Transcript Episode Zero
Buddy Duquesne 0:09
All right, sports fans, it's the year 1520. And it's time for a joust!!!!
Buddy and Alice 0:16
(sing the sports center theme very badly)
Buddy Duquesne 0:22
Oh, Alice, you know, this is it really is a great day for jousting. And this is the unreleased pilot episode of the podcast that will eventually be known as the joust, which is is an invention of our creation that combines the fortune telling and gaming deck of Tarot, with the storytelling skills of you and I to create a fantasy sports cast that I hope becomes something fun that people will enjoy.
Alice White 0:59
Yeah, yeah, so um, so this is just just the pilot episode. Like we said, this is going to be a test of the gaming system and the game mechanics that we've come up with, and we're going to walk through each step of it. But when we actually start publishing episodes, we are not going to include the steps you'll just be hearing the finished, uh, the finished story, right, this is kind of like a sneak preview.
Buddy Duquesne 1:26
Yeah we're going to be kind of editing out all of the mechanical stuff and just kind of existing in the fiction as Buddy of Duquesne and Alice of House White. And kind of just I actually like that Alice, did you know that was pretty good. And just kind of pretending that the things that we say we're deciding, will happen happen. Does that make sense Alice like we're not going to be doing all of this drawing on the mics. Most of the time.
Alice White 2:00
So we're going yeah, so what we what you're hearing right now, listeners is us getting ready. What we're going to record is the process of us pulling the cards that determine the story and spitballing some ideas for it and then we'll settle on, you know, what we're going to end up saying, and then what will end up being published is the final version of the.. of the story without any of our Buddy and Alice in real life commentary,
Buddy Duquesne 2:29
right, the characters Buddy of of the land Duquesne and Alice of house White, will.. we'll narrate all of the stuff that we decided at the end.
Alice White 2:40
Yeah, exactly.
Buddy Duquesne 2:41
So Alice, let's, let's set up a match here, between a couple of our knights
Alice White 2:47
Okay, well, um for I mean, I pulled these two knights at random, but they end up being the ones from round one, match one. Okay, so, uh, what do I have right here as I've pulled out The knight of cups and the knight of wands.
Buddy Duquesne 3:04
The knight of cups is known as uh Sir Vai who comes from the the kind of farmland area of our fictional kingdom. A Moody, creative, intuitive sort of magical person. Um, and she goes by Sir but is a lady
Alice White 3:26
Yes, Yes, she is. She is our lady knight. And she is Yeah, she's... she's our knight of cups and if you know anything about Tarot and I guess I could put in a little Tarot color here, You know anything about Tarot cups are your, your suit of water of emotion of creativity and intuitiveness. And so we've created this character, the knight of cups around that idea. Contrast, perfect, exact contrast, we have the knight of Wands on the other side. And that's Sir Ignatius.
Buddy Duquesne 4:06
Sir Ignatius is one of my favorites. A mountain-y desert region produced him. And he's here to represent the fire and energy of his area.
Alice White 4:18
Yes. And so the the, his.. this suit the character the knight of wands, we have created his character around the suit of wands, which is about energy and action and fire and passion. And so those these two characters in direct contrast, probably our strongest contrast because I think air and Earth aren't as strong or as powerful of a contrasting elemental. These guys are going to be our big rivalry I think throughout the, throughout the whole tournament.
Buddy Duquesne 4:55
Yeah, I mean, I've got a penchant for Sir Vai and her whole deal. Yeah. And I think sir Ignatius, like he's he's a fun character. He's not like a bad person. None of them are.
Alice White 5:08
No, no, they're very honorable, very, like powerful people a lot of like traditional chivalry going on here and protecting the week and-
Buddy Duquesne 5:20
to break that chivalry would probably incur not just penalties in the story but like system penalties as well.
Alice White 5:27
Yes. Yes. So, so we have our we have our knights. And the way this is going to go is... and this is our first time doing this for real everyone, so bear with us as we're doing this live. But we're going to do is we're going to- each of them is going to we're going to pull two numbers. We have the number cards here. Ace through king of their suit. I've shuffled them up and separated them. So I'm going to pull one cup card and one wand card. And this is going to be a little bit like war. So the highest number is going to win. So I have drawn the ace of wands. Ooh, that's not a great card.
