So rolling our navigation of two D six plus two, and we got a nine,

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so that doesn't beat the queen.

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However,

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we are in shadows, so we can play either card and discard the other one.

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So we're gonna go ahead and discard that eight, and we're gonna play this queen,

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and let's go ahead and roll up a description for this pretty lady.

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So first up for the descriptor, we got four three, which is Labyrinth Theme

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six.

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Six on our feature work benches and four, three for our category.

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Just never read Labyrinthine workbenches.

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Never read.

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So it would seem that at the back of.

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At the back of the room where we had the master's works.

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We found a dusty ladder and followed that up, and we found

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another area of workbenches.

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And the, the, these are all just kind of cobbled together, kind of

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thrown about all willy-nilly, like,

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and you know, it's creating kind of a labyrinth like pattern on the floor.

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And

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I mean, dust is covering everything.

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This looks like someplace that people haven't been to in a while.

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You can tell that the stuff here is not being taken care of.

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It's not being read, it's not being used.

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I mean, hell, half the benches have

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half the benches, have those workman cloths just draped over them just to

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try to help keep them from dusting up.

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And let's see what type of document we might have in this area.

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So that's gonna be two D six, twice.

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And for the first description, we got four six, which is the pressure from.

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And for our second one, we got six two, which is knotted yarn,

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the pressure from knotted yarn.

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Well, that makes sense why that would be in an area that's not,

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not used anymore.

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The, the pressure of knotted yarn.

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That,

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that seems very.

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Very niche,

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so I can see why it would definitely be in this area.

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But while the rules don't say, I'm going to declare that there is a complication

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here, we have to face a complication in order to get this document.

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So we're gonna roll two D six for our complication table

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just to see what complication we have.

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And that is six one,

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which is gonna be a gnosiphage.

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Which is a type of creature, the gnosiphage, AKA bootlicker, a withered

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husk of a person from the burn section steals words and knowledge from documents.

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By licking them, the content appears on their skin, like tattoos.

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Yeah, this is a interesting and creepy creature to be running across.

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This definitely feels like one of those Gene Stealer Colts.

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Trying to eat away at our, eat away at our dangled knowledge that we have here.

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And these guys have a difficulty score of six.

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All right,

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so we are going to be using our lore in order to try to overcome this

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thing, preferably without violence, cuz after all we are a librarian.

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And we got a nine a jack.

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Not looking good for the home team right off right off the rip there cuz we are

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rolling two D six with no modification.

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And we got a five total, so we're gonna go ahead and take one.

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Fatigue,

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bringing our fatigue up to one.

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So next up we have

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a five and a seven.

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This seems much more manageable.

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Rolling.

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R two D six oh oh oh oh, and we got a four,

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so that is also a failure.

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Bringing our fatigue up to 2 of 4.

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So I'm gonna trade my nine spades in for a plus one.

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So I'm gonna take a plus one on this roll because I need I, I need it.

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I definitely need it as I got a jack and a king, so I have to beat an 11, so rolling

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two D six plus one and I got an eight.

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So once again,

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Another fatigue.

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All right.

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My servo is going to whip in front of me on this one just to try to help out

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which probably good because we got an eight and a queen,

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so my servo is gonna roll.

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Two D six plus one cuz they had the plus one in lore and they got a seven.

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My servo doesn't help out any, but the bright side is, I am still in it.

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This is probably the last round though.

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Nine and a two.

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Nine and a two.

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I need to beat to nine though, because I'm gonna take fatigue regardless.

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And I got an 11.

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Outstanding.

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And also because I mean, So first of all, it doesn't matter because I can

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sta or I will stack the nine and the two on this gnosiphage, and that is

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11 versus the gnosiphage six we win.

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But because the nine and the two are both clubs and the queen that we're,

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whose room we're in is also a club then.

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I would be able to,

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actually, this is important because I misunderstood the rules, so

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it's not the val, it's not the number of the value on the cards.

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I have to stack six cards on this.

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So because the value of the card is the same as the value of my

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room, the suit of the card is the same as the suit of my room.

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Those count as two.

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So my nine counts as two, and my two counts as two cards.

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So I'm at four of six cards right now.

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I'm going to trade in my heart.

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To remove one of these resources.

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So I no longer have any, or I no longer have any tradable goods.

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However, I am at 2 of 4 fatigue, which may be important as we continue to do

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this, that it does buy me an extra round.

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Which might be good because we got a two of hearts and a 10 of diamonds.

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And I doubt I'm beating the 10.

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I am not.

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I'm matching the 10, which is frustrating, but that's okay

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because I get to stack the two.

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So that brings me up to five of six,

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and I'm still taking one fatigue.

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So it's a good thing I traded in that heart from earlier.

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And now we're on the last round.

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Either this thing is going down or I'm going down

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and a jack and a four,

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which is gonna bring up a very interesting question potentially.

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I could fail outright and then we don't have to worry about it.

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No, I got a six, so I'm in shadow.

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So the way, the way that the rules read is once you have achieved four

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fatigue, you have to return back to the office, the librarian's office.

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But that four also allowed me to accomplish this challenge.

