Fixing XP

 

Milestones, where the GM tells you that you level because you met some goal, are the absolute worst way to level up a character. The. Worst. Basically it's whenever the GM feels like giving you a level for doing whatever nonsense he came up with. It takes the already-bad trend of GMs throttling the life out of their players and amps it up to eleven. "Trad", where the GM has total control, needs to be eliminated, not further entrenched. 

The problem is that XP is normally implemented so poorly that it makes more sense to hand the GM leveling power. XP isn't really anything, it's just numbers on a sheet. There's no context to XP, there's nothing you do except get it. Anything is better than milestones, but XP usually isn't. So how do we fix it?

Those who know Dark Souls are laughing, because I didn't exactly bury the lead here, didn't I?

Dark Souls is certainly on the right track: XP becomes a resource: you use it as currency, you lose it if you die and have to get it back, and it requires actually being at a bonfire to spend to level up. You also can farm XP, deliberately going to places where you know you can get a lot of XP relatively easily, kill everything in sight, and then go back to the bonfire, reset the area, and farm some more. You can manipulate XP gain. Mechanically and setting-wise it's an object, part of the game in all senses.

The OSR keeps the old ways, even if they're imperfect: gold brought back to town is XP. It's not perfect because XP is still just this random abstract object, but the way you get it is by playing the game in an objective way, outside of GM fiat. How you get that gold which gets you the XP is totally up to you, so long as you get it. And this creates a really cool loop of players picking their own goals, going out in the world, and getting their gold how they want to. The GM preps the sites and the players go where they want, doing what they want. At that point so much player stuff is going on that nobody cares if XP is an abstract object, with no actual game relevance beyond marking what you've done so far. If anything the XP then serves as a marker, as a "YES WE DID IT!" sorta an object.

But I think more can be done with it. Here's two ways I mess with XP.

So in Crescendo I use XP as a resource. You get it by various actions and yes, you spend it on stats and skills and whatnot... but you can also use it as currency, and to bypass certain challenges in the game system. Basically it's used to get around certain things I don't think Crescendo to get around. And, since it's not used as a static number to level, you don't really have to care whether or not you spend it. You have it. You do what you like with it. It's a resource, not a tracker.

There's another game I'm kinda working on, Once More!, where XP is gained for each and every HP regained; you're rewarded for getting roughed up. Now, you can spend XP or burn HP to improve your rolls at any time. Given that you get XP for regaining HP, you'd probably opt for one or the other... until you hit a threshold of XP; I'm thinking it should be the character's current max HP. When you do, you must get your XP back down to 0... which means spending it to augment rolls. And then you level up. The problem is that if you roll too high you run the risk of creating unexpected trouble in the setting. This little trick puts the player in an environment where getting in trouble isn't just inevitable, it's necessary. You get this awesome romp, where your character is super powerful and just breaking everything in your way, while setting up for the next arc.

Milestones are bad. XP  can be a good way to provide an objective measurement of progress, but it can be so much more! Dark Souls already paved the way on that, showing that XP can be a general all-around resource. I've been experimenting with a few ways that XP can be used as resource, and am definitely looking to do more! If you've seen some innovative ways to handle XP let me know!

But not milestones.

Milestones very bad.

Spider-Man: Reign

Many think of giving up as a choice. Life gets hard and people make this decision that enough is enough. And then somehow they keep deciding that they’re done. It’s the same line of reasoning you see with Luke in The Last Jedi. Something happened and he made a decision to just screw over everyone.

That’s totally idiotic.

Giving up is a disease of the soul. It HAPPENS to you. No, you don’t get a choice to be done or not. You get so overwhelmed that there’s really nothing else you can do. And whether or not you’ve fought this sorta thing off before is totally irrelevant: everyone will have a threshold that, if crossed, they will automatically give up, until the day they die.

Everyone.

Yes, you, Last Jedi hater.

After One More Day I threw away all my comics in a fit of grief I couldn’t communicate to you if I tried. Along with the comics went my hopes of being a comic artist and writer. All this happened at the same time I came down with Lyme’s Disease (which became so bad that I would have cars literally pop into existence before my eyes), my best friend completely went off thr deep end, and home troubles amped up a few notches. No, giving up really wasn’t a choice. It was too much. Later on I had to grieve throwing my comics out.  

There was one comic I made sure to buy again from that old collection. Just one.

