Catalina and Esperanza, Twins at Odds - Drama and Romance with Character Creation Cast (Pasión de las Pasiones)

Star : 0:00

How much romance Do you like in your games? How do you create drama before the game even begins? And are you a magical girl or a necromancer? Hello friends welcome to characters without stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled. I'm star. This episode I'm joined by Amelia and Ryan, the two hosts of the character creation cast podcast, a show where they discuss and create characters with guests using the guests favorite games. Amelia does most of the social media organizing and graphic design for the podcast and was also an ENnies judge for two years. Ryan does the editing and production while also dabbling in game design and freelance audio editing. Ryan and Amelia, I'll give you a chance to plug your projects at the end. But right now, do you want to tell listeners a little bit about yourself?

Ryan: 0:54

Sure. I mean, Amelia, do you want to go first?

Amelia: 0:56

Sure. alphabetically. Yeah, I'm Amelia Antrim. I am currently mostly just doing our podcasts. That's kind of my main creative thing. I was an ENnies judge for two years than they require you to take a year off. So I'm going to apply hopefully to do it next year. Which, for people that don't know the ENnies are the big RPG awards. They present them every year at Gen Con. And it was so much fun. I am a single mom of two children. That really kind of like is all of my time. That's That's most of it.

Ryan: 1:40

Yeah, absolutely. I'm Ryan Boelter. I am an editing fiend.

Amelia: 1:44

I guess that technically I dabble in game design now to Apparently, I do the editing for character creation cast, also one of the CO hosts. And I do a whole bunch of freelance editing, from actual plays, to discussion podcasts, to some audio dramas here and there, which is a lot of fun. So there, there's a whole slew of things that I do behind the scenes as well. And I also dabble in game design and whatnot. By day, I'm a computer program team lead. And by night, I'm a podcaster, I since we're working on a game.

Star : 2:23

Oh, nice. guess, and father of two. So

Amelia: 2:24

Yeah. And then I guess also in my in my day job, I work in oncology research, since Ryan said his day job. I'm the person that does all the paperwork.

Ryan: 2:49

And Amelia is the reason why our podcast is so organized.

Amelia: 2:54

Yes, yeah. I'm professionally type A.

Star : 2:58

So I'm curious, how did you guys meet and start podcasting?

Amelia: 3:08

We met because we decided to start a podcast. We were We are part of this, like Twitter DM group of people that do podcasting. And because we were both kind of vaguely interested in making a podcast and listen to a lot of podcasts. So we had some mutual friends. And then one day, a tweet from Ryan showed up in my Twitter feed that said, you know, what, if there was a podcast about creating characters, because everybody does actual play, but like, we don't hear about character creation. And I replied and said, That sounds amazing. And Ryan sent me a message was like, Do you wanna make a podcast with me? And then I sent him like this meeting agenda thing that was like, alright, we're doing this. Here's all the stuff we have to do. And like a day later, we had registered an email address, we decided on a name for the podcast, and we were like, Yeah, let's do that.

Ryan: 4:18

It took like, what a solid month of just planning. We didn't even like video chat for what it was like a couple of weeks after we decided to do that.

Amelia: 4:32

It was only only a week or so. But we didn't meet in person, I think until that trip to Chicago, which was a full two months into actually streaming the show, and about four months into the project itself.

Ryan: 4:49

That's wild

Star : 4:51

that is truly wild.

Ryan: 4:53

We were invited to to go to the One Shot Podcast Network to that's another Funny story. But long story short, James D'Amato said, hey, I want your podcast on our network after we reached out, hey, we want to do an episode with you. Because one of his good friends Alex Roberts was recorded with us for our third series. And and she couldn't stop talking about the show. So we said, wow, that's cool. I was I was cool. Amelia was freaking out because James D'Amato it was like, you know, a real big name to her. And I'm like, I've heard of one shot.

