In case anyone was curious, there was an actual-play DnD podcast of all bards! It's called Bombarded, and the players and DM are a band in real life. They even performed a song every episode that they had to create from random dice rolls.
I ran a short campaign where the BBEG was a god of war so the MC's couldn't wield weapons of war against him or his minions (they'd just do no dmg). So they had to repurpose other things into weapons! we had a Spade (reflavored glaive), a thresher (reflavored flail), a fishing wire (reflavored the trap-master rogue subclass), and a Leather ball (an old tool for reshaping leather and wicker, can't remember what they're called) that i plain stole from FFX Waka's Blitzball (reflavored ranger archer). one of the tools the players passed on was a great club reflavored as a cart axle!
It showed up in something to do with that aperiodic monotile they discovered last year, and I thought "*That* thing again? It keeps showing up like a bad penny . . ."
As a 70s Meccano kid, scratch 'claimed', i.e. the exploded views in their instructions were littered with misaligned components and bolt lines. Wee me couldn't understand why such a massive company hadn't proofread their literature.
I remembered seeing a video in a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, where engineers try to rebuild the tank from his plans. In the original plans, the gears/mechanisms would cause the front and back wheels to turn in opposite directions and thus not move.
In MacGyver, possibly the show with the highest ratio of people who understand the reference to people who have actually seen the show, the improvised (usually dangerous) solutions would all work except that they always left out one necessary ingredient so that viewers wouldn't be able to reproduce them at home.
just after the question: I know Leonardo drew his designs wrong so they wouldnt work if you just copied them. Especially for "futuristic" fantasy weaponry he felt was too dangerous
I'd never heard of Meccano before, and when I googled them, my first thought was "oh, it's plastic Erector." And then I found they *bought* the Erector brand and now sell it as "Erector by Meccano".
So, I'm 40 seconds in, and Stuart is proclaiming himself to be the great, most useful member of the group? Bold move. Let's see how that pans out for him.
Bards do have very specific, identifiable, and rather impactful uses in modern TTRPGs, at least the ones I've played. Support is invaluable, people! Pathfinder players are up in arms about Bard being overpowered because it can consistently give you a +1 to checks. 5th edition Bards can add an entire dice to your roll which is genuinely kind of ludicrous. Bards are definitely not the "little brother pressing buttons on an unplugged controller" class this podcast would have you believe. That's Gunslinger!
As a (very mediocre) occasional lutanist, I cannot think of an instrument,ent less suited to accompanying ranging. It’s got 13 strings in 7 courses and predates mechanical tuning gears, keeping it vaguely in tune is a task.
As a kid I made a lot of little "books" on folded/stapled paper, mostly handwritten and I would intentionally make little mistakes (mostly leaving out punctuation I believe) just because I would see the same mistakes in real books.
It's was common common practice in the days of paper maps for cartographers to include nonexistent roads and features for copyright protection. If a competitor's map included your fake road the court case was settled before it began.
Bardic knowledge is a thing and it would pretty much be the sort of knowledge you'd want when playing Lateral. It models the idea that traveling around and learning the local songs and legends nets you lots of random bits and pieces of knowledge...
It is said (in some ethnic groups and languages) that man learns from mistakes. So it only follows that if you want to teach something to somebody, you should introduce mistakes so they can learn.
I think I played DND once in my life, like 20 years ago, and I'm pretty sure I indeed was some sort of bard. And I remember my character was super annoying and made everything harder on my friends but sometimes he got so incredible lucky, that it was worth not just killing me of.
Interestingly, Katie's description of Meccano reminds me very of what I would call the unfortunately-named Erector - which was an assemblage of thin metal plates with rounded edges, holes, and little bolts and nuts to fasten them (it even came with an appropriately sized hex key, which I promptly magnetized). Is that just what they called it in the states?
From the Wikipedia for Meccano: "In 1913, a very similar construction set was introduced in the United States under the brand name Erector. In 1990, Meccano bought the Erector brand and unified its presence on all continents."
