We're in. We're in. Started. Hello and welcome. Welcome to Watch the Buttons. We've just done
the Patron episode. Give us your money. Patreon.com forward slash what's the buttons. It's not
Ashley. Dot com dot go to UK. I don't know. For Patron. No, yeah, I said it. Patreon.com
forward slash what's the buttons. That's the one. That's the one. That's the one. If you
want to give us some money. Give them the money. Listen, I'm paying. Why aren't you?
To the exclusive. I'm paying and I'm being here as well. Had to leave off a fair amount
of conversation in the Patreon because we just wanted to talk about on this. We did
it the other way around because usually you do it the other way around. Boring, stupid,
nerdy, Dungeons and Dragons. No one likes Dungeons and Dragons apparently in the. In
the yard. In the world. It must have such an awful perception from the outside looking
in. You know why? Because when D&D first came out back in the 70s or whenever it was, it
was all taboo and cult shit. Basically got hit with it and it because it was it came.
I think it's Gary Gygax and all that. They're all American. Is that the ones that made it?
Yeah, Gary Gygax made it and essentially they all looked at it and went, oh, that's fucking
weird and it's spooky. It's getting the kids to fucking worship Satan. They know all that
all that fucking Jesus shit we talked about in the van earlier that America's a bit, you
know, a little bit extreme in their in their outlook and essentially all the all the Christian
moms didn't like D&D. And so for a long, long time when it first came out, it was seen as
a with massive stigma. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, essentially Stranger Things is obviously
what kicked it off again, but they didn't really make a big deal out of showing the
D&D aspect of it. Yeah, it was briefly mentioned, but because at the time they no one liked
it and it was like, oh, it's going to turn my kids, you know, special and gay or whatever
else. D&D is going to turn us gay. He's going to worship Satan and suck dick. You know,
it had a real bad rap for a long time till it wasn't even it was obviously had its place
in the world, but it wasn't such a big, big attraction. Whereas then people. It's turning
the frogs gay. Satan and suck dick. Oh, good God. So ultimately it went quiet for a very
long time. And then we Stranger Things coming out whenever the fuck that came out. Probably
like a while ago, man, probably like 10 years ago now. Halfway through filming the last
season, like eight years ago now that it had a little bit of an upsurgence. And then there
was a lot of groups of people that had been playing D&D from when they were very, very
young and then stuck with it because they loved it so much and it appealed to them and
their love of fantasy and story writing and collaborative imagination. Then it grew and
you know, with the rise of podcasts and everything that a lot of people then like CritRole or
Dimension 20 and there's shit tons of other ones out there that they started to make it
big off the back of like Stranger Things going, Oh, D&D is kind of cool. And everyone it's
picked up a lot in the last like 10 years. So D&D is just really picked up. It's what
you make it in terms of what you what you're playing the freedom that you've got. But yeah,
but because of that, then you've got a lot of people that still don't understand it because
either either their older generation like like our matey from the yard is like, Oh,
that's proper nerdy, you know, doesn't understand it even though he doesn't understand how to
turn his phone on let alone like, you know, doesn't know what how to understand D&D. Yeah,
doesn't understand how to have an imagination and just be there with your mates going, Oh,
you don't have mates. It's like, well, you know, I've got enough that play D&D that yeah,
probably got more playing D&D than you've got alive old man. So it's, it's just I can
see why people would look at it and go that's massively nerdy. But nerdy is also subjective
into what you what you would call nerdy. Is it nerdy or is it geeky? Because like there's
a difference in the two. Yeah. But it's there's an element of just own it. If you know, yeah,
we play D&D but also, you know, most of our lot that we played with at the weekend, we're
all tree search and so we're all like, yeah, we're all men. It's, it's, I can only imagine
it as it's just weird from the outside looking in because it's like anything. It's like,
but how incredible would a session of D&D be if you had professional like with critical
world professional voice actors there and taking away that almost anxiety and fear of
really getting into character.
I went to their live show back in September, October in the Wembley OVO and there was a
fucking astounding energy in there. Like just maybe because it was everyone was a nerd and
wanted to be there for that event. But like, you know, I went to fucking, what was it?