Amelia: 5:40

I was Yeah, I was like, in a panic, because I was like, we will drive to Chicago, we will. Because we are only about I'm about two hours away, right? About three and a half hours. So it's like, we're gonna drive to Chicago. We're gonna do this. And I'm like, panicking. And Ryan was like, cool, I guess we'll go do this. But that was the first time we'd met in person. It was several months into making this podcast. I know, a lot of people are, like, super good friends. And then they decided to make a podcast. And we were like, we've never met each other. We don't know anything about each other. What if we made a show? And now we're very good friends. It's worked out really? Well. We have really good chemistry. But um, yeah, it's not the traditional route.

Star : 6:27

No, yeah, that's, that's for sure. That's that's kind of amazing. That story.

Amelia: 6:31

Yeah, we both lucked out. I think.

Star : 6:34

So the two of you made these characters on your own podcast. With the game designer, the game is called Pasión de las Pasiones. And it just came out on Valentine's Day. And the game designer is Brandon Leon-Gambetta. So I'm really excited because you are going to be able, dear listeners to go to their podcast, listen to how they built the characters with the game designer. And now we're going to talk more about them. So this is really fun.

Amelia: 6:59

Yeah, absolutely. The this is probably our messiest duo, in the, in their show history in terms of the amount of like, sweet, sweet drama that is possible between the two. Yes. And I'm also just really excited to talk this through because the the real pain of our show is that we make characters every month we sit down and we make characters and we never ever, ever play them. No, like, it's it's terrible. We didn't take that into account.

Star : 7:36

It's it's a true tragedy.

Amelia: 7:39

Yeah, yeah, we didn't think about that before. I thought about it, but I thought it was gonna be one of those like, oh, it's gonna be a funny little bit. And it's just turned into torture over the five.

Star : 7:54

It's true. This is why my podcast exists is because that pain is very familiar to a lot of TTRPG fans.

Amelia: 8:05

Definitely.

Star : 8:06

So let's talk just a little bit about Pasión de las Pasiones can you kind of give a brief rundown of what the game is.

Amelia: 8:13

Yeah, it's a powered by the apocalypse game, which means it's relatively rules light from the player facing standpoint, it's a it's a game that you play as characters in a telenovela. And you're playing to kind of find out what happens all the drama and steaminess that that happens in telenovelas is a lot of the tropes that the game plays on. For people that aren't familiar, powered by the apocalypse. It's a type of system that pulls heavily on genre. And the mechanics of the game, kind of like reinforced that drama at every turn, pass you on day last pass you on as everything pushes towards kissing or drama in this game, and it's fantastic. Brandon was on our show, like our second episode, I think and mentioned that he was making this game and ever since then, I've been following it and really excited about it, because it does really lean into these tropes of creating drama between players. And it's very story focused and everything is meant to, to kind of happen really fast, and be really over the top. So it's not like a combat not not a lot of careful consideration and planning of how you're going to do things. It's very much like, what do I want to do in the moment? Okay, do it.

Star : 9:49

So tell me who are you bringing to the table?

Ryan: 9:52

Sure. So my character is using the l have a playbook El Jefe is like Your quintessential like guess villainous boss type character, right? This is the type of character that's got some goons that they can pull upon. And they generally try to get what they want. And and they genuinely succeed by, you know, strong arming the rest of the people that they're interacting with. So I'll have a is pretty, pretty bad character for the most part. But I created Catalina who is somebody that was the the lover of the captain of the ship that we were on that the ship is like this private yacht, owned by Lorenzo and Lorenzo mysteriously fell overboard and was lost at sea one day. And there's there's no idea what happened. And my character Catalina has been just consumed with grief, trying to trying to keep Lorenzo's business afloat. And trying to see whether or not this boat can get sold as per Lorenzo's final thoughts of what he wanted to do with the boat

Amelia: 11:21

and definitely not hoping to collect any life insurance money and, you know, definitely it wasn't your fault at all.

Ryan: 11:29

No, no, I there's no way I wouldn't know. I've done anything to learn.

Amelia: 11:37

Yeah, part of this game is that you kind of get to pick where you're telenovela is set and everything. And we opted to set ours on this private yacht in the ocean. And that was the mysterious disappearance slash possible murder of Lorenzo was kind of the center of our of our story.

