#winter in hieron is Good i love these two so much

[swordbreakerz]

friendship is when u are so mean to eachother in fun stupid ways

[wanderingandfound]

Okay so I finished Autumn in Hieron. Loved the way that things ended up, 100% intrigued with the way Boat Party turned out, it was like listening to an out of control roller coaster. Apart from that one episode where somebody's audio was kind of missing entirely and then just kind of all at once (I still cannot consistently tell Andrew and Art apart but I think it was one of them) it was very listenable. Love Austin's approach to world building "are they undead pirates?" "Well they are now"

I love Autumn so much. That moment when Austin decided sure, they're undead pirates, let me tweak my plans, was the moment I decided that I also wanted to try playing ttrpgs instead of just listening to them.

Question is, where to now? I'm currently listening to Night Vale for a bit like I usually do between narrative arcs, but I'm not sure what FatT to try next

Okay so I would recommend going with one of these two options:

1. Chronological by the real world: COUNTER/Weight

The second season of Friends at the Table is a sci-fi season that ended up being the distant origins of all their future sci-fi seasons (so far). It's one of their shorter seasons, in part because there's only one "adventuring party" and the other half of the crew do galaxy fleshing out episodes. Characters included Aria Joie — "what if Han Solo used to be Beyoncé?" — and AuDy, a parking robot that no longer parks cars and refuses to connect to the internet.

2. Stay in Hieron: Marielda

Marielda is a mini-season that's technically a prequel to Hieron and explains some stuff about Samot and Samothes. The first two episodes are a fun game of The Quiet Year to build the city of Marielda, and then the rest of it uses Blades in the Dark to follow a team of intellectual thieves.

2.1 Mini-Onion version: Winter in Hieron interrupted by the Ultimate Marielda

Okay so in 2021 a group of us listened to all the mainfeed podcast (excluding PARTIZAN) in a very layered way called the Onion, and at the center of the Onion was the Ultimate Marielda. Rather than listening to Marielda before Winter in Hieron, this listening order has the story revealed to the listener at the same time as the story is revealed to the characters. While this was very fun, I cannot in good conscious recommend it to someone listening for the first time. It makes listening to Winter confusing at times because the cast knows, and expects the audience to know, about the events that unfurl during Marielda. But you should know that it exists.

For both options 1 and 2 you don't need to worry about confusing Art and Andrew because they're mostly not together, the exceptions being COUNTER/Weight's original worldbuilding episode (optional), the holiday special, and the finale.

[waveridden]

hi!!! thank you SO much this ik this is a lot:

- marielda is currently my frontrunner for a starting season bc a) that’s what every post i’ve seen has suggested and b) i have a mild obsession w heists. however one of the main draws of this show for me is leftist sf/f, and i’ve seen partizan listed as the show’s “sharpest politics.” are those elements a major part of marielda/seasons of hieron? in general, do u have a favorite starting point / season? (played the first minute, not at all bothered by autumn’s audio, and if anything an editing pace change i’ve seen mentioned would be more likely to get to me)

- assuming i go with marielda as my starting point for the backlog, is it close enough to autumn in hieron you’d reccommend just going straight to that so it Hits Better, or is jumping around campaigns (eg marielda -> COUNTER/weight -> autumn -> twilight mirage) decent?

- are boat party and ice party interconnected? the carrd says you can go in release order or listen to either of them separately, but would u actually reccommend doing that?

- if i decide on the sci fi campaigns instead of marielda, are c/w twilight mirage and partizan separate enough to actually serve as standalones? even if they are, is it a good idea to jump around? similarly, i’ve seen mixed opinions on listening to road to partizan before partizan, thoughts?

ooh GREAT questions! once again f@tt fans feel free to hop into the replies and weigh in but here are my takes

i started with marielda, because it’s the shortest and i also love heists! the leftist politics are present throughout - hieron is critiquing different things than the sci-fi seasons, but those criticisms are still very much present and plot-relevant. partizan is the sharpest or at the very least the most overt, but every season is incredibly pointed.

i started with marielda and didn’t have a problem, but i have heard from friends that if you start with autumn, marielda hits harder because of certain plot reveals, so i think either of those works! and there is an editing change of pace that kicks in midway through counter/weight, so marielda is a lot more tightly edited than autumn - if you would prefer to get the looser/slower stuff out of the way first, autumn’s a good starting place.

i would personally recommend doing all the fantasy (marielda/autumn in either order, winter, spring) and then all the sci-fi (counter/weight, twilight mirage, partizan) - that’s what i did and i enjoyed being able to follow the through-lines. but i know people also just go in straight release order (autumn, c/w, marielda, winter, tm, spring, pzn) and that works!

listening order is tricky because like... in theory everything functions as a standalone except for the continuity of autumn/winter/spring, but i don’t know that every season functions perfectly as a standalone. in particular i think twilight mirage might be rough, it’s my favorite but it’s very abstract in a way a lot of other seasons aren’t.

road to partizan is tricky because i enjoyed it but i wouldn’t say it’s necessary? it’s a series of one-shots bridging the gap between tm and pzn, but it’s mostly filler and they explain all the lasting plot-relevant bits within partizan proper. i think if you want to start with partizan, you should skip the road, but if you end up jumping around in any way, it’s really up to you. (and also even if you skip the entire rest of the road, i wholeheartedly recommend both the game of dialect and the game of ech0, two of my favorite f@tt one-shots)

and as for boat party/ice party: autumn is not my area of expertise but i think either way works? i personally prefer just going straight in order with the back-and-forth between parties, but like, you do you

i hope this helps! please feel free to send me any follow-up questions!

[gurguliare]

Ok, ok, Hieron wrapup notes, pending epilogue

Hadrian: Strengths and problems of Hadrian’s arc are for me aptly summarized in the jump from 1) Hadrian eking out a moral victory of sorts over Samot and the gods at the not inconsiderable cost of taking judgment into his own hands one last time---it’s all well and good to talk about Hadrian being in no position to pass judgment, but then, he wasn’t with Jericho, either, and sending Samot to Aubade is not a neutral choice. Of course no neutral choice exists! and the important thing is he no longer considers himself a mere weapon in the hands of a higher justice, but a person making a decision, which (as it turns out) simplifies the decision exactly as much as being a weapon did back in the day.---to 2) Hadrian cracking a joke about how, if his wife and child were hurt, of course he would pursue Samot to hell and back. Hadrian the family man exists, conflict-free, on a planet of eyewatering sentimentalism. I don’t really understand why. It has something to do with how they chose to handle Hadrian’s “redemption” or anyway recuperation as a character capable of normal communal life, after what I guess we’re now supposed to understand as his antisocial spiral in s1---laugh with me, it’s good to laugh---with his somber diagnosis of Samot as having spent Too Long Away From His Family also applying to his past self. Um. 