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So I've beat my complication, but I've hit my max fatigue.

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So

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we are going to ask the Oracle, because this does have an Oracle in it.

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And for the Oracle, if you think the answer is likely a

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yes, you would roll plus two.

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If it is unlikely you would roll zero plus zero, otherwise plus one.

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So I think it is about 50 50 that I would've been able to grab the

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document before running away as this was correct, the hectic chase.

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As I try to, as I try to get this thing towards some blank documents so that.

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It would not be empowered by any of the, any of the words.

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Or at least some silly documents, you know, because again, this

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is a room that's never used.

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The nothing in here is read.

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So it feels very much like this also would've ended up as storage

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for some random stuff, and I'm just kind of chucking those books

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at it, but, I'm getting tired.

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This thing is disgusting.

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I am slithering way too close to the warp powers for U 40 K fans out there,

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so right as I convinced this thing to leave, I also have to leave.

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But am I able to get the document yes or no?

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And again, we're gonna roll plus one against a two and a one.

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So I really think that I got it and I rolled a six.

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So yes, I was able to grab the document before I left.

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But that's it for tonight.

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That is librarian's apprentice.

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So for the librarian's apprentice, I do.

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I like the setting.

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I like the, I like the feel and the very whimsical asset of it.

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Now the gameplay.

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The gameplay.

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It is.

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It is a fire lights game.

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Fire lights by.

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The Firelight system is created by Rene-Pier and Rene-Pier, I love your work.

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Forgive me for not pronouncing the rest of your name cuz I cannot

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do the rest of your last name.

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But Fire Lights is a great system.

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This is, again, this is the second game we've played in that system.

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The first one being Queen Less, which really fun system.

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Highly enjoy, highly enjoy the system.

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And I think this does, I think that the librarian's

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apprentice uses the system well.

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It definitely makes sense that a librarian would not be doing

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like physical combat or something like that wouldn't be

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necessarily be getting in a fight.

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So the fatigue system versus this game, I think.

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Works out really well.

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And again, I love the librarian aesthetic.

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I love the searching dusty tomes in order to find lost or forgotten knowledge.

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That's all great.

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The layout of the book, look.

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So it is a, it is a trifold pamphlet.

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It is done as a trifold pamphlet.

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Which is fine if you are printing it.

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If you are not printing it and you are reading it off of your computer,

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then the problem you always have with trifolds is page one has the first

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thing that you would read Then, The last two things that you would read,

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and then page two or page two would have the bulk of everything else, but

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then you have to go back to page one to finish up on the rules and everything.

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Luckily all said and done, this would come this comes out to two pages

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if you actually printed it front to back four pages total for the pdf.

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But yeah, I kind of wish that.

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I kind of wish that they had like a straight PDF book flavor, you

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know, where everything was in order.

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Like I get it.

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This is a minor gripe.

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That's really my biggest gripe is that.

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You know, it doesn't, it doesn't do well on the computer, you

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know, and all my stuff is digital.

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I do everything digitally.

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So it's annoying for me.

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And if that's gonna be my biggest complaint with this

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game, then, you know, that's it.

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But no, like I said great.

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Feel great, feel to the game.

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Great feel to the way everything that works.

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I really enjoy, I really enjoy just the searching and the exploration aspect.

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And fire lights is definitely a great system if you're trying to do something

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exploration based and, you know, if you're just trying to play an a exploration game.

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I highly recommend this.

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I highly recommend this, or Queen Less is another great one, another

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great one for exploration type games.

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But yeah, librarians Apprentice.

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Great game.

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Go check it out.

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You can find it on itch at bronsonlowe.itch.io/the-librarian-apprentice,

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as always, a link will be included in the show notes below, and then also something

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you may notice a little bit different.

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The show notes will only have the links to the game now, as we do have our own

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website up our own blog and website.

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So if you're looking for, if you're looking for this stuff

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actually spelled out like.

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We used to do well then go check out Black Dragon dungeon company.com, which

SteelStash:

is gonna be the best spot for you to find out about any of our past shows.

SteelStash:

I will be updating the.

SteelStash:

The backlog of games that we've done on there.

SteelStash:

It'll also be a great spot for finding out about our upcoming games

SteelStash:

and any type of lore or things that we develop for our systems here at

SteelStash:

the Black Dragon Dungeon Company.

SteelStash:

But go check out Librarians Apprentice.

SteelStash:

Go pick it up.

SteelStash:

It is only $5.

SteelStash:

And if you do get it, remember let 'em know that steel stash sent you.

SteelStash:

And remember, I mustache y'all to stay Awesome.

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About the Podcast

Lonely TTRPG
A Solo Play Podcast
Lonely TTRPG is a show where I play and review solo TTRPGs.

Every other week, we play another solo TTRPG from across the indie community.

So join us as we roll, draw, and journal our way through some fantastic games.

About your host

Profile picture for John Stum

John Stum

Black Dragon Dungeon Company is a TTRPG podcast. We do weekly actual play podcasts and bi-weekly discussion podcasts where we talk about certain things about the TTRPG world.

You can reach us at blackdragondungeoncompany@gmail.com or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bddc_pod