Star : 11:59

Does your telenovela have a name?

Amelia: 12:03

I don't think we did name it, did we? Oh, that is a serious mistake.

Star : 12:07

You could correct that now.

Amelia: 12:11

I'm disappointed in us. I I know that the boats name was Daddy. And there was a key harpoon I get them on the on the boat named issues. So like, Oh, that's right. Yeah, we should probably call this daddy issues. there was a lot of like, everybody, in the cast of the main characters we created have some sort of connection to Lorenzo and the three of the people I believe, had some sort of like relation to him directly. And one was like kind of this business associate. Right? Yes, that's right. Brandon's character was like the best friend and Elsebeth was playing Lorenzo's sister, I think. And then I was the former business associate slash pining lover. And also, Amelia's character was my twin.

Star : 13:25

What So Amelia, tell me about your character?

Unknown: 13:28

Yeah, I picked El Gemelo For my playbook, which is the twin. And that's really your your whole thing is being duplicitous and confusing people and pretending to be your twin and causing problems. So I decided to be Ryan's twin. And I was the former business partner of our boats Captain Lorenzo, but really had been in love with him secretly, and was actually the person that introduced Ryan's character, Catalina to Lorenzo. And so there was a lot of jealousy, and I had been kind of like sidelined from our business. And so I had a quarrel with Lorenzo as well, because he'd kind of pushed me out, so I couldn't get all of our money. My character's name was Esperanza.

Amelia: 14:28

And there's no there's no way that you would have had any motive to to push Lorenzo off the edge of that boat on that fateful night. No, no, of course not. My for my characters looks to I picked up my hair was glossier, then you're like, no matter how good your hair looked, mine was shinier. My eyes were slightly darker. It was just like no matter what room we were in, I was hotter. Yeah.

Ryan: 15:02

But like nobody could tell us apart, which is great.

Amelia: 15:04

Yeah, no, my tops are always just a little lower cut than yours just so slightly

Ryan: 15:09

extra button unbuttoned here,

Amelia: 15:12

right? That's right. We said like, it's all about how many buttons you have on button and whatever you had I had one less.

Star : 15:20

Yeah. It could go south pretty quick.

Ryan: 15:23

It could. Yeah. Yeah.

Star : 15:25

So question about that, then you you made a decision to make your character prettier. How did Catalina feel about that?

Amelia: 15:33

Um, well, I mean, it's all part of the game, right? Like Catalina is, you know, always thinks that she's one upping Esperanza. Anyway, regardless of the looks, because, you know, Catalina got the man, she probably knows that Esperanza was pining after Lorenzo as well. DId you do it on purpose?

Ryan: 15:58

Maybe? Maybe? Because like, I imagined that our characters had a history of like competition with one another growing up, right?

Amelia: 16:09

Oh, definitely.

Ryan: 16:10

So like you had this like, nice, sweet business arrangement with Lorenzo. And then when I when I first met Lorenzo, I imagined Catalina was thinking, Oh, well, here we go. It's time. Now's my chance.

Amelia: 16:27

Was it your fault, then that Lorenzo kicked me out of our business? Like, were you whispering in his ear? Telling him to do that? You know, I, I'd be willing to bet. Yes. Because like, like, in a very, I'm just complaining about my sister sort of way. But like, in reality, it's, it's so this would be sowing that seed of like, is this the right person? I want it as a business

Star : 16:58

It's like you're not even currently playing the game. And partner. already, there's so much drama.

Ryan: 17:03

And that's, that's the beauty of Pasión de las Pasiones is yes, you get all that sweet background drama during character creation, right. So when you jump into the game, you have all this good stuff to pounce on?