This is when it's good to be old enough to have actually played with (my father's) Meccano - There's a bloody deliberate mistake in the instructions. And there really is... I spent ages as a ten year old trying to work out why my model of an old-fashioned bagger combine harvester wouldn't work. Also it's better than Lego if you get it right because it's screwed together. Very useful for prototyping stuff too.
I assume i know the answer immediately Meccano did instructions wrong on purpose so that you had to figure out what was wrong and fix it yourself which helps you learn mechanisms i think Da Vinci i know wrote his plans and designs backwards and in code? I'm guessing he may have also left in deliberate mistakes so that people copying his designs would fail
On the intro - I've been playing in a group of mostly the same people, in the same (custom-created) world, for going on 25 years now. One of the kingdoms in this world has forbidden "bardery" under punishment of death. So of course we played one campaign as *ALL BARDS* (or Bard-adjacent, like the Skald, Swashbuckler, etc,)
Whether intentional or not, the same is true for all but the most benign instructions in the infamous Anarchist's Cookbook. So many of the instructions for IEDs and psychotropic substances have real potential to get you unalived or seriously wounded if attempted without understanding the science behind it. Except for the good old 1960s notion of getting high off of smoking banana peels. That's just a total urban legend that if attempted is only a yucky smelly waste of time.
I'm pretty sure the same thing could be said about drying toad skins in the fridge to smoke falls under that same banner as the banana skins. Im pretty sure it is toad-lly (lol) bs as well.
Having played with both, Lego is for children (my first Lego was given to me when I was 5), while Meccano is for older kids (like 10 and above). Both are used to build things, but the second requires more skills.
I know that its said that Leonardo did put a mistakes in the designs on purpose to make sure that no one copies his designs successfully. Maybe Meccano did it as well? Although I have no idea what they do beside what is in the question.
I have my exams and have spent the whole day binging Laterals and right as I'm about to return to my books, a new one drops.😂 Well played, Tom Scott, well played !!!
My first introduction to D&D was the computer game "Bard's Tale" at around age 8. "Well, he's the titular character, he must be important. And I confess my ignorance: I never really got into that system, I later became a White Wolf geek instead. ANYWAY, at least at the beginning, the bard class is able to sing ONE SONG. And after that point, his throat remains too sore to sing until you purchase a drink at a pub, or have him use a throat lozenge item. WHO CAME UP WITH THAT NONSENSE????
As a person not from the UK and not familiar with the name Meccano before listening to this episode, I was sure that this name had an r after the a because of how you Brits pronounce it, until I saw the subtitles here.
"Oh, this isn't the stupid tank thing is it?" This story always annoys me because (if it's true) it makes DaVinci sound like such a d*&k. DaVinci's designed a 'terrifying weapon of war'. He wants to show off how clever he is, but doesn't want anyone to actually build it, so he publishes the design with... one gear installed backwards. So either a) DaVinci really though he was so much smarter than everyone else that no one would be able to fix such a simple flaw or b) he used the design flaw as cover so he could show off while still claiming to be a pacifist. I really like the panels idea that it was an accident and he only claimed to have made the mistake on purpose, I hope that's actually what happened 🙂
Leonardo's helicopter couldn't work, the little men would just walk round in circles without turning anything and his tank had front wheels going forwards but the rear wheels would go backwards at the same time. Were these deliberate mistakes? Were there mistakes in the Meccano build manuals yes, but more through laziness than malice I think. Anyway I'm going with deliberate mistakes. As for Meccano, I made several catapult like devices that were palpably dangerous.
I heard that Archimedes designed an odometer that the Romans use, but no examples survive. Da Vinci had seen a surviving example and sketched it, but the mechanism that he drew won't work. And relatively recently (a few decades ago?) and engineering grad student worked out what the problem was - the gears Da Vinci drew had square teeth, but if you make the teeth triangular it works fine. If this is true it is pretty strong evidence that Da Vinci put errors into his work to keep people from stealing his ideas.
