Podcast / Eidolon Playtest

Eidolon Playtest is an Actual Play podcast dedicated to a work-in-progress tabletop game, Eidolon: Become Your Best Self, running two campaigns on alternating weeks that act as playtest runs for it. Eidolon is based off of Jojos Bizarre Adventure and the Persona game series, with the main draw of the player characters having Stand/Persona-esque powers called Eidolons.

The first season is split into two campaigns: POP and ROCK.

POP centers around the adventures of a group of college students and their professor being brought into the Estate, a mysterious mansion located in the shadow world known as the Undertow. After "cleaning one of the rooms" there, they find that history has been altered, and the outside world changed to fit. They're soon offered jobs cleaning up more of the Estate... which go very poorly.

ROCK deals with the Alta Drive Jawbreakers, the least-respected gang in the Dead Pharaoh, an international crime syndicate that runs most of Las Vegas. A feud with a rival faction leaves them with a briefcase full of superpower-inducing drugs, a contract to deliver those drugs to New Jersey, and a massive target painted on their backs. They have three days to get to the other side of the country, all while evading or killing the forces of the Pharaoh.

The stories of both campaigns came to an end in February 2022 after two seasons, and though the crew have said possible follow-up stories involving the cast may appear as Patreon bonuses, ensuing stories will be set in their own continuity. The third season began in 2023, using a new edition of the game system built on tarot cards (the previous edition was Powered by the Apocalypse). Like before it is split between two campaigns, DISCO and SKA.

DISCO takes place in 1979 in the town of La Laiterie, Kentucky. A group of high school students have just returned from their summer vacation as the Newcastle County High Mystery Solver's Club, hoping to find evidence of the supernatural but failing. But it's not long before they discover their own town has become embroiled in it's own city-wide supernatural contest, and they find themselves trying to keep their friends and family safe before it's too late.

SKA takes place twenty years later and focuses on the latest iteration of the Mystery Solver's Club - a tradition that began when the '79 club disappeared twenty years earlier. Though the club has been reduced to community service and dinner theatre, the members soon discover the supernatural elements of their predecessors' disappearance and gain their own Eidolons. Now they must untangle the years of mysteries that have built up as other people begin discovering powers of their own.

There have always been several miniseries between seasons focusing on specific musical artists, which were chosen by their patrons. The first batch came out between seasons 2 and 3:

• Eidolon DAFT follows a group of rebels in a dystopian cyberpunk future trying to hack into a powerful computer.
• Eidolon SPICE follows a group of popstars and magical girls in their final face-off against an alien foe.
• Eidolon CRUSH is about a group of competitors in a city-wide virtual reality game (which might be more real than they realize).
• Eidolon GIANTS? takes place in a surreal version of New York where a team of detectives try to solve their own fates thanks to messages from the future.
• Eidolon THIEVES returns to the Undertow of the first season, where a team of baseball players fight against their opponents both on and off the diamond.
• Eidolon AGAINST! takes place After the End, where pirates sail across a flooded world searching for the ultimate treasure.

Another batch was released between seasons 3 and 4.

• Eidolon QUEEN takes place in the fantastic land of Rye and follows a band of adventurers seeking the save the missing White Queen.
• Eidolon ÖYSTER follows a team of supernatural doctors.
• Eidolon MONTREAL will be the third of this batch.

Eidolon POP and Rock:

POP and ROCK General

• Animorphism: Virginia and Henry's playbooks are the Wildcard, which sometimes switches them to the Beast playbook and transforms them into animals to match.
• Ambiguously Evil: Lady Luck, a denizen of the Undertow that toys with members from both campaigns to an unknown end. While in POP she has the underlying goal of freeing her lover Teoth, her playing both sides in ROCK is just her having fun.
• Ambiguously Human: President Dracula is revealed to have written a book in the 1800s and the moment Chris thinks it's weird he immediately forgets about it. POP 17 reveals that he is a reincarnation of the actual Dracula that was a former Estate master.
• The Artifact: As Eidolon: Become Your Best Self is still a work in progress, some things in early episodes reflect changed mechanics. For instance, in ROCK, Chili could only communicate with Chris because of their bond, which was later changed to everyone with an Eidolon being able to understand her and other beast characters.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Lady Luck was originally supposed to just be a luck spirit that appeared whenever Virginia/Molly rolled a 12, as per her playbook. She winds up being the most important NPC across both series.
  • President Dracula was originally intended to just be a goofy background detail that was slowly built on until he became a major NPC.
  • Gabe was intended to be a minor enemy that the players of POP would fight. He wound up being a well-liked character that survives to play a more major role in the second season.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: President Dracula passed a bunch of strange laws like deregulating the Grand Canyon to allow a restaurant to be built over it and relocating flamingos - but the ROCK gang think those policies are good and likes him for it.
• Chekhov's Gun: The picture that Alexis took of Henry toward the end of the first season is used to bring him back to life in the new universe at the end of the second season.
• Chekhov's Skill: Sabrina's ability to change people into a house is this two-fold. She is called in by Harvey in ROCK to transform Michael Valentine into a house... and much, much later, it's revealed that he intended for that to happen, as a version of Sabrina is always hardwired with that ability in every iteration of reality to set up his failsafe.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Henry Vladimir Dracula becomes an Estate master and works with Lady Luck to destroy the Estate, only to later reveal that he only did so to get rid of the other masters to consolidate power and is only playing both sides to gain power in the real world as president. In the process, he also abandons his friends that worked for him at a trial, which leads to Ursula getting erased from existence.
• Deal with the Devil: Lady Luck offers different ones in the campaigns. While she's the Game Over Woman in Rock, she offers the Pop team a chance to save themselves from erasure if they enter her service.
• Deus ex Machina: The "Reveal Your Master Plan" mechanic zigzags with this. Revealing a master plan allows a player to announce an action or intention that they secretly done, usually to save the day or subvert the actions of an enemy. However, the plan must be plausible for it to be allowed into play; for example in ROCK, player Maxie suggests that Chris' roomba should appear to suck up Dustland Fairytale, but it's impossible because it was destroyed and there was no plausible point for it to be repaired.
• Downer Ending: Season 1 ends with the heroes accidentally freeing Teoth in an attempt to reinforce her seal, leading to the destruction of the original universe save for Sabrina and Cecilia, due to being left in the Neutral Milk Hotel. While the original characters survive, they're also marked for death by the demons.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: A consequence of, well, being a playtest of an in development tabletop game. The biggest change is that POPROCK had a dice based system, while every campaign after would rely on a tarot card playing system.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After all the pain, the people of the Neighborhood team up to pacify Teoth and create the City of Dreams as a mutually beneficial alternative for reality. All the characters that aren't flat-out evil wind up finding happy lives in the City of Dreams, even the people that became part of Teoth.
• For Want Of A Nail: Virginia is completely new to the present cycle of universes, created by Michael in hopes of introducing a new element that can finally push him to be ruler of the universe.
• God of Evil: Lady Luck reveals herself to be one in POP 14. Her girlfriend, Teoth, is one as well.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The Pop episodes are named after the Major Arcana, in order. The Rock episodes are named after rock songs, usually matching an Eidolon the crew face that episode. This flips in the season finale - Pop 23 is "Total Eclipse of the Heart Part 2", and Rock 23 is "Judgement, Inverted". The new pattern continues into the second season, with Pop having episodes named after pop songs and Rock episodes following the Major Arcana inverted, and counting down from where they left off.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Lady Luck secured the help of the heroes in the first season by owing herself to Quentin. After the original universe is destroyed, this completely bites her in that the deal extends to not only the original heroes, but every variant of them across the growing multiverse.
• Legacy Character: It turns out that everyone was this for each other over the course of multiple realities, with Michael Valentine frequently swapping characters in and out of roles in an attempt to achieve an ideal reality.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Both sides have them in season 2, featuring the principal cast taking over NPCs and assigning them playbooks and, where applicable, Eidolons.
  • In ROCK, the players take over the Jawbreakers and detail how they came back to life and what their motivation is.
  • POP shows associates of the players look in to their disappearances and end up getting pulled into the Neighbourhood themselves.
• The Man Behind the Man: While the Spears of Hell are the primary antagonists of the second season, they all work under the Humanity Home Owner's Association, which is staffed near entirely by copies of Dracula's mother.
• Mephistopheles: The second season introduces Mephistopheles as one of the Seven Spears of Hell. He looks like a charred skeleton wearing a tweed-suit and is trapped underneath Harvey's house in the Undertow, making deals with people who die to resurrect them in return for finding a way to free him. His blood also gives the Jawbreakers their Eidolons this time around.
• Me's a Crowd: Due to the rules of how the multiverse works in Season 2, there's multiple versions — a possibly infinite amount — of each character.
• No Kill like Overkill: In season 2, as punishment for contributing to the end of the original universe, the demons mark all versions of the player characters across all possible universes for death.
• Official Couple: Lady Luck/Teoth (and Holly/Jenny by extension), Harvey/Christina, Sloane/Abby
• Our Presidents Are Different: The 44th president of the United States was a certain Henry Vladimir Dracula, who may or may not have been a vampire. POP 17 reveals that he's still the president because of his dealings with the Estate, and anyone that considers it to be weird is hit with amnesia.
• Our Vampires Are Different: While the reincarnated version of Dracula isn't a proper vampire, he has a secondary Eidolon, Bat Out of Hell that mimics his original self's abilities.
• Mythology Gag: The seemingly filler Bumper to Bumper podcast run by Harvey that ranks different pinball games is a reference to Let's Place, a podcast hosted by Harvey's player where she and her friends rank different video games.
• Super-Power Meltdown: A major mechanic is the Phantom Clock, which ticks down each session and if certain rolls are failed. If the clock hits midnight, one of the things that can happen is a person’s Eidolon going berserk and causing problems. Best demonstrated in the ROCK episode “Little Lies”, where Chili’s Eidolon starts insulting its own user and lashing out at people. Or the POP episode where Sloane's Eidolon Start a Riot goes berserk and melts that point in time.
• Stealth Sequel: To Bram Stoker's Dracula.
• Theme Naming:
  • Fittingly, characters in POP have Eidolons named after pop and hip-hop songs/albums, while characters in ROCK have ones named after rock songs/albums.
  • Angels are named after Biblical angels (e.g. Metatron, Jegudiel, Uriel), while their surnames are derived from saints (Vincent, Peter, Valentine). The exception is Stapleton, who appeared before this convention was settled on.
  • The Killers all have Eidolons named after songs by the band.
  • The Seven Spears of Hell from season 2 all have Eidolons named after Britney Spears Songs.
  • In Season 2, Henry's sub-Eidolons are named after songs by Harvey Danger. President Harvey Stoker's Eidolons are named after songs by The Presidents of the United States of America.
• Token Good Teammate: Gabriel is identified to be the most helpful (if pedantic) and friendly of the celestial creatures in the series and is the closest thing to a Big Good in season 2.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 17 of POP winds up being one for both series, as it's essentially a prequel to both. President Dracula, the background character repeatedly mentioned in ROCK, is revealed to be a former Estate master that's being targeted by Michael, who traveled to Earth using Ron's body; the result of Michael's travels is the soul of Ron becoming the completely emotionless Ronnui and his body is heavily implied to become the Dead Pharaoh.
  • The 43rd episodes of both campaigns. They reveal that the events of the podcast have happened at least twice before, as everyone is stuck in a Vicious Cycle created by Michael Valentine, who keeps recreating the universe and repeating events with slight variations until he gets a universe where he wins. Additionally, Teoth and her lover are recurring figures created from two beings from the previous universe, with the current incarnations of them being a past Jenny and Holly respectively.

