#299 Groundhogs Day, a Prognostication Secret Frequency

0:00You You

1:00You You

2:00You You

3:00You You

4:00You You

5:00You You

6:00You You You You

7:12You You You You You You You You where it came from and like, why do we listen to a wrote it, what it comes to the weather? Cause it feels like every year we have that conversation of why are we listening to this, this creature for our weather advice. Right? And it seems like, it feels like sometimes it's always six more weeks of winter, six more weeks of winter. So I thought it'd be really cool to kind of have a conversation around that and how we can tie that into gaming.

8:19Alright, let's dig into it. Alright, so the first thing to understand about this is the history of Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day actually comes from several different places in the world. There, part of it is the Germanic history where it takes place during Candlemas, which is a festival of the Catholic Church that is about the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's also known as Badger Day and due to the creatures that inhabit Germany and the areas around that, Badgers were used most of the time for that. But they also used bear and foxes as well, anything that hibernates basically.

9:27So immigrants from Germany brought this to America. Well, I've heard that Gaelic history centered around Bridges Day or Breeds Day and used hedgehogs, which as we all know, also hibernate. And they used February 2nd because of its proximity to embulk. So if I'm a little Gaelic calendar connection there. Meanwhile, here in the new world in Wisconsin, Sun Prairie is the self-proclaimed Groundhog capital of the world. And in 2015, local resident Jimmy the Groundhog, bit the ear off of the mayor and went viral worldwide.

10:30The mayor, of course, being a fair and kindhearted soul, absolved Jimmy of any wrongdoing the next day. Clarification, he just bit the ear, he didn't bit it off, bite it off. That's not what my source is say, but you know, as the local expert, I will bow to your local expertise. It was so funny because I remember that happening and it was very scandalous. It made like every single local news station in the entire state. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that in Wisconsin, in February of 2015, there wasn't a whole lot vying for competition news wise. No, not at all. At most, there's probably there's snowstorm or an ice storm that was coming because February tends to be either snow season or ice season, depending on where we are.

11:34And in our weather calendar. But not in Sun Prairie where it's Groundhog bites the mayor season. Correct. Yes, apparently the mayor had a tasty ear. And I believe after that they also stopped doing it. I'm not 100% on that because I haven't heard anything about it, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. I'm not sure. I mean, if Jimmy says no, and Jimmy says no, he kind of listened to your local groundhog. If you take nothing else away from this episode, listen to your local groundhog. Yeah, they are, they are very large rodents. I would not want to mess with them. Kathy Barra's angry cousins. All right. I also hear that Texas has a connection as well with the University of Dallas and Irving, Texas, posted of hosting the second largest groundhog celebration in the world.

12:47That's correct. It's held right here in beautiful downtown Irving, Texas, where I am currently not. At the Madonna basketball courts right on the campus of the University of Dallas, Irving. Events include a 5K run, a rugby match, because in February in Texas, you can do those kinds of things, faculty debate, and a happy hour. Alumni and students get ready for next year today because it's never too early to pregame for Groundhog Week. And yes, it's Groundhog Week because everything is bigger here in Texas. So, I, what is the faculty debate? It's exactly what it says on the 10. They have, they staged debates in their departments, you know, the science faculty has debates with students on whatever the current. Running theories are in the science department and so on and so forth.

13:51Oh, okay. So it's not really centered around Groundhog. No, it's just a great, I mean, they also don't run 5Ks with the groundhogs on their back. It would be hilarious. It would be funnier if they did, or if they ran 5K from the hordes of, you know, rampaging groundhogs. It's like having like a whole, like, what is the collective noun for Groundhog? I'm going to go with a sti. It's a sti. You know, chasing college students throughout the campus would be hilarious. Listeners, no need to ride in. I have looked it up. The collective noun for a Groundhog is one of colony, coterie, or repetition. Oh, repetition of Groundhogs. In honor of a certain film.