I went to ACDC the other, the other literally like three weeks ago. That was dreadful by
comparison. It was so crap. Like, and that's like a big, they've been around how many years
they've been around. So shit. Oh shit. Compared to like, whereas I had such a better time
then watching fucking seven people roll dice in front of like, you know, eight thousand
people because just the energy was so much better when you got like-minded people. And
yeah, it must have for the outside, it must be like, Oh, what are all these weirdos doing
rolling dice? And you know, it does attract the stranger crowd of like the autism crew
and the ADHD crowd, but the non-binaries and all that lot. But, but so long as it's a welcome
place. That's where you get the, the, um, these people were turning up because they
felt like they were safe being there because they're with like-minded people. Yeah. Yeah.
That's why, that's why you get what would, what would be classed as, as, as the weird
people or the, just the alternate people where they like in Comic-Con and things like that.
Cause it is a safe space where people can, can come and, and, and be who they want to
be. Um, but I just, the stigma around it is just, I just find it, I just find it, I think
a lot of people, cause you're encouraged to imagine things and you're encouraged to use
your mind in a way that's picturing fantasy and, and escapism that, you know, you go,
well, what you like sitting there with your mates and having a good time and thinking
about killing orcs. Well, that's weird. Like, no, I'm, I'm literally sitting here with like
four people that I get on really well with and we're having a laugh. We're taking the
piss out of each other at the same time. Yeah. We're smacking goblins about, but instead
of I'm not doing it with, I'm not doing it playing a game like, you know, I'm not playing
Lord of the Ring, one of the Lord of the Rings games or like any, you know, like Valheim
or anything where you can go and smack goblins. I'm doing it in like-
But it's such a weird-
With little figures and dice.
It's such a weird, um-
It takes playing it to start to understand.
Yeah. Because at first when I'd never played it before, I thought, well, how, how exactly
are you supposed to be a creative? And I'm just looking at a tabletop here. And when
you actually start playing it, visualize it for the people, for the people that are listening,
let me help you visualizing what it actually, what it looks like when, whenever we play.
You can upload, um-
Upload a photo of it. Yeah. Yeah.
That you put on for, that you took of the tabletop.
Yeah. And I took a, I took a photo of everyone playing it as well. And it's, it's literally,
we're all sat at a table with, with energy drinks and-
Monster.
And all sorts of other shit and just sweeties. And it's just a fucking, a grid on the table
with a map drawn out and then some figures on the fucking map. And then we've all got
dice around us.
Yeah.
And you are left to your imagination. When, when we're playing that, I can picture the
road that we're walking down. I can picture the scenery, where we are, what we look like
when we was in the cave fighting those goblins that fucked me up. I can imagine what they're,
what they looked like. And when one of them was sat on the, on the, um, on the bridge
above, I could picture that.
You could picture a little goblin, like, like something out of Lord of the Rings, like the
goblin town or whatever.
And it's so weird how you don't even sort of realise that you're visualising that. Your,
your mind is completely run away with, with what you're doing in, in physical form in
your, in your being and how you're talking and everything like that. It might be a little
bit different in that you're somewhat more reserved. I definitely am.
Um,
The thing is you're, this is like, we've played two sessions.
Yeah, yeah.
You've been present for two sessions. Like by comparison, I've essentially been playing
D and D for about five years now.
Yeah. But don't get confused. Those two sessions are about 20 hours worth of fucking play time.
All right. They're not, they're not short like half hour there, an hour here. They're,
they're long old fucking sessions. And it's, it's you, yeah, it's just, you don't realise
the, I would imagine if you had the wrong type of group that you didn't necessarily
get along with that it would be quite difficult to get involved with that.
There is a whole Reddit of DM horror stories for individuals. It's literally called DM
horror stories. I think
On the old Reddit.
That have different people that do have problems with the groups they're playing with, be that
that it's their friends or be that that they've gone to like local game centre and met people
that they decided to play with, but they do
D and D horror stories.
There you go.
It's, yeah, it's different. Understandably, like if you've got professionals doing it,
yeah, you're going to get a higher tier of game that at the same time, I feel like my
play style or my DM style is quite, you know, quite loose and chill in some respects because
That's a long old
Yeah, they are long stories.
So, so I just want to know if I'm overreacting here. Bear with me everyone, because this
is a, this is a lengthy one.
Let's tell you a tale.
I'm about to leave this group because of how much they're making me hate the game of D
and D. So I don't need need advice. Like if you don't, if you don't like the group that
much stop playing with them because that's already the plan. So I'm in this group as
the only girl with five boys.
Here we go.
I say boys because they never actually act like
Women!
They're all older than me.
