SPEAKER_03 0:00

So, how many of you play this damn game anyway?

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Wait, what is it?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

What is the crack of muff? It was a muff. I didn't know what the hell motion was and I went, bread didn't go, and then he win it, and then I finished and I yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

It's been apparently a little rusty crack since you guys are cracked. Well, speaking of which bread is here. Like the first time we've done my show.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I'm gonna want the coordinated crack.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Uh it is time. Well, there was the opening crack, kind of sort of cracks, you know, whatever. Uh, but welcome to another episode of Bards and Burrels. It's time for part eight of our 10-part Candela Obscura series. It's a little crazy that we're on part eight. Uh Phil, I it feels like we just recorded all of this yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Kind of, but it's starting to feel a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Uh so today we're gonna be talking about well, if you watched the YouTube video last week, we we talked about like how to role play Candel obscure as a player. So in the past, you know, a few episodes ago, we talked about running the game and how that works, how you maintain how you how you manage the mechanics and how you manage the players and the role-playing. And now we've gotten into the player side of things. So we talked about the role-playing and being in that system, and then now we promised you in that video that we were gonna talk about like the actual playing mechanics. So uh here we go. Uh, Phil's gonna lead this one, and then Brett and I are gonna kind of play along with what Phil's throwing out there, and we're gonna walk you through things more or less step by step, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

That is the goal, yes. You know how you do one of those things, you're like, oh shit, did we just like sign up for that? This is one of those things.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Did I get myself in?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

No, so we're gonna talk through some of the mechanics. Um, I know I think in the very first episode we kind of mentioned that this was based off of the uh illuminated world system as far as kind of how roles go. So um the primary you know role mechanic, hey, we're gonna bust out the dice in Candela Obscura is for an action role. So, hey, if there's a question, like we get into a situation. So if we're if we're all playing together, um and let's say uh you've received a brief from your lightkeeper, you guys head out to make your initial investigation, and uh you see something that doesn't look quite normal, but between you and what you see that isn't quite normal is the periphery or the police force that's there. So, how would you get around that? What would that look like? That's not rhetorical, you actually want to know. Well, yeah. I want to know. And I know you guys don't have a character sheet in front of you, but we can pretend we can use the one we sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Yeah, so so uh Alindra being our weird character that we created several episodes ago. Uh so so I guess my first thought was was actually if you were a slink character, not necessarily a weird character that we created, but it's it's like maybe potentially so like they're they're like around where we need to go investigate, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:30

So we let's set the we'll set the scene a little bit better here. So you're in the red light district and you have been tasked with investigating an unusual situation that has occurred in one of the uh taverns in that area. And as you go to approach that tavern, uh something immediately catches your eye that just looks off uh as you kind of take in this scene. But the other things that you notice in this area are a heavy police presence here that is between you and what you potentially wish to get a better look at. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Do they do they recognize us as being like members of Candela or anything to that effect?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

I feel like uh that they would know who you guys are. They may not always uh agree with your methods. Okay, is there a crowd around? No, not at this time.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

No, so it's pretty quiet. It's just us and them for the most part. Yes, the Tuesday Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday morning. Yeah. Um, I I think the first thing that I would probably do in this situation would to maybe keep distance and kind of scout out the the the perimeter like of the area, just to kind of like I know where something happened, where this this event took place. I'm gonna kind of go around and see maybe where where the police presence is like highly concentrated. Is there a back door that I can get in so I don't draw too much attention to myself?

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Okay. Um so I don't know that I would normally make you roll for this, but just as an example of the mechanic, right? I feel like in essence, you're you're trying to to survey this scene and kind of see what is happening, see if there's another in. Um so if we wanted to practice an action rule, right? I would say, okay, hey, let's see what you can survey through this action that you're taking, and I'm gonna have you make a survey roll. So survey is one of the actions that's listed under the intuition section. And as far as dice go, right, in candela, I know we've mentioned it before, but you roll D6s in this game. So there is something in Candela known as the rule of six, just to kind of get that out there in the open. You can never roll a pool of dice that has more than six dice in it. So that's the maximum number you ever can roll within one roll. To make your action roll, you'll look on your character sheet in the survey action and see how many of those little bubbles are filled in. If you have one, you're rolling one dice, two, two dice, so on and so forth, right? You also, if you have zero, I guess we should address that because I'm looking at this character sheet and you got a zero. So if you have none, uh if you have none and you choose to just roll without expending any extra resources, you roll two d6s, and then you have to take the lower one. So basically you roll in disadvantage, right? In other mechanics. Now, one of the other components to an action roll is that characters have something that's called drive. So looking at this character sheet, she has six drives in intuition. So you can choose to burn a drive, right? Use up one of those drive to be able to add an extra die to the pool. So if we wanted to avoid rolling with disadvantage in this point, we could burn a drive and be able to roll one die and use it instead of two die and taking the lower. Sure. Now, before we figure out what you want to do with your dice, before you make that determination, right? As the game master is my responsibility here to tell you what sort of stakes exist for this role. This is a pretty low stakes role here, right? So you're really just surveying the scene, you're not being belligerent, you're not trying to just get past them. Yeah, realistically, if anything, they might not even notice you doing this if you're just kind of skirting around the outsides, if you're not being blatantly obvious. So pretty low stakes here, which would typically mean lower level of consequences if you were to fail. Sure. There are three different sets of stakes. So low, normal, high. I'm gonna double check the wording on that just to make sure that I match what they actually have laid out, but sure. That's roughly what it would be.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