Of course Hadrian was never intended as a reliable narrator, but it’s hard for me to do much with that when his narrative isn’t countered by anything else in the text; we meet Benjamin and (less often) Rosana in other contexts, but we don’t get their view of Hadrian, much, and when we do it hews to a narrow pattern of concern and exasperation, as if Hadrian were only an aging action hero this close to claiming his retirement benefits. They lament his recklessness but seem not to notice the dogmatism or the listless doubts that replace it. (That’s with the fact that doubt, if anything, makes him a worse husband and father.) Despite her often-stressed importance to the surviving followers of the church, Rosana’s religious feelings are largely a cipher, and she’s almost never in a position to witness or comment on Hadrian’s most dramatic struggles with faith. So “family” and “faith” remain separate, unable to complicate or inform each other. It’s a shame, because I theoretically am really charmed by the story where a man’s incrementally degraded---not even broken!---faith is the mechanism of his salvation, and by the end he and Samot have swapped places, Samot incapable of not pursuing bitter, futile, barbarous justice and Hadrian very relaxed. The problem for me is that Hadrian ironically restored to his devout family through heresy is never treated as the strange accomplishment it is, and it’s not something he has to work for; I know we get Benjamin scenes this season, I understand the narrative function is to gesture to the very thing I’m describing, but I don’t mean “work for” in the sense of “carving out more time for family dinners.” I mean “acknowledging and accounting for Hadrian’s failings,” rather than glossing his escape almost as a matter of removing the temptation of belief, problem solved.  

Hella: I’m in a similar place with Hella; I like the skeleton of her complete arc, I don’t think it ever got the development it needed and it’s missing some key connections. I got a lot of joy from Ali affirming the thread of Hella’s relationship to Ordenna, from s1 avoidance to s2 voluntary exile to s3 final, reluctant return and assumption of responsibility. For me, it’s compelling to look back and realize that Hella essentially begins in a place that Hadrian only reaches circa Winter: having not rejected, but unobtrusively fled, a culture which failed to inculcate her completely with its horrible values---in part because she was too cowardly to adopt them---but that left her with a tangle of blind prejudice and bravado, the relief of freedom making her that much happier to perform “big tough Ordennan,” as long as she stayed far away from Ordenna. I love... of course I love Velas, in concept, I love and will always love FATT’s shitty compromise cities, cosmopolitan and democratic of necessity rather than out of any high ideal. Yes! We get it! I imprinted on Terry Pratchett, I don’t need to say it every time! But the fact that Hella identifies with Velas and befriends Calhoun in Velas and that they have this common experience of “shit, maybe the world is a bigger place than I realized, maybe it’s not actually a choice between tyranny and anarchy every time” ... makes me really verklempt. And in Nacre they both fall back on old habits and Velas barely seems real; for both of them, Nacre has an unpleasant tinge of “reality” asserting itself over a dream---for Calhoun, returning there is obviously something he’s always feared, but for Hella it’s the discovery that the Ordennan state was more right than she knew, that gods and magic exist, and aren’t just bogeymen used to keep Ordennans off the mainland; and, on a deeper level, that Ordenna’s narrow pride is a reaction to a far older and more arbitrary authority.

So she kills Calhoun---“If she’s going to, then why don’t I?” Escape is so unlikely, caught between Ordenna and Nacre, that helping others find it would be a frivolous proposition: the only person Hella hopes to save is Hella. Then she goes home to learn that Velas is also in mortal danger, that the whole world will soon be Ordenna (and Nacre.) She’s ensured it. No wonder her nihilism at the start of Winter is much more marked, and she finally starts to accept that escape isn’t there for the seizing, that there isn’t an outside.

And then she... goes to Aubade?

This is where it starts to break down for me, as with Hadrian and his family. In theory, I get why actually showing Hella what it means to live away from savage god-eat-god imperialism gives her the courage and vision to face Hieron head-on. I think the line about “surrounding herself with clever people” is great and gets at the point that her education, her personal growth, are not meaningless just because they’re the product of artificial intervention, fantastical prosthesis. But, I dunno, in execution it’s so spotty. Part of it is that Adelaide has to come to her senses at the same time, but that process happens very quietly and never gets free of Hella’s orbit---the scene where she asks Hella for a reason to leave Aubade is good, but comes at the price of other scenes in which we see them, for example, negotiate the terms of Adularia’s existence together. Hella as Death’s Servant reads too much as "running Adelaide’s errands,” not enough as her ardent champion, and I’m not saying that every Ali character has to become a zealot before they’re done for me to be satisfied, but hey! If this is you redeeming Nacre and its ideals from the start of the show, then redeem those things! And give Hella the space for her return to Ordenna to feel like atonement, rather than “one last job”... it’s such a good atonement, is the thing, the only possible one, because for all that she’s changed, Ordenna is still the one place where you can imagine Hella Varal having something to teach people. 

Probably the solution to this would involve triangulating with the sentience of the Anchor; since Ordenna got the plans from Nacre, Adelaide should take partial responsibility in the cleanup there, as well, and not only in releasing Hieron from the curse. Keep the two plots in conversation to the end. But I’m not sure what exactly that would have looked like; something with Hella’s new body, maybe. 

Fantasmo: I love Nick. Thanks to Nick for half-assedly speedrunning Fantasmo through Fourteen’s bit of “in lieu of character development, what if: uplifting character regression?” I cracked the fuck up at him using “Dominate” solely to make Samot captive audience. Audience... to the world’s most insipid power-of-heart lecture, which was honestly very sweet as an obvious truth Fantasmo once knew, or knew well enough to mouth. I did love all the grace notes about the Last University in the finale, still nameless, still a refuge.  