14:51That, uh, that actually seems very, very fitting. Coterie 2 kind of, you know, ties into the gaming aspect too. Absolutely, you know, they do have those sharp teeth already. So, can you embrace a Groundhog? Local Kendra, let us know. Well, I mean, you can go, um, so. Cooled Groundhogs. Alright, so, uh, let's talk about why, why do you want to predict the weather? Um, and, and why would we use animals to do it? Well, uh, humans by nature, just like unpredictability, and they always are looking for patterns. And so, like, whether divination is, is no different. So, um, looking for things to watch out for. Sure. And plus animals are a natural connection to, um, you know, nature.

15:54They're less restricted by civilization, and therefore must obviously be more in tune with natural cycles. Makes perfect sense. Yeah. And so, um, yeah. And honestly, like, humans are also somewhat similar in that there is a want around this time of year for it to be spring. And that's a lot of times due to seasonal depression or, like, just not having the sun and the sun finally starting to slowly come out. And so, there's like a, a built-in optimism with that as well. Um, and then also winter boredom. Um, my example is Wisconsin. Uh, we, if you ever look at any of the statistics for Wisconsin, we have the highest per capita drinking and bars per, you know, city, uh, within the United States.

17:01And, uh, even Wisconsinites are barred from drinking contests throughout the world. Uh, and, and, uh, we also, you know, we're the location where dungeons and dragons were created. Because we have a lot of snow. We have a lot of cold weather. We have a lot of ice. And, you know, so one of the things for like Wisconsin is we need something that is interesting that's different to kind of break that up. Such as looking at wild animals and seeing if they see their shadow. Non-stop excitement for your average Wisconsinite. Um, I guess that. Now that I'm thinking about it at some latitude, this kind of divination just no longer matters whatsoever, because it's either all snow all the time. If you go far enough north or far enough south. Or.

18:02What, what's a snow. If you're right there in the, in the middle of the planet. Yeah, I, I would agree with that. It is something that I feel is just one of those silly human things that we do that doesn't really make sense if you think about it over a long period of a year. Or even like longer. Um, but it's just something that we do because it's, it's different and it helps us to feel optimism for things or even feel angry at things. The feeling feelings is something that we, we are, you know, made to do. And this helps us with that. Um, and then one of the other things too is, uh, this is the time of year when farmers start planning out their fields. We've had warm weather in Wisconsin for the past couple of days.

19:05And you can smell that they're prepping the fields with manure already. Great. Um, but you know, so they are already out there in their fields and then so prepping the fields too early can be dangerous for their plants. And so something like this might, might be a little helpful, might be helping to guide them in the right direction for things. Sure. Yeah, you know, farmers need to know when they can start planting and getting back to work. So asking a magical animal. Good, good science is any for this, I suppose. Well, I mean, the farmers use the farmers almanac, which is essentially the same thing, except for it's in paper format and not in animal format. So hey guys, what is the science behind seeing the shadow, moving right along from our Wisconsin tourism board paid advertisement here.

20:13Well, as Crystal mentioned earlier, all of the animals use and weather divination, groundhogs, bears, foxes, hedgehogs are hibernators. Yeah, and so when we're going to be waking up the animals or observing wild animals, because, you know, there's some of those that you probably don't want to get too close to. If they're waking up or emerging from their hibernation around this time, that's generally a sign that spring is going to be starting soon. If they are like really confused, then they kind of have to sleep a little bit longer. Yeah, I can just imagine the your Wisconsin forebears having haunts go poke that bear, see if it sees a shadow. And if it does, hey, six more weeks of winter, and if it eats on, hey, spring is sprung, get those cropped in the ground.

21:18And I guess that's the reason that we mostly go with groundhogs these days, we ran out of haunts is so. I mean, like, I've never stumbled upon a sleeping bear, but I have stumbled upon awake bears in the wild, and that is, that is a nuts to fun time. Remember, if it's brown, just lay down, if it's black, yell right back, and if it's white, say goodnight. Yeah, I could be like my grandmother and just bark like a dog at it until it's scared, because bears are actually big, scary cats. If it's black, yell right back. If you look to a brown bear, it will just knock your head off today. Probably. Yeah, Wisconsin is mostly black bearer, so. See, I knew it, because she yelled right back and lived to have your forebearer, your parent.