POP Season One

• All for Nothing:
  • Lady Luck's plot to destroy the Estate turns out to have been pointless because Ronnui's body - the thing that actually needed to be destroyed - is somewhere else. Though, it's implied this is what starts her involvement in ROCK.
  • In fact, Lady Luck's whole plot resulted in this, as Teoth fell out of love with her. In season 2, she's an emotional wreck.
• Ascended Extra: Some of the player characters in the second season were NPCs from the previous one.
• Back for the Finale: Gabriel is revived through a picture of him taken before his demise during the season 1 finale episodes. He spends much of it a nervous wreck since he's alive past the point where he should have died. This enables him to live on into season 2.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While the defense attorney version of Satan-Genesius seems friendly and willing to help the group, an examination reveals that he's made no attempt to build a case for them and is actively trying to throw it.
• Born of Magic: Alexis can recreate living beings out of photographs she has and can essentially recreate dead people. However, the downside is that people in the photographs will undergo the same behavior they did in the picture and only have the same knowledge as they had when they were depicted.
• Call-Forward: The end of Episode 14, Death, has Ursa kill Uriel-Peter and essentially turn over control of the cycle of death to Lady Luck... explaining why she's able to go around resurrecting people in ROCK.
• Cessation of Existence: Anyone terminated by the Estate. Ursula, from Quentin's past group, faces this but winds up being revived as the shade Ursa.
• Death Is Cheap: Sloane avoids being Killed Off for Real by virtue of the fact that everyone screwed up the Estate's paperwork department and her guide would rather have her go back to life than process more paperwork.
• Driven to Suicide: James briefly considers this when he's rendered as an Unperson.
• For Want Of A Nail: Cleaning somebody's room in the Estate changes the real life events and conditions depicted in that room, leading to reality changing.
• Flash Step: Ursa manages this by jumping from the Undertow to the real world and back to the Undertow (or vice versa).
• Fusion Dance: Ursula Ursa is the fusion of... Ursula and Ursa. Ursula essentially takes up the main consciousness with Revolutionary Lover as a weapon, though she can shift into the Ursa form at will.
• Heel Realization: Sloane has one after almost annihilating the universe. In the aftermath, she starts taking other people's feelings, and the Estate/Undertow in general, much more seriously.
• It's All About Me: Sloane, early on. To the point where Start a Riot eventually goes berserk with the express stated mission of destroying everything and everyone that isn't her.
• Kangaroo Court: Johanna (serving as judge) and Satan-Genesius (serving as both prosecutor and defense attorney) subject the party to one after the murder of Jegudiel-Vincent.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: While the trial is completely unfair, the prosecution is actually right and the cast has no evidence to defend themselves.
• Last Episode, New Character: Strix, James' reincarnation, is born during the finale episodes.
• Lives in a Van: Alexis is this; part of why the whole Cessation of Existence thing is a big deal to her is that she no longer legally owns a van.
• Magical Camera: Kinda. Alexis' camera is normal, but her Eidolon manifests anything from photos, which essentially makes her camera this when used in unison.
• Morph Weapon: Ursa's Eidolon, Revolution Lover, can turn into a wide assortment of firearms and tools.
• Mundane Utility: Sloane attempts to use the power of the Estate to simply get rid of her roommate. She succeeds but it pisses off Johanna enough to subject them to erasure.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Early on, Sloane causes the team to become enemies of the Estate after trying to abuse her powers to... get rid of a roommate she didn't like.
  • The whole conflict started because Quentin unconsciously reached out to the Estate for a chance to change the cognition around him so that he could keep his job. And before that, he and his friends aided Henry Dracula's ascent to power in the hopes that he would use it for good.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Satan-Genesius appears to be impervious to most forms of physical harm, up to and including being shot point-blank in the head.
• Odd Name Out: Stapleton does not fit the rest of the Estate's religious name ties on account of being named before the convention stuck.
• Off the Rails: Contributors to the Patreon get the GM notes, which for Pop almost never predict the decisions of the actual players. They wind up skipping a bunch of planned encounters because of this, notably skipping the boiler room where they would have encountered Ethelwulf before his proper appearance in season 2.
• Playing with Fire: Sloane's Eidolon, Start A Riot.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Metatron, manager of the Estate's records department. He's implied to have worked many "employees" to death entirely because he either doesn't realize or doesn't care that mortals need breaks longer than three nanoseconds to survive.
• Refusal of the Call: Literally in the first episode, figuratively in later ones.
• Retired Badass: Quentin, before the beginning of the campaign. He ends up back in action pretty quickly.
• Sanity Slippage: While initially appearing normal and self-adjusted, James steadily grows unhinged as his life falls apart around him.
• Senseless Sacrifice: James sacrificing himself to prevent Lady Luck from using him to break the Heart of Glass becomes moot when everyone forgets about said sacrifice and wind up breaking it in a different way. Gabriel even says that by erasing himself, he couldn't be around to discourage everyone from doing so.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The majority of Episode 14 centers around the party defending themselves in court; ultimately, they're not only found guilty, but they also have their connection to Lady Luck exposed. They're promptly executed and sent to deal with Uriel-Peter, who refuses to bring them back to life, and threatens them with eons of suffering. All of this ends up being a moot point when Ursa teleports behind him and shoots him in the head, preventing him from carrying out their sentence.
• Ship Sinking: Ursa's growing interest in James is hilariously killed off when he casually reveals that he's gay.
• Straight Gay: James.
• Unperson: While most of the cast prevents being erased from existence, Ursa and James only partially prevents their erasure, leaving them alive but as an Unperson in the eyes of everyone except for the rest of the group. The ultimate fate of people that experience this is being turned into a shade.
• Team Mom: Ursula Ursa plays this role a bit, being the most responsible grown up in the cast.