[tangleofgold]

9, 14, 15, 22

thanks carly!! (thank you for asking 14 and 15 it made me smile)

9. favorite track from the soundtrack?

um so i totally can’t choose so here’s a bunch i guess? i really like these ones:

autumn in hieron : autumn not winter, eve’s light parade 

counterweight: the sermon of sister rust , the one that’s in morse code (because i still viscerally remember hearing it for the first time and being Absolutely Terrified), cassander times berenice (because who doesn’t love to be sad)

marielda: the killing of the king-god samothes by the traitor prince maelgwyn, i have seen the stars (the first one i heard! it made me want to listen to the show)

winter in hieron: red jack, there is a path, samol, the boat, the warmth of love 

twilight mirage: on sleep detachment, mr. magnificent and elegy, the world without end, the doyenne describes the canvas (those three notes!), crystal palace, the reveries, an anchor, falling asleep/waking up

spring in hieron: the last university, on a white horse, tell me, and ace! 

ok that was too many. look i really love them all tbh and i can’t decide on even a favorite from each season. there’s literally only two from autumn and they’re both on here.

oh also i really like the cost of greed and when justice is done from bluff city!

14. at what point did you realize you liked the show?

i listened to everything in order and it was around the autumn holiday special that i really fell in love with it- i remember i’d been slowly working my way through the beginning of autumn and i liked it, but it didn’t really hit me until that first holiday special. i remember i got to that part and listened to the whole holiday special in one day while i reorganized my room and it was just So Good and i was like yes. i love this podcast.

15. which character’s arc do you find most satisfying?

I think probably Hella? I’m really proud of how much she’s grown over the course of all the seasons, and i love her a lot. i know the season’s not done yet but i’m really proud of her and am excited to see what the finale has in store for her. also i’m really happy that she has two hands! and is using them both!

22. favorite weird friends at the table name?

probably a tie between waltz tango (cache) and fourteen fifteen!

ask me friends at the table questions!

[timetot]

Friends at the Table: Winter in Hieron Ep. 19

In which Fero loses his goddamn mind thanks to Orcish culture shock.

Welcome to the New Archives, halfling.

JACK (as Lem): You need bedding or beds?

AUSTIN (as Porter): Both. Also bets, also. If you have any bets to make, I would love to take a bet. KEITH (as Fero): What're you taking bets on? AUSTIN (as Porter): What are you--what are you putting a bet on? KEITH (as Fero): What is there to put a bet on? AUSTIN (as Porter): Literally everything. Welcome to the Archives, halfling. KEITH (as Fero): Um... So what's the odds on sun going down? AUSTIN (as Porter): They're split right now, funny story. KEITH (as Fero): Okay? AUSTIN (as Porter): It's two to one, the uh, no two to--three to two. Three to two.

AUSTIN: He's doing this correction himself.

AUSTIN (as Porter): Three to two, that it will not go down. KEITH (as Fero): All right. Fifty on not going down. AUSTIN (as Porter): Fifty? KEITH (as Fero): Fifty. AUSTIN (as Porter): All right, I'll take the bet.

KEITH (as Fero): All right.

AUSTIN (as Porter): Who are you betting with?

KEITH (as Fero): What d'you mean? I've never--I don't like this. I don't go here. I don't--

AUSTIN (as Porter): Okay. I need a bet. I don't need you to bet me.

KEITH (as Fero): (laughing) Wait, so you need a, you need the other party?

AUSTIN (as Porter): No, I need the bet. I need you to make a bet, and then I'll take the bet.

KEITH (as Fero): Wait! You need me to invent a thing to bet on? AUSTIN (as Porter): No, you can bet with him, you can bet with whoever you want, I just need there to be a bet, and then I'll take the bet and add it to the Archive. KEITH (as Fero): The bet is the--the bet is that I don't think the sun will go down, with the money I have! AUSTIN (as Porter): That's not how it works. JACK (as Lem): Who are you betting! Bet me. Or bet him. KEITH (as Fero): I'm betting all the people that also bet on this! That's how a bet works! AUSTIN (as Porter): That's not how--no, that's now how it works. JACK (as Lem): That's not how it works. ANDI (as Ephrim): Two coins. KEITH (as Fero): What are you talk-- JACK (as Lem): Ephrim. All right. Ephrim, Silver Hand. ANDI (as Ephrim): Yep. Two coins on the sun going down-- KEITH (as Fero): Two coins? ANDI (as Ephrim): Which one were you betting on? Fero? The one that Fero's not betting on, two coins on the other one. KEITH (as Fero): I'm betting--but I'm betting fifty! I'm not gonna give--I'm not--you have to-- ANDI (as Ephrim): I gave away all my money like, a few hours ago! I've got not as much as that! KEITH (as Fero): But that's not how--that's not how three to two works! ANDI (as Ephrim): Well... make it less! JACK (as Lem): I think you might have to leave without the bet, but I can give you the bed. AUSTIN (as Porter): I'll take the bed. JACK (as Lem): All right.

AUSTIN: And he like takes out a wrench and starts like wrenching the sockets and removing things, and…

JACK (as Lem): It's a good bed. AUSTIN (as Porter): It's a good one! KEITH (as Fero): Can I--are you--can I just give you some advice? About the bet thing? If everybody that bets all bets together, then you don't have to have a second person to bet with. AUSTIN (as Porter): It's not--you don't-- JACK (as Lem): He's new--he doesn't--it's okay. AUSTIN (as Porter): I know, this happens every time we get guests. ANDI (as Ephrim): So... we wanted two new beds... and now we have no beds. AUSTIN (as Porter): Have a great night!

AUSTIN: Door. Lights.

KEITH: Hey, I'm leaving. I'm--bye. I'm also gone.

[thanks to rhys for the transcript!]

[featherquillpen]

Canon Polyamory Recs

For this month’s Polyshipping Day, I thought I might rec some canons that have canon polyships. I don’t just mean strong subtext, or things that could be interpreted as poly, but actual explicit nonmonogamous relationships. I love non-canon polyships as much as the next person but I thought some folks might like to try out some canon ones!

The Magicians on SyFy

This has the best polyamory rep I’ve seen on television, period. The Magicians is a show about students at magic grad school. It started out with minor characters, showing us one student’s parents in a triad relationship with another magician. Then it brought polyamory into the foreground with a main character, Eliot, who is a king in an alternate reality where it is custom for royals to have both a husband and a wife. The show’s exploration of Eliot’s complicated emotional life is an absolute delight to watch.