We're playing Curse of Strahd.
So that's, I would really like to get to that point with you guys because it is, it's probably
one of the pinnacle pre written adventures, but it's a fucking slog. Not in terms of it's
like
Like Final Fantasy 14 type of fucking slog
Not that kind of slog, but like it's fucking actions have consequences. This is a fucking
meat grinder.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, expect your character to die, but expect like, it's meant to be a horror kind of lead
in one, but the, the introduction. So think where we're running Lost Minds of Vandelver,
which is like a baby adventure.
Essentially, and that's meant to take you from levels one to five. Just the starter
section of Curse of Strahd is meant to take you from one to three, but it's a fucking
brutal. It just trying to get to do different things like they're throwing monsters at you
left and right. There's traps. There's fucking the whole thing says, anticipate to lose that
character because it's just that bad and you have to be ready to expect that. You can't
be like, Oh, can I keep my character because I really like them. It's like, no, you're
we've ran it.
Yeah. We ran it with my other pals. We ran it with level five characters and it hurt.
We nearly lost level five characters in a level one to three adventure bit. This is
what I mean. It's fucked, but that's the whole point because that sets the tone for that
adventure is you need to be prepared to run. If you have to, you need to be prepared to
like hide or come up with solutions that aren't just there's an enemy. I need to attack them.
I don't like that at all. So we're playing with me, the forever DM finally getting to
play a PC. What's a PC? A player character. I was really excited and didn't want to stress
out the DM by coming up with some crazy builds. So I went for the silly, this would be fun
to play route and made a known barbarian. That was a bear totem barbarian because what's
funnier than the smallest one in the party being able to smack people with giant axes.
This is where the problem started. I made this little barbarian and everyone elected
me the meat shield. That's funny enough. That's what I fucking am great. Which is fine in
a sense.
You're into a fighter. So you basically went from having loads of health to now you've
got armour.
Yeah. Which is fine in a sense. I'm the barbarian that is part of my job, but it started to
become an issue when the DM decided to just never go after another PC. I was the only
one that ever took damage by anything that wasn't an AOE ability, which again, I thought
was me doing my job well. People were focusing on me so the rest of my party could attack.
When we were heading to the Abbey of St. Markovia with Irina and my DM decided to put a blacksmith's
caravan in the middle of the path because his friend was complaining about how few magic
items he had. We were level four and he already had three rare items. The party then argued
back and forth and taking the caravan back first so we could get gear. I was saying we're
so close to the Abbey, let's just go. Which made them all pissed off because I had a whopping
two magic items. Hill giant belt and Bracers of Defense, woo. I was already geared up and
everyone else needed stuff, which I understood in a way, but I also looked down onto D&D
Beyond. I was the only one that had taken any damage that day. I was down to 12 HP and
everyone else was at full because they begged the cleric to use his spell slots to heal
them and I just went, I'm alright, I can take it, don't worry about me. During them yelling
at me about how they got scratched while I sit there with my guts pouring out, I look
over at the DM who I expect to have my back because everyone is screaming at me and I
realize something. I had been crit on six different times in that one encounter. He
had rolled six natural 20s in a row. Now I'm not great at math so if anyone wants to tell
me the odds of that, I'd appreciate it, but I'm so sure he was lying on his rolls to get
me to go down. Everything's AC has been harder than I could hit without rolling a 19 or 20
and things I as a forever DM know should not have had as much HP, just never seemed to
go down. Now I know people tweak stat blocks all the time. I do it too. That's not what
I'm upset about. I'm upset because I feel like everyone at the table is out to get me
and there's one more paragraph. Six natural 20s in a row.
In a row, that's fucking a lot.
That's not possible. I mean, obviously it's possible, but that's not possible.
Yeah, it's not impossible, but it's massively improbable.
We kicked off the other day.
You loved that one.
When you needed a fucking roll of 20.
I'm going to up in Darrell's little, he was pretty much hidden and I probably shouldn't
have made the roll and I was just like, I was going to let it slide anyway, but you
know, up to his AC by five, he was 18 already. I had to hit a 23.
And then hit the fucking 23.
And they have a plus, essentially the goblins had a plus four to hit. So it would have needed
a 19 or a 20 and it rolled out of my hand and hit a 20.
Yeah, of course it did. And then he was like, what the fuck?
Even I was like, what the fuck was that?
What?