Buddy Duquesne 6:14
Not going well for Ignatius,
Alice White 6:18
we've decided aces low, kings high. And yeah, because the knight of cups has drawn the 10 of cups.
Buddy Duquesne 6:25
So this is not just a victory, but a crushing victory.
Alice White 6:29
Crushing victory for the knight of cups. As yeah, as she has scored fully nine points higher than, than the knight of Wands,
Buddy Duquesne 6:40
and that we're not keeping track of like point totals or anything like that. No, this is just flavor for, for how the victory went.
Alice White 6:47
Exactly.
Buddy Duquesne 6:47
This is definitely an embarrassing start for Sir Ignatius.
Alice White 6:50
Yes, absolutely. Yes, yeah. We're not going to keep score except who wins so we're going to be tracking number of wins. Not- not point values. And so the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pull two, one event card for each, for each character and the event cards I have made out of the major arcana. And we have assigned values to each or not just values but events or ideas to each of the major arcana. And so I'm going to draw one for the knight of cups I have drawn Ooh, I have drawn the lovers.
Buddy Duquesne 7:28
Oh, my lord.
Unknown Speaker 7:30
And for the knight of Wands, I have drawn the High Priestess which is not going to not going to help out the knight of Wands. Unfortunately, the High Priestess is a card that we've decided... she Oh, wait no, no, just kidding. This might help actually yeah,
Buddy Duquesne 7:47
this is actually a potential save here
Alice White 7:48
I was thinking of the Empress, this is a potential save. Because the High Priestess we have decided you get to or the knight of Wands gets to pull a new card and you get to keep the highest of those two cards so
Buddy Duquesne 8:01
this, this kind of implies a connection between the knight of wands and the High Priestess and that there would be kind of a like ah-ah-ah this has to go better than you think it's gonna go sort of a moment, like entreating the gods in some way
Alice White 8:18
yeah so so we could write this into the story as the knight of Wands was maybe not going to have a very good day but maybe went to go pray at the temple and the High Priestess bestowed some favor. And unfortunately it didn't help enough because I've just drawn a seven for the knight of wands
Buddy Duquesne 8:37
that won't beat the 10 that the cups got
Alice White 8:41
right. The 10 is a great card. That was a really good way to start
Buddy Duquesne 8:44
the thing that's tripping me up here is the lovers, we've assigned that there.. there has been like love happening,
Alice White 8:51
"someone falls in love" is what I assigned to this card,
Buddy Duquesne 8:55
so like not to jump too quickly into drama, but I do imagine that there's kind of a, an Olympic Village for this, joust in our fantasy realm. And no doubt, no doubt there's many crossing and intermingling of paths and no doubt love can happen on the battlefield. I think it's too hamfisted to say sir Ignatius immediately fell in love with Sir Vai on the battlefield and lost because of that.
Alice White 9:23
No, that's too.. no see, we don't want to fall into too many cliches,
Buddy Duquesne 9:28
right? That's way too cliche, but maybe Sir Vai is is fighting for love.
Alice White 9:34
Oh, I like that.
Buddy Duquesne 9:36
And that there's there's already romance in her life. That or she has just found new romance. And that's given her fighting spirit to go out there and utterly crush her opponent.
Alice White 9:48
Yes. I love that.
Buddy Duquesne 9:50
I also really like the two phases that just happened like sir Ignatius gets absolutely demolished. Maybe in like an early phase and then like, looks to the High Priestess and is like "oh right my faith like let that be my shield. Oh no, that didn't work"
Alice White 10:10
because in what I found in my very brief research and traditional rules of jousting, they run four courses. So I'm we're not going to pull a card for each of the four, for each of the four like rounds that they go because they run at each other four times. um, and so what we're doing is just pulling the outcome of those four, you know what happens after, so we can say maybe in the first two passes the knight of cups does serious, breaks a lance and does serious damage of the night of wands spurred by her you know, by the... maybe a favor that she received from her lover in the crowd. And the knight of wands struggles for the first two courses but... Yeah for the first two courses but looks to the High Priestess or says a prayer and the High Priestess, you know tries to, you know, bestow favor maybe upon, you know, or entreats to the gods to bestow favor, but unfortunately it doesn't quite help because the knight of cups had such a lead, the knight of Wands was able to come back and score some points in the final two courses, but it wasn't enough to unseat the knight of cups who takes round one,
Buddy Duquesne 11:27
right. And then and then are we playing by medieval times rules where you can be unseated and then continue to fight, which I really love.