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

This is one of the best fantasy book series of all time, in my opinion. It’s an epic set in a secondary world where a brutally oppressed class of geomancers are the only buffer against a tectonically active planet hostile to life. One of these geomancers, Syenite, and her friend and mentor Alabaster, enter into a long-term V relationship with a charming pirate named Innon (who is the hinge of the V.) I love the books’ loving, tender depiction of the metamour relationship between Syenite and Alabaster, who are so important to each other, and united by their love for the same man.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Rosemary, a human woman from Mars, and Sissix, a female lizard alien called an Aandrisk, end up in a committed open relationship by the end of the book. Aandrisks as a species are non-monogamous by default, and an important part of their relationship is Rosemary accepting that Sissix does not love her any less because she goes off to join Aandrisk orgies sometimes. Their romance is very sweet.

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Vorkosigan Saga is an epic space opera centered on Barrayar, a planet that was cut off from the galaxy and regressed technologically, and was recently reintegrated into the galactic fold. It begins with a dramatic romance between Aral, a Barrayaran, and Cordelia, who basically comes from Space California. In the latest installment of the series, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, we learn that Aral and Cordelia were secretly in a committed V relationship (with Aral as the hinge) with Oliver Jole, Aral’s secretary. I liked how this newest book explores the metamour relationship between Cordelia and Oliver.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany

This book is centered around an epic romance between two men from different planets and radically different backgrounds. Korga is an ex-slave who went through hell to get where he is in life, while Marq is wealthy, respectable, and surrounded by a family that loves him. They end up in a committed open relationship. There is a scene where they go to a public bathhouse together and fuck a dragon. I don’t know what else you want from a book, honestly.

The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells

These books explore a culture of dragon-people who live in colonies much like social insects. The worldbuilding is very interesting. In this culture, polyamory is normalized, and the main character is in a committed relationship with the queen of his dragon-hive, and later on a lower-ranked man of his hive as well.

The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang

Set in a fantastical historical China, this book is centered on Sanao Mokoya, a magician on the run from her mother’s tyrannical regime. She is in an open marriage with a monk named Thennjay, and over the course of the book she falls in love with a mysterious naga-rider, who goes only by Rider, who she isn’t sure she can trust. Mokoya and Thennjay have a difficult marriage, but for reasons that have nothing to do with Mokoya’s lover. This book and its companion novel The Black Tides of Heaven are great new releases.

Edits: 21 June 2019

First of all, I want to rescind or at the very least qualify my rec of The Magicians; after I made this post, the show got deep into some toxic Bury Your Gays bullshit, and I can’t in good conscience fully recommend it anymore.

I also want to add some new recs.

Sense8 on Netflix

Definitely now the best polyamorous rep on television. It has not one, but two, canon polyamorous triads. Both of them are extremely sweet and good. 

Friends at the Table: Seasons of Hieron (podcast)

Friends at the Table is an actual play podcast where each season they tell a beautiful story by playing indie tabletop RPGs. One of their story arcs, Seasons of Hieron (consisting of Autumn in Hieron, Marielda, Winter in Hieron, and Spring in Hieron) now has an absolutely beautiful slow burn polyamorous V relationship between three women. 

Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton

A new YA fantasy book, set in a fairytale village on the edge of a deep, dark, terrifying forest, to which they regularly sacrifice boys to maintain their prosperity and harmony with the land. The daughter of the village witch gets into a polyamorous triad with two boys as they discover the forest’s dark secrets.

The Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee

I should be upfront that much of the polyamory in this series is not remotely happy or healthy, but deeply twisted, including incest and dubious consent. But whether it’s the two bloodthirsty gay immortals who share beautiful helpless young men over the centuries, or the boss general lady who just loves her wives a lot, polyamory is ubiquitous and deeply normalized in the fictional space fantasy society of the Machineries of Empire series. 

[transfemmbeatrice]

Where should I start listening to Friends at the Table?

A short novella by me

Friends at the Table is one of the best actual play podcasts out there and you should listen to it because they tell amazing stories with both diverse characters and a diverse cast (the GM is a queer black man and almost everyone at the table is some flavor of queer). They put character development and good storytelling at the forefront while creating incredible and complex worlds to play in. They make you laugh, cry, and laugh so hard you cry (and also give you chills on occasion) and I genuinely cannot recommend them highly enough. Whether you like a good story, characters to fall in love with, learning new ttrpg mechanics, or listening to friends have a good time together, FatT is for you.

FatT also has an enormous backlog that can make it hard to dive in so here is a handy guide for when you want to listen don’t know where tf to begin.

The Friends have provided some resources for this: there is a flowchart that gives you the quick and dirty deets (though it hasn’t been updated to reflect their current season) and also Austin made a 20 minute ep of him explaining the show and stuff and put it at the beginning of the podcast feed which could also be helpful (which I haven’t actually listened to bc they put it out after I was already deep into the show)...but this is my over detailed take.

There are currently 4 seasons of FatT. In order: Autumn in Hieron, Counter/Weight, Marielda/Winter in Hieron, and Twilight Mirage. Marielda is a mini season that takes place in the Hieron universe but before the Hieron seasons; Counterweight and Twilight Mirage are both standalone but do take place in the same universe, tens or hundreds of thousands of years apart. 

Twilight Mirage is approaching its endpoint and will be followed by Spring in Hieron which should be the last Hieron season. There are pros and cons for starting with any of these seasons so depending on your taste and preferences you can take your pick!

(Also, each new season begins with an Episode 00 which is just the friends discussing the setting and pitching characters. It’s not required listening and they’re pretty long so you can skip them if you want but for people like me who live for worldbuilding and behind the scenes, they’re great prefaces to each season!)

Autumn in Hieron: The very beginning! This is where I started because I’m a hardcore chronological completionist. There is definitely something very fun and satisfying about watching them develop over the past 4 years, in confidence and skill and in production quality! They’ve been amazing since the beginning but it only gets better. 

However, because it’s early, the audio quality is not great, so if that’s an issue for you, this probably isn’t your best starting point. Some extremely good shit goes down in this game and I highly recommend listening to it if you can parse the bad audio. Also, starting at episode 5, they split into two smaller groups and the audio improves, so if you want to start here but find the sound unbearable at the start, you can try skipping to here to see if it works better for you! The first few episodes are just a mini quest and it’s definitely fun but not deeply plot relevant so you’ll be fine to skip it. This is also a season potentially worth returning to even if you don’t start here because as I said, it’s good, and the bad audio might be more listenable once you know the players’ voices better. But if you absolutely can’t, no worries! They recap this season at the beginning of Winter in Hieron so if you don’t listen to it you won’t be lost as the story continues!