Amelia: 17:21

Yeah, each playbook asks relationship questions between the characters. So for example, my set, blank is your twin and has something you want more than anything else in the world. So I had picked Catalina as my twin. And the something I wanted more than anything else in the world was Lorenzo. Yeah, and mine was blank has been a thorn in my side. So obviously, I chose Esperanza for that. So that way, we can have that on paper as our relationship is kind of at odds with one another. I like the moves for my playbook too, because they really lean into this trope of being the evil twin, mostly, one of the moves that I had was called that wasn't me, that says, when someone sets a scene with you, or your twin, you can mark a condition to switch which one of you is really there

Star : 18:28

amazing.

Amelia: 18:29

So anyone in the game could come in, and they're talking to Ryan's character. And I could just mark this as my move and say, Nope, actually, it's me there, but they don't know that.

Ryan: 18:43

The game is brilliant.

Star : 18:45

I mean, it sounds amazing. I am itching to try it. Ryan, question for you. You're playing a woman? Yeah, I don't believe you identify as a woman.

Ryan: 18:55

I know not entirely, like Demi male, is is the technical term for the gender which is kind of fluid on the inside, between masculine and feminine ideals

Amelia: 19:11

you use he and they for your pronouns.

Star : 19:15

How does it feel to be playing a woman? Do you struggle with that at all, particularly in a game that focuses on sexuality and romance?

Ryan: 19:24

It's almost second nature to me, because of how I feel about all that inside with my gender. It was actually one of the things that sparked the realization of being demi gendered, right. Because I always, I always gravitated towards female characters more often than not, something felt a little off of playing like pure masculine characters. So this is kind of a, a way for me to kind of explore that part. Have my personality in a game that you know, I normally can't explore in, in real life, right?

Amelia: 20:08

I think you've made a lot more feminine characters on our shows. And not absolutely, I guess we would have to go back and count. But I want to say that the majority of your characters have been feminine, it's, it's usually the case, it's probably a little bit of projection of that, that inner self, onto the character, but it just feels better and more natural. We talk about that a lot on our show, too, about games being this kind of tool for empathy. And it is one of the places where you're kind of in a safe space, and you can try out those kinds of things in a controlled environment.

Star : 20:49

Definitely.

Amelia: 20:50

And so I especially like the idea of people getting to kind of play out some of those gender roles in games and see what feels right, what feels good. And being able to do some self discovery with that.

Star : 21:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: 21:07

Now, having said all of that, Dirk Stranglethorn. One of the things one of one of the OG characters from season one, basically, probably my most masculine character, a real dirtbag, and I would probably have a lot of fun playing as him because he's nothing like I am. So like, trying to play to a redemption arc for somebody that's, that's all about stealing and murdering and a wild west setting. It's just like, Okay,

Amelia: 21:43

that was a character building challenge was that I gave you because Ryan is lawful, good. Isn't the strongest sense of the word anytime there is some kind of healer or support playbook or character type or something like that. I can usually point it out and say Ryan's gonna pick this one. Yeah. And I'm the opposite. is part of why our chemistry works. It's our trope on our show is Ryan will always make a magical girl whenever possible. And I will always make a necromancer whenever possible.

Star : 22:23

That's I love that I was going to ask you, Amelia, like how often do you play against type or play against kind of your own identity or what you're accustomed to,

Amelia: 22:35

um, almost never. More and more as we've gotten on with the show, well, we've we've stopped really kind of pushing against our type for a while, we were really trying to make characters that were very different every series. And then as we went on, we realized that there's there are just things that are more fun for us. And then the challenge became, can I make a necromancer or a magical girl in this system. And so that's sort of where we leaned every time, my favorite spaces to play in our dramatic games that have a lot of moral gray areas. And so I like to create characters that are complicated in that way. I don't know that I've spent a ton of time really exploring a lot of myself in games. I have a pretty strong sense of self I am a bisexual woman, I'm extremely mentally ill but I tend not to play mentally ill characters because it's just weird. But yeah, I, I tend to kind of stick with what's comfortable. And that's usually playing a smart, snarky dark magic character. Yeah, I would say that Amelia has influenced me as a player a lot more than I've probably influenced her. Because I did the first few series. Most of my characters were very straight, laced, like direct to the point, but after like being challenged with Dirk Stranglethorn and, and whatnot, my characters started getting a lot more complex. And I'm noticing myself like embracing the dark side of characters a lot more. You've started making characters that are a lot more internally complicated.