Alice White 11:37
I do love that about medieval times, the place.
Buddy Duquesne 11:41
the place, and I think I've seen that at Renaissance festivals as well where like Knights get knocked off their horses and they're like, "bring me my sword. It's about to go down."
Alice White 11:53
Actually some really incredible there's about eight rules that were laid down in 1330, that, that are kind of the general like assumption for this is kind of how most jousts were like. Like, kind of created upon. Not all of it. Obviously, not all jousts are created equal. And this was 1330. And like who knows what they were up to before this, but it says, but these eight rules I don't believe that you could fight from the ground.
Buddy Duquesne 12:32
Oh, that's... I mean, Alice, this is a fantasy sports cast. And that's super lame
Alice White 12:39
that's it (laughs) that is, that is we- they should be able to fight from the ground. Yeah,
Buddy Duquesne 12:44
Yeah finding out that medieval times is not 100% real is one of the most crushing blows my psyche I've ever explained.
Alice White 12:50
Here's a fun, fun rule that I want to read to you. It's the fourth rule on here says
"Furthermore, if one night knocks down both his opponent and his Horse and the other knocks down the knight but not the horse, we declare that the knight whose horse fell with him shall be the winner because the fault in this case was the horse's and not the rider's. And in the case of the knight who fell but whose horse did not the fault rests with the knight and not with the horse. "
So if both of them fall down, and it looks like a tie because they both fell off their horses- if the horse fell down, also, it is implied that it was the horse's fault that you felt and not yours.
Buddy Duquesne 13:31
Blame the horse
Alice White 13:33
that's really good. That's super good. Just it's rules like that, where there it's a lot of rules for you get, you get points or you get you know, you win if you splinter your lance on the other person if they both do it, it's the... (long pause) Oh, okay, so if a knight chatters two lances on his opponent and the knight, but the night who got hit by those two lances knocks the other knight down, even if he didn't splinter his lance it's a tie. So yeah, like knocking someone off is basically the equivalent of two shattered lances, like two points for knocking someone off, one points for breaking a lance. Wow It kind of sounds like I thought maybe A Knight's Tale was, um was bogus but it actually sounds like their point system was pretty, was pretty accurate
Buddy Duquesne 14:30
Yeah it did seem made up also because of like the sports chant monks which is definitely an aesthetic that we're going for in this podcast. Um, so, so kind of try to imagine listener if you will, medieval times but as irreverent as A Knight's Tale, but as irreverent as an NFL sports cast, but as reverent as an NFL sports cast
Alice White 14:57
but as reverent as a tarot reading.
Buddy Duquesne 15:00
Oh yeah, exactly. So, So I mean, like, you know, you pick a favorite knight and that knight does well that day. I mean, like consider that like our, our reading for you that day you're gonna do just fine.
Alice White 15:12
Yeah. And so this, this event is a month long tournament hosted by the Emperor and the Empress of the mystical land of California. We got to come up with a new name for it (laughs). We've established that this is a mythical place that is exactly the size and shape of and, and climate of California. We've got four regions, we'll elaborate on this a little more in the intro episode of the show. But of the four regions, we've got the Northern California, we've got the high desert/Mountain region of like Death Valley plus San Bernardino area We've got the cityscape of Southern California. That's from LA to San Diego. And we've got the central region, which is.. right? we've got coastal- central coastal region. Isn't that-
Buddy Duquesne 16:14
Central coast, kind of kind of the Farm Belt? Sort of like breadbasket of this, this magical land which I've just decided shoudl be CALIANO
Alice White 16:24
Oh, I like that. Right, right. So good.