22:25That would be my dad, but yes. I assume you have at least two parents and at least two grandmothers, so in theory. So now that we've discussed the real world, groundhogs a little bit. Is this all tie in to the Bill Murray masterpiece groundhog day? So there are, like there are a ton of internet theories. We're not going to get into all of them, because you can start spiraling down into a whole bunch of different things. Specifically, that would go really well with cult, but. One of them is the juxtaposition of divination and the loss of free will. So basically, there's a theory that because the groundhog predicted what it did in the movie, fill the main character, needed to follow a certain pathway for that divination and that he was not doing that in the movie.

23:31And so everything kept resetting so that he would continue to follow that. Well, that's one theory, sure, but I prefer the theory that fill was actually the groundhog, which is why they share the name. And he wasn't really waking up as it were from being a jerk. So he was being taught a lesson until finally one day. He woke up and did not see his shadow or hear sunny and share. I mean, you could, you could technically argue that they're both the same, actually, because he had a loss of free will from being a jerk. I think choosing to be a jerk is a choice that implies free will. Yes. Although, the groundhog may have chosen for him to be a jerk until it chose until a decided he had learned enough.

24:32The two theories are one theory. They're coming together. All right. So we kind of gave a little bit of a history of everything. We talked about the actual science behind hibernation. Not too deep, but science. And we talked about groundhogs. So now we actually want to get to our focus, which is like, how are we going to use this in a game? What are we going to do with this? How can we draw inspiration from real life things like this and make it into something that either you're going all full campy with it or making it actually serious? And so there's a couple of games that we can talk about. And the first one is going to be Chronicles of Darkness.

25:33There's a bunch of different splats on there that we could talk about with this. So check, what are your ideas for this? Well, obviously, the first thing that has to happen is the Prince of Madison has to be bitten by a groundhog. This will, of course, be seen by those in the city as a portentious ill omen, which means that the Prince must be overthrown and opposed nature, the land over which the Prince rules has decreed that he is no longer fit. So somebody has to step up, take over, take the reigns of power, depose the Prince and all of his allies because they're not going to just let you come in there and take over. And who could be chosen for that? Why your coterie, your little group of groundhogs?

26:34One of my ideas is actually for werewolf. And it's very similar to the divination aspect, except for the werewolves find this groundhog that starts telling them all of these prophetic things about their Karen, about their pack. And some of it is true and some of it is not, but it's enough truth that they are very confused as to what's going on. And so they have to kind of figure out what's going on with this groundhog because the predictions start to get more and more outlandish to the point of where all of a sudden the groundhog starts predicting their spiral. And they're fall from grace.

27:36And it's concerning because they're not sure if that's actually going to be a thing or not because enough of the predictions have been correct. So it kind of starts out lighthearted, helping out the coterie, giving them direction for plot points and stuff like that, but also confusing them just enough to sow some doubt into some of the predictability of the groundhog. I also like the idea that a group of PCs might become too dependent on this type or any type of divination. And if they should lose access to it, they might be lost as to what to do next. So give them give them a little groundhog that always points them in the right direction and then have the groundhog either just give up one day, run away or start giving them bad advice. And then they have to ask, was the groundhog ever right? Is it now wrong? Or is it still giving us good advice in the long run that happens to be bad advice for us right now?

28:51Yeah, that'll work with any chronicle. That's a really good one. I like that one. Another idea that I had for it was kind of based on the needer where the groundhog is actually like not not directly a senator, but rather taking on the bad prophecies of an area, particular area, and then using that to power its own divination, which is inherently corrupted. And so it positions itself as a very powerful and trusted ally, but in reality, it's actually taking on the negativity and using that as fuel instead. My last dumb idea because all of my ideas are dumb ideas. My last dumb idea is that you have a major chronicle that has a divinatory animal and they call in the master of fate magic in the area to work with this animal that is able to predict the future.

30:09Unfortunately, this mastermage only knows how to predict the future by reading in trails. So when he arrives. Poor Phil, he never knew what was going to happen. He never saw a common. Poor Phil. That might also work in cult. It becomes a blood sacrifice. I mean, I think that's going to work in any of the games that we have listed here. I mean, really, if you think about it, the divination, the divination aspect can apply to a lot of different games. Okay, so moving on from Chronicles of Darkness, we have cult. And so, yeah, speaking of, and we just did a deep dive on this one. So, chick, do you have anything that you would like to add to this? You can find that adding groundhogs to the more nostic interpretation of reality.