Spider-Man: Reign.

I will not pretend to be objective about this comic book to you. It is so a part of my soul that it’s the spiritual equivalent of an arm or a leg. Or a heart. The beating heart.

Spider-Man: Reign is about a Peter Parker who has been so thoroughly poisoned against himself that giving up is no longer an option. It just is. Mary-Jane is long dead, in a manner that totally hollowed Peter out. While he was possessed by this illness a utopian government took over New York. One day J. Jonah Jameson appears on Peter’s door to ask him to become Spider-Man once more.

It goes about as well as you’d expect.

I am not going to tell you this is the best comic ever made. It’s not. The art is well-done but not exceptional. The story is a deliberate pastiche of The Dark Knight Returns. The third chapter is strange and outright gross and I love it for those qualities. You may not. And that’s fine.

But this is my Spider-Man story. It is the story of my soul, dressed up in dystopias that aren’t speculative anymore, costumes, and aliens. Whenever I read it I see my remarkably damaged and sick soul staring back. It’s stronger than when I was nineteen. A lot of the gaping wounds are now healing into scars. It’s ugly.

But it’s still alive. 

Someday I will be able to do what I always wanted. Slowly but surely I am becoming who I always wanted to be.

And yeah, that gives me hope. That’s what stories are for.

Initiative is Badly Handled

 

The other day I was playing in my weekly Level Up game, and it went particularly well: I almost drowned. The previous session I was almost eaten by zombies. And the session before that I did actually die. And was then brought back to life by the god of justice, cause as it turns out Sir Solomon the Ugly is too cool for school, nevermind death. I have a habit of throwing characters into certain death with an aplomb that's a bit unnerving at times. This time we had some creatures coming up and out of the ground... so I asked Marty the GM if we were gonna roll initiative. And Marty said no. I raised an eyebrow.

And I charged.

Marty was surprised. 

The warlock facepalmed. "Oh God, not again".

What followed was essentially a puzzle as we tried to figure out the weird creature I'd managed to piss off was. It got... really intense. Like I said, I almost drowned, after reducing the creature to 1 hp underwater... and then passing out first. The warlock pulled me out of the water, none too happy about having to save my fanatical ass, yet again. We exchanged the usual pleasantries over a warlock having to save a paladin. For the third time in as many sessions.

Later on Marty asked me what I thought about the session. I told him that I had a great time and that that particular session had felt pretty unique. I wasn't even sure why. Marty's encounter design is absolutely pristine. There is literally nobody else I trust to run a trad game, because Marty's got a good enough head on his shoulders to handle the normal awfulness that is trad design. But this was particularly good, even for Marty. We fought a goopy tentacle monster with a gigantic-ass skull for a head. It had eight legs I think? Took a long time to find the head, and then killing it was... it was something. I got stuck when I hit it, and couldn't get out, and we spent all our resources to figure out that it hated radiant and necrotic damage... and then realized we couldn't do any more of either of those types to the stupid thing. So we had to brute force it into oblivion.

Like I may have pointed out, I almost died.

Anyways.

It felt different this time, a fact that I pointed out to Marty. I couldn't really figure out why the fight was so much fun. I mean, it was a good design on Marty's part, but he's done a lot better. So we talked it over. And for a few minutes I just couldn't figure it out.

But then I literally started shouting on the phone, causing poor Marty to wince. He asked me to calm down and explain. 

See, the thing that people don't understand is that special modes inside of RPGs are... well... special. You have to treat them differently. During playtesting of Crescendo I found that if each scene was ended formally players made the transfer to the myriad game scenes that Crescendo has pretty easily. Because of that formal ending to scenes players were able to handle multiple game modes. Their concerns were tied up, debriefing happened, and they were able to move on with a clear head. Clear demarcations helped a lot, specifically ending the scene. In fact I'd argue that doing different sub-mechanics should have some form of debrief before, simply to get everyone's head in the game.

See, the thing is that, without the initiative, there wasn't the muscle response to "combat". Sure, we were using attacks and whatnot, but there was a definite feeling that was not there from not rolling initiative. Had we had an opportunity to book it for the hills after my charge we would have. And it was specifically because we didn't have this klaxon going off in the back of our heads going "KILL. MONSTER."

Instead it was just a puzzle. With swords.

We didn't have to fight. Heck we didn't have to do anything other than just get around it. 