So so I I I think this is a good point to pause really quick because we've we've mentioned this in past episodes of of kind of the the freewheeling nature of Candela Obscura. So I think you've already seen that a little bit here. So Phil set the set the the the scene here, and then he asked me what I wanted to do. And then I just went in D D quite oftentimes you're playing along, and depending on your your party makeup, at least uh amongst us and our group that we play with, we may get in a situation where I'm like, man, uh, can I roll investigation on this? And then you as the DM would go, yep, sure, roll investigation. In Candela, you play until you reach a point where the DM needs an outcome to decide what happened. And that's what Phil said here. Because you did specifically say normally, for the case of our example here, we're gonna roll, but you said normally we probably wouldn't roll for this because it's pretty inconsequential. But we want you to see the process for doing this. Yes. But it still fit in really well because I just played until you said that we have reached a point where you need to roll for this, and then now you've laid out the stakes, and I need to decide what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah, so that's kind of how that works, right? So the game master will call for the action roll, set the stakes, and then basically you as the player now can kind of have this conversation and figure out okay, you know, what what do I have in that action? First of all, do I have drives I can burn? Should I? Maybe it depends on the stakes, and then the rest of your party as well, though, has the option to potentially try to help you in that situation, too.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

So I think in this instance, uh, since it's a low stakes roll, I perhaps this mystery is intriguing enough to me that I want to avoid being seen. So I don't want to roll this with disadvantage. So I think I would burn a drive so I can at least take the straight outcome of the D6. Have them use them. Yep, that's exactly right. And in this particular instance, to me, this is probably something either an inspect or an analyze, which is an intuition roll under focus. Uh, I have six drive that I could use here potentially. So I'm gonna use one of those drives. So on your sheet, uh, the little boxes show what you have available, the big boxes are what you have used. I would fill out one of those columns and then I would make the roll. I rolled a two.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

All right.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Boy, that's on that's on done. That vibe is about right.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

So uh the scale on these rolls, right? So a one to three is considered a failure. So typically you're not going to accomplish what you wanted, and there are consequences. Uh four to a five is considered a mixed success. So in those instances, you would accomplish what you wanted to, but there's typically still a consequence. There's some sort of a cost associated with that. Um, if you roll a six, that's a full success. You get what you want without any complication. If you're rolling multiple die and you roll two sixes, that's considered a critical success. So you get everything you wanted and a little bit extra. Cool. So was it a two? It was a two. Okay. So uh it's right on par for me. Unfortunately, uh as you as you are kind of surveying the scene here uh and looking to see if there's maybe some sort of a back door, um, you catch um out of the corner of their eyes, the periphery uh sees you sort of like in their mind slinking around the building, even though I mean they're right. You aren't necessarily conducting your body language in that way. And one of them starts to slowly uh follow after you.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

That's fine. I'm I'm still probably gonna make my way around to try to they I know why they're here, they know why I'm here. I'm still gonna kind of scope out the situation.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And that would be a perfect example of how this would still fail forward, right? I think that's exactly what we're looking for. Yeah. So that is basically kind of how an action role itself would work. So some other components that we need to talk about, though, are, and we've mentioned it in other episodes, but just want to make sure we get it kind of clearly defined here: a gilded die. So what is a gilded die? Um, and how can we figure out if we have one and what am I supposed to do with it? So a gilded die on your character sheet is going to be the diamond on the far left side of your actions, and if that is filled in, that is a gilded action that you have. So I'm looking at Landra's character sheet here, the one that we filled out in our character building episode, and I can see that she has one in focus and she has one in read. So in those cases, right, if the GM calls for a focus roll or a read roll, she can still roll her two die there. She's not gonna burn any drive, but one of the die is going to be different than all of the others. That one is the gilded die. So the book recommends maybe two different colors of die, something like that, just so you can keep them straight. But the purpose of the gilded die is to be able to recover drive. So let's say she rolls her two die and she rolls a three and she rolls a six. The six is on the non-gilded die, and the three is on the gilded die. She could make the choice to take the failure, take the gilded die, and whatever consequence comes with that, but regain a drive if you take the gilded die.