1:13 Not only has it been done by many ppl before, ive DMd for an all Bard party before; and yes, they performed gigs as a travelin band as a goto plot hook to get them from town to town Whats funny to me tho is that i didnt end up playin the one time my group did an all bard group, and i almost always play a bard; but the fact it was a band, actually makes it make a lot of sense why this bard opted out then Im a diff kind of performance bard; i go for oratory not for singin, but for givin inspo speeches and motivation. Im a demagogue; but ideally without all the negative connotations of that word in our modern tongue Im a bard who acts as a political agitator, who riles up a crowd to action, who weaves the right words to butter up someone whilst the rogue cuts their purse strings; a master wordsmith, not a master of an instrument nor a grt songstress Its my fave way to play a bard, its the kind of bars who wud make a grt politician style character and who works rly well with the Leadership feat that gives them companions aplenty; i love havin hundreds of loyal minions to protect my lair... Even when im bardin it up as mayor instd of bein a sorceress supreme who is likely usin dark magics to manipulate folks into joinin her township
I was so hoping that when Tom announced he was quitting youtube that he was still going to be doing lateral. I was so happy to find out that that was the case! I'm pretty sure not having Tom around in some way, shape, or form would be a detriment to my mental health. He is just such a wholesome, intelligent guy...
I don't know how you pick the youtubers who appear on the channel, but I'd like to nominate a few - Shadiversity, J.J. McCullough, Brooks Holt (and Elisha, of course) and Ashley Bruton (I'm pretty sure none of these have been on, but I at least think they'd all be great). Thank you for your consideration.
JJ only complains about liberals. That's his whole TH-cam channel. Jk, but I think he has a bit of a "liberals and youths are dumb" mentality. His videos are often very well-made and factual; this doesn't negate that he whines a bit.
More recent DnD game I played a halfling Bard, School of the Sword, wielding dual short swords with an outrageous French accent and a big floppy hat. One of the Three Musketeers, but without the musket, or other two guys. Ended up the party tank, and as the player with the most experience, party leader, making more than a few metagame choices on 'bardic knowledge'.
In case anyone was curious, there was an actual-play DnD podcast of all bards! It's called Bombarded, and the players and DM are a band in real life. They even performed a song every episode that they had to create from random dice rolls.
Rest in peace
can i see it?
It's brilliant.
That's a better name than what I was thinking of: Oops! All Bards.
"+2 Axle, good for stabbing..." absolutely sent me, I definitely need to work that into a campaign of mine at some point 😂
I ran a short campaign where the BBEG was a god of war so the MC's couldn't wield weapons of war against him or his minions (they'd just do no dmg). So they had to repurpose other things into weapons! we had a Spade (reflavored glaive), a thresher (reflavored flail), a fishing wire (reflavored the trap-master rogue subclass), and a Leather ball (an old tool for reshaping leather and wicker, can't remember what they're called) that i plain stole from FFX Waka's Blitzball (reflavored ranger archer).
one of the tools the players passed on was a great club reflavored as a cart axle!
That roast of the golden ratio woo woo was good.
It showed up in something to do with that aperiodic monotile they discovered last year, and I thought "*That* thing again? It keeps showing up like a bad penny . . ."
Lateral is such a pleasure to listen to. I don't know why it doesn't have 1M subscribers. Bravo Tom for this few moments of pure joy.
As a 70s Meccano kid, scratch 'claimed', i.e. the exploded views in their instructions were littered with misaligned components and bolt lines. Wee me couldn't understand why such a massive company hadn't proofread their literature.
It's still a claim of *deliberate* mistakes.
Not to be confused with Mecano, the Spanish pop group from the 80s who sang Hoy no me puedo levantar and Hijo de la luna
haven't heard the songs but Hoy no me puedo levantar is quite apt for me, given that I'm listening to this video instead of getting up for work lol
Yeah, Mecano's assembly instructions were always meticulously accurate.
i only realized 6.5 minutes into the video that they were not discussing leonardo di caprio.... the clip is now making a lot more sense
I actually knew this one! Really cool seeing how the crew pieced it together!
"LEGO that hurts"
clearly never stepped on a brick in the middle of the night, or early morning, half-asleep, especially with cold feet. 😂
Maybe "Lego that's out for blood" would have been better :)
6:30 oh. it's the unusable tank thing, isn't it. took me enough to get that one...
I remembered seeing a video in a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, where engineers try to rebuild the tank from his plans. In the original plans, the gears/mechanisms would cause the front and back wheels to turn in opposite directions and thus not move.
