ML015 - Episodes 66-70

It's the triumphant return of Machine Learning!  No time has passed since the last time we did one of these, so let's jump in the "not far back at all" machine to recap some episodes from near the end of book 2, when absolutely nothing bad happened specifically to Vaargas.

BIG SPECIAL THINGS

Our Hopefinder Third Party Kon game with special guest GM Jason Bulmahn drops today!  The creator of Pathfinder 2e and Hopefinder (a Pathfinder 2e hack) will be running the game he made through a one-shot he wrote on 2/19 at 2:00 EST (and whatever that time correlates to for you.  Wherever you are.)  We'll have a podcast version of it up later...but you're going to want to see this on the big screen.  Or the small screen.  The screen part is the thing I'm emphasizing.  Check out https://www.pf2events.com/schedule for more details, and all the other great events that are going to be part of this convention, and maybe check out some of the independent, third party content that's going to be showcased there!

Jeff and Sam will be joining Steve and Griffin from Hideous Laughter Productions on The Zone of Truth on 2/27!  They'll be talking Iron Gods, taking questions from the audience, and probably not revealing how many cats Sam has.  Hop into the Hideous Laughter discord server to pose your questions, and check out the episode on their main feed next week.

ALSO!

Network Against the Machine Patreon slash Ko-Fi are changing for the be better.  Last year we hit a couple big goals, attaining self sufficiency for podcast expenses, and opening up the aforementioned bonus games, which have really rattled some peanuts.  This year, we’re going to turn things up a bit.  More benefits, basically—more reasons to support the pod and network that fights against machines so you don’t have to.  Thought, I mean, you still have to fight against the Machine, probably.  But that’s for later, you know, when the revolution comes.  In the mean time: fun podcast stuff!  We want to make sure that we’re providing value to those of you who are willing and able to support us on a month-to-month basis, but we also want to make sure that we’re not unduly locking people out of content they might enjoy because of their economic circumstances.  There’s a needle to thread here—and we are always open to hearing feedback on how we’re doing.

$2 – The Glaucite tier

When you join this tier, you already get access to original music on our crowdfunding sites, plus Discord role access, but now you’re also going to get a thank you on our website—you know, since we thank you for supporting us.  But the biggest change here is that we’re adding a Patreon podcast feed, and it’s going to be available to everyone who supports us.  Well, what’s going to be on this feed?  The Story Machine.  We’re going to start releasing a Story Machine on this feed every month, starting with our first multi-part story, “Foul and Fair,” beginning at the end of March.  We’re going to have a new crowdfunding goal to up that rate to every other week in the future.  If you can’t afford to join in on our crowdfunding, don’t fret!  We don’t want to lock you out of these stories—transcripts of them are still going to be available on our website.

$5 – The Adamantine tier

You get all of your existing benefits, including The B.R.I.A.N. Identity maps, the stuff described in the previous tier, and the new benefit: you’re going to get a chance to name characters and places in new Story Machine arcs, and/or Gootube flavors.  Here’s how this is going to work: for the first part of Foul and Fair, for instance, we have eight character slots and two places up for names.  Have a PC name you’d like to see immortalized in audio and text form, or a brilliant idea for a tavern, a shop, that sort of thing?  If you’re at the Adamantine tier and above, send it over to us via Discord or email or the built-in messaging thing in Patreon, however works for you.  We’ll work as many names as we can into the stories, and when they appear you get a credit in the show notes, in the transcript, and in the audio credits.  If you’d rather throw us an absurd flavor combination to upset Izzy with, you can send those to us as well, and we’ll find ways to work them in.  For some reason, those tasty, goopy containers just keep coming up.

$10 – The Djezet tier

All the stuff listed before this, plus Skymedal dedications, and we always need more of those.  The more dedications we have, the more Skymedals the cast gets.  There’s a mea culpa due at this tier—we’ve promised you an out-loud, personalized expression of gratitude on a Machine Learning and those haven't happened.  We're very sorry about that!  Starting next ML episode, the wrong will be rectified.  As far as new stuff goes, we’re going to share with you eBook and/or PDF versions of The B.R.I.A.N. Identity adventures so you’ll have everything you need to run them in your home game, and eBook and/or PDF versions of some of our Story Machine stories.  In that case, once part 1 of “Foul and Fair” is all up on the audio feed, we’ll compile it into a reflowable eBook you can run on your Kindle or Nook or whatever, and a PDF you can look at on a normal screen.  Compiling the adventures from B.R.I.A.N. is going to take a little while to get started, since we have to, you know, learn how to make a nice looking adventure PDFs and books.

$20 – Siccatite tier

You know the drill by now—all the lower tier benefits, plus the existing benefit of the discount code to our merch store (new code for 2023, along with new merch coming soon), and then the new stuff.  If you’re supporting us this hard, we want to make sure to put a physical benefit in your hands.  So we’re going to send you stickers.  The Book 1 stickers are already out in the wild—you’ll get all four of those.  The Book 2 stickers we’ve been showing on social media lately—you’re going to get all four of those.  Book 3 will have a series of stickers by the time its finished, and those will come to you in good time.  We’ll also send you theoretical bonus stickers and other extras—things like The Dapple sticker that we produced for episode 100.

$50 – The Orichalcum tier

Hey, you’re still here.  Hello.  All the other tier benefits apply here, both old and new, plus the game with some portion of the cast, but we’re adding to that.  Twice a year you’re going to get free exclusive physical rewards.  The idea is that we’re going to generate special edition t-shirts, print limited edition Story Machine paperback books, and send them out to you.  These are going to be bits of merch that will literally not exist outside this reward tier, so that's very exciting.

We hope you’ll consider joining one of our crowdfunding thingies, or upgrading your membership if you’re already on there, and let us know what you think of the new rewards and anything we might be able to do better.  We’re not far from our next goal, at which point we can upgrade our website to one that can actually handle, you know, visitors.  After that the goal to be able afford to pay someone to transcript our backlog of Pod Against the Machine episodes—that’s a huge project, but one that we’re really committed to.  One of the first things we brought up when we started this podcast was that we wanted this show to be as accessible as we could make it, and transcripts are a huge part of that.  In addition, we’re adding another goal on the far end of that, and when we get there we can bump up the rate of releases for The Story Machine to every two weeks.

AND Our Store is a thing, with all your t-shirts, tote bags, stickers and more!

Background music and sound effects:

Elf Meditation by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5728-elf-meditation-preview

License: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/standard-license 

Sneaky Snitch by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4384-sneaky-snitch
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Action Sport Breakbeat by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6391-action-sport-breakbeat
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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