unknown 13:25

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

So and it could be you know, it doesn't have to be a bad situation. Maybe she rolls the six on the gilded die. Best case scenario, right? Success and you still get a drive back. Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

And I I think I think that's the mechanic that people playing this game are probably gonna, it's gonna take the most to get used to. But I I think the key thing here is to remember you're not rolling dice near as much. Because if you if your point of reference is basically any other TTRPG where you're rolling a lot of dice, that is not the case here. So don't think that you're gonna be burning through drive left and right. Maybe in an intense situation, you might burn through you know two or three, uh, depending on what those rolls are or something like that. But like this is a prime example. Oh, I probably really wouldn't have rolled that in most cases, uh, because it was such an inconsequential thing. And my decision was to roll one, even though I had six available. So there's still five there. I even rolled a gilded one, uh, although I didn't say I was rolling a gilded die, so I actually could have gotten that drive back. I didn't really think about that, but I could have done that actually for that one. So, but anyway.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

And you have different sections, so you have drives within the different groups of actions, correct?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yes, yep. And really that gilded die, right? That mechanic is so you can regain the drive that you burn. So that's what it is there for.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Yeah, yeah, and it goes back to what you already mentioned. So it's like even if you use up all your drive, you can still roll. You just roll two d6s and take the lesser value, you just roll a disadvantage. Because uh, in the case of Alyndra, any nerve roll doesn't matter what it is, we have no drive for nerve rolls. So we would be rolling to a disadvantage anyway, if we do something in that area, yeah. So yep.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

So one of the other mechanics when it comes to um kind of the dice roll, the mechanics or the um consequences piece of this is the resistances. So as a character, right? Your resistance is your way to push back against um a consequence. So if there's any time that you don't like the result of a roll, you can burn a resistance as long as that you know is in the same section as your action and you have one available. So if you're looking at a character sheet, your resistances are right underneath your drive. They're the three kind of downward pointing triangles. So if you have those filled out, um, that means you have a resistance in that set of skills or that set of actions. So maybe Ross doesn't like his failure. And don't give me the dice back in intuition, right? We have uh we have some resistances there. So you could choose to burn a resistance and re-roll, but when you do a re-roll, you don't get any drive that you spent on that initial roll. And if one of your allies burns some of their drive to help you, you don't get that die either. So you strictly like if we're taking a survey looking at the launcher's character sheet here, yeah, you would roll disadvantage if you're doing a survey. Sure. Because you can't roll anything else with it.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

So if I burn a resistance to re-roll my inspect or analyze in the focus, do I just re-roll the single die?

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Nope. If you're doing your focus, because it that's different. Focus you have two in, right? Sure. So you would roll two die and you could take the higher of the two. Okay. We're gonna do that. You wouldn't be able to burn a drive or anything extra. Sure, you can't add to it. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Okay, let's let's see what happens here. That's much better. I got a six that time. Hey, see, so look.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

So they don't actually know they didn't see you. Of course they didn't. Look at me slinking around. They're busy passing around the thermos, refilling their clubs. Um, one last thing I think we need to hit on um before we kind of wrap this episode up. So, marks and scars. So on the character sheet on the kind of right-hand side there, and I know we've talked a little bit about marks and scars, but that's where the tracking of these things go. So, a mark, right? This is the harm that you would take during an investigation. So it falls into three different categories, and you can see them there on the character sheet. There's the body, which represents like physical harm to you. So someone stabs you with a knife or you get shot with the gun, right? Something along that line. It's physical. Um, the brain section represents some sort of mental strain. So this could be uh maybe you're in a highly tense negotiation and it doesn't go your way. Then you may be taking a brain mark, right? From the almost exhaustion of doing that. Um high anxiety situations, right? There's a lot of intensity in this game, and your character feels that too. So if you're in a situation like that and it doesn't go your way, you may be forced to take a brain mark. Um or sometimes even seeing like some of the things that you come up against in Candela. Like they're so bizarre, so kind of grotesque that you may have to um take a brain mark that way as well. Uh, and then lastly, bleed. So this is magical corruption, right? Um, potentially like exposure to phenomena. Maybe you touch a ghost, or um, I know in some of the uh Ross, you kind of in one of our other episodes, maybe it was the video I think we did for this, we mentioned the um reflection type. I feel like if your characters ever actually came face to face with that reflection, right, you would have taken a bleed mark. Sure. Like that's something the magical phenomena would impact you. Um so you get three marks in each category. You can take three. So I could take three body and three brain and three bleed and still be okay. But then when I take a fourth one in any category, that's when you sustain a scar at that point. This is a permanent change to your character, and I you know we've talked about that in another episode, but this is a mechanical change and a narrative change as well. So once you do get that fourth one, you would erase your marks in the category you overfilled, come up with that scar, and that's what goes in one of those lines underneath there. You would fill that scar um diamond in, and then make the change to your actions over on the left-hand side of your character sheet. You can take three scars, and then if you take a fourth one, you're done. And they have a little comment on there, I think about like basically talk to the DM about your demise.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Your final moments, yeah. So so I think something that that that fits here that we haven't talked about, and I think we should talk about it really quick, is that you as the GM, can you hand out those marks for pretty much anything? Yes. And without without me rolling, too. So it's basically if there's a situation that we find ourselves in, you can assign a mark based on what happens in that situation without ever rolling dice. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