@@mingguangkoh1426 I think the tank is in one of the Assassin's Creed games aswell, and it's absolutely awful.
I think James May mentioned this in the Meccano episode of Toy Stories a couple of years ago.
Oh that is brilliant. Well done Sophie for getting it!
In MacGyver, possibly the show with the highest ratio of people who understand the reference to people who have actually seen the show, the improvised (usually dangerous) solutions would all work except that they always left out one necessary ingredient so that viewers wouldn't be able to reproduce them at home.
Often MacGyver's solutions would not have worked. They were all based on valid principles, but often the application was way off.
@@dancooperish And then there was the remake, that wasn't even based on valid principles.
All Bard Campaign summed up as "what if the Beetles had magic music powers and needed to save the forgotten realms from corporate evil?"
So, from corporations.
@lady_draguliana784 Hello!!
@@timothymclean Corporate evil?!
For one moment here, I thought this channel was going from bard to verse.
"I'm the bard."
🤣I felt that.
Love their dynamics! Good team!
..
“It’s a feature, not a bug.”
-every engineer, at some point in their career
I got this as soon as Tom said the question and now i am disproportionately happy.😊
Ohhh, Stuart’s Lute reference in the previous Lateral TH-cam upload makes a lot more sense now 😂
just after the question: I know Leonardo drew his designs wrong so they wouldnt work if you just copied them. Especially for "futuristic" fantasy weaponry he felt was too dangerous
so THAT'S what the lute thing was all about in the clip that was recommended to me just before this one
6:15 Are you talking about the Orchestrated Army, whatever it's called? Archers on wires, basically.
I thought the da Vinci part was going to be a direct reference to the armoured vehicle, where the powered axes spun in opposite directions.
I'd never heard of Meccano before, and when I googled them, my first thought was "oh, it's plastic Erector." And then I found they *bought* the Erector brand and now sell it as "Erector by Meccano".
So, I'm 40 seconds in, and Stuart is proclaiming himself to be the great, most useful member of the group? Bold move. Let's see how that pans out for him.
Yay, long episode!
2:10 Meccano is an erector set for us yanks from the states
I was wondering that...
Bards do have very specific, identifiable, and rather impactful uses in modern TTRPGs, at least the ones I've played. Support is invaluable, people! Pathfinder players are up in arms about Bard being overpowered because it can consistently give you a +1 to checks. 5th edition Bards can add an entire dice to your roll which is genuinely kind of ludicrous. Bards are definitely not the "little brother pressing buttons on an unplugged controller" class this podcast would have you believe. That's Gunslinger!
Ah, yes, Meccano, famous for it's ability to draw a circle freehand.
As a (very mediocre) occasional lutanist, I cannot think of an instrument,ent less suited to accompanying ranging. It’s got 13 strings in 7 courses and predates mechanical tuning gears, keeping it vaguely in tune is a task.
As a kid I made a lot of little "books" on folded/stapled paper, mostly handwritten and I would intentionally make little mistakes (mostly leaving out punctuation I believe) just because I would see the same mistakes in real books.
I would have loved the captions to say "that apostrophes' wrong" or something similar. 8:32
It's was common common practice in the days of paper maps for cartographers to include nonexistent roads and features for copyright protection. If a competitor's map included your fake road the court case was settled before it began.
Bardic knowledge is a thing and it would pretty much be the sort of knowledge you'd want when playing Lateral. It models the idea that traveling around and learning the local songs and legends nets you lots of random bits and pieces of knowledge...
It is said (in some ethnic groups and languages) that man learns from mistakes. So it only follows that if you want to teach something to somebody, you should introduce mistakes so they can learn.
I think I played DND once in my life, like 20 years ago, and I'm pretty sure I indeed was some sort of bard. And I remember my character was super annoying and made everything harder on my friends but sometimes he got so incredible lucky, that it was worth not just killing me of.
I spent this episode, that started by commenting that Stuart Goldsmith sounds like Tom, thinking how much Stuart Goldsmith sounds like Stuart Ashen
Interestingly, Katie's description of Meccano reminds me very of what I would call the unfortunately-named Erector - which was an assemblage of thin metal plates with rounded edges, holes, and little bolts and nuts to fasten them (it even came with an appropriately sized hex key, which I promptly magnetized). Is that just what they called it in the states?
