Ask Me Anything: Verrain

Oooo I've been looking at Wanderhome recently for a potential university project, what's your reaction of the system, setting, etc? Have you been PbP or IRL?

I am enchanted by Wanderhome! It is more shared storytelling than an RPG. The system is fairly minimal. Certain actions need tokens to take and certain actions gain you a token. The setting is a land of animal folk but that can stretch from Redwall to a Miyazaki film depending on the group. There is a lot of baked in setting in the playbooks, natures, and traits in the system books but every table's version of Haeth will be different. I love all the little gods of the setting. The quiet animism is really very charming.

I have played in play by post and in real time over discord. I fine real time is better for collaborative discussion but PbP has been working just fine if a slower pace.

I'd love to hear about your project.

What have you been cooking lately? Is there something in particular you especially enjoy, whether a specific recipe or a certain region's food?

I don't know what to make for dinner on Sunday night. What should it be?

Biology is a very specific interest. Is it related to how you make a living?

Who are your three favourite Doctors? Who would you love to see follow up after Jodie? Torchwood or Sarah Jane Adventures?

What would you say is the appeal of Burning Wheel? I understand it's a somewhat complicated/crunchy system so how would you sell someone into checking it out?

If my math is right, you were in your early 20s when Pokémon first came out. Since it was at first seen as directed towards much younger ages, how did you find yourself drawn towards it?

Chinese food is one of my greatest joys and I have just started diving into how to make it myself. I have been watching two Youtube channels, Chinese Cooking Demystified and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, and just some of their basic technique videos have upped my game significantly. Accordingly, I suggest a stir-fry made up of whatever meats and veggies you happen to have for your Sunday supper.

As for biology, I have a Ph.D in molecular biology and currently work as a biological safety officer. I am employed on behalf of my university to make sure all research is done safely and according to the regulations.

I refuse to choose my favorite child! I love them all equally! It is really hard for me to choose even a top three. Since you asked though, Tom Baker, David Tennant, and Peter Davison. As for who comes next, I gave up on that game a long time ago. The correct answer is always, "A British actor I've never heard of who turns out to be perfect."

As for Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, the answer is "Yes, please. Are we starting the beginning and binging the whole thing?" They are both great in their own ways.

So, selling someone on Burning Wheel. I usually start with showing off the Lifepath system for character creation. I love all the myriad combinations you can make and how much implied setting is there in what what lifepaths are needed to lead to others and which lifepaths are in which subsettings. Burning Wheel does not have character levels. You get better at a skill by using that skill. You don't get that cognitive dissonance in D&D where killing enough orcs taught you calligraphy somehow.

I like that every player writes the goals their character is striving for and the GM uses that to build the world and opposition. I love that I have had characters engage is social debate with the same exciting back and forth as combat in other games. In short, the appeal of Burning Wheel for me is that all of the crunch is in service to driving the story forward and to reward players for doing things the player decided to do.

As for Pokemon, partly it is because I still haven't grown up and was watching the anime on TV. Then my young cousins at the time got into it and showed me the Gameboy games and the first edition of the card game. Then things lay fallow for a bit until I had my own kids. I introduced them to the video games and then took my son to a local Pokemon card league. I became a League Leader, Tournament Organizer, and Pokemon Judge for the TCG. I am a card carrying Pokemon Professor.

As an avid fan of Chinese food, that is awesome! My favorite meal of all time I had was in Xi'An - a spicy & delicious paomo on a cold winter day - but mostly we eat Cantonese style. Do you have a particular region of Chinese food that you like?
That's awesome! My kids and I have been enjoying Pokemon Go during the pandemic as an outdoor activity, and they ahve since gotten into the show and (as of this Christmas) the TCG. I am a long time magic player, so it has been fun learning this new game and admiring it's design. We only have 2 complete decks (pre-built decks designed to battle each other) plus a few boosters. What is the best next steps for a person who wants to get a little more into the Pokemon TCG hobby, just for funsies with their kids, without spending an arm and a leg?

Cantonese mostly for me as it is the "standard" American Chinese food that I know. I can't handle spicy peppers very well so that makes branching out into other styles tricky. Having said that, I am very intrigued by Hong Kong and Macau dishes. It is Chinese food by way of British and Portuguese influence, respectively, and I find the fusions that emerge to be quite interesting. I made a decent Singapore noodle that way and I look forward to refining my recipe to my spice tolerance.
This is tricky because most of my standard advice has been messed up by COVID. Check to see if there is a Pokemon League in your area. Official League session are still on hold but many places are reopening their game spaces. Just before each new Pokemon set comes out, they hold Prerelease events. You get a Build and Battle box that contains some boosters and a pack of basic cards. Then you make the best deck out of what you got in the boosters and play against other people in a friendly tournament. It is a fun afternoon out and a good low key way to get used to how official play looks.

If you want to go from pre-built decks to something resembling a competitive deck, you will want to buy/obtain consistency cards like: Professor's Research, Boss's Orders, the various Ball cards to search out Pokemon, etc. If you look at competitive decks, they will have 8-12 pokemon, 8-10 energy, and the rest are all the Supporters and Trainer cards needed to get the cards you need into your hand when you need them and augment what Pokemon types you are playing with. So, get those consistency cards which can be the core of most decks and then add in the best Pokemon you can afford to go with them.