I commanded Marty to try a few more encounters with us that didn't involve initiative, to see if it stuck. We'll see.

But going from one mode of play to another suddenly may not work out. We'll see.

Alterna Comics

 

Guys, I’m excited for comics again.

I’m not sure when I stopped, honestly. Sometime in Spencer’s Spidey run it occurred to me that I was spending a lot of money for something that didn’t ever seem to have a satisfying ending. So many of the comics I bought were just people standing around talking about their feelings, just straight up navel gazing. The rules of plot just seemed… abandoned.  Look folks, I like Book of the Long Sun, but Wolfe does get to the point. For what I was spending I sure wasn’t getting what I thought was my money’s worth.

Oh, and I usually miss newsprint. I don’t know why, rightly. Something about the smell and the feel and the fading colors. I dunno. Put a pin in that.

Then one day I happened upon Alterna Comics. To be honest I wasn’t terribly impressed at first. I found it hard to figure out what was going on in their stories, and some of the art flat out didn’t impress me. But hey, two bucks for an issue! And three issue collections for five bucks? Okay, that was… better.

And then I read their submission guidelines. And I fell in love. Each issue was to be as self-contained as possible, with “writing for the trade” expressively forbidden. Instead of spending 24 bucks acrost six months for a “complete” story, it was two bucks for a whole story! And if it was part of a larger arc the comic still had to be mostly self-contained.

Oh, and newsprint.

Sold.

What I found beggared my expectations. Every. Single comic. Was good at worst.

Holy hell.

Alterna woke something up. 

This blog is going to be three times a week now. The third entry? Comics. I’ve a lot to say. Stay tuned.

Tom Bombadil Is Essential

 

No, I’m not trolling you. Yes, I mean it. Here’s why.

In order to understand my point, we need to go over a fact of the narrative: Frodo is the main character. Sorry, he is. He’s the one carrying the Ring, everyone is literally there to support him, and it’s his exit from Middle Earth that is the actual ending of the book. The main plot rises and falls with Frodo. 

Now, we also need to establish that the Scouring of the Shire is Frodo’s climax. Not Mount Doom. The Scouring of the Shire is where Frodo finally has his moment of genuine heroism. For those of you who still don’t know, the Scouring is where the four hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin come back to the Shire, only to find it taken over and defiled by Saruman. Keep in mind that Saruman, while diminished by Gandalf, is still a demigod. His voice is still extremely powerful. And Saruman uses his voice to work his last work of evil, in petty vengeance. Sam, Merry, and Pippin organize a resistance and make short work of Saruman’s organization. But then they run into Saruman. And not even those three can face him; he’s still a demigod. In an instant all would be lost.

Except for Frodo.

Frodo isn’t phased in the slightest. Because of his experiences with the Ring, especially his succumbing to it, Frodo is can’t be intimidated. Frodo stares down a demigod, and wins on sheer strength of character. It’s a powerful moment. 

And you need Tom Bombadil to make sense of it.

Y’see, Tom is this random… something… that shows up in Fellowship of the Ring. He just comes in laughing, and leaves the same way. He’s totally unaffected by the Ring and can’t see why everyone is so frightened of it. And Tom’s no bumpkin, easily capable of facing down pretty much anything in Middle Earth… but you’d have to get him to care long enough to do it. Tom’s presence in the books is controversial, with detractors claiming Tom’s irrelevance and defenders usually claiming Tom’s charming attitude and his general contribution to the ambiance of the story.

But the thing is that, without Tom being immune to the Ring, Frodo’s arc is nonsense. Frodo FAILS. Why is he capable of having any form of hope at all, nevermind standing up to a demigod on sheer force of will, something literally no one else does in the Legendarium? His ability to stand up to Saruman doesn’t make much sense without the example of Tom, the one who would rather pick flowers for his wife while singing silly songs. Tom contextualizes the world that Frodo is making his decisions in. If there isn't a good that can survive any evil, then Frodo has hope.

The problem of adaptation is that the context of the original work is vitally important; it is a fragile thing, context. I have no problem with changing anything in the adaptation to keep that context. The anime Gankutsuo is possibly the best adaptation of a classic I've ever seen... and it transfers the the setting in order to keep the moral context intact; Dantes's possess by the spirit of revenge is made literal and apparent, so that the spirit of the original work can become that much more powerful. You can argue the change from French Revolution to sci-fi was unnecessary; you cannot argue that the change damaged the actual context. I bring this up because it is absolutely possible to keep the real context and change practically anything about the work. Not one Tolkien "adaptation" has done that.