From the Wikipedia for Meccano:
"In 1913, a very similar construction set was introduced in the United States under the brand name Erector. In 1990, Meccano bought the Erector brand and unified its presence on all continents."
I believe so, yes.
It's a different product but very similar
Vitruvian Man was humankind's first documented body shaming.
i have the same four-color pen
Any chance for TH-cam Music support? Google killed Google Podcasts. Love the pod but can't find it now
This is when it's good to be old enough to have actually played with (my father's) Meccano - There's a bloody deliberate mistake in the instructions.
And there really is... I spent ages as a ten year old trying to work out why my model of an old-fashioned bagger combine harvester wouldn't work.
Also it's better than Lego if you get it right because it's screwed together. Very useful for prototyping stuff too.
Ah interesting. I had myself convinced it was something to do with the fact that da Vinci used to write his notes with the text mirrored.
So Meccano is responsible for my engineers brain? Who would have thought it
Come up with the idea for a helicopter.
Because FLYING!
I assume i know the answer immediately
Meccano did instructions wrong on purpose so that you had to figure out what was wrong and fix it yourself which helps you learn mechanisms i think
Da Vinci i know wrote his plans and designs backwards and in code? I'm guessing he may have also left in deliberate mistakes so that people copying his designs would fail
Lego sort of means "Play well." making war is the opposite of "playing well."
On the intro - I've been playing in a group of mostly the same people, in the same (custom-created) world, for going on 25 years now. One of the kingdoms in this world has forbidden "bardery" under punishment of death.
So of course we played one campaign as *ALL BARDS* (or Bard-adjacent, like the Skald, Swashbuckler, etc,)
Whether intentional or not, the same is true for all but the most benign instructions in the infamous Anarchist's Cookbook. So many of the instructions for IEDs and psychotropic substances have real potential to get you unalived or seriously wounded if attempted without understanding the science behind it. Except for the good old 1960s notion of getting high off of smoking banana peels. That's just a total urban legend that if attempted is only a yucky smelly waste of time.
I'm pretty sure the same thing could be said about drying toad skins in the fridge to smoke falls under that same banner as the banana skins. Im pretty sure it is toad-lly (lol) bs as well.
Having played with both, Lego is for children (my first Lego was given to me when I was 5), while Meccano is for older kids (like 10 and above).
Both are used to build things, but the second requires more skills.
I know that its said that Leonardo did put a mistakes in the designs on purpose to make sure that no one copies his designs successfully. Maybe Meccano did it as well? Although I have no idea what they do beside what is in the question.
I actually got one right. 😳
One day, I hope to see The Tim Traveller on this podcast, that'd be amazing when/if it happens
I have my exams and have spent the whole day binging Laterals and right as I'm about to return to my books, a new one drops.😂
Well played, Tom Scott, well played !!!
map makers put in "paper towns" to catch copyright infringement.
Some cartographers do the same thing
My first introduction to D&D was the computer game "Bard's Tale" at around age 8. "Well, he's the titular character, he must be important. And I confess my ignorance: I never really got into that system, I later became a White Wolf geek instead. ANYWAY, at least at the beginning, the bard class is able to sing ONE SONG. And after that point, his throat remains too sore to sing until you purchase a drink at a pub, or have him use a throat lozenge item. WHO CAME UP WITH THAT NONSENSE????
As a person not from the UK and not familiar with the name Meccano before listening to this episode, I was sure that this name had an r after the a because of how you Brits pronounce it, until I saw the subtitles here.
The NERF (Non-Expanding Rigid Foam) football was created by a former NFL kicker.
"Oh, this isn't the stupid tank thing is it?"
This story always annoys me because (if it's true) it makes DaVinci sound like such a d*&k. DaVinci's designed a 'terrifying weapon of war'. He wants to show off how clever he is, but doesn't want anyone to actually build it, so he publishes the design with... one gear installed backwards. So either a) DaVinci really though he was so much smarter than everyone else that no one would be able to fix such a simple flaw or b) he used the design flaw as cover so he could show off while still claiming to be a pacifist.