Darrell was like, I'm pretty safe. He needs a fucking 19 or 20 to get me. And he was like
watching roll a 20 and then hear them dice fucking slam the table and boom.
Connor was like, fuck.
So yeah, there's a 20. He's like, right, well you're dead now. You're done.
So now I'm on a mission to get my little known barbarian killed because I'm thinking maybe
if this is going to be the case, I can try a new character and maybe enjoy it more. I
tried just asking the DM if I could change characters and I got guilted into holding
out. Finally, I managed to kill her off and bring in my new character who is the paladin
bard build I've been really excited for. But I don't even finish rolling on my death save,
rolling all my death saves and one guy at the table, the friend whose magic item count
is up to eight, immediately jumps in and goes, I take all our magic items. Items I as a player,
not as a character, had to work really hard to get because the DM did not want me to have
any items. I tell the DM, I'd rather anyone else at the table take my items because they
will actually be fair with them. And I get yelled at by the DM and his friend that I
don't get a say because I'm dead. They refuse to understand what I'm telling them.
Sounds familiar.
Yep. None of my items would benefit a rogue in heavy armor because they all play off my
unarmored defense and my strength. So why does he want them anyway, if not to hold it over
my head? He has no more attunement slots, they don't benefit him and he already has
more items than anyone else in the party. I then give up and tell them to do whatever
they want just to bring in my new character and everyone immediately try to kill her.
Am I overreacting here or is this whole table out to get me? And someone said run forest
run.
Yeah, that sounds like a bunch of-
That sounds awful.
Bunch of gimps to be honest.
How do you play with people like that though after? Because you just go, oh, we're not
playing with you anymore. But if you've got to the point where you are playing with them,
then you obviously must know them.
It's difficult to say because sometimes you can be like, I'm, so say it was like, say
I said you want to play D&D, I didn't want to DM it and then you joined my friends who
play. You could turn up and then they could be right cunts to you just because you're
new or whatever. It depends on that group of people because it's essentially like, we
get along well. The rest of the like our lot that we're playing with now, we all get along
well because we've known each other quite a lot and we get on really well. But it's-
I wouldn't like it if I joined in like, if I joined all of your other pals and then they
just ganged up. I would immediately switch off. I'd go, right, well I'm not doing this
anymore. Fuck you.
Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what turns people against it because you can, if you're
at a bad table, a lot of people say no D&D is better than bad D&D because you could turn
up at a table.
Literally, no D&D is better than bad D&D and honestly this just seems like bad D&D.
Yeah. So essentially, yeah, because it's all table bound. It's, if you've got people that
don't, that will, but like, I feel like I'm not targeting, I know it's bad. You've had
shit that things happen, but I feel like I've not-
Completely battered, robbed, spat on, fucked about. I have taken the most bollocks out
of anyone.
Yeah, but that wasn't all from me.
No, exactly.
So-
From everyone.
I was going to say 90% of that was from your party.
Bullshit. Take that.
Absolute bullshit.
Take that up with Ash and Daryl.
Absolute bullshit. Yeah, he didn't fucking like it when he got knocked unconscious and
robbed, did he? Wasn't fun then, was it mate?
Fucking bells.
You love it. You'll come back for more.
Yeah. Yeah. 100% level two now.
Oh, level two. They only took two sessions and about-
A long old time.
About 20 hours.
Long old time.
Well, no, that is it. It's just if, cause a lot of people, they find that the hardest
struggle for them is to get to a table. Be that because they themselves as an individual
like D&D, but none of their friends do, or if you don't have enough people to run games
with, like we-
Hold that mic closer.
Essentially we struggled with, well, when it was just the two of you, like Ash and yourself
and me, that it was harder because the adventure wasn't set out for that. I know I could have
adjusted it and made it easier, but obviously when Daryl had turned up, things moved along
a lot smoother that if you don't have enough people and enough, everyone that wants to
play because we've got not so many people, it does make it more difficult and there's
more work that needs to be done versus say you've got six people that are actually happy
to play and consistently, but then the more people you throw into it, the more difficult
it is to schedule. Like there's essentially three or four of us, not excluding obviously
having Lisa there to help out now if she's free and everything because I can play a character
if need be, but the scheduling arrangements, so we can't now play for essentially a mother
month. So if you're that desperate to play, you have to then wait for this main group
to play that then you might turn around and go, I really desperately want to play D&D.
I'm going to find a table to play at. You might look around online.