So I'm not surprised that Jackson removed Bombabil, but I am saddened by the inability of the adapters to understanding that there was a moral and metaphysical framework that needed to be kept in order for the work to be respected. By removing this one character Frodo becomes the saddest of sacks, one of the biggest suckers in the history of suckers. The context of a character's decisions are really important in an adaptation, and the utter lack of caring about Frodo's context just...

Look, I can complain about the movies all day, alright?

Let's leave it at that.

The Problem of Advancement and Endings

So the modern RPG usually follows a pretty settled formula: you start out unable to stop bad crap from happening, so you get some XP and level up, gradually erasing the chaos from the game. You now have control, hurray!

Well, not really. That’s boring as hell.

See, the thing that makes a plot move is tension, the pull between law and chaos. Without tension stories don’t live. So basically most Western TTRPGs,  on a design level, kill themselves. We remove tension and the game deflates. Storygames are particularly bad at this, creating games where complications are tied inherently to failure… which the advancement system totally chokes out. PBTA particularly is bad at this, and can only be played for a short amount of time before the mechanics grind the story to a halt. For a genre that prides itself on mechanics generating story, this is a deadly flaw.

“Just have the GM smooth it out!” you might say. "That's up to the group to figure out!" No, that’s making excuses for bad design: a game should not need a GM to houserule or ignore the mechanics to keep playing. Period.

“These games aren’t meant to run for long!” Even if that’s true grinding to a halt isn't the same thing as an ending. Storygames don’t usually do ending mechanics… which I think a really bad idea. Endings are the hardest part of a story to get right, enough RPGs don’t have advice and mechanics to support this to where an entire book, World Ending Game, focused on ending the stories from other games.

So not only are most storygames advancing the fun out of their game, but they're going into mechanical oblivion.

Yes, trad games are usually worse about it. That should just be a given.

The irony is that it’s because we bastardized DnD.

See, we get XP from The World’s Most Banal RPG. Duh. We all knew that. But XP and level growth originally happened in a context: the random encounter. Advancement didn’t affect the chances of random crap happening to you, it just indicated how big of stuff you could handle, and even then the numbers weren’t perfect; by and large you weren’t ever the top of the pile. And therefore you were always in danger. That’s good game design!

Trophy Gold is another game that manages to thread the needle. Dungeons are made as flowcharts of possibilities that must end. Not only that, but advancement doesn’t turn you into some god on earth, but just gives you a BIT more of an edge. You could run a Trophy Gold game for years, with bite-sized little adventures that you can drop in and drop out of. And that's a really good setup!

And yes, Crescendo and The Truth Found in Death address these problems, each in their own ways.

Crescendo's solution is to make higher rolls create more chaos within in the setting. So the more powerful you get the more out of control things get in the setting, because your efforts are just so much more powerful. As the game progresses it gradually goes from deep introspection on who your character thinks he is to having to deal with his intentions not matching up to effects those intentions have. And that's the sort of thing character development thrives on! The ending of an arc of Crescendo is called The Festival, where characters discover how they have changed, in the context of a public celebration. The ending of a game of Crescendo is called The Apocalypse, where players get one last time to define their characters, and the world responds one last time... but not in the way the players expect. The game ends in a final, irrevocable, statement on the characters and their relationship to the world.

The Truth Found in Death takes the problem in a more BDnD way: by putting chaos generation into the framework of the game. In every adventure there are four times when the players have to help randomly determine where the plot goes. Nobody knows where the one-shot is going. No one. And four  times in those two hours the plot jukes like this... and then ends as the characters wrap up the adventure on go on to their next thing. Which we may or may not see in a future session. Dunno. But it's done. Eventually players will be able to build and protect their own towns, which will dramatically alter gameplay for those who have stuck around long enough. By that point there will be differing levels of player interaction going on, and the game will have gone from a bunch of murder-hobos looking for adventure to a political thriller. With lots of blood. Since The Truth Found in Death is a Westmarch game I don't think it's the type of game to have an ending, per se, but each session will be totally standalone and offer its own ending.