I really like the panels idea that it was an accident and he only claimed to have made the mistake on purpose, I hope that's actually what happened 🙂
Bards are certainly creative… procreative that is
Leonardo's helicopter couldn't work, the little men would just walk round in circles without turning anything and his tank had front wheels going forwards but the rear wheels would go backwards at the same time. Were these deliberate mistakes? Were there mistakes in the Meccano build manuals yes, but more through laziness than malice I think. Anyway I'm going with deliberate mistakes.
As for Meccano, I made several catapult like devices that were palpably dangerous.
I heard that Archimedes designed an odometer that the Romans use, but no examples survive. Da Vinci had seen a surviving example and sketched it, but the mechanism that he drew won't work. And relatively recently (a few decades ago?) and engineering grad student worked out what the problem was - the gears Da Vinci drew had square teeth, but if you make the teeth triangular it works fine.
If this is true it is pretty strong evidence that Da Vinci put errors into his work to keep people from stealing his ideas.
... its rumored that there are deliberate misteaks in the lateral podcasts to get even more people interested...
I thought it was gonna be about davincis self driving cart
1:13 Not only has it been done by many ppl before, ive DMd for an all Bard party before; and yes, they performed gigs as a travelin band as a goto plot hook to get them from town to town
Whats funny to me tho is that i didnt end up playin the one time my group did an all bard group, and i almost always play a bard; but the fact it was a band, actually makes it make a lot of sense why this bard opted out then
Im a diff kind of performance bard; i go for oratory not for singin, but for givin inspo speeches and motivation. Im a demagogue; but ideally without all the negative connotations of that word in our modern tongue
Im a bard who acts as a political agitator, who riles up a crowd to action, who weaves the right words to butter up someone whilst the rogue cuts their purse strings; a master wordsmith, not a master of an instrument nor a grt songstress
Its my fave way to play a bard, its the kind of bars who wud make a grt politician style character and who works rly well with the Leadership feat that gives them companions aplenty; i love havin hundreds of loyal minions to protect my lair... Even when im bardin it up as mayor instd of bein a sorceress supreme who is likely usin dark magics to manipulate folks into joinin her township
Stuart, bards have Jack of All Trades and get Expertise. A bard played well can be an *extremely* powerful caster build.
I'm just happy to see Tom again. I didn't realize how much I would miss his posts until he stopped. 😢
I was so hoping that when Tom announced he was quitting youtube that he was still going to be doing lateral. I was so happy to find out that that was the case! I'm pretty sure not having Tom around in some way, shape, or form would be a detriment to my mental health. He is just such a wholesome, intelligent guy...
I don't know how you pick the youtubers who appear on the channel, but I'd like to nominate a few - Shadiversity, J.J. McCullough, Brooks Holt (and Elisha, of course) and Ashley Bruton (I'm pretty sure none of these have been on, but I at least think they'd all be great). Thank you for your consideration.
JJ only complains about liberals. That's his whole TH-cam channel.
Jk, but I think he has a bit of a "liberals and youths are dumb" mentality. His videos are often very well-made and factual; this doesn't negate that he whines a bit.
Bards are a great support class!
Just want to say that in the last D&D movie, the charismatic guy with a british accent was the villain.
But the bard was the hero
He was also the rogue.
Hollywood. 'Nuff said.
More recent DnD game I played a halfling Bard, School of the Sword, wielding dual short swords with an outrageous French accent and a big floppy hat. One of the Three Musketeers, but without the musket, or other two guys. Ended up the party tank, and as the player with the most experience, party leader, making more than a few metagame choices on 'bardic knowledge'.
Meccano in proper USA English is erector set.
Erector Sets were so much fun as a kid!
“proper USA English” of the irony lol. Just a joke don’t be offended 🫡
But of course the Americans needed a reference to the peepee.
So "Erectoset?
Meccano is going to be my bard name if I ever play D&D.
If you think Bards are useless, you need to stop playing D&D and try some better game systems
Or find more creative people to play with.
Nah, because bards are extremely useful in D&D, too.