31:14Very difficult. Because in cult, you know, there, there is. There are the, the angels, the fallen angels, the demiers, the created this reality. And I honestly am kind of at a loss as to how you can tie in a groundhog or any other predictive animal into that sort of a setting. How about you? What do you have? Do you have anything good for this? Because tell me something I might spark something. So, so one of the things with cult is that you have these very tiered systems in place for what's hidden from humanity, right? And not every single one of them is explored with in order for ground for groundhogs day to work within the cult setting and having a groundhog in there. Actually, you have to go down the rabbit hole of the movie theory that groundhogs day is actually purgatory.

32:22And that he is continually reliving things in order to set his wrongs right. So, for him to move on to heaven or hell. So, if you are doing that in cult, what you would do is you would basically have the purgatory level and the overseer is the groundhog. And there is a specific moment or something in the past that the characters have done together as a group that they are continually having to replay out in order to stop making mistakes essentially. And in the end, there is either going to be where they kind of have to hammer their way through like the Kool-Aid man where they don't actually learn what, what wrong. Or they continually just fall down the spiral and go deeper and deeper into the things that they were trying not to fall into too far.

33:30Or eventually they learn that there is actually no lesson and that the groundhog was just trying to keep them captive because of something else that was happening, whether the groundhog was trying to hold them back from something or the groundhog was hired. But essentially there is no warning that happens. It's just they think that there is because you can play on some outside or knowledge for the players themselves on that one. The real lesson that the groundhog taught us was that we were right all along. Eat it reality. So did that kind of spark any ideas for you or no? Let me think about it for a minute and search for the music here. Well, I don't want to. Yeah, we're going to get going to get taken down.

34:30The ghost of Alex Trebek will haunt us. Yeah, I'm just not familiar enough with Colt to come up with anything good here. I'm sorry. That's okay. All right. Well, we can move on. Would you like to move on to the next? The groundhog is an agent of the demiurge and if you plant your crops and listen to it, that is listening to nature, which is of course a fallen and imperfect system. And only by ignoring the groundhog and going outside in just absolutely crazy Wisconsin winter cold in your cutoff jorts and your flip flops. Will you ever be able to make your way outside this cage?

35:30So essentially you have to have to Wisconsin it up in purgatory. Yes, 100% or in Wisconsin, which is the same thing as purgatory. Hey. I mean, we do go outside and cut off shorts and flip flops when there's still snow on the ground. So like see or not wrong there. No, there's always that one kid in junior high when there's no on the ground. And that that kid in junior high right there is the true person on the path to ascension. I mean, in my high school, we actually had one of the kids in my grade wore shorts for all four years every single day in high school. See? That's a thing. See? And where is he today? You don't know because he is ascended from this reality. Or in jail for meth, one of the other. It's Wisconsin. I figure it's 50-50 chance.

36:30He's actually not either of those. He's actually a really good dad and a huge nerd and a comic collector. All right. So he felt a worldly pleasure. I see what you're saying. He ignored his own teachings. I know. You really wanted that one to stick to you. I really do. Sorry. I may have been drawing from my own high school classmates. That's fair. All right. Our next game line is Old Gods of Appalachia. Now, Crystal, I don't see how we're going to get any bulk wisdom imported from the old country into such a setting. As Old Gods of Appalachia, which, as we all know, is about the cyberpunk future of 2077. Set. Well, wait. Let me, let me, let me, let me, let me check something real quick here.

37:30Oh, my notes are way off. Oh, yeah. It's a perfect fit. Yeah. So. In the Old Gods of Appalachia setting. There are witches who serve the green, I believe is what the, the nature spirit, good guy, not really good guy, but they're kind of against the. The more traditional usual bad guys in the setting who represent industry and pollution and all those other things that Captain Planet told us were bad. The servants of the green naturally will reach out to nature for their information about what's happening in the world. They will be able to reach out to the hibernating creatures, consult their spirit, animals, guides, what have you get information about perhaps the movement of the creatures of the black, the evil.