POP Season Two

• Ascended Extra: Parodied and defied when Sloane nicknames a helpful mailer demon "Paulie;" instead of having this one specific mailer demon become a recurring character, all the mailer demons decide they want to be named Paulie.
• Beach Episode: Episode 36 has the main group having a rare bit of respite at a beach (though they're grossed out by the implications of the beach) while Ursula and Alexis has a fanservice filled fight.
• Carnival of Killers: The primary antagonists of Pop Season 2, the Spears of Hell, are demonic killers with abilities names after Britney Spears songs.
  • Mook Maker / Laser Guided Tyke Bomb: Andromalius uses Baby One More Time to birth offspring that can invade other realities, and sympathetically deal damage taken from their target back at them.
  • Born Lucky: Phenex's Lucky makes them incredibly lucky, and others around them increasingly unlucky. They kill their targets by simply being near them and waiting for the misfortune to compound to lethal levels.
  • Deadly Gas: Sabnock's entire body is Toxic - he is made of, and can seemingly produce more of, a gas that causes organic material it touches to crumble.
  • Vampiric Draining / Make My Monster Grow: Beleth initially appears as weak and comical, but can use Stronger to drain other people's physical strength by touch. Draining enough will cause him to transform and eventually grow enormous, Sentai monster style.
  • Deal with the Devil: Mephistopheles uses (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction to grant Faustian bargains.
  • Time Master: Flaorus wields Oops I Did It Again, which rewinds mistakes or forces people to repeat them.
  • Reality Warper: Lucifer uses Brightest Morning Star to directly manipulate the starlight that powers the Neighborhood.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Ana Borba, the woman that gained ownership of Alexis' van when she was erased, is Crystal's alternate player character in season 2.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Burgess Ethelwulf Joseph turns out to be a massive weirdo when he shows up.
• Electric Jellyfish: Superfast Jellyfish, the Eidolon of the Ron Moreau from Sloane's universe, is a slime-spitting jellyfish.
• Enfant Terrible: Phenex, the user of Lucky, is a demon that takes the form of a bird-like child and acts like a kid. They are also incredibly eager to kill Strix and are indifferent to the idea of collateral damage.
• Fusion Dance: The version of 9-to-5 James has is actually a surviving aspect of Metatron, who ends up hijacking James' body entirely. Shortly afterward though, a surviving aspect of James awakens in Strix and they fuse together as well.
• Gentleman Thief: A version of ROCK's Chris appears as a thief born into wealth that steals from the aristocracy to stick it to them.
• He Knows Too Much: Bezelbub kills every version of Gabriel that brings a group of heroes to him so that he wouldn't bring back data that would dissuade future Gabriels from seeking him out, since the heroes he always brings provides him a steady supply of wishes.
• Hero of Another Story: Different versions of the ROCK characters appear as brief divergences that the POP characters go through, with their own stories and settings separate from everything else.
• Humanity Ensues: A version of ROCK's Chili appears as a human woman named Valerie Danger Masters, though she was still a fox at one point.
• Jerkass Genie: Bezelbub is a variant. He does not try to grant wishes in an unfair way. However, he only chooses to grant wishes that could bring him long-term benefits, which means wishes that would naturally go against the wisher's intent in the long run.
• Keet: The season 2 version of Quentin is the excitable young man that he was before he took Dracula's offer.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Asteroth turns out to be the one literally maintaining the Neighborhood; if he's killed, all the universes die out, which would kill more than trillions of people.
• The Man Behind the Man: While the Spears of Hell acts as The Heavy and drive the initial conflict forward, they're ultimately working in service to the Humanity Home Owners Association.
• Nuke 'em: Lucifer attempts to do this by creating an atomic bomb as his dying action, but Etherwulf manages to dismantle it. The team does put it back together to drop on Bezelbub, though.
• Power Perversion Potential: The show features not one, but two people who have altered their universes for their gratification. "Onion Ring Guy" is more wholesome than the user of Crash Into Me, but not by much.
• Retired Badass: Sloane ends up taking this role in season 2.
• The Sociopath: This season's version of Ursula doesn't really care much for anyone but herself and views her partners as playthings, to the point that she's willing to sacrifice them for collateral for a chance to save her own skin. She also tries to emotionally harm Sloane over her not giving her a proper thank you.
• Stone Wall: Season 2's Caroline Rose has Human Disco Ball, which grants her practical invulnerability.
• Time Master: Abby Morrison's One More Time allows her to rewind a target 30 second backwards in their chronology.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • The season 2 version of James is intended to become a flat-out villain, while Ursa's counterpart is more conceited and manipulative.
  • The original Ron goes on a reality wide killing spree of Henrys, and while he's an Asshole Victim, it does not excuse the fact that he treats everyone else around him as dirt secondary to his goal.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The Quentin shown throughout the season later turns out to be the original Quentin, who reimagined himself back to be the kinder young man he was before accepting Henry's offer.
• The Unfettered: The original Ron dedicates millennia to killing every version of Dracula non-stop. He only finally takes a break when the brief Neighborhood outage briefly erases all Draculas out of existence.
• Un-Installment: POP 29 is "Toxic, Part 2". Part 1 is covered in episode 40, which details Sloane's lost memories.
• Weapons of Their Trade: Ethelwulf, who began his career as a tradesman before becoming a philosopher, has the Eidolon Son of Man (after the Phil Collins song), which manifests as a hammer that he can control remotely.
• Wham Shot: Coupled with the line below, James successfully using his Eidolon is coupled with it revealing itself more. It's Nine to Five, the same as Metatron, and Metatron's arm emerges from James' mouth when he uses it.
• Wham Line: After James successfully uses (and names) his new Eidolon in season 2.
  James: Man, I thought I had a shitty one, but Nine to Five is really putting in work.
  • POP 29 comes after a few episodes of players playing different characters, so when Luke asks yet another new character (Valerie) to describe herself, everything seems fine... until Lexi, who plays Chili on ROCK, starts talking. Queue everyone else freaking out because they didn't even know Lexi was in the call.
  • POP 31 does a similar thing, with Luke asking the character Hekaton to describe himself revealing that Maxie, player of Harvey and Henry, is also in the call.