It sounds like dirty cheating.
Yeah. It's like looking for a party.
I'm just going to go and find another table because you're not what I need right now.
I need more and you can't provide it.
Yeah. You can't give it to me.
I'm not getting what I need from this. So I'm just going to go and find another table.
That's what I mean. But at the same time, they also say that sometimes playing with
your friends isn't the best thing for you.
Yeah.
So like at the end of the day, sometimes the play styles of your friends isn't the way
that you want to play or they might want to play something very specific. They might want
to play political intrigue campaigns and you're like, nah, I just want big sword kill. Someone
might want a campaign, a combat heavy campaign, which will mean there'll be a lot of fighting,
a lot of everything, but there might not be as much role play and intrigue and law in
the world and whatever else that everyone's play styles are different. Everyone's tables
are different that you've got to find a balance that especially as you get more people that
you'll cater to everyone and then you can't focus on one person and be like, right, you're
getting every bit of attention today or on the flip side, you're getting bullied because
like that person's horror story, they're getting, maybe it is because they're a girl or a woman
or whatever, or maybe it's because they're an ex DM or whatever. There is no basis of
a lot of it sometimes, but if you do want to go out there and look for a group that
isn't your friends or isn't associated with you, that you will have trouble sussing them
out because it's like meeting new people at work.
I would find that so weird though if you do like, I don't think I could do it. We just
go around someone's house, some randomers house with a group of random people. Library.
Yeah, like library or you've got one not far from here, that Wayland games or nerd base.
You would go to those places and you say like you would might look on Facebook or Reddit
or anywhere that's got that sign of stuff and say, look, I want to play D&D. Does anyone
live around this area? Are they happy to have another member? Where was it? When I was in
Braintree, there was a comics and records and sort of semi nerd shop. When I was in
there and by we were looking at stuff and Alicia bought some odds and sods dice and
whatever and I was asking them if they could were like what they had in and if they were
ordering anything in that they said, oh, are you a DM or a player? I was like, oh, I dabble
it or I do both. They were like, oh, and then obviously it got into do you run pre-written
or do you run your own stuff and got into talking about that. They're like, oh, and
getting into like, oh, would you like host for anyone or would you like join anyone because
they had people that came in that would host for people or would want to join tables. There
is also a thing of like you can essentially get, I don't know how it quite works, but
there is a way or where to find it, but a lot of people actually do pay for a DM. So
they've got like, say it was all of us, like the four of us, I didn't DM.
Let me Google that. There's a DM service.
You would like DM for hire essentially and have them run something for you, but then
you have to trust that they're a reliable and trustworthy and aboveboard DM because
you could get one who's an absolute cunt who stitches you up. Same as you can get players
that join your table who are massive like rules lawyers where they go, well, you can't
do that because dungeon masters for hire UK. Because the book says you can't do it and
things like that. Private game quote, corporate game quote,
online game looking for new players. But that's the same as like DMs for hire. Essentially
there's some people do it. I don't know if it's so big in this country. Oh, you have
to fully write out the subject number of players. If you want it online or in person time of
day, week, night, weekend. Imagine that. You should have done that as a little stag.
Let's hire a DM. Let's hire a dirty DM.
I wonder what Reddit's got. Personally, I don't have a problem with any DM charging
for the services. It's a lot of work, time and money. I did say that to my mate Toby
because I was talking to him about D&D and he was saying how involved it is to be a DM.
I said after you showed me a couple of the bits, I was like, there's no way in hell I
could be a DM. I am not dedicating that much fucking time. It's a full time job. That shit
looks so fucking long. Sometimes it's not as bad. I would imagine it's bad if you're
meeting up every fucking week. If you're doing that shit every week and you're having to
plan that out, you're in charge of these people and their story. Fucking hell, you've got
to remember everything that's going on.
If you're doing homebrew, you're making all that shit up yourself. I've got that. I've
got a homebrew world and I've got a lot of law to it and everything, but it's hard work
for me to want to work on it and hard for me to be consistent with that. Whereas at
least with the adventure we're running for you, I can just read that out of book. Essentially,
I knew the adventure. I hadn't bothered to really pre-read that because I was like, is
there in the book? At the same time, when you guys were starting out, I was like, I
don't know how much you guys are going to love this or even like it. Half of you could
turn around and go, I really like that. Then one of you be like, yeah, no, I'm all right
and pass up. Then essentially turn around and go, well, I've wasted time prepping out
for anything. I think one of my friends does it, they almost do it as a charity sort of
thing that they DM for some, I think it's their niece. They DM for their friends and
they're like young kids, eight year olds almost. They just do like little kiddie bits and pieces.