Hieron is a high fantasy setting in what Austin describes as the post-post-apocalypse. It’s been long enough that they’re past just surviving and have rebuilt tons but it’s still a wild world out there, and no one alive really remembers what apocalyptic event happened, but they all know something bad went down. Over the two (and a half, counting Marielda) seasons they’ve done they have really built out the world. It explores a lot about the concepts of divinity and entropy and so much more. I think Hieron is a great place to start because fantasy is the usual setting for actual play podcasts so it’s a familiar touchstone. And also just, really fucking good.

Counter/Weight: Welcome to SPACE. The second season of FatT is a good starting point because it’s self contained--it’s longer than the Hieron seasons but when you reach the finale, you’ve gotten the whole story. It starts off a little slow as they adjust to a new system and new characters for the first time...but there are some hilarious bits in those first couple of missions that I love. Then they switch systems again to something that fits more what they are doing and things pick up from there. 

The “ground” game (the majority of the episodes with characters going on adventures as usual) is interspersed with the “faction” game--Austin and two other players not in the other half of the game zoom out and use mechanics and roleplaying to decide what the big factions/corporations/etc are doing around the sector, and eventually we see these events trickle down to effect the player characters in the other half of the game. These are a bit slow, especially when they first start, but I recommend listening to them because it’s cool to see how things are moving around on a more macro scale than one little crew of fixers, and it really informs the world they’re operating in. It’s not strictly necessary if you really find these episodes untenable, but you’ll definitely be able to follow along better if you’ve heard them. Also, around the 3rd or so faction game session, they cut down the number of factions significantly so it goes a lot smoother. I’ll also put in here that Counterweight is probably my favorite season of the show at least thus far even though I wasn’t sure I would like it at all when I first started it, for what that’s worth.

Counter/Weight is a cyberpunk/scifi setting somewhere in the Milky Way. It is set less than a decade after a war in which two rival powers united in an uneasy alliance to drive back an Empire. They succeeded, but now things have settled into a good old fashioned cold war. There are lots of robots and mechs and they use the cyberpunk genre to explore labor and capitalism and feeling small and helpless in the face of such massive, powerful corruption. Or, sadness and robots in space. (Also, literally none of the PCs ended up being cishet.)

Marielda: Marielda is a mini season they did right before Winter in Hieron. Set in Hieron before the events of the other seasons, it provides some context to the world. It’s also fucking delightful. This is probably the most recommended starting point for FatT because it’s short, has high production quality, and some of their best work. It really encapsulates what this show is so if you’re unsure if this is the podcast for you, this is a great starting point. 

Since it takes place long before Autumn in Hieron, you don’t need to have listened to it to follow along; but I do find it somewhat helpful because there are callbacks to the events of that season as they show how some of the things they encountered then came to be in the first place. Marielda (and Winter in Hieron) were made with new listeners in mind, so Autumn definitely isn’t required.

Marielda is of course also high fantasy, but it has a tinge of steampunk too because this island has more technology for....reasons that will be revealed as you listen. The only train in Hieron is there, and the crew stages a heist on it, and it’s amazing. Marielda has two parts--the first couple episodes are some of the players playing The Quiet Year, a collaborative mapdrawing game, to build this city. Then the other players played a few missions in Blades in the Dark as scoundrels who steal information to sell to the highest bidder. Their shenanigans are hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking and I’ve relistened to it so many times.

Winter in Hieron: Hieron season two of three! Winter begins with two episodes recapping the events of Autumn in Hieron, so if you skipped Autumn you can listen to them and be good to go, and if you didn’t...you can skip the recaps! (Unless maybe you listened to Counterweight in between and you need a refresher). There are two new PCs in Winter because Andi and Janine joined between Autumn and this season, and they only make Hieron better.

This season is a little heavier than Autumn because it’s Winter and...Winter is usually darker than Autumn. I’m in the middle of relistening to it now, though, and it’s still incredible the second time through and a great starting point. I would not recommend starting with Winter without listening to Marielda first, partly because Marielda is so good, but also because Marielda informs so much of what happens in Winter. 

Since Twilight Mirage is getting close to finishing up (as of writing this, anyway) if being Current In The Fandom is something that’s important to you, I’d start with Hieron (whether that be Autumn or Marielda/Winter). After Twilight Mirage wraps up, they are reportedly planning to return to Hieron for its final season--Spring, so if you start catching up now you can be ready! I don’t know for sure yet but so much has happened at this point that I find it hard to imagine that they’ll do a recap before Spring that lets you jump in there very easily. I could be proven wrong but even if I am....I don’t recommend it. You’ll miss too much Seasons of Hieron is a joy to listen to.

Twilight Mirage: The current season! Usually I say to start here if you find the backlog intimidating--it’s current and you can jump in to what’s happening now and get to the rest when you feel ready. And that’s still somewhat true, but Twilight Mirage has gotten pretty long so it’s potentially still intimidating? And they have said they’re nearing the endgame, but I have no idea if that means weeks or months. But regardless, it’s still less to get through than starting further back, and it is a standalone season so it’s a great starting place!

Twilight Mirage is another game in space. It is set in the same universe as Counterweight, and there are some callbacks to it, but it’s set far in the future from the events of that season and was intentionally made so that people who hadn’t heard Counterweight could listen fine. It’s more like easter eggs than important backstory.

The premise is a dying utopia: a massive fleet that has slowly been whittled down, still home to millions of people, but they’re starting to look for somewhere to hopefully colonize. This game does a great job of questioning what a utopia would look like--what does prison look like in a utopia? how do we treat synthetic beings?--and exploring the themes of self/identity and colonization and so much more. It’s the most philosophical FatT season to date but the narrative is also great and stands on its own--you can engage at whatever level you want. (I, for instance, don’t get a lot of the philosophy referenced, but I’m still deeply enjoying it because it’s a great story and I love all the characters!) So much shit happens to alter the original premise and it’s fascinating to see the characters have to adapt to all these evolving circumstances and question their values as they themselves also change. Also, lots of robots and mechs and aliens and shit. One of the PCs is just a cat person. One of the PCs is a downloadable hitman who is losing their memory every time they die and get downloaded into a new body. It’s A Good Season, they friends are extra af (more than usual, even) and it’s a Delight.

And that’s my answer to the age old question, where do I start listening to Friends at the Table?, answered in more detail than anyone ever wanted. If you have any questions or anything feel free to shoot me an ask or a message, I’m literally always here to talk about FatT!