ROCK Season One

• Animal Talk: Played with. Those who have an Eidolon can understand Chili, who can understand them in turn, and she can also understand other animals.
• Affably Evil: Bartholomew Lightkill, the user of Neon Tiger, who pays for the gang's expenses and gives them an hour headstart before hunting them down.
• All There in the Manual: The names of the users of Bones, Miss Atomic Bomb, Dustland Fairytale, Stand and Road to Nowhere are not revealed in the podcast, but are in the GM notes on the Patreon.
• Apologetic Attacker: The "user" of Houses in Motion only hunts people for her Eidolon because it would otherwise go berserk and attack the nearest city. She winds up joining the crew afterward as soon as they free her from her Eidolon.
• Back from the Dead: Multiple PCs are revived by Lady Luck, albeit at a high price. They're not the only ones who get to come back, though.
• Big Damn Heroes: Invoking a "Reveal Your Master Plan," Harvey has Sabrina rush in during the fight against Micheal to transform him into a house.
• Born Lucky: "Harvey D. Godlove never loses!"
• Boss Rush: Before the finale, Lady Luck revives all the combat ready Killers to fight the protagonists. Unusually, The Killers are actually the heroes in the situation in that they're trying to stop the crew from advancing Lady Luck's plans. Lady Luck only revived them just to have some fun.
• Came Back Wrong: Chris comes back from the dead, but has to give up "his genius" in the process, leaving them a less passionate, directionless, and more irritable individual.
• Carnival of Killers: The Killers, whose members are all named after songs by the eponymous band:
  • Dem Bones: Bones, an assassin that's a living skeleton that can move his separate parts at will to attack multiple people at once.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Holly Wilson wields Miss Atomic Bomb, which takes the form of a lighter that generates explosions. Her counterpart in season 2 instead has Tick Tick Boom, which generates explosions from lit matches.
  • Master of Illusion: Dustland Fairytale, whose Eidolon is a dragon made of dust that can create elaborate illusions with it.
  • Light 'em Up: Bartholomew Lightkill wields Neon Tiger, which can manifest killer tigers within any source of light.
  • Frame-Up: The user of Jenny Was a Friend of Mine avoids fighting directly, instead opting to use her Eidolon - which can morph into a dead body - to frame the protagonists for murder and let the cops deal with them.
  • Charm Person: Mr. Brightside is capable of influencing people to perceive things that should make them upset as normal, which extends to people being fine with the user telling them directly that he'll kill them.
  • Artificial Human: Micheal's Humans are humanoid puppets that he made to fight. He has a more specific one, the Ballad of Micheal Valentine, which is Virgina, and he's been tracking the team through her and is able to control her body.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Harvey's not on the same wavelength as everyone else and is quick to suggest bizarre solutions. And sometimes they actually work out.
• Complexity Addiction: At the end of the Little Lies episode, it's pointed out that the user of Jenny Was a Friend Of Mine could have simply framed the protagonists for the gas station owner she murdered instead of using her Eidolon as a fake dead body.
• Cop Killer: The crew is forced to kill several police officers, though they aren't particularly hung up about it.
• The Dividual: Harvey and Henry's souls are intertwined toward the end of the first season; in the second season, they wind up co-inhabited a house because of this.
• Eldritch Abomination: Road to Nowhere is assumed to be this at first. It turns out to be a map that can let the unnamed user manipulate someone’s position in space.
• Evil Mentor: Jack Stern ends up being one when he tries killing Harvey for cheating to beat his life-long pinball record.
• Fanboy: Chris is a huge fan of the PSP.
• Faux Affably Evil: Mr. Brightside is all smiles and wishes to give his targets a good time, but it's all in service of killing them in a low effort way, with his niceness reading as that of an abuser.
• Foreshadowing: A probably unintended one. Chris' Ironspy takes the form of a woman which foreshadows how she comes out as Christina in season 2.
• Forced Transformation: Houses In Motion, a semi-sentient suburb, feeds by turning its victims into more houses. After Sabrina tames it to actually follow her commands, it's renamed into Burning Down the House.
• Forgot About His Powers: Chili constantly forgets that she has an Eidolon, instead usually opting to simply maul enemies.
• Fusion Dance: After killing President Dracula, Harvey absorbs his essence, legally becoming President Dracula and gaining his powers in the process.
• Genre Shift: After the horror show that was the Houses in Motion arc, the gang winds up being terrorized by a roadrunner whose Eidolon, The Distance, creates Looney Tunes esque hijinks.
• Graceful Loser: In line with the rest of his personality, Mr. Brightside's user gives up when Chris has the upper hand and lets him shoot him.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Will at least until he realizes that the crew are enemies and Sabrina
• Gone Horribly Right: The user of Jenny Was a Friend of Mine creates a situation where a police manhunt is out on the gang, hoping that either the cops kill them or they lock them up in a place where the Pharaoh can take care of them. In a normal situation, it would be ideal. However, because Fraiser is on his own time limit to kill them it just complicates things further.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Fraiser, a high ranking officer in the Dead Pharaohs, is constantly stressed and gets increasingly aggravated by the gang's failures to kill the protagonists. As it turns out, Lady Luck's also forcing him to fight them on borrowed time, so he has good reason to worry.
• Harmless Villain: The version of Jenny that appears in season 1 is easily the most ineffectual of The Killers, with no actual combat skills and her plan being a case of Complexity Addiction.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Bartholomew somehow hitched a ride under the gang's car so that he could kill them as soon as they create a light source for him to channel his powers through.
• Humanoid Abomination: Virginia's shifting Eidolon powers are attributed to her being an "angel;" it's later revealed that she's more specifically the Eidolon of an angel.
• Humanity Ensues: Valerie Danger Masters is a human version of Chili, who ironically becomes a caretaker for animal versions of the rest of the ROCK cast.
• Inn Between the Worlds: The Neutral Milk Hotel, which serves as a peaceful place to rest for people all across the multiverse.
• Joke Character: Among the president effigies summoned by Dracula's death, James Garfield winds up being a non-threat that Virginia kills anti-climactically.
• Killer Rabbit: The roadrunner and its Eidolon, The Distance, causes people to crave poultry, making them chase after it, and forces the world to obey Toon Physics. It’s heavily implied, by the picked-clean skeletons found in a motel the gang passes, that the roadrunner uses this to hunt humans for food.
  • A fly that Chili swallows comes back to haunt the gang three episodes later. It gains its own Eidolon, The Fly, that allows it to increase in size and power by consuming anything with sugar content, and nearly kills Chili by absorbing her blood sugar and sending her into diabetic shock.
• The Load: Cecelia's Eidolon is a heavy and hard to move fortunetelling machine and she can't move very far from it. While Fortune Teller does sometimes give useful (if cryptic) predictions, the physical downsides of it leaves Cecelia as a noncombatant. Chris later figures out that he can seal it in a much easier to carry electronic device so that she can be more active.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Dustland Fairytale, which conjures up a fake Cracker Barrel for the gang to wander into and later conjures (a much less successful) illusion of their homes.
• Metaphorgotten: Just about any time Harvey tries to make a pinball-based analogy.
• More Dakka: The whole gang somehow acquires an arsenal of guns over the course of the campaign, which they wind up using liberally against Bartholomew.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being more cool-headed than the others, Virginia joins Harvey in trying to find out Chris' fursona in Neutral Milk Hotel Part 2.
  "Chris, what's your FurAffinity account?!"
• Organ Theft: Will's Eidolon, Take Me Out, makes people's organic matter disappear; while it comes back if he's killed, it makes him scarily effective if he were to reach for the brain.
• Panthera Awesome: Bartholomew Lightkill’s Eidolon, Neon Tiger, allows him to conjure glowing tigers from any source of light. The Eidolon itself resembles a robotic figure with a roaring tiger head for the chest. His season 2 counterpart similarly wields Electric Version, which can generate tigers (among other things) from electric sources.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Michael convinces Marty to recruit the gang into the Killers, thinking that they'd be better replacements and if they were to be killed, they'd at least be in a more convenient place. Unfortunately, Chris' initial aversion to killing and Jack Stern's attempt to kill Harvey completely sours the deal.
• Puzzle Boss: Whilst the majority of Eidolon fights across the series are this, there are some notable ones that stand out in Rock:
  • The battle against Pinball Wizard is a deadly game of pinball.
  • Stand forces the group to face north via magnetism, meaning they can't turn to face oncoming threats.
  • Road to Nowhere is an attack from miles and miles away via a map that manipulates people's physical location. Initially, the group doesn't even comprehend what's happening, and only by exploiting the two-way connection created by their attacker do they achieve victory.
• Race Against the Clock:
  • After Virginia is brought back from the dead, she's given exactly 72 hours to deliver a briefcase full of Eidolon to New Jersey. If she fails, she dies for good. After her second death, Lady Luck decides to subject Harvey to it instead.
  • As it turns out, Lady Luck is playing both sides, giving similar deals to Dead Pharaoh members to kill the protagonists under a similar time limit. Fraiser turns out to have taken the deal while Will managed to negotiate a different deal with her.
• Religion of Evil: Episode 14 reveals that the Dead Pharaoh is secretly one, with the Eidolons coming from the blood of the titular Dead Pharaoh that Marty worships.
• Sir Swearsalot: The only thing the Roadrunner is heard to say is “Fuck you!” In the same cadence as “Beep-beep!”
• Spot the Thread: The user of Dustland Fairytale briefly disguises himself as Harvey when he's knocked out and lays next to him. Chris immediately figures it out since Iron Spy can only enter Harvey's real pinball, leading to Chili mauling Dustland Fairytale to death.
• Super Serum: The protagonists (and the Eidolon users deployed by the Dead Pharaoh) gain their powers through use of a mysterious drug, also called Eidolon. It's chemically indistinguishable from ordinary human blood, which raises the question of how it works and why it's bright orange. It's later revealed that this is the blood of Ronnui from POP.
• Tempting Fate: After dealing with Bartholomew, Lady Luck directs the gang to a hotel, with Chili happy that it doesn't have a weird name. The hotel turns out to be the Neutral Milk Hotel.
• Too Dumb to Live: Harvey refuses to turn his cell phone off in spite of the gang being tracked. Granted, Micheal seems to be tracking them through supernatural means, though it does not justify him answering a phone call from Bartholomew that would have generated light for him to kill through.
• Took a Level in Badass: Chris starts out as a guy who's only willing to commit petty crime to a man that's shot and killed multiple assassins; considering that Chris' initial resistance to killing was why the gang rejected Jack's offer to become Killers, the players briefly wonder how different the story would have turned out if it was Chris post-character development.
• Toon Physics: One of the effects of The Distance, which causes the world to obey the logic of a Looney Tunes cartoon. This doesn’t apply to the humans it’s implied to hunt.
• Uplifted Animal: Chili, an ordinary red fox granted sapience by Eidolon (the drug). Also happens to a roadrunner and a fly.
• Vampiric Draining: The fly’s Eidolon, The Fly (after the U2 song), allows it to absorb anything that has sugar content through contact. This extends to blood sugar, and can occur even through contact with other Eidolons. Harvey and Chris fall victim to this effect, and Chili almost slips into a diabetic coma as a result.