You've got to cater to your audience almost, but that's where again, it can be bad if you
go to a random table and you're like, oh, I'm a new player and I've not done anything
that at least I've done. Well, I'm trying to do as much exposure to different things
and not make it so you're not enjoying yourselves and giving you as much information that I
can give you that you might not get at a different table if you were to just go, oh, I'm new
and random.
But what if we get rid of you, still use your house and your table and we just hire in a
DM instead.
Why don't you just bring them near to your mansion with 17 seat fucking table and you
can do whatever you want.
Because imagine doing D&D on that, on the Lord's table.
On the Lord's mansion.
Fucking hell, bouncing dice down that.
Yeah, you've got to roll dice from one end to the other.
I don't know if I would like to do a session with, because what's the, is there a max amount
of people?
There isn't, but it gets difficult to balance and it gets difficult to balance time wise.
So think like there's, well, there ended up being four players and me at the end of Saturday.
It takes time to get around everyone in a combat round and then in a role playing counter
or whatever you want to do.
It takes a lot of time for you to get around to people, especially in combat.
I think the max we ever got on a table was seven or eight people plus the DM and it was
a slot, like it was slow.
And that was my first actual proper try of D&D.
We had probably about that seven, about seven people plus the DM.
And it took, I think we only did like three turns and it took hours, like three turns
in combat and it took hours.
And it wasn't even like there was a lot of enemies, but if you think you've got seven,
seven party members, all with their own intentions about what they're going to do, whatever,
whatever, whatever.
And then you still got the enemies to go on that.
Like think that the weekend where you had like one of the fights when there was about
eight goblins at one point and then there's you.
So then you've got a turn, you've got three things, like multiple things you can do in
a turn.
Then the goblins have still got that much they can do that it just proper drags out.
And you've also got a base on what the DM is comfortable having that many people.
Yeah.
Cause I suppose if they're, if it's just not.
Cause if there's not, if there's not facility for it for one, because if you imagine you
have that many people round to play D&D, like, you know, it's doable.
I could probably do it at my table, but it would be hard because there's not, there is
room, but there isn't enough room to squeeze everyone in and squeeze everyone on and everyone
can see and everyone can be involved and everyone feel involved.
And then at same breath of, you know, does the DM feel comfortable having that many people
to cater to?
Because at the minute, like I've got, say I've got four people now, technically.
Yeah.
And truthfully like, yeah, at least you can drop in and out as she pleases and doesn't
need to be there and can be there.
Whatever, whatever that I'm just working with three of you.
That's quite easy to go.
Well, what do you want to do?
What do you want to do?
You know, balance it out nicely.
Cause everyone's going to want to do different things.
Seven.
I imagine seven people and you don't all fucking get on.
Yeah.
I know.
Yeah.
That's what I mean.
Yeah.
I mean, I like to tell you stories.
If you like, luckily enough, like the group I play with there, we're all.
We've known each other like years.
These are people I've gone to school with.
We've known each other years.
We've been through whatever that we do get on quite well.
We still have disagreements about things and can have, you know, arguments at table about
negligible things, but no one's like out to fucking get each other.
Oh, everyone's out to get me on this fucking table though.
There's one little weasel that's out to get me on this fucking table consistently.
He's your best mate in the entire year.
Consistently is trying to fucking do me over on this for...
Well he did break his pinky promise so...
For no reason.
No reason.
DM's given the fuck around to find out so...
Alicia killed him and I am the one that gets the fucking flack for it.
Yeah.
Because I took back what was originally mine.
Yeah.
It makes no sense.
It makes...
It's funny.
I enjoyed it.
And I know you'll be listening at some point Ash.
It's almost tempting to just flat out kill your character just so that you can make another
one that isn't a prick.
You've heard it here first.
You know what I mean?
Your day's a number.
It's shitty, cunty fucking drow that he's made and the personality...
I hate it.
I hate Solax Sustarian.
But then that's a good thing because then clearly the roleplay's working.
I hate him.
I don't hate Ash.
Ash is fine.
He's lovely.
Well...
There's some parts, sometimes when I hate Ash.
But the fucking character that he's made...