Ryan: 24:47

Yes, thank you. And I've taken a lot of cues from Amelia as characters and tried implementing them with my characters and found that the messy This is fun. So sticking with it.

Star : 25:06

Speaking of messy, your characters for Pasión de las Pasiones. They're both obviously not squeaky clean. We have an evil twin and a evil boss. What is their morality? Like?

Amelia: 25:24

I think that they are not nice. I don't think either one of them is necessarily good or bad. I think that they're just really complicated people. And I think that's a thing that I would love to explore in a game. Pasiones isn't necessarily meant for exploring super deep, emotional stories. It's meant for drama. But I think if it was a different system, or a game that kind of supported that it would be a lot of time exploring why they are like that, and what things have led to that, like, why do we hate each other? What happened there that made us so competitive? And what are our reasons for doing the things that we do? Why did Catalina need to steal Lorenzo? One of the things that we definitely didn't decide when we were doing our, our character creation episodes was decide who actually killed Lorenzo. That was a thing that we left open. And if we played the game, I'm not sure I would even want to know who did it. You know, I think we all had very strong reasons to do it. And I don't know I don't know that I would be rooting for anybody there. No, I would be along for the ride to find out who did it even if that somebody was me. Yes, if Catalina ended up being the murderer, I'd be just as shocked as everybody else. Which is a fantastic way to go into playing a game. I think in the in the realm of Pasiones. The Catalina is a very bad person. Yes. She She is very manipulative. She will pretend to be a good person to get what she wants, if it serves her, right. So so she she became Lorenzo's lover because he had a lot of money. He was probably good looking. And it was a way to one up her sister. Right? Those are good things to be aspiring for. So no, no. And like at every turn, like, yeah, she probably manipulated Lorenzo into forcing Esperanza out of the business a bit and trying to wiggle her way into Lorenzo's will. Right. So if anything bad happened to him, she would get the money, right? I mean, that's the thing, because we decided to that we didn't know if either if you were actually married, like was it official? Was it legal? Yeah. And so there was the question to have, even if you did kill Lorenzo, were you even in his will? Or like, legally, could you even inherit? Yeah, because it wasn't a legal marriage. So they, they they gotten married in the heat of the moment, right? With no witnesses. But with Lorenzo being a captain. He's able to marry people but not himself to another person. So like, Catalina thanks. Yeah, that we were married. I'm entitled to this. But like, it was never like official. Right. When I think you had been telling everybody that it was official, it was a done deal. Like you had married Lorenzo, but you also kind of knew that you?

Ryan: 29:02

Yes. Hadn't. And Catalina also knows that one of the other characters outfits character. That was Malena. Malena is one of the biggest inheritors of Lorenzo's stuff in the will right. She is Lorenzo's sister. Nobody else knows that. Yeah. Yeah. So nobody else knows that. But Catalina so Catalina is telling everybody, I am the biggest one in the will. You know, I've got control of everything. Don't worry about it. I'll I'll take care of you all. Meanwhile, she's trying to cozy up with Malena because Malena is the one that's gonna get everything.

Amelia: 29:43

Right. She's technically Lorenzo's next of kin.

Ryan: 29:47

Yeah, exactly.

Amelia: 29:48

It's so messy.

Star : 29:50

Quick plug for your guys's podcast because I really enjoyed that part of the episode where you're talking about the marriage that was not really a marriage. It's like Such a fun way to come up with a conflict before the game starts. It's really delicious thinking about all of the ways that these things are going to be revealed in the game just like that moment in a telenovela.

Amelia: 30:14

No, I know. And that's, that's part of what made this one especially hard to not play because there's, we created all of these hooks, and all of this drama, and we'll never find out. We'll never know, never gonna know.

