This episode originally aired as the Patreon bonus episode for February 2019. The original description follows:
Man oh man, I never know what sort of team we'll end up with when we do these bonus episodes, but the $5+ Patrons never fail to make some really interesting choices.
As usual, I didn't decide on the central concept of this episode until I saw what characters everyone was going to be playing. In this case, I wanted to give our stealth- and social-centric characters plenty of opportunities to be sneaky and manipulative, so I came up with a scenario that would lead them away from taking a forceful and direct route, at least at first.
Most of the PCs were pretty straightforward to design. The ones that gave me issues were Austin Powers and Esmé Squalor.
In the case of Austin Powers, I felt like it was important to give him abilities beyond just being a James Bond clone--I eventually came up with the Mojo mechanic, which allowed him to weaponize his catchphrase.
In the case of Esmé, both Claire and I wanted to make sure that she could at least handle herself in combat. Claire eventually came up with the idea of giving her a clothing-based weapon from another setting--we tossed a number of ideas back and forth before settling on the Dresspheres from Final Fantasy X-2. It felt very appropriate to essentially tie her combat abilities to being able to change clothes rapidly.
This was a fun episode to record and I hope it's a fun episode to listen to!
-Dan