[sleepymarmot]

COUNTER/Weight liveblog, part 2

Episodes 23-40

Keith hasn't listened to the previous episode and Austin & Ali are cackling like “You got a big storm coming” lmao

…Look I understand the idea of making Tea an ally after the players and audience got to know her in the Kingdom game but the excuse is really thin

“A gift for his little brother” You guys are really bad at this gender neutrality thing huh

AuDy talking to Orth makes my head spin a bit now

Oh so Addax is the leader of the Angels? The person who has been watching the Chime from the shadows = the group that has been spying on them? Okay, I now feel dumb for not putting this together myself.

Wait I lost track again. Who were Jacq & Jill working for initially that gave them access to those immortality tanks? Iirc it was Odamas who had that technology and then gave Horizon access to it while imposing strict rules on them during the merge? So why does Jacqui get less fun assignments now if she was a part of the winning faction, not the losing one?

Oh cool, so Jamil wanted to hand over the virus to the Angels because they're both just from the Rapid Evening?

“A bard notices their enemy's heart isn't in the fight, so they stop fighting, fall in love” is such a specific thing. How the hell did it happen twice on the same show. Is this the new big gay trope now

Heeeey could you stop punching me in the stomach with intros

So, Jacqui was working for Horizon, which in turn was given this job by Petrichor? Still doesn't answer my question…

Do I have to mentally rewrite the entire holiday special so that in every scene on the Kingdom Come everyone is floating in zero gravity all the time?! I'm sorry but this makes no fucking sense!

The doppelganger thing started really creepy but now it just makes my head spin! Please stop it with the names, I'm too easily confused, especially with a show that has a record of passing characters back and forth between the GM and the players!

Re: that whole thing: aaaaAAAAA???

I don't understand what Austin and Jack are doing but it's pretty magical

God, the Aria/Jacqui scene is so… tender? Idk. Austin's gentle “PC's love interest” voice has murdered me again. I'm not sold on Jacqui by herself as a character but on the feelings between the two? Definitely. (Though I still wonder about Aria’s heroism vs Jacqui’s disregard for life. That’s a biiig value clash)

Okay, this was all very unsettling and I still understand so little

I really love that Sokrates' refusal to make that one nameless person take the fall, which seemed (at least to me) kinda stubborn and shortsighted, turned into a key moment, both because it demonstrates integrity, and now because that person becomes an actual NPC as an important asset in their faction

I love how the idea of moving Rigour to September comes up and everyone starts screaming and I do too! They sure love leaving horrifying surprises for the ground team to stumble upon lol

Is it too callous and unwise of me to react to Ibex overthrowing the Hands of Grace as “good riddance”?

Maryland's letter has strong Alyosha/Arrell vibes

I love the “reluctant alliance with an antagonist” trope and was hoping it'd happen with Ibex so I'm happy! Also in one of the early episodes Austin mentioned the Anders-Justice storyline and I'm glad to hear him finally deliver. (There was stuff about the pilot/Candidate->Divine influence with Order, but not about the other way around or fusion, like with Vengeance)

Okay thankfully things are clearer now (I'm reeeally glad I wasn't spoiled on this) but I still have so many questions. How were LD made in the first place? Why and how did they hide in/turn themselves into a simple robot? What are they – just software, like Righteousness, or is there some Divine hardware core inside the normal Automated Dynamics unit that nobody has noticed somehow, or is the hardware in a remote location they access through the mesh? Did Ibex know AuDy was LD the whole time – he didn't act very surprised? Why didn't Ibex rescue his brother, did he die really quickly? How will Mako be able to fog without Righteousness? Shouldn't AuDy be gamebreakingly powerful now? How and why do LD count as two Divines but have a single consciousness, are they like Garnet?

Lazer Ted feels like a fucking TAZ character lmao

The comic relief was welcome but at the same time I'm continuously like “What is AuDy thinking and feeling. Why are they acting like nothing happened. Where's the existential crisis. How do you realize you're a pair of ancient gods and just proceed with your life? Are they so impenetrable on purpose because they're a robot”. Like, it was chilling when they were suddenly chatting with Ibex like old friends, and now it's chilling that they're acting just in the early episodes.

I'm glad the robot incident made everyone realize it might be unwise to put the two charming extraverts in the same half of the party lol

Looks like they decided to permanently switch back to “he” for Cass… Probably for the best.

Jack keeps excitedly jumping at every opportunity for creepiness™. God, AuDy makes so much more sense as his character now after the Reveal

Is September just fucking Solaris now?

I think this is the first time I'm not excited to hear a faction game episode because I really didn't expect it at this point in the story. My reaction was “Wait what? Are you telling me everyone gets stuck on September waiting out that storm for a whole month?! I wanted to hear what that cliffhanger led to!” Idk, the September arc was generally kind of a let down after the intensity of the episodes leading up to it, and this further deflates the tension.

Speaking of tension and letdowns, I just have to complain… It's really disappointing when the show sets up really big dramatic hooks and then does practically nothing with them! I complained about Addax and Cass in the previous post and that point still stands. Case two: Mako and Righteousness/Voice. It's set up in a faction episode, and in the immediately following arc Mako indeed is in danger from something inside his own head, but it's a completely unrelated thing! At the end of the arc he finally finds out, but the threat immediately gets nullified with no consequences – no self-doubt or identity crisis, no diminished abilities in terms of game mechanics. Case three: Ibex himself. Out of the reasons the Kingdom game is what it is, the excuse for it happening in-universe was to give more details on Ibex, and at least half of it featured a collective effort to make him as central to the story and as threatening as possible. But as soon as that flashback ends, so, counterintuitively, does the role of Ibex as an active antagonist to the Chime -- the role which was literally just supposed to begin in earnest. So by this point I can barely recall why we were all so intimidated by this guy in the first place. I'm more like “This is a useful ally to have”. This is what I don't like about the world-ending threats like Rigor: all other interesting conflicts fade in their face.

Dang, I thought Isurus was a cooler name than Enhydra!

Sokrates, forced to shake Ibex's hand: *clenched fist meme*

Wait, I missed something, why is Rigor deep underground and has to dig itself out?