He's just such a prick.
I really, really dislike him.
I really do.
I have to get it out.
I really...
I'll tell you what.
I'm going to put it in the chat.
I'll put it in the little fucking D&D chat just so he's aware before he...
Before he gets upset.
Let me fucking...
Let me hate him.
Where is he?
But yeah, your drow is a prick.
I fucking...
I fucking hate your character...
Daryl's is fun though.
...as a person, by the way.
Yeah, Daryl's is great.
That's the thing.
That shows that the roleplay works and you're detaching player from character.
Obviously, it's only two sessions in and you're not fully founded.
You're not fully comfortable and found your feet in playing a roleplay.
He's just so fucking annoying.
Just everything.
And he's not even good.
He's not even good.
That's the worst part.
He's not even good.
He's not capable of doing anything.
He's a glass cannon with no fucking gunpowder in the cannon.
He can't do anything.
He's just fucking useless.
Just useless.
He's broke his ankle trying to climb up a fucking wall.
Just so pointless.
You've got Daryl who's just like...
He's just a fucking thick, stupid paladin but so lovable.
So lovable.
I'll tell you what Daryl's character is like.
It's like Chicken Joe from Surf's Up.
You ever seen Surf's Up?
Rings of Bell.
I can't picture it off the top of my head.
Fucking let me get...
Is that the one with the little one with the mad hair?
No, Chicken Joe.
I think I remember now.
Chicken Joe.
It rings a bell but I can't...
Chicken Joe.
Okay.
Just call Surf a chicken, man.
Don't fucking care.
I was thinking of the wrong thing.
Wins the fucking big surfing competition without even trying.
He's just chilling in the fucking ocean.
Just everything goes his way and he's just so chilled.
That's because...
Nothing matters.
...buddy Argon wants to fight and fuck and that's about it.
Everything's going his way and that's exactly the same for fucking Daryl's character, Argon.
Just everything's just...
Oh, you're fine, mate.
All right.
You're all right.
Me trying to tactically think of shit and I'm getting fucking rasclited.
Just getting done in.
Just fucked up.
And then I've got Solax sitting there, just a little prick.
I hate him.
Does he all feel drastically fucking incompetent when Alicia's character turns up?
Yes.
Like here comes a proper adventurer.
Because Alicia's character is built to be played properly.
Yours is built to be played properly.
I know, but you can see the skill gap.
It would be no different of...
I don't know.
It's no different of if everyone jumped on World of Warcraft.
I'm going to be the best person there, hands down, by quite a fucking margin.
I will be.
I just will be.
And it will be that you, Darryl and Ash could all be playing WoW together, and Alicia, and
Steph and fucking anyone else, and be having a merry, merry time and thinking that you're
doing fantastic.
And then I can fucking jump in and blow everyone out of the water.
Because I have the experience behind me for that.
And that was exactly how I felt with Alicia joining in.
Because I was like, you're the epitome of everything.
You know it would be worse if I was a player.
That's what I'm saying.
Could you imagine it was like...
I can't do and think the same way that you are currently, but I won't be able to because
I'm still fresh.
Again, it's only your second session.
I was like, wow!
It's easily excusable.
The geezer tried to nick from her pocket and she just turned around and slit his wrist.
You can fuck off.
Dead.
What the fuck?
I'm not having that.
What's going on here?
Just rolling fucking 20s every five minutes.
Every single roll was above 16.
Every single one of them.
Is that him agreeing or is that Darrell agreeing to him being a knob?
Darrell's agreed.
So much hate from Friday today.
He's a bit of a knob to be fair.
The old black hearted drought.
Black hearted drought.
I hate it.
But you're right.
You're right.
That is where the role play is doing what it needs.
I just want to...
Darrell's role play is fantastic.
It's fantastic.
Scottish fucking dwarf.
He's great, man.
He's so good.
So's Ash.
It's just...
But Darrell was just so...
He's got the secret sauce going on.
It's so weird.
What I need to do is...
He committed.
I was surprised.
He knew how committed he's been.
Yeah.
He was all over it.
I need to essentially kill off my character and then have another one come in where I
have made it for a role play that I'm able to actually do because I'm terrible at accents.
You can't do the dwarves.
I can't do it, boy.
Get some happy snaps.
You can.
I can't do it.
So accents need to fucking go out of the window for me and I need to sort of have something
else where I can just be almost like how I am now, but weird and fucking quirky.