The ultimate tip for fun at home on the cheap is proxy cards. There are websites where you can print out images of the cards at the size of the cards. People will print them out, slide them into card sleeves that contain another card for stability, and play with those. This lets people test out different deck types before actually purchasing any expensive cards. Not legal for tournaments but fine for home use.

Ordinarily I would also suggest the online version of the TCG but the current incarnation is being shut down and the new one is still in beta testing so it would be better to wait until the new system is up and running before getting into that.

perfect timing since your AMA happens to fall on the week containing Pokémon Day—they literally just revealed the gen 9 starters!

Sprigatito, Fuecoco, or Quaxly? where do you think your kids will go on this one?

and, bonus question that is also about Pokémon because it’s the most immediately obvious thing you and I have in common, does your biology background play into your enjoyment of such things at all? did you see Solosis and Duosion and think "finally, Pokémon for me" or is the fictional biology so fanciful you have to ignore what you know?

Thanks Verrain for your answers, good advice! Yeah, we used to use proxy cards for MtG as well. I used to get free colour laser printing at a summer job and abused it for proxying decks. I printed out a 900-card draft cube and the quality was not significantly lower than if I had all the cards :D

Do you have a particular match from your storied history of games that is your favourite match of all time? Tell us the story if you don't mind! Do you have a particular card that holds a soft spot in your heart? And do you feel the Pokemon TCG is healthy right now and still fun to play?

We tend to wait until we know the full evolution line before choosing but I am thinking Sprigatito. My eldest was leaning Fuecoco but that was because he thought it was based on a chile pepper. Now that we know its just a fire croc, I'm not sure. My youngest is always a wildcard. No idea. I generally turn my bio brain off when enjoying magical transforming pocket monsters. I would say the most its come in handy is deciphering some of the names when they go with the greek or latin roots of words.

I am going to answer the middle question first as it is easiest. The first deck that I really enjoyed was based on Empoleon so he's a favorite. I played a crazy Fire deck based on a Chandelure. It either destroyed everything in its path or fizzled out badly. When it worked though, you felt amazing!

As for war stories, it is hard to appreciate them without knowing what the cards do. But I will share one. There was an Eelektrik card with an ability that let you get an Electric energy card from the discard and attach it to a benched Pokemon. So the idea was that you would set up two or three of these and use them to power up your heavy hitters. It also had an attack but that was largely ignored. As was said, if you were attacking with your Eelektrik, then things had already gone horribly wrong. So in a tournament, we were trading knockouts pretty evenly and the board setup was him with a big, heavily wounded Pokemon and me down to only my Eelektriks. I did the math, powered up an Eelektrik and did the last bit of damage to knockout his wounded guy. I won the match with the attack no one ever uses.

Do I think the TCG is healthy right now? Well casual and competitive play has been suspended during the COVID period. Everyone switched to online league play through TCG Online. Now that larger events are being scheduled, the player base is champing at the bit to pickup where they left off. Compared to other card game player bases, Pokemon is way more supportive and has less toxic elements than others. It is for children of all ages after all. The game suffers from power creep like many others but you can't really put that genie back in the bottle. There are many unofficial alternate formats floating around to address that which are quite fun. The only other recent negative is that collectors were swooping in buying tons of product and then trying to resell at inflated collector prices. That seems to have tapered off but getting boosters and such was tricky at one point. It also has a lower financial barrier to entry than other games if you go competitive. It isn't cheap of course but the top prices for Pokemon cards are quite a bit below those of Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh.

What was the last song you looked up to listen to online, via YouTube or some other streaming platform?

I'll give you two for the price of one as it depends on the definition of song.

I am a huge fan of the Stupendium, a a British singer/animator that makes splendid music videos about video games. His latest is called Ad Infinitum, about the character Spamton G. Spamton, a character from Deltarune. I have described this song as an algorithm having a a seizure and then writing a musical about it.



For more traditional music, I last searched out this classic as so many have referenced it in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.

Thanks Verrain! These are wildly different, but both enjoyable. I'll check out Ad Infinitum because that video was a bit bonkers!

I love Chinese Cooking Demystified! I could watch them long yao all day! And I love how Kenji has some serious culinary cred but his videos are just incredibly accessible and unintimidating. Great stuff!
Can you tell us about a biological safety crisis or near-crisis where you saved the day?
Do those kinds of stories ever make their way into your games or characters?

My job doesn't really lend itself to dramatic stories like that. If we have done all of our advance planning right, then there isn't a need for us to come rushing in to save the day. In fact, I'll give you a reverse story. Part of what we have to do is run drills for a high containment lab to simulate what we do if there was an emergency. In this case we were simulating a spill of a hazardous chemical. When it came time to "spill" the chemical to start the drill, we found that our safeguards worked well enough that it took three times to "spill" the chemical in a way that might have happened in the course of standard work.

As for bringing them into my games, I haven't really. That is mostly because I rarely run or play in a modern setting. I do tend towards scientists in those settings though. My wife and I have a favorite activity around this. If she is binging a show without me and they have a "bioterror" episode, she will call me in to watch it so I can point out everything that is wrong with it while she laughs at my frustration.