Star : 30:30

Well, like I say at the end of every episode, may your characters find their story. I hope, I hope you get to play them someday. Yes. So you mentioned that you weren't sure if Lorenzo was attractive. And I just want to say he's a character in a telenovela, right? Everyone is attractive.

Ryan: 30:48

I mean, that's, that's fair. Yeah,

Amelia: 30:51

of course he is. Of course he is.

Star : 30:54

So on that what do both of you look like? Ryan, if you want to tell me first about Catalina?

Ryan: 31:00

Um, so let's see Catalina. I think she had like long dark hair. If I remember correctly

Amelia: 31:08

I have your character sheet here in front of me.

Ryan: 31:11

Oh, there you go.

Amelia: 31:12

Yeah. You picked styled hair, paranoid eyes and expensive clothes. Yeah. So you can kind of expand on what those mean but those are the three that you you went for.

Ryan: 31:24

So she always is on the look out for trouble right that's why the paranoid eyes she's she's always trying to be one or two steps ahead of everybody. Because she believes everybody's kind of trying to get her and that probably stems from the competition with Esperanza her whole life

Amelia: 31:46

from the fact that Esperanza is always trying to get her

Ryan: 31:53

but yeah, she's got this this like styled long dark hair. And, and she wears like, you know, really expensive, like, business style clothing to kind of give this air of like, I'm in charge. You can trust me. You know, don't don't question my authority because I am the one that holds all the cards at all times.

Star : 32:20

And I know the two of you are twins. But Amelia, how does Esperanza's appearance differ?

Amelia: 32:25

I picked that my hair was glossier. So like the choices in here were bouncy or darker, longer slicker. And I wrote my own in is glossier, everything in here is like all of the look options that it gives you are more angry or colder, darker. So yeah, I said, I just had glossier hair. I had darker eyes, and then I picked risque clothes. So it's just in every way we are twins, but I'm just a little bit hotter. But not enough that you can tell the difference because we switch places sometimes.

Ryan: 33:07

Yeah. All you have to do is literally button up one button and nobody can tell.

Amelia: 33:16

Right? That's my that's my secret disguise. I'm like, ooh, we're going to trade places. button one more.

Ryan: 33:25

Except for this one character. That was Brandon's character. Armando. Armando could tell the difference every time. That was the relationship.

Amelia: 33:36

Yeah, that was my Yeah, relationship question. I wrote Armando met you before they met your twin and can usually tell it's you.

Ryan: 33:45

Yeah. So it's so it's a nice, a nice extra bit of like, potential drama in there. Right.

Star : 33:52

Right. Yeah. To have somebody in the room who knows when you're lying. Yeah, it's powerful. Yes.

Ryan: 33:57

Yes, exactly.

Amelia: 33:59

I really, I really wanted to do a scene where I traded places and pretended to be you. I'd really love to see how I know.

Ryan: 34:06

I know that. Yeah, having that mechanic like in your playbook specifically. It's, it's just so delicious. Not to be able to use it. Right. Like, you have to get that in there somewhere. Right. Right.

Amelia: 34:21

Also, I just want to pretend to be you. Yeah.

Ryan: 34:23

And then then you can like have my my thugs, which are the staff for the boat. Like the five staff members, like a couple of them are obviously super jacked thugs. But the others are like more, you know, espionage like thugs. And so like, just interacting with them and tricking them and having them do your dirty work. Sounds like it'd be a ton of fun.

Amelia: 34:49

Yes, I bet I could get them to tell me things. Thinking that I'm you

Ryan: 34:54

Exactly. Great. And this is why Catalina is so paranoid.

Amelia: 34:59

Right? Right, right. There's a there's a podcast that I listened to. I've suggested it several times on our show called the vulgar history. And one of the things that keeps coming up in there is, like, historical accounts of these women being paranoid, and the host, and is always just like, but they had reason to, because everyone is murdering everyone else around them. Because usually it's about these women and royalty. And it's like, well, she was really paranoid. Yeah. Because people tried to murder her like six times. And so I think that's how I feel about Catalina is just like, yeah, she's paranoid. Because everyone's trying to get her.