Buddy Duquesne 16:26
Caliano, Caliano,
Alice White 16:30
Caliano,
Buddy Duquesne 16:31
Caliano,
Alice White 16:32
I like it, write it down. So
Buddy Duquesne 16:33
I did.
Alice White 16:34
Oh good. Um, so yeah, so we'll have you know, these knights represent these different, different spots. We're using the we use California as our, as our base to to give them more cultural flavor, some, like, well, this was the region they're from this is you know what they're used to, but they are in the the capital, the capital city of this kingdom. Or of this empire which is somewhere. Sacramento. Sac-Town.
Buddy Duquesne 17:06
Sacra-sacro
Alice White 17:10
it's this- this- it's The Sacrament Valley is that what I said?
Buddy Duquesne 17:15
Sacrament Valley and we could we could call it Sacrament City.
Alice White 17:18
I swear I wrote this down somewhere.
Buddy Duquesne 17:21
I think we made it up. Sacrament Field is the name of the joust location.
Alice White 17:28
Yeah, they're on Sacrament Field for sure. Um, and so yeah, so in this round, so are.. you know that episode we will have broken down the story of the passes and the you know, the love and the High Priestess and all of that, make it into a narrative instead of just numbers. We won't say "Oh, and she scored a 10 and he scored a seven" you know, like that. We'll make it a narrative and then we'll record it and publish it once a day.
Buddy Duquesne 17:59
Yeah. And hopefully it becomes part of your daily routine to listen to it and keep up on the events of the joust. I mean, like, I'm hoping that Sir Vai takes it all the way. And that's like, that's where I'm coming at it from. I don't even know if that's what my character thinks that's where I am with it right now.
Alice White 18:15
Yeah, well, yeah, our characters, Buddy of Duquesne and Alice of House White are going to have to, you know, they're going to try to remain impartial, but they're definitely going to have favorites, right? Um, I'm personally I'm leaning right now towards Sir Sayif. Because he's our city boy from
Buddy Duquesne 18:36
a very honorable city boy,
Alice White 18:38
very, very honorable city boy, kind of a paladin kind of character.
Buddy Duquesne 18:43
I mean, it would be it would be fine if he won. I mean, like, very, very earned. And well,
Alice White 18:48
they're all they're all very good. Yeah. Um, and there's no villains here. Really. I feel like sir Ignatius is the closest maybe to being our, you know, our hot blooded hot tempered?
Buddy Duquesne 19:01
He has, he has a short temper, but that doesn't make him bad, right? Like it's just part of who he is. And it is tempered against other energy like, like, personality traits.
Alice White 19:12
Sure, um, the knight of pentacles is maybe too ambitious by half. So maybe
Buddy Duquesne 19:18
Sometimes we equate ambitious with evil if we live in the universe of Harry Potter.
Alice White 19:25
It's not necessarily bad, but it could, because of his temperament there are some cards here that could react poorly with that ambition, and maybe spur him towards treachery. Who knows?
Buddy Duquesne 19:37
Who knows,
Alice White 19:37
you never know.
Buddy Duquesne 19:38
And that's what the beauty of the joust is that since we're making it up 100% of the way, not only do the points not matter, but there is no way to tell what's going to happen next. So we will crown a champion on the 28th of February and on the 29th we will have a kind of an award ceremony for them and hopefully a portent of a positive future for the rest of the year. So I'm looking forward to it.
Alice White 20:07
Yeah, this is I think this was a really good test run. I'm super proud of it. Um, this game system sounds fun. If we can refine this game system further, I feel like we could even publish it for people to play on their own.
Buddy Duquesne 20:20
Yeah, hopefully over the course of the month, we come up with new ways to play. Because the whole idea is just to put something together that goes out every single day about five minutes at a time. It's gonna be good.
Unknown Speaker 20:31
The episodes, yeah, we're gonna try and keep them to five minutes flat. So that we don't take up too much of your morning. But um, but it should be good.
Buddy Duquesne 20:41
Yeah,
Alice White 20:41
I'm so- I'm so hyped. This is good.