Okay, after the lore episode I'm also confused how Rigor ended up underground on Ionias after it was blown up 20000 years ago in a completely different place

I'm very distressed by the idea of Hieron as a future popular franchise!! No, it's supposed to be real when these people are talking about it!! Oh wait a fucking second, does this mean Jace's Panther was a deliberate reference in-universe?? Like you're fighting in a real serious terrible war and you model a giant war machine after, like, a thestral from the fucking Harry Potter and just call it “Thestral”??!

No, no, wait, do tell me who Cass and AuDy would cosplay!

Oh no, Rigour wants to talk to Voice(?), great

Hey Cass, your Hadrian is showing??

Speaking of Hadrian, I was caught off guard by description of Tower as a “hot young Hadrian”, for some reason Hadrian never struck me as a character who's supposed to be exceptionally attractive. But then again, I imagined him as very young until that letter to Hella, and then I imagined Cass as a young adult until I did the math, so I might just be bad at visualising Art's characters lol.

Austin is so generous and unsubtle about throwing hot gay NPCs right at the players. Too bad Mako doesn't sound as interested as Aria did.

I expected they'd find a room with one copy of everyone plugged into the mesh, that'd be even creepier. What's with the false memories though? This doesn't explain them.

So, how does this whole clone system work? How does time work? Why don't the real students like Tower or Maxine notice that there's a new guy who looks just like their friend, but doesn't know them – or, for that matter, why don't the other clones notice? Oh, maybe that's the purpose of the fake memory aura? So that Maritime-4 could continue right from where Maritime-3 left off?

When Cass saw Apokine's face I thought it meant that the humans had genetically engineered the Apostolosians and that's what “we made them look like us” meant, which would be two of my long-standing questions answering each other. And then it was just another giant mech.. :/

Wait, does Orth calling Cass “Apokine” mean that he pilots the mech now or that Sokrates died and Cass inherited his position?! I'm worried now…

I'm even more worried about Mako, because at first I of course reacted to the question about being in two places at once as “hah, Larry”, but it's probably the other thing, and on one hand that must mean that the rescue of clones was successful, but also that means that our Mako might be dead and the one in the intro is one of the clones… Considering that in the Winter post-mortem I caught Keith saying how emotional the C/w finale was for him before I started fast-forwarding in fear of spoilers, do I need to start mentally preparing to bury Mako already or what?

Speaking of spoilers… The farther I go, the less I understand the advice to skip Autumn. I thought that at least for C/w it wouldn't matter, given it's a whole different universe, but they keep referencing it, and then casually dropping major spoilers, and then referencing it again in a story-relevant way. (The Ordennan ships arrive on the screen as Rigor does, and the next episode is named “The Storm over September” and quotes Lem's poem in the description. That's really cool but I somehow feel vaguely irritated on behalf of my potential alternate self who skipped season 1.) I really hope they've grown more careful about this by now, because I'll probably not even begin Twilight Mirage by the time the next season starts, and I would really like to stay in the dark about the intense events they're all vague-tweeting about at the moment!

Why was AuDy alarmed by Voice's presence as “a” Divine accompanying Maxine? Shouldn't they be familiar with it already because of Mako? (And I don't want to even ask about the ontological difference/border between Righteousness and Voice. I'm tired and feel like a nitpicker. But just for the record, this still isn't clear.)

Well that's a sadder family reunion than I hoped for!

So AuDy does have a split personality to some degree?

Oh well. AuDy's got a fate worse than death: Liberty and Discovery, imprisoned indefinitely. Or devoured I guess, I didn't really get it. Great. Thanks. Fucking RIP I guess. Out of all ways I expected them to go, this wasn't one.

(By the way I still don't understand how the portal works. Where is this portal to? Why can't L&D fly out and take the slow way home, and why can't Rigor?)

There's still about ten minutes left in the episode and I don't understand how it isn't the finale. What's there to do for three more episodes now.

“With Rigor defeated so easily, so permanently, she thought” *Rigor screech*

Yeah, fuck Grace btw

Sounds like cultivating saplings is not a priority anymore for a certain someone… (Wait, btw, what happened to that patch/seed they left? Will it ever come back into play?)

“...Why they would put themselves into a body like yours? And I think, maybe, it's that they were curious about what it would be like for four years to feel like a long time” AAAAAA

Okay, things are better on September than it sounded initially, but still… Wtf's going to happen? Rigor repairs itself, takes over the survivors, takes off again? But what's the timeline on that? I genuinely have no idea wtf the finale is going to be about after this.

Oh, what happened to the clones btw? Did Larry manage to get them off the planet in time, despite the Minerva ships in orbit and, more importantly, Rigor? Or are they stuck on September, unable to continue reenacting the plot of Orphan Black?

From how it's been described in this episode, feels as if Liberty and Discovery are a candidate of AuDy… They didn't want a candidate but were curious to learn how it feels for the other side?

Paisley's dead-eyed, Tower's gone, and even Ibex, who is barely holding on himself, loses his ex… Everyone's love life takes a nosedive: the episode. At least Jacqui's okay… (And because of Jacqui, it was doubly sad and surprising to hear Aria still has feelings for Paisley…)

[makotrigs]

ahh @codeswitch you wrote so much im so happy adhdhsj

(under read more because it Got Long)

fero IS an unsortable asshole and i know this very well because he took me longer than anyone else to decide on. like, comically longer. every house is nothing like him so i eventually put him in slytherin cause thats where the assholes go, also hes pretty cunning and resourceful imo

i put ephrim in gryffindor because they're very passionate about a cause, like you said, but of course we all know Just How Well that passionate cause ended. theyre emotionally driven and brave to the point of being reckless, which isnt Exactly like ephrim but i believe thats one of his flaws for sure, like during the winter in hieron finale. gryffindors are also considered to be self-righteous, arrogant, and have a great disregard for rules which.. is very ephrim. that boy cannot get enough of himself. also remember when he had to make a library smile and he was gonna fucking draw a smile on it with chalk? that is such a gryffindor thing to do.

mako was definitely also hard to sort, keith cursed me with these very complicated characters. so for him i did slytherin because he is very clever and cunning even though hes a bit of a dumbass. the whole larry thing? thats very slytherin. he loves to deceive people because why not! also hes a spy?? and spying just seems very slytherin to me. slytherins are also very much a self-preservation house and idk i just feel like mako is always lookin out for himself first and foremost. then i also did hermes for him and.. deciding his godly parent was TOUGH but i ended up with hermes because hes the god of thieves, travel, boundaries, etc. and that gave me the same vibe slytherin did? hes also often portrayed as a trickster who would outwit people and as clever and cunning, like mako is. i could definitely see mako as the son of a bunch of different gods though, im not totally set on hermes, its just what i decided on in the end when i got tired of arguing with myself lmao. and, finally, sagittarius as his zodiac sign, partly because when i was doing my Zodiac Research and looked at sag i immediately thought "oh this is so fucking sokrates" but sokrates wasnt on the list so i went to mako instead because theyre pretty similar. sagittariuses are optimistic and honest, but can be TOO honest, wanting to speak their mind no matter how undiplomatic it is. theyre also not a fan of rules and dont like taking things seriously which is very mako. wow i wrote a lot here but listen, i love him.