Ryan: 35:39

Yeah, I mean, she's at the top of her game, right? And so obviously, there's going to be people that want to dethrone her basically, right? Yep. And everybody wants that money. Everyone wants that Lorenzo money, even if they don't want to admit it.

Amelia: 35:54

You know, this is a thing that I love about our show that has happened over the course of our show is that Ryan used to be very resistant to intra party conflict. It's one of my favorite things in games, I love causing problems. Not as a player, but as a character. I don't like to cause problems with people at my table. But Ryan was very resistant to that, because you were very, like, I don't want to upset anybody. But now Now we're at a point five years in, like, I hate Esperanza, and how can I undermine her and I stole the man of her dreams.

Ryan: 36:42

And constantly flaunted him in front of her.

Amelia: 36:45

Yes, yes. I'm so proud of you, Ryan.

Star : 36:52

That's yeah, that's very messed up. Right. But it's like the game requires that. Yeah, it may not be appropriate for all games for there to be that much conflict.

Ryan: 37:02

Right. Yeah. This is player conflict the RPG.

Amelia: 37:07

Yes, definitely. Definitely.

Star : 37:11

So I, I'll say this game is about drama, but it's also about kissing. How comfortable are you with romance and sex in games like that,

Ryan: 37:23

I am extremely comfortable with it. I haven't been able to explore it much, unfortunately. But I am extremely, like romance and sex positive. In all, all aspects of my existence, but like, being able to play that out in the game, it's kind of one of those like, one of those dreams session things that I am still trying to attain, I got a little bit of a taste of it a while ago, there is a picture on my wall, I had art work done for a scene that I had with another character where our two characters were really into each other. But like, they would never admit that to each other. So there's like, there's this really sweet, tender moment where I was just handing her her mask. And she was very vulnerable by not having her mask worn. So like, there was like this really sweet moment. And like, that was one of the most intense emotional moments that I've ever had in role playing game. So now I'm like, give me give me all the romance, you can because that sounds amazing.

Amelia: 38:42

I've had a couple of games where there was there was romance involved. And I've always really enjoyed it. It's obviously something that you you really need to be comfortable with the people that you're playing with, to kind of have those moments of vulnerability and awkwardness. Sometimes, I had one game where there was another character that I was married to we were in this arranged marriage. But he was gay, and I was also gay. And so we both had other partners. We were in this sort of political marriage, but we both had other partners. And we're fine with that and everything. And that was a really interesting one to play to, because we did love each other, but not like that. And so that was a really fun, dynamic to play out. That is it was somebody that you really do love, but not in a romantic way. And then I've had a couple of games where I played the spouse of another character and got to play out some love stories and stuff was it was a lot of fun. I'd love to do more of it.

Ryan: 39:55

Yeah, like one of my favorite games that I've still not had a chance to play on. Starcrossed by Alex Roberts can be mentioned earlier, is a game where you play with a Jenga tower and like the the tension of pulling the blocks and setting them on top and everything and touching the tower when you have to talk, all of that builds this very real tension inside your body. That simulates the tension of longing for somebody that you cannot be with. Right. That's the whole point of the game. So like that those are like the sorts of feelings that I really want to dive towards is that that, like, getting to experience that, that heartache, and that pain, and as well as the joy of playing out that

Amelia: 40:44

we did a little bit when we when we played broken? Yeah. Which is a game by Benjamin Wallace. And it is about the breakdown of a relationship. And one of the mechanics of it is that you actually physically break objects. Yeah, when you do it, you have these objects that represent phases of your relationship. And as the relationship breaks down in the game, you actually break the objects. And so we did get to play that one where we had been married, and things were kind of falling apart. Yeah. And you had a hard time with that one, because you were like, the point was to have these fights and Brian kept trying to like, equivocate and make peace. I was like, No, that's not how this works.

Ryan: 41:30

It took me a few rounds of that to finally get what the game was going for. I think I got there in the end.