Buddy Duquesne 20:44
We need an outro for the show. Something that simultaneously says, Monday Night Football and medieval fantasy, so it's like, oh, "until next time sports fans..." What, What do you got?
Alice White 21:01
"Until next time sports fans don't catch the plague"
Buddy Duquesne 21:08
oh no too close to home. Oh no no in January of 2020
Alice White 21:12
oh no we have a plague.
Buddy Duquesne 21:15
"Sports fans until next time keep watching the skies"
Alice White 21:19
oooh. No, that's fun. That's a might be a thing already.
Buddy Duquesne 21:23
Yeah, I think that's from a thing.
Alice White 21:24
Okay, but I like that "until next time sports fans. ummm pray to the gods for good harvests".
Buddy Duquesne 21:36
(laughs) Remember our survival depends on the results of this broadcast so I think you're right "so until next time sports fans keep listening to this magical...." How did we decide in fiction that this is delivered? Magic stones?
Alice White 21:55
magic stones like stone of far speech kinda thing? Yeah, you can listen to us on your portable magic stone radio.
Buddy Duquesne 22:03
That's just a crystal radio. That's a real thing.
Alice White 22:06
Oh, shoot.
Buddy Duquesne 22:06
Oh. delivered via crystal radio.
Alice White 22:09
That's okay. Yeah.
Buddy Duquesne 22:11
The Crystal waves are being broadcast at what's what's a good amount of hertz for crystal waves?
Alice White 22:18
I don't know anything about hertz!
Buddy Duquesne 22:23
What what year does this take place in 1520?
Alice White 22:26
You opened it with I think 1520 but we need to go much earlier.
Buddy Duquesne 22:30
Okay, it's 1320
Alice White 22:32
Okay,
Buddy Duquesne 22:32
What year were those rules written?
Alice White 22:34
1330
Buddy Duquesne 22:35
so 1320, so this is before they decided you can't fight off your horse. "All right, sports fans. It's 1320 and you're tuned to Radio 1320 on your magic crystals."
Alice White 22:51
Yeah, no, that's good. "You're tuned to Radio 1320 on your magic crystals. Thanks for tuning in to another another edition of Joust Cast."
Buddy Duquesne 23:01
"The Joust! It is royalty mandated that you listen every morning. So until next time, don't end up in the stockade." "Until next time, don't be a fool. Listen to the fool."
Alice White 23:21
sure
Buddy Duquesne 23:21
there's something here.
Alice White 23:22
There's something about the fool. Something about the fool who is our court jester character.
Buddy Duquesne 23:26
Who was probably like head bard. Right? So like,
Alice White 23:29
okay, yeah.
Buddy Duquesne 23:31
with apologies to the fool. We close this broadcast.
Alice White 23:38
We'll figure something out before before February 1.
Buddy Duquesne 23:42
So, to everybody listening out there, thank you for listening to our pilot episode, we do another show called Those Happy Places. You should listen to that. We're available on Twitter. I'm @buddy_Duquesne, Duquesne spelled D-U-Q-U-E-S-N-E
Alice White 23:58
and I'm @AliceWhiteTHP, for those happy places, the podcast we do about theme parks, go listen to it.
Buddy Duquesne 24:04
And our theme music for the joust is Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeod. There's additional music from Kevin MacLeod even in this unaired pilot, which we will be airing just for fun. You can find Kevin MacLeod's entire discography- Is that what it's called? It's not really on discs, entire musicography on his website incompetech.com. Thank you, Kevin, for your creative commons contributions.
Alice White 24:32
Yes thank you, Kevin. And thank you all for listening. And until next time,
Buddy Duquesne 24:42
Oooh I've got one, I've got one. Okay. "Until next time, strike true."
Alice White 24:47
Ooh.
Buddy Duquesne 24:49
Well struck sir.
Alice White 24:50
Well struck my Lord!
Buddy Duquesne 24:51
Well struck my lord! Pretty good, right?
Alice White 24:55
May all your lances strike true.
Buddy Duquesne 24:57
Until next time, may your lance strike true!
Alice White 25:04
Got it in one!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai