I've mentioned it here and there across my social media platforms, but I'm doing a big gaming adventure this summer. The trip starts with a week in Oklahoma visiting Owen K.C. Stephens and progresses to 3 days with my partner, Starfinder Designer Dustin Knight, in Minnesota. From there, we're taking a train to and from Indianapolis to do GenCon, spending a day in Chicago on the return train, before finally culminating with about a week and a half in Minnesota proper before I return home for the 2026-2027 school year. It's quite the adventure, and today the first leg of my adventure is over.

Owen K.C. Stephens, Legendary Designer

The first leg of the trip was spent entirely with Owen K.C. Stephens, his wife, and the colorful cast of characters they surround themselves with. This includes Jacob Blackmon, an artist Owen and I have both worked with extensively on our various projects.

Jacob's done a lot of the expressions in the Eversaga CRB and all of the item illustrations. Click for more Jacob!

Owen and I were very busy during this trip. Not only did we playtest the Eversaga RPG twice with his friends and playtest group, but we also discussed many future projects, worked on our respective projects in tandem, ate a ton of good Southwestern Food, and watched a LOT of movies together. I spoke fairly extensively on the playtesting part here, but I didn't talk much about the other bits. So, why don't we talk about those other things?

Oklahoman Food

Now, I'm a suburban boy from Philadelphia. We're a major immigrant area, so there's a lot of different foods available. You don't see a ton of "region defining food" in Philadelphia, though. The big one is, of course, cheesesteaks, but you also have stuff like scrapple which is more Pennsylvania Dutch than "Philly." The way I describe Philadelphia's culinary scene is that it's a place that values comfort foods. The foods from home you know and love without a lot of experimentation. Unfortunately, low experimentation means few unique dishes, so it was interesting to come to a place like Oklahoma that has a ton of foods its known for. I tried a lot of them while I was here! Mountain-Fried Pies, which are kinda like the Granddaddy to Hostess Fruit Pies, a bunch of different specialty steak dishes, and the best-known of them all: Southwestern BBQ. Obviously, I had to try as many as I could. Owen and his wife, LJ, were extremely generous with me throughout the trip, and after trying a bunch here's what I have to say about the different foods I had.

LJ made her specialty lasagna and something called a sauteed steak. As a kid from an Italian American family, I found the lasagna fascinating. I'm mostly had lasagna with marinara sauce and LJ uses something that's a bit more cheese and gravy based. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was good. As a midwestern cook, LJ obviously knows how to prepare steak and her sauteed steak was incredibly good. I'm not a major cooking guy, but she tops the steak in a way that reminds me of the cheese topping of an au gratin potato. If you ever have the chance to try some of LJ's cooking, I highly recommend it.

Ray's BBQ. I had pulled pork and chopped brisket.

We went to Ray's BBQ for the Southwestern BBQ. Owen and Jacob used to go to this restaurant all the time, but fell off during COVID. I remember seeing group events all the time and longed to be at that table, and now I had my chance! Southwestern BBQ is REALLY good, it's a lot more moist then the BBQ I've had in the Northeast. Most BBQ I've had is, like, well the meat's not charred or anything, but it's usually thick on the sauce and has crispy, caramelized bits as a result. In the Southwest, they barbecue your meat with a lot more marination, it's a lot softer and juicer. Then they had you the sauce and tell you to season to YOUR taste. That's also a change, I'm used to people judging what you do with your meat! But folks, let me tell you, if you ever get a chance to try Ray's BBQ Sauce, do it. It's the best BBQ sauce I've ever tasted. I also got to try some of Ray's homemade cakes; I had Red Velvet, Owen had Lemon. I was told Red Velvet was a staple of the Southwest, but it was just okay. My Mom has made red velvet just as good, since its really just red-dyed chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Owen's Lemon Cake, though? It was INCREDIBLY good, I've never tasted frosting that flavorful. I said as much to Owen, and his response, "Of course I know dessert better than you, Alex. I'm fatter than you."

Mountain-Fried Pies were nothing special. Honestly, Jerry's was the worst restaurant we went to. They forgot my corn, they messed up Owen's entire meal, and the fried pies were kinda sad, definitely not as good as Owen and LJ remembered. We were all kinda bummed about that meal.

Zeitgeek Movies

So, let me preface by saying that I'm not much of a movie person. I have a hard time sitting still for a movie; I self-diagnose as ADHD due to my intense familiarity with the symptoms coupled with the fact my brother has ADHD too. Between this and the fact I'm like a decade and a half younger than Owen, and he's seen a lot of movies that I haven't. Movies that he feels are crucial to understanding the Geek Zeitgeist. The 'Zeitgeek' if you will. Owen also has a MUCH better memory for movies then I do. There are tons of movies on his list that I'm like, "I think I've seen that," or I'll remember a couple of details but not the whole movie. That's not good enough for Owen! So Owen put together several lists throughout our trip of movies that he felt were crucial to his understanding of the Zeitgeek; personally, I think the Zeitgeek is changing and there's a ton of things in the zeitgeist that are newer than the 2000s, but who am I to turn down some bonding time with one of my friends?

Owen had easily 20+ movies he wanted me to watch, but I put a hard cap of 3 hours per day on movie-time (except for Thursday, I gave him 4.5 hours that day). He did his best to minmax my movie time allocation each day, but there were a few days where the beast known as Chemofatigue claimed him, unfortunately. So, what did I watch and what's the official Alex-ranking-your-childhood list? Well, it wouldn't be a Patreon article if I didn't tell you, right?

Warning, there WILL be spoilers for all these movies. Read at your own risk.

The Princess Bride. I adored this movie. It was fun, face-paced, a little campy, but honestly the thing that made it special to me was Freddie Savage and the Grandpa; I don't this movie works without the context that the whole movie is this sick kid imagining the characters in his Grandpa's story. My favorite character in the whole movie is the Grandpa. He does a REALLY good job of building suspense simply by pausing the story in all the right places; you become the 8 year-old boy in bed, desperate to know what happens next. That squirming feeling, the boy's protests? Freddie's the audience and Grandpa's the narrator, and it's SO clever. (Also, I immediately said, "Why does this Prince look like Prince Farqui and why does his whole court look like Shrek?" Owen said, "And now you see why this is Foundational.)

The 13th Warrior. Okay, I actually HATED this movie for the first 20 minutes. It was slow, dark, boring. It caught me at the montage of the 13th Warrior learning how to speak Norse. The fact that this movie is essentially an explanation of where the myth of Beowulf came from is super interesting, and I found myself extremely invested in the characters. (I honestly don't remember most of their names except for Ahmed and Beowulf, but I think that's kind of intentional since the actual myth doesn't record their names.) Very good, worth the watch, but you have to survive the introduction scene.

Kung-Fu Hustle / Big Trouble in Little China. Okay, here me out. I know there are BTILC fans who are gonna hate me for this, but I actually couldn't decide which one of these was better. There's stuff I love and dislike in both of them. Kung-Fu Hustle is a Chinese film, and I've never seen a Chinese film before. This was great! Fast, funny, and full of heart. The fighting scenes were REALLY good too, and I loved how much Wuxia you could see in this movie, especially with the different special moves. Big Trouble in Little China has this thing where nearly ALL the movie takes place in this hidden underground of San Francisco. It's gorgeous, and everything from the set to the effects holds up pretty well, but half the time I had no idea where anyone was. I wish we had gotten more sorcery and more special effects, and the humor kind of relied on the humor of Kurt Russel playing an incompetent character (that being said, the end where he beats the BBEG in the funniest way possible made me laugh SO hard because I've played SO many TTRPGs like that, where the boss just gets one-shot anti-climatically). The thing I liked better about Big Trouble in Little China was that it had better stakes and the characters were more fleshed out and more interesting. Overall, I couldn't pick between these two!

The Shadow. Okay, I was NOT expecting to like this movie. But it's pulpy, noir goodness whose special effects hold up well. This character is absolutely Batman's grandpappy, and the old-timer's got moves! I really enjoyed how this movie had a female lead who wasn't a damsel, she had plot relevance and was crucial to the climax. Great movie, enjoyed it a lot.

The Amazing Screw-On Head. This "movie" is a 30-minute banger that was apparently the pilot for a TV Show that never got picked up. I LOVED it. Weird occult science and magic with cosmic horrors DURING THE CIVIL WAR?! The fact this didn't get picked up, with its amazing, pulpy visuals and weird humor is a cardinal sin, in my opinion.

The Blob. I picked this movie from Owen's list because it takes place about an hour from my home in Philadelphia. I was not disappointed. It's fun, if a bit dated, but the thing I really love about this movie is that EVERY CHARACTER MAKES INTELLIGENT DECISIONS and THE WHOLE COMMUNITY COMES TOGETHER TO SAVE THE DAY. Very good, loved it.

Godzilla vs. Gigan. This was a campy Toho-era Godzilla movie. Guys in costumes, very overt environmentalist morals. It was fun though, Godzilla is always fun, although the speech bubbles were WEIRD here. I don't think Owen picked this one because it was necessarily the best Toho-era Godzilla movie for me to see, I think he picked it because it was the only one HE hadn't seen, and you know what? Fair.

The Mummy (John Hammerfield Version). I want to make it PAINFULLY clear that this is not the 1990s version; I've seen that movie. No, this is a movie from the 50s about a Egyptian with an axe to grind about the Brittish disturbing the tombs of his god. (You know what? Fair. Though that's certainly not the tone this movie takes.) I didn't think this movie was terrible, but it was less fun than Godzilla and it did this weird thing where it would show you the same scene 3 times, but add a bit more each time. I get where they were going with it, but it felt poorly paced because of the constant throwbacks to stuff I just saw 10 minutes ago. This is rough, but it wasn't the worst movie.

The Wizards. OH MY GOD OWEN WHY DID YOU MAKE ME WATCH THIS?! (Don't answer that, Owen, I know you made me suffer through this whole movie for the ONE AMAZING SCENE at the climax of the movie). This movie was padded, hard. There's a lot of stuff I didn't need to see, stuff that made it run a lot longer then it had to. And worst of all, it was preachy as shit. It was very much a post-WWII period piece of, "Fascism gets its power from its head figures, and when that narrative collapses so too does fascism." I think that's a very pertinent lesson in modern America right now, but MAN this movie. Ugh. It was so slow, so boring. I've watched trees walk and that was definitely more entertaining!

BAMF!

Since I was in town, I got invited to be part of an episode of the BAMF! podcast that Owen was scheduled to be on regarding Paizo, Inc's current relations with the Archives of Nethys, their online SRD provider. Feel free to check it out here! Owen talks about the legal issues and the chain of events leading up to this incident, and I mostly talk about how disappointed I am in the Archives of Nethys and its leadership for how they conducted themselves in bringing this to light.

Writing, Writing, Writing!

I got a fair amount of writing done during this trip, as did Owen. Most of what I did was reviewing my pagination of the entire Eversaga RPG project, then proceeded to kill all my darlings (or at least push them back to a later book). This was feedback that I discussed in my Eversaga RPG playtesting with Owen blog, but I decided that this bit of feedback was the right move and began working on implementing it. I think it's going to take me a while to do fully, and in the meantime I'm not going to do a ton of Playtesting, but on the plus side I have four long train-rides to look forward to that I'll need something to do during!

What's Next?

Currently, they're literally calling my boarding as I write this. I'm hopping on a plane to spend the next 3 weeks with my partner, Dustin Knight! We're going to spend the next 3 days preparing to leave for GenCon, so expect posts to be relatively quite for a few days as I get ready to head out. I'll make sure I have plenty of pictures from the trip and stories about whatever gaming I do and whatever conversations I have with other TTRPG folks!

Until then, bye! ~