38:32People who are mining deep into the heart of the mountains to steal the power of nature. They'll be able to use this information to either support the other players. If this is a PC or the players can go to the old witch who lives in her shack deep in the hall or and consult her and she will then consult the spirits and the creatures of nature to show her the way. Which she can then interpret for the PCs. So basically just like real life where you go when you ask the groundhog, hey groundhog, when is the best time to go monkey wrench this mining operation and the groundhog says six weeks and you go back to sleep for six weeks and then six weeks later you go tear it out and suddenly your mountain home is not polluted. The power is yours. I feel like because I have old gods of Appalachia, Puxitani Phil is from Pennsylvania.

39:38Pennsylvania has a huge swath of its space is considered to be part of the Appalachian mountain chain. And so if it's really really well into all of that. I really like the aspect of having the granny magic use the divination magic with groundhogs whether it's predicting the weather or predicting when you can move next but also like that whole we mentioned it before but reading entrails and stuff like that. Granny magic still did that in the show like that's a that's a valid form of divination that they absolutely you go out there you kill the chicken you know the future and you have a nice delicious stew for dinner win win win. And so you know one of the things that you can actually do is set up your characters to the point of where like the big bad in order for you to predict anything with it eventually you just have to kill the groundhog and read entrails which you know if you play it right the groundhog should be a pretty powerful entity for its size and creature type.

40:55And so like you have to balance of the do you want to actually kill a creature of divination that has been around forever in order to get the information that you need or are there other ways that you can do it. Right and then you have to decide hey I can kill this creature that's been around forever providing information to my ancestors. And you know theoretically if I don't do this it'll provide the same information to my descendants is that a is killing that creature. A greater evil than letting whatever you're trying to stop happen decisions must be made and that is something that only a groundhog can decide for you. I mean I would be honest if it's the railroad man yes it's absolutely worth it. On the one hand yeah but on the other hand it's real nice being able to get out of that.

41:58So yes but I mean if you if you've ever listened to any of the stories with with with him he is evil. Well sure I mean he's a bad guy. Yes he is. All right are there any other games that we want to talk about chick. How can I use. I think Satani Phil in my ongoing shadow run campaign. Well shadow run has magic and it doesn't it. Shadow run has actual for real magic because when the Mayan calendar completed its long count back in 2016 magic return to the world for the sixth age. I love the precursors to this to the rising man account was a creature known as the.

43:06Millennium ferret it is a creature that can interact with magic and has no other special abilities and is already a rodent so yeah I'm pretty sure is that. And if you want to be a groundhog shaman I would if that doesn't already exist which help it may there's a lot of books for shadow run. I think that you would get a bonus on divination magic it would make perfect sense if you did. I absolutely would agree with that. You absolutely no shadow run way better than I do so. I got a bonus on divination and a negative on illusion because apparently if you are a mayor and you take him off they will fight you so can't take a negative on your combats Phil.

44:08I have I have two game lines that I'm thinking of that I haven't put on our notes or anything like that yet because I was just thinking about them you mentioned cyberpunk. I actually now you have to go along with me on this one okay so. If you're going to be playing cyberpunk and you want something of a groundhog's day scenario or you want to use a groundhog for any sort of divination or anything like that one of the ways that you can do it is to make it a computer program. Make it a computer simulator where you can run through things and have it give you some statistics on what could possibly happen. Is it going to be right every single time it shouldn't be because cyberpunk that's you know you're you're letting a whole bunch of things algorithms try to predict human on predictability.

45:11And so it should be not very accurate is it something that players would use absolutely all the time. So in cyberpunk it is in a future that is post economic collapse all the food that is eaten is genetically modified there aren't a lot of naturally occurring plants you can find. There are trees and grass and such growing in very very high end enclaves but if you're just wandering around outside of cities you're mostly wandering around in whatever the local equivalent of desert dust bowl wasteland is going to be so having a groundhog that is still alive kept alive maybe in a captive breeding program. Typically for the tourist dollars to get people to come to your otherwise unremarkable small town once a year and then your entire economy living off of those tourist dollars for the rest of the year is not only very much a real world thing.