There's a pretty big gaping hole in most RPG designs when it comes to advancement and what you're advancing to. It's not a universal problem (and ironically enough DnD not only did it first but better than most), but it's widespread and asks players to do something that full-on professional writers have a hard time doing: pacing and finishing the story. But I'm not just blowing smoke out my ass. Whenever Crescendo and The Truth Found in Death get released they have their own ways of handling advancement and endings that will help each story to be satisfying.

Franky

Names changed to protect the guilty and innocent alike.

I tell this series of incidents for two reasons: like with everything else I put on this blog I have a feeling I should, and because I think it a good instruction on human nature in general, from the incidents themselves to the fact that I still chuckle about these things, more than ten years later. I’ve never once claimed to be a good person and I’m certainly not about to start now. The last caveat is this a selection of the misdeeds of Franky, who was easily the least likeable person I’ve run acrost. He wasn’t the most evil… but understand that I am heavily editing the most irritating person I’ve ever met, and am deliberately underselling just how noxious this dude was.

I first met Franky in my household’s common room. I disliked him on sight more than I usually disliked people at that age… which is saying something. I was startled. I have a high degree of passive hatred for each and every living thing that God slowly has slowly purged from my being: to dislike someone personally was unexpected. I couldn’t put my finger on it though. I just had a feeling, a presentiment. Knowing such feelings could be nonsense I pushed it down.

That feeling? It was right.

You see, Franky decided he liked our household, specifically because of all the video game equipment. So he stayed. In the common room. He didn’t eat much, which was odd because of his bulk. If he slept we didn’t know of it, and I went to bed at 4 am on an early night. And he didn’t shower. 

Franky was not blessed with good body odor.

We had to ban him from our common room, because it turned out his stink didn’t clean out easily. No seriously, that’s a thing.

That said nothing about his personality. Franky was that peculiar blend of hopelessly arrogant and stupid; more than once my jaw would drop in shock at the absolute garbage that came out of his mouth. Everyone else tried to be polite. I did not see a point in such polite cruelty. I’d call him a fool, what he said idiocy, and ask how many times his mother dropped him on his head when he was a child, because nobody could be this stupid naturally.

And then one day it reached my ears he had told my girlfriend to, and I quote, to “Shut the fuck up and get back in the kitchen “. My girlfriend took one look at my face and begged me not to do anything. 

I was already out the door.

I found him in our common room with our household leader, who I respected a great deal. I told him to leave. Anyone who said such things to ladies deserved to have their ribs broken, if not worse.  I was so angry my vision was starting to cloud over crimson. My friend told me calmly he would not leave. I had to control myself and that was all there to it. Franky was utterly terrified and hadn’t spoken since I came in breathing murder.

“Did you tell Angela to shut the fuck up and get in the kitchen because she was disagreeing with you over something? And her friend Crystal?”

“I don’t remember?” I took a step toward him and grabbed something. I don’t remember what. Felt nice and heavy though.

My friend got up and put himself between me and Franky. “Nathan, DON'T. Please. I’m asking you not to do this.”

I shot him a look and turned to Franky again. Whatever was in my hand landed on the ground. “You don’t remember? You either did it or you didn’t.”

He cowered. “It sounds like something I’d say.”

I gestured at my friend. He has always been a better man than I’ll ever be. “He’s here. So I won’t do what I’d dearly like to. But I ever hear you doing that to anyone, ever again, I’ll break those stupid glasses and shove them down your throat. Men as stupid and vile as you rob us of oxygen!”

And I stormed out.

As I said, I’ve never once claimed to be a good man.

Franky found a new group of people to annoy, and my life became remarkably more pleasant. And then one day he decided he liked my brother-in-law Marty. I love Marty like you wouldn’t believe… but Marty suffered fools less than I did. Marty, however, has always burned cold where I burn hot. So he waited, like a spider waits for the fly. It was a bit menacing, honestly. I could tell Marty didn’t dislike Franky, he hated him. Franky had a way of sticking his foot on his mouth…. and then refusing to apologize, doubling down in ways you wouldn’t believe no matter the oath I took.

Marty waited.

One day I came into Marty’s room to find Franky in tears. He was sobbing uncontrollably. “NOBODY LIKES ME! You all hate me!”

Marty shrugged noncommittally. “We’ll, you’ve not exactly made it easy to like you.” 

“But I’m trying!!!”