I KNOW when i was doing audys i was like "but... theyre a robot they dont have parents... wait they ARE a god... WAIT THEYRE TWO GODS"

ME TOO thank u for giving me an excuse to talk about it too arhdjskks

mm u make a good point, i put him in gryff bc hes brave, short-tempered, and definitely reckless, but also.. he stole lance noble orchids gun.. what? three times? that is def some slytherin shit. also gryff points because hes just like.. a genuinely nice sweet guy? but slytherin points because he aint afraid to cut a bitch. im rlly on the fence about this one now!

[wanderingandfound]

Nicole help I have finished Sangfielle and I don't know where to go next FaTT-wise. Please share with me your wisdom.

Okay before I type a big wall of text, take this quiz here.

I've taken it twice and both times I was assigned Autumn in Hieron, which is in fact the season I started with back in 2017.

Why you should start with Autumn in Hieron:

It's the very beginning! Yes there will be a few in-jokes from their video game streaming days, but those are kept to a minimum. There's a scene in the first few episodes with a nice skeleton man that will be called back to throughout the show.

It's fantasy.

You will hear the moment Austin decides that yes, Keith is right, based on the wording of a letter these pirates should be undead. Time to change all the plans. This was probably the moment that got me interested in tabletop roleplaying games.

Boat Party. :)

Hey did you ever worry that if left unchecked you would care about Books and Knowledge too much and lose sight of the value of people? No? Just me? Anyways you will meet Fantasmo and think that he is a dick and then he will still blow you away (probably, no promises).

Is it still autumn in Australia or have you entered winter now? It really does have lovely fall vibes.

Reasons why you should not start with Autumn in Hieron:

You care about """audio quality""".

Idk you're in a sci-fi mood.

You don't want long-term investment but rather shorter stories. (Listen to Fall of Magic for fantasy, or Bluff City Season 1 for weird East Coast America.)

If the audio quality is really too much for you, start with Marielda and then listen to the two Autumn in Hieron recap episodes. But like, Nav this season is so good. So good. It's fully transcribed here.

Sci-Fi?

Okay so if you want to listen to their mech seasons instead, you can start at any of the four current places: COUNTER/Weight, Twilight Mirage, Road to PARTIZAN (collection of one-shots), and PARTIZAN. I do not recommend that you start with their upcoming season as it will be a direct follow up to PARTIZAN.

COUNTER/Weight: A smaller season. Dystopia and revolution.

Twilight Mirage: A long season with big goals. The end of a utopia and the beginning of something new.

PARTIZAN: A war within a war.

These seasons take place in the same universe but are separated by so many thousands of years that you do not need to listen to them order.

[transfemmbeatrice]

Hi! I keep seeing your Friends at the Table posts and I really want to get into it, but I tried listening from the beginning and the audio quality isn’t great. Did you start from the beginning or is there another good place to start? Thanks!

Hello friend! I am always here to talk about Friends at the Table.

I’m a hardcore completionist/chronologist so I started from the beginning and went straight through. The beginning is super rough though. I don’t know how far you made it, but if you DO want to try and listen to the first season, I would skip to episode 5. After their first mini-quest, the permanently split the party and go back and forth between the two, starting that episode. The audio quality still isn’t great for a while, but it’s way more listenable with 3 players than 6. There is some really good stuff in s1, but never fear! If you find it unlistenable, they recap the season at the start of the next Hieron season so you’re fine to skip it if you need to.

That leaves Counterweight, Winter in Hieron, and Twilight Mirage. You can really listen to these in any order because they’re all separate, depending what you prefer. Hieron is fantasy so if you want something more specifically taz-like (or if you just love fantasy) start there. Listen to Marielda along with that, it’s like a prequel mini-season before Winter in Hieron that’s AMAZING. You don’t need any prior knowledge to listen to Marielda because it’s set in Hieron but in a different place and time, and then they recap s1 of Hieron before the season proper. (There will be one more season of Hieron to finish that story, presumably after this Twilight Mirage season).

Counterweight is sci-fi/cyberpunk. I wasn’t sure it would be my thing when I first started listening but I ended up absolutely loving it. It’s self-contained—that season is the whole story. It’s also the second season of the show so their recording equipment is way better at this point and the editing really improves (even throughout the season) and they’re more comfortable with what they’re doing, though the beginning is a little slow because they’re learning a new system and world but Drillbot Taylor makes it ALL worth it.

Twilight Mirage is the current season. I pretty much only recommend starting here if you want to skip the backlog, which it doesn’t sound like you do…mostly just because it’s still airing so if you start here and then go to another season you’ll have to break to listen to Twilight Mirage again? But if that doesn’t bother you, by all means… choose your own adventure my dude. It’s sci-fi also, but it’s this super interesting dying utopia setting. It’s set in the same universe as counterweight but thousands (tens of thousands probably) years later and it’s specifically designed for you to not have to had listened to Counterweight to understand it. I recommend listening to Counterweight first anyway because it gives a little more context and there are some references to it but they’re more Easter eggs than anything.

I️ kind of generally advise listening in release order just because they reference past seasons in play, not in any spoilery or important way, but it’s always fun to be in on the joke and I really enjoyed listening to them evolve over time.

And because this post isn’t long or overwhelming enough: they also have a patreon! If you find yourself really liking f@tt and you have the funds, I highly recommend backing them and getting the bonus content. This includes the clapcast (funny behind the scenes stuff), a Tipcast (fan questions about DMing and playing tabletop rpgs), Live one-off games in cool different systems (which are archived), and best of all: Bluff City, a single setting where they play lots of different systems for a couple sessions to tell different stories in this slightly surreal version of Atlantic City. It’s amazing.

Tl;dr skipping s1 is no problem and you can start with whatever season you want but I’m extremely long winded and couldn’t just leave it at that.