Amelia: 41:38

Yeah, we did. We did. It was very emotional and dramatic. I liked that one a lot that was really interesting to play is the opposite of romance. But like the breakdown of a relationship was really fun and interesting.

Ryan: 41:51

But yeah, I really want to play in a game that has, you know, romance and, you know, intimacy, that sort of stuff, because it's one of the things that I just haven't experienced.

Star : 42:02

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, so for me, I just love that slow burn romance story. This game is a little different. It's a very fiery fuse. It's it's yeah, there's not a lot of slow burn in there. So it seems like it's a different kind of romance story that's being told.

Amelia: 42:21

Yeah, definitely.

Ryan: 42:22

Yeah. It's all over the top too. So it's like you have that steamy romance one session, the next session, they're dead to you. And now you're steamy romances with another character. And then two sessions later, now you're fighting over each other, both of them and it's, you know, there, it could go so many different ways, depending on the roles depending on the setup. It's such a brilliant setup for the game.

Amelia: 42:49

Yeah, it can go very quickly from kissing to stabbing. Yeah.

Star : 42:55

Esperanza What do you like least about yourself?

Amelia: 43:00

Oh, that's such a good question. I think I, I am very hard on myself and take it very, very personally. When Catalina comes out ahead, and, and I feel I feel very much second best in almost everything in my life, partly because of things that Catalina has done in that competition that we have. But I think it's really spread to all aspects of my life where I continually just have this almost pathological need to be better and to win the competition. And to not feel like I'm in second place all the time.

Star : 43:47

Catalina, what do you like least about yourself?

Ryan: 43:52

Yeah, I think the thing that I like least about myself would be how it it, it never feels like I truly have the upper hand. It always feels like it's an illusion that can just fall apart at any minute that I don't have all the answers, and I just pretend that I do. And it seems to work out.

Star : 44:17

Thank you both so much for being my guests on the podcast today. I've really enjoyed talking to you and hearing more about your characters. And I do hope you get the chance to play them someday

Amelia: 44:28

Hopefully yes, this is a little a lot of fun though. This was it was cool to to get a chance to dig a little deeper this time.

Star : 44:35

You are always welcome to come back and talk about any of the many many characters that you've built. Never played.

Ryan: 44:42

Gosh, we do have a few.

Star : 44:45

It's just going to be the two of you are going to be my guests now all the time. steady supply. What would you like to share with my listeners?

Amelia: 44:55

Oh, well, I guess as far as personal plug So you can always listen to character creation cast wherever you find podcasts. We do also have a new monthly newsletter that we put out, that talks a little bit about the games, we've covered things that we're excited about. And over on our Patreon, we are doing a Game Design series where we are attempting to create a game that marries magical girls and necromancers. It's called Undying Bonds. And that's a been a very fun project too, that people can listen to over on our Patreon feed, too.

Ryan: 45:33

Absolutely. For me, I've got all sorts of different projects going on. Working on pandas, talking games, working on a Patreon only theme for the one shot Podcast Network, Starwall Odyssey of the lucky Finn, which is a sci fi actual play with some really killer players and that one, and a few other things here and there that are not get released. I'll keep those under wraps, but stay tuned. You'll hear all about that on our show. Whenever those do come to fruition.

Star : 46:13

I'll put all the links in the description so you can find all of Ryan and Emilio's projects and their podcast which I highly recommend. You can find me on Tik Tok at St AR Ma Ma c you can also listen on YouTube, just search for characters without stories or follow the link in the description. I am nearly at 50 subscribers and would really appreciate it if you go over there and subscribe. Please like subscribe, rate, review and share with your friends. It really does mean a lot. If you'd like me to send you a free button, you could go ahead and leave me some feedback at characters without stories@gmail.com. Make sure to include your address so I can send you the buttons. I want to give a special shout out this week to Jim who shared about my podcast on Twitter, and got me a few more downloads. Thank you, Jim. I'm currently accepting submissions, particularly for non d&d characters. So if you'd like to share your character, you can go to the submission form at characters without stories.com. Thanks for listening and may all your characters find their stories