ROCK Season Two

• Affably Evil: Mephistopheles has the energy of a used car salesman, but is generally affable and friendly to whomever he isn't trying to kill.
• Anti-Villain: President Harvey isn't exactly nice about what he's doing, but it was ultimately in service of weakening Mephistopheles and at least protecting some versions of his friends.
• Ascended Extra: A few of the more popular Killers (Holly, Bartholomew and Jenny) and Ruby and Cecilia are the alternate player characters in the second season, with the former Killers now working as Jawbreakers. Holly and Jenny in particular stand out, since alternate versions of them became Lady Luck and Teoth respectively.
• The Dividual: An unusual take on this happens to Chris in Season 2, who has Bart Lightkill's memories stuffed into him via a deal with Mephistopheles. This results in an embarrassing (but hilarious) interaction with Holly and Jenny during the attack on the Luxor.
• Dueling Hackers: In Season 2. Chris attempts to hack the security of the Luxor and must contend with his co-worker's Eidolon, Whenever You Breathe Out I Breathe In, which deals gruesome physical injury to anyone who tries to subvert the security system.
• Functional Magic: The Killers-verse's Virgina has Midnight Show, a set of jewellery that grants her magic powers.
• Infraction Distraction: The attack on the Luxor is this - a faked "assault" in order to allow the heroes to steal the briefcase back.
• Nice Guy: In the second season, as he's no longer a villain, Bartholomew Lightkill is this. Case in point, instead of trying to kill Virginia he tries to approach her diplomatically.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Christina coming out as a trans woman correlates to her player, Iris, also coming out as a trans woman around the same time. In the season postmortem, Iris discusses that the two versions of Masters would have fused and be nonbinary like she previously identified as before settling on her identity.
• Reality Warper: Ruby Thursday's Eidolon, Gimme Shelter, lets her create contracts that retroactively become true, leading to things like her creating buildings from out of nowhere from forging building permits.
• Remember the New Guy?: In the flashback to the previous reality, Bartholomew replaces Christina in Holly and Jenny's friend group after Professor Harvey changes reality, acting as if he was always there. Holly and Jenny, despite being confused, easily welcomes him.
• Supernatural Suffocation: When Casey Horton, the IT guy of the Dead Pharaoh, figures out Chris is hacking the Luxor, he hijacks Chris' rig and turns off the ventilation of the building, causing Whenever You Breathe Out I Breathe In to force Chris to stop breathing. Chris forcibly disconnects himself from the network to avoid this fate.
• Super Serum: In the Killers Universe, Eidolons are instead granted from the blood of the demon Mephistopheles.
• Take That!: Senator Ursula Bexar is a caricature of centrist Democrats (particularly Hillary Clinton).
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The season 2 Killers versions of Chris and Virginia are far more cold and callous compared to their original counterparts.
• Trans Tribulations: The original version of Masters comes out as a trans woman, via rebirthing herself into her own universe as Christina Masters. Her version of Virginia is also presented as agender and Lisa, being a version of Harvey (and indirectly characterizing him as a trans man) later pursues transition himself and comes out as Hatch in the series finale.