46:30You can absolutely see that very much carrying into the future you know when when groundhogs become an endangered population in cyberpunk in the year let's pick a random date 2017. The importance of a punk satani Pennsylvania or Sun Prairie Wisconsin grabbing a handful of them and putting them in groundhog habitats that are maintained artificially to keep these wild animals alive for future generations and future corporate profit of course I can 100% see that happening. And now how does this tie into the game well hey turns out that after a century of inbreeding even the hardiest of rodent species needs something to from the outside to keep it from being non viable so your team of edge runners is hired by the residents of Sun Prairie to go steal a viable male or sample.

47:43Of male genetic material from their competition in punk satani. All right welcome to the glorious future of cyberpunk. That is so fitting yeah absolutely I could see that happening now your jizz runners. All right I'm sorry would you prefer cumleggers you know let's let's move on. You said you had two other examples I did I did I happen well no I have not another example two other games I have an idea for for like dungeon dragons or whatever D20 system game that you that you play for fantasy high fantasy whatever. And that is a play on the mechanic of luck where you have essentially either a groundhog or some sort of statue of a groundhog I mean I think it's funnier if you have like a magical groundhog and you like shake it like a to get the magic off of it and essentially instead of having luck where you get to reroll you actually get to redo your whole turn.

49:06And it has luck points like this like the same however if you use up too much of it then the groundhog dies or the magic dies with it so you have to kind of temper that and use it only sparingly so. Yeah you don't want to have you don't want to have your groundhog succumb to shaking groundhog syndrome it is exactly the horrible thing but yeah I like the idea that if you it gets you know one D4 uses per week where you can replay the last scene or action in a combat or what have you. On the other hand it's a lot to keep track of for the guy run it is that's why I would keep it low and that's why there's also like if you use it too much it goes away that makes sense yeah I like that and it's now on a groundhog familiar.

50:12I was actually thinking about that so I was like oh a little groundhog familiar with like a little witch's hat that'd be really cute. Yeah you ride around on my shoulder or whatever maybe get a little baby born for him if he's a bigger groundhog. Yeah I could see that that would definitely work. I mean now I want to see that I want to write that up I want to put that on the DM's guild for fifth edition. I mean yeah you absolutely should you probably make a lot of money out of it. I would feel so guilty. I don't know because I totally dungeons and dragons. You have like Dungeons and Dragons to write stuff for it. Seems like I should replay testing if nothing else. Oh no you don't know anybody that runs Dungeons and Dragons at all. Nope not one. All right any other game lines.

51:18So any game line that is set in modern day that has magic that is not you know what man should know. Say Call of Cthulhu Delta Green unknown armies any of those variants. Any of those types of game lines could have a nefarious groundhog day plot where we go back to our previous notes about the movie. And you are your agents your investigators your add-ups in unknown armies are forced to relive the day over and over and over again until they either learn their lesson. Or all of them agree that this is hot garbage and the only lesson that we needed to learn was how to cook a groundhog.

52:27And then the next day they wake up and they're in deep trouble because they killed in the groundhog that was a national treasure. I kind of like the idea of a groundhog being a mini eldritch horror. And like it's it's you know predictions and stuff like that end up being madness driven hallucinations essentially that end up coming true. But if they don't they don't acknowledge the prognostications they don't actually come true and they don't happen. If a groundhog sees it shadow in the woods and nobody is around do we have extra winter. On that note listeners thank you for joining us for this secret frequency on groundhog's day.

53:34If you'd like to find out more of our work or gaming check out darker-days.org. If you'd like to get in contact with us check our link tree at link tree slash darker days radio send us an email at darker days radio at gmail.com. Visit darker days radio on Facebook. Tweet at darker days radio or join our discord discord server to the links in the show notes. Until our next secret frequency good night good luck and stay safe out there. Snow falls on the ground frozen solid deep in the winter trees creek and grow under the weight of ice. Wait have we done this before?

54:35I don't know what's talking about. Alright start over from the top and see.