Episode 318 of the Letters Page: Writers’ Room: A Day in the Life: Benchmark

Maybe this episode in the metaverse will get him more fans.

Upcoming schedule:

  • Tuesday, June 2nd: Episode #319 - Writers’ Room: A non-Vengeance Friction story
  • Tuesday, June 9th: Episode #320 - Writers’ Room: Cosmic Tales: An intense space opera story
  • Tuesday, June 16th: Episode #321 - Writers’ Room: The Rise of the Sixth Sun
  • Tuesday, June 23rd: Editor’s Note #90
  • Tuesday, June 30th: Episode #322 - Writers’ Room: Rambler calling in a debt pulls a character out of a different fight
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Wow, I can’t believe this is episode 2 of the Letters Page Podcast!

No, this whiny bro voice bit is comedy gold. :smiley:

Benchmark is the oven-toasted brussels sprout of Sentinel Comics.

I need an image of this broccoli-loving radical fox now. I wonder if he’s friends with Gun Rat?

Who knew Benchmark was an influencer? Though clearly, he’s the new standard for influencers.

I’m glad I figured out Setback as the most likely to take money from Revocorp because he needs it. :slight_smile: Ra is a considerably funnier choice, however.

“Wow, this sucks” I’m so glad they’re having fun, because I am too. :smiley:

Feels like Benchmark vs. Adhesivist would be a pretty one-sided fight, huh? God, what a great cameo though.

Gotta say, I wasn’t notably jazzed for this issue, but I had a lot of fun with it! B+!

Ooh, Benchmark confirmed for Definitive Edition! :slight_smile: And more than one expansion left, too!

Writer’s Room: Setback fights an Argent Adept villain, someone make it happen!

So you could say there’s one ring to guide them all, and in their bloodline, bind them.

I neither needed to hear or see it, I knew Christopher was doing the walking-into-the-basement bit. XD

Adam doesn’t have any cats yet.

Oh wow, they actually confirmed more than 6 boxes. :open_mouth: I was just kind of joking there!

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I can’t say I’m exactly elated by the news that they’re expanding the DE roadmap. I feel like the initially planned content would’ve been more than enough to keep myself, personally, satisfied, with enough breadth that it would never get old. (Though I do acknowledge that there are many who play much more frequently than myself and thus might desire more content, and also that there are those for whom more content is simply always more better.) I also would have thought that the past year would have made GTG more appreciative of every chance they get to make something, and so focus on essentials, rather than add extraneous things.

There’s also the thought that extending the lifetime of SotM DE likely also means putting off focusing on the RPG even more, but I suppose it’s most prudent to assume that that ship has sailed long ago. Although I do wonder — perhaps they intend to make DE something of an evergreen product? That is, perhaps the company’s financial problems arose, in part, because there was a period when they stopped releasing new SotM products, and so they plan on continually releasing them for the foreseeable future. On reflexion, I don’t think that hypothesis is particularly likely to be true, since IIRC they were also releasing Spirit Island things during that time, which of course was far more successful and profitable than any Sentinel products.

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Lots still unknown about their roadmap and so we can only wait on more information. At least I expect regular news coming out of them compared to the near complete silence of FRG.

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Welp, so much for my plan to eventually review the entire podcast backward and forward.

The way you make broccoli cool is the Ant Man and the Wasp Colony Quantumania character Broccoli Man. I will buy any comic book that has him on the cover.

Pretty sure TikTok was still called Vine in 2016.

I think it might be Captain Cosmic who does the phone call. Ra is a stretch, but Hugh is maintaining a secret identity as a lawyer while not actually practicing law, he could easily find himself strapped for cash to pay the next YEAR of rent and bills on his flat, in case he gets lost in space again.

I could get really into the psychology of a character like Benchmark with the kid asking about Legacy; I could see his narration box making some commentary about how Legacy does the right thing but he’s a little old fashioned and cheesy in his earnestness, while Randall does the right thing but he’s doing this crass commercialism and tacky promotional stunts.

The only cool broccoli is @broccoli

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“Well, the puns are back…” Honestly surprised they waited a week to do that.

Warden Hoffle…is he awful? That will determine which pronunciation is correct.

Reprehensible Business Practices needs to be a card in the Revenant deck.

PS: listening to this episode before the previous, I didn’t realize this was the triumphant return of the original intro theme.

The original intro theme is in the previous episode, just a minute or two in.

I find the notion of Setback taking more money from Revocorp—the same company that gave him his powers in the first place—pretty funny.

I don’t think much of the SotM team spent much time on Spirit Island. Christopher was involved, of course, but not as a principal. The visual design team did, of course, but that’s a rush of work at the end.

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Paul, if I remember correctly, was lead on defining the alternate history of the Spirit Island world. The thematic aspects of the adversaries are mostly his thing, and he had a lot more planned…

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pretty sure Booster Gold has been hit by “do you know Superman?”
My interpretation of the final bit would be him trying to be “inspirational” telling the boy from the street to “don’t do drugs” and then on the monorail sees an ad for Revacorp pharma enhancements to make a new, better you through… drugs.

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for those who did not get Dispiration the “next expansion” ad on the back of the rulebook (now changed was) Vengeance. Naturalist as a focus hero and other figures I am uncertain of and my copy is at my other house.

oh, and Grimm’s nemesis symbol is a crossroads sign over a pit of fire

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Crossroads on the neck of a guitar at that. Hmm, who could it be now? :thinking::notes:

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It’s a mystery alright…

(Apparently I’m not allowed to quote a post?)

When you highlight the text to quote, you don’t see this? :confused:

Yes I did.

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But now…?

Okay, so it was just some weird technical hiccup.

Yea, I think what likely happened is that the system doesn’t allow one to quote the entirely of the directly preceding post, as it deems doing so redundant. Without quotes, the assumption is that you’re responding to the last post, after all.

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AH! :man_facepalming: Yep, it does do that. :+1: I completely forgot; thanks, fjur! :grin:

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We talked about this in Discord, but clarifying for anyone else reading, more boxes doesn’t necessarily mean more content, it might just mean reordering/splitting content into more manageable chunks until they can hire Braithwhite back.

I think there’s still too much unknown to say for sure.

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