I think one of the very first ones we played, um, that's actually from the book, um, that happens, like as even just as you witness something, like you don't have a save, right? There's nothing like a save in this game as far as that goes. So you saw it, you take the mark. Sure. Yeah, that that makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

So, okay, before we get out of here though, so so what are our general feelings on the mechanics of this game? Because I think I I have I have two sets of feelings. I have on one hand, I'm like, this is a really pretty simple, straightforward game. On the other side, there's certain pieces, much like the the gilded dice, that have a learning curve to them. Uh, what are you guys feeling?

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Hmm. I feel like this is version 1.0 of their character sheet, and it could be laid out a little bit cleaner to translate some of that information. Sure. Yeah. Because I think it's gets a little bit confusing, like with the guilded dyes, like it it's just a mark on there. It doesn't have any sort of like frame of reference for what that is, right? And once you once you follow it and understand what it is, super simple to look at and glance at any character sheet for Candela and understand. Until that point, it can be you gotta you gotta under like take a minute and look what it actually research it a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

I agree, and especially when when like you think of like a DD player sheet, like uh i if we're thinking about like little filled in boxes, that's your proficiencies in D D quite often. That's the only thing that you're Filling in little boxes like that. Whereas you look at this player sheet and your your uh your uh guild your gilded actions, gosh, I can't think of the word. Gilded actions are marked that way, your drives are marked that way. You have to to basically mark what drives you're using to keep track of those. By the way, if you're using an actual player uh physical sheet, use pencil because you need to be able to erase those and come back to that. Your resistances are filled in little bubbles, so there's just so many of those. And we didn't even we didn't even get to the point where we like talk about the actions that you can use from from your role and your specialty. Again, that's a little thing that's filled in. And Brett, before we were even started this episode, we were looking at the character sheet, and he he looked at this and he's like, Well, what are those? Well, they're actions, but the only one you get is the one that's filled in. But typically, in like a DD player sheet, the only stuff that's on your sheet is the stuff that you can use, so it's like kind of the opposite in some ways. It is somewhat confusing. I get that.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah, I I would agree with that. I mean, coming from DD, right? You don't erase things from your character sheet. You know what I mean? Like you level up and you add some stuff, but you're not ever maybe hit points, you know, if you're erasing and actually writing your hit points on your screen or on your sheet. But in Candela, you're that's a constant ebb and flow, right? Using drives, gaining them back with gilded dice, taking marks, healing marks, which is something you can do between assignments um with some circle action. So yeah, there's just a lot more, I guess, character sheet management.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Maybe it's a little just a little more involved. Yeah, it's it's it's closer to DD like on paper and pen when you like first start like old school DD, where you actually had to fill out your sheet by hand. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Yeah, and we have we we're not even talking about the circle sheet. There's a there's a whole separate sheet for your circle that because you keep track of things there too, and your circle has abilities too. So we didn't even talk about that. I don't know if we have enough uh we don't have enough time. There's not enough beer here tonight to do that. At least not in my mind. Uh, anything else before uh we get out of here? I think this is a super approachable game. I do love playing it, and it's just I think there's some little quirks that new players may find odd the first time they play.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

I definitely think the first time. So I think the first one we ran was definitely a learning experience just with the character sheet and how the actions work and gilded dice. But I think the more of it we play too, like that we've played as a group, it it is natural, like it comes to you, but it's just sure it's a shift, you know, initially.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

Right. And focus on the roleplay, don't get bogged down in the game.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Because you won't use it the range, yeah. Truthfully. But but it's like but that could be also part of the problem, too, because like you don't use it enough to really understand it at the beginning. That's hard too. So I think it's a double-edged sword. I I agree but disagree at the same time. It's the game master's problem, not yours. Yeah, that's exactly right. As long as you know how to run it, Phil, we're good to we're good to go. Uh, that's gonna do it for this episode of Bards and Barrels. You can listen to past episodes of the show anywhere podcasts can be found. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, threads, TikTok, YouTube at Bards and Barrels. Uh, stay tuned. We're gonna wrap up here next week, uh, episodes nine and ten, and then Candel is done. So we'll see you on the flip side.