Eidolon DISCO and SKA

General

• Big Bad: Jordan Rogers, who had become the god of the world at the end of DISCO's first season and had been presumably controlling everything across both campaigns as a story he's writing.
• No Fourth Wall: Starting toward the end of the first season finales, the campaigns become this as Jordan makes himself known as an interactable narrator. Only the protagonists and people who are touching Excalibur have the ability to hear him.

Eidolon DISCO

• The '70s: DISCO is set in 1979, and as such references to 70’s culture such as the Brady Bunch abound.
• Aggressive Drug Dealer: Wolf, a local weed seller. Bob once attempted to get him to help the gang, but was too put off by his aggression to commit.
• Cast from Lifespan: Jordan's use of Touch drains away his life force. He winds up dying in Episode 21.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sherlock does not hesitate to make sarcastic comments about the gang's lack of prowess as detectives.
• Foregone Conclusion: The campaign will end with the cast disappearing and being presumed dead as per SKA, with an occassional Flash Forward showing bits of their presumed last moments.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: In Episode 7, Maurice has a bad reputation for getting Mr. Hall injured, and he can't really fight that because revealing the full context of what happened would probably break the Eidolon rules.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: While people can openly use their Eidolon during the midnight hour, they'll forget everything that happened in that hour. This is not part of the competition itself, but is the power of an Eidolon called Night Fever, which is also used on people trying to research the user.
• Living Statue: Played with. The Toymaker carves the player character's Eidolons out of wood, but these themselves aren't alive. After each character reads the contract, however, the wooden figures transform into their Eidolons.
• Magical Accessory: The Hustle takes the form of Bob's running sneakers, aside from the Mercury's Wings made of energy that form when they use it. However, the figure that was carved for Bob before becoming the shoes resembles their favourite comic book hero, The Speedster.
• The Power of the Sun: KC's Eidolon, Sunshine Band, lets her control fire and sunlight. It manifests as a female figure made of sunlight, but can disguise itself as a band around KC's arm. The downside is that it's proportionally as hot and bright as the real sun, which causes KC problems when she's trying to sleep.
• Power Incontinence: Maurice has trouble keeping Boogie Wonderland under control due to inexperience with it. This results in such hilarity as the interior of Bob's van turning into a miniature jungle with everyone inside it.
• Randomized Transformation: Downplayed. Haley runs the Wildcard playbook, so her Eidolon, Shining Star, can access the abilities of other playbooks by changing forms. While Haley has some control over what form it can take, this is limited to one of three playbooks randomly drawn by the GM.
• Reality Warper:
  • Maurice's Eidolon, Boogie Wonderland, does this by bringing out the "latent spirit" of a location. The tiny gremlins that are the true Eidolon act as a film crew, lighting the area and dressing people up to match. It also causes Maurice, its user, to change personalities as well, i.e. acting like a cowboy when near Haley's house.
  • Jordan's Eidolon, Touch, makes anything he writes real. He created Sherlock Holmes in a misguided attempt to help the Mystery Club and gives KC her dream of being born a girl.
• Sherlock Scan: Utilized by none other than Sherlock Holmes himself, who claims that his deductive skills are just the result of actually paying attention in a world where nobody else bothers to. However, he still deduces many things that shouldn't be possible, and gets annoyed when not asked how.
• Super-Speed: Bob's Eidolon, The Hustle, takes the form of a pair of sneakers that let Bob run so fast that it's initially mistaken for teleporting.
• Trans Tribulations: KC is initially presented as a trans woman in denial, with the expressed goal of realizing who she is as the series goes on.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!:
  • Episode 4 has the Mystery Solver’s Club facing Knock On Wood, an Eidolon that causes classic bad luck scenarios (walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror etc.) to actually cause bad luck. Maurice manages to counter it with a traditional good luck ritual - throwing salt over his shoulder. Flannery later develops a machine that lets people analyze luck as a scientific unit.
  • Episode 6 reveals Flannery's father, who's the user of Righteous Rhythm, which allows them to essentially manipulate luck by following the rhythm of the universe to create the best outcomes. He indirectly murdered the janitor's wife through using this, and winds up killing the janitor when he confronts him about this.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 3, "Hold Your Horses", gives the surprise reveal that Patrick, one of Haley's fathers, possesses an Eidolon in the form of a teleporting horse. This confirms Maurice's suspicions that more people in La Laiterie aside from them have Eidolons.
  • Episode 4 has the gang assume that Knock On Wood belongs to a black cat. The cat itself is the Eidolon, and it belongs to a classmate of Haley’s, Flannery.
  • Episode 7, "Righteous Rhythm, Part 2" reveals the state of the world: everyone that's of age in the town has an eidolon, and the gang's fight with Flannery's father has invited open conflict between eidolon users.
  • Episode 13, "Disco Inferno," goes deeper into the world building, revealing that the toymaker is Merlin who has been administering a trial via giving people eidolons for years to discover who can crack open the "egg" in the Undertow, which is sealed in place by Excalibur, which Sherlock has been tasked with retrieving.