That was a mistake. 

“Are you?” asked Marty, perfectly level. And, right before my eyes, Marty broke down every character flaw Franky had and how to fix it. He talked awhile.

“But I can’t do any of that!” wailed Franky. “I’m too pathetic for that!”

“Your words, not mine,” said Marty with a shrug.

And that carried on for weeks, with various people. He tried it with me and I told him I’d seen the act enough, thank you. Many people had tried to give good advice, and it had all been rejected. I wasn’t going to play along.

When he tried to wheedle something out of me anyways I got up to break his legs, breathing threats of an agonizing time in the hospital if he didn’t leave immediately.

Franky left in a hurry.

Towards the end of the year we had a huge Smash Bros tournament. Marty is a genius at Smash. He easily climbed into the semifinals, where he came face to face with another player who was almost as skilled but much luckier, Brandon. Five lives, medium items, Final Destination was the stage.

It was a twenty minute match.

I’ve never seen someone sweat buckets at a video game before. Both of them did. But Marty won by the skin of his teeth.

It was the best Smash Bros match I’ve seen in my life. Marty went on to win the tournament.

As we left, Franky ran up to Brandon. “Hahahahha you choked! Marty’s been your bitch for months but when it mattered? YOU CHOKED!!!”

I sighed. “Franky, shut the fuck up. Brandon lost well. I wish I could lose like he did. Please shut up or I’ll hurt you.”

Franky skipped away laughing. “You won’t touch me! You’re too nice! You choked too!”

I was holding the Wii. I handed it to Marty with a “Hold this please.”

And I charged. Silently. After the fat skipping Franky.

He turned around to find my fist whistling toward his glasses. He turned pale, comically so.

My fist stopped an eighth of an inch from his face. 

He whimpered. 

“You’re right, I’m a good person. This is me showing mercy. I want you to take your fat ass up into your room. I don’t want to hear you, see you, or smell you for the rest of the evening. Given how you perpetually smell like ass I suggest a shower. Now get moving before I decide you shouldn't walk.”

“Y-yes sir.”

“DID I TELL YOU YOU COULD SPEAK, YOU DUMB FUCK???” I screamed.

Franky ran like hell.

My household was not happy with me. I was called a bully, cruel, no better than a thug. That last accusation came from Matthias, who always took issue with my impatience with nonsense. I wasn’t sorry and I made sure they knew it.

A few weeks later Matthias came into my room. He started small talk. Matthias never did that. “What do you want?” I interrupted. “You clearly want something.”

Matthias turned red. “It’s… it’s Franky. He’s been in the common room three days. It stinks in there. He’s been picking fights.”

I didn’t even bother to take the high road. “And what do you want from me, oh gentle and good natured Matthias?” I asked with as much scorn as I could.

“I don’t care how you do it. Please get him out, At least so we can air the common room out.”

I grabbed my study stuff and opened the door to a wall of solid STINK. I wrinkled my nose. Franky didn’t even look up from Paper Mario. I sat down, trying to decide how I was going to get this human parasite out of my common room.

“Whatcha studying?” asked Franky.

“Oh, Logic. I’m not very good at it,” I admitted with a bit of a chuckle.

“Wait, what’s your major? What the hell are YOU doing taking logic?”

“Oh, um, philosophy.”

“You are NOT what I think of when I think of philosophy. Why are you taking that?”

“Oh, um, well, to be a priest.” My cheeks flushed a bit.

Franky laughed until he had to wipe his ugly pudgy face.

I turned beet red. “And what in the fuck is your problem?” I asked in a quiet voice.

“Nothing! Just… you’d either be the best priest ever or you’d just scare everyone shitless and they’d be good out of fear!” 

And the motherfucker kept laughing. 

And laughing.

There was not one bit of malice in his laugh. He couldn't stop.

He saved his game.

Got up.

And left.

He left the door open. The room started to smell better at once.

I just sat. I tried not to think about what just happened. I failed.

A few minutes later Matthias came in. “Holy shit that was fast! Where’s the body?”

“I… I didn’t touch him.”

He stared at me. “Uh huh. How many bruises you leave?”

“I promise you, I didn’t touch him!”

“Then what did you do???”

“I just talked with him. And he left. I told him I wanted to be a priest and he left.”

Matthias went and knocked on Franky’s door.

And Franky answered it, puzzled.