Eidolon SKA

• Animate Inanimate Object: A skeletal Big Mouth Billy Bass named Fishbone resides in the remains of the burnt-down toy shop. He speaks in an Elvis impression, and only knows how to sing "Hound Dog".
  • Regina's Eidolon, Pride of Lions, can cause this, as it brings anything that represents an image of an animal to life.
• Big Bad: The therapist Dr. Philips, who manipulated the aggression of multiple characters with Dog Eat Dog in his attempts to indirectly fight the Mystery Club.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Natalie seems bubbly and friendly, but she freely uses Two Words without regards toward anyone else, shows that she's casually homophobic, killed the drama teacher in DISCO and mind controlled her husband to love her.
• Born Detective: Naomi is essentially one big shoutout to Naoto Shirogane of Persona 4, being the child of a famous detective striving to carry on the legacy.
• Genius Loci: Main Street, an actual street within La Laiterie, has come alive under mysterious circumstances - and is highly resentful of being supplanted in importance by the new highway. It has the Eidolon Streetlight Manifesto, which allows it to summon memories of its former glory within the beams of its streetlights.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Regina runs the Veteran playbook, meaning she already has her Eidolon at the beginning of the series. After something happened in her original home town, she came to La Laiterie to try and live a normal life, only to be incredibly annoyed when supernatural events start happening again.
• Invisible Introvert: Kacey's Eidolon "Just A Girl" helps her pass beneath everyone else's notice. It fits her personality of wanting to fade into the background and not draw attention to herself.
• Lethal Joke Item: Fang's Are You Sure This is Cool? is a tablefan that still needs to be plugged in to be used and its power is to make things room temperature. The lethal part is that because the human body itself is hot, a room temperature body is essentially a dead one, and winds up being horribly cold to any living thing.
• Malicious Misnaming: In season 2 Kacey starts being called Melissa because Jordan realized that her having a name close to KC is a mess from a writing perspective.
• Nervous Wreck: Kacey doesn't enjoy the idea of disobeying authority and gets panicky whenever the gang does anything she considers immoral, from smoking to illegal trespassing.
• Nightmare of Normality: In episode 19, a newly aggressive Charlie uses her eidolon Three Small Words (which can convince anyone that a three-word sentence Charlie says is fundamentally true) to tell Naomi "Eidolons aren't real". They immediately forgets the supernatural elements of the case they've been working on with the Mystery-Solver's Club, and in their head their own eidolon gets locked in a prison cell.
• The '90s: SKA is set in 1999, twenty years after the events of DISCO. As such, references to cultural fads like Heelys and Pokémon turn up frequently.
• Noodle Incident: Within the context of SKA, the events of DISCO is this, with the goal of investigating what happened to the cast being an initial objective.
  • Regina has also yet to disclose what happened that caused her to move to La Laiterie, although she obviously obtained her own Eidolon in that time.
• Overly Long Name: Solo's full name is Solaris Apogee LVII, 4th House.
• Punny Name: While Naomi's Eidolon is named "All My Friends are Metal Heads", it takes the form of a masculine version of themselves named Jake. Jake has his own arrogant personality, and considers Naomi to be "less than" him.
• Scarab Power: Solo, a scarab beetle, is a major party member. He possesses the Eidolon Soul Together, a miniature black hole that he can roll around to absorb and expel matter.
• Words Can Break My Bones:
  • A downplayed example. Charlie's Eidolon, Three Small Words, alters reality by making any three-word sentence she says be taken as fact by those around her. For example, telling a teacher to his face that she's not smoking when she already has a lit cigarette in her mouth. That being said, it affects everyone around her and can go off on any three-word sentence - telling a crow "we're all friends" didn't just make the crow become her friend, but everyone else feel good about the Mystery Club as well.
  • Charlie's mother has the Eidolon, Two Words, which does the same thing as long as commands are phrased in two words. She can also still use this when she is reborn as Three Small Words.

Side Projects

World of Assassination

• 0% Approval Rating: Doctor Whye is only mainly liked by the kids who are fans of his show and is hated by everyone else. Unsurprisingly, most of the people around him choose not to help him when he's dying.
• Born Unlucky: While Nikolai succeeds in assassinating his targets, he's cursed by multiple mistakes on account of multiple bad rolls from Iris and winds up leaving near death.
• Friendly Enemy: Francis does not assassinate Rebecca, instead letting her live on good terms with her.
• Shout-Out: The "World of Assassination" tabletop game is built off of the Hitman series.
• Take That!: Earl Shipman is a bizarre parody of Jared Leto.

Eidolon DAFT

• Fusion Dance: Highway's attempt to resuscitate Craig leads to their consciousness fusing with his.
• Humanity Ensues: Highway's Eidolon allows them to give life to any inanimate object, leading to a lot of weird existential horror.
• Let's Meet the Meat: Sebastian, being a talking pig, is disturbed by the commune raising pigs for slaughter and successfully guilt trips the butcher into considering other food sources.

Eidolon SPICE

• The Starscream: Miranda attempts to take the title of the Queen of Spice for herself. She technically succeeds by having a mind controlled proxy on the throne by the end.
• Token Good Teammate: Katarina is pretty much the only party member with no bad morals.

Eidolon CRUSH

• Anti-Hero: Ricki is a strong woman that's willing to help everyone that sides with her, though she's very callous and is willing to kill under the belief that Death Is Cheap. She is evidently a bit shaken when she discovers that she isn't in a time loop.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Angel, a young boy with gravity powers, who supports the party after he's defeated.
• New Game Plus: Ricki has participated in Bit Crush multiple times, having restarted the game every time she won as her reward. While initially believed to be a time loop, Bit Crush's host is actually just sending Ricki's consciousness back to the past and wiping her memories, giving the impression that she isn't just playing the same game over and over.
• Shout-Out: All the Eidolons that aren't named after Crush 40 songs are named after songs from the general Sonic The Hedgehog series.

Eidolon THIEVES

• Continuity Nod: This campaign references multiple past ones:
  • The campaign’s setting takes place in a variant within the City of Dreams.
  • Jimmy Spaghetti, from the World of Assassination campaign, makes a surprise appearance as the team’s manager. Doctor Whye is also still on his phone.
  • Freeway was given life by Highway.
  • ROCK’s Killers is implied to be another baseball team in this setting.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Baseball is souped up by the inclusion of Eidolon powers.