Can you do that?
Just be a self insert.
You could make it akin to a self insert if you were that.
Obviously it would be like, oh yeah, if you want to call yourself Reese, then fine.
Whatever.
That wouldn't fucking work.
It's Solax, Astarion, Argon, Reese.
The human fighter.
Bubba.
Bubba boogo.
Again, it comes in time with playing.
Some people are a lot more capable of just leaning into the improv and the role play.
When I first started, even with friends, I felt very like, I don't know if I can do this
and feel very comfortable doing it.
You just do it more and more and you start to feel like you can do it and then you start
opening yourself up to doing it.
I think that's what I'm experiencing.
Because it's just little me me bits you can do.
With My Powers, we joked about fucking doing occasion accent.
And then all of a sudden-
Yeah, but it's crazy.
I have a picture on my phone of Daryl's gooch.
Gooch, nutsack, asshole on my phone.
Multiple pictures of his penis.
Multiple pictures.
I've seen Ash's shit in the back of a van.
I've seen it.
And you don't want to.
I've seen it in person with my own eyeballs.
We've spoke about cum and all sorts of manner of things.
Dirty soggy biscuits.
You know what I mean?
And I've seen Daryl's gooch and I'm too, not scared, but anxious to throw an accent in
front of-
We've shared the same straw or a milkshake.
Exactly.
I mean, it doesn't-
We've basically kissed.
I know, but it doesn't make any sense why you would have some form of anxiety around
getting proper into the role play because I know that I'm capable of doing it.
I know it's there.
All right?
I definitely know that maybe not all the voices, but I know that I'm able to fucking delve
into it.
Maybe it's because we're a bit slow in terms of the actual gameplay of it and the flow
isn't necessarily there yet because we're still having to figure out what the fuck is
going on.
Because right now, it's one hell of a split fucking party right now.
We ain't making it to the end of this adventure, the same party that started.
There's no fucking way.
I don't even think we'll all survive.
It's not going to happen.
You might.
You might do.
You're quite likely.
You'd have to see.
The thing is, truthfully, when I've looked at it, you're not even out, well, you're just
now out of the first chapter, truthfully.
Yeah.
And how many chapters are there?
I think there's four or five.
Twenty hours it's taken us to get out one chapter.
It, truthfully, when you look at the it took us four hours to get out the fucking out of
the end that we slept in because that was trying to wank off into a pillow or some shit
like that rolling for dick size rolled for pain as such.
Seven inches is what I got.
It's the smallest of the group by quite a margin.
That will roll to 12.
We'll probably reroll that with some better stats.
It's just fucking best at padding on the back of that because a day 20 ain't exactly the
most accurate for that one.
I just it's it's it's so good.
The excitement.
I love it because over the last couple of weeks in terms of of gaming, I've got excitement
from other areas that I wouldn't normally get excitement from.
So like me and Steph, for example, playing the World of Warcraft tabletop game and getting
absolutely battered in that, which makes you want to play it again because I haven't beaten
this fucking game yet, which you can play solo somehow.
But me and me and Steph just can't do it.
So I wrote.
But it was great.
It was fantastic.
And whether that was because it was a cooperative board game where we're not pitted against
each other or whether it was because of it being World of Warcraft and I recognized every
single aspect of it in with it.
Yeah.
Or culmination of those things.
You're playing with your partner like it really, really fun and enjoyable.
And then you've got D&D on top of that where it's like this is this is gaming on a level
that I am so not involved with or at least haven't been involved with.
It's kind of your first exposure to that style of like tabletop.
Like I say, I'm not.
It's a tabletop game, but it's not like is it like Monopoly?
Yeah.
It's like no.
No.
It's a tabletop game.
But it's a tabletop role playing game.
Which is.
Yeah.
It's the role playing aspect that I think is what makes it so so fun.
And I think that's where because it's what you come up with and what you can come up
with.
Yeah.
And it's just again, it comes.
If anyone's listening and you've got a group of friends and you've all fought at some point,
maybe we should try D&D. 100% try it.
And then we've also let you in on the thing that if you don't have a DM, you can just
buy one.
Yeah.
If not, just hire a DM, give them a score, give them some fucking sniff, whatever they
want.
No, give them some snacks.
Provide them with whatever they want.
Give them some drinks, give them some snacks, give them some sucky sucky.
And off you go.
We're driving back to the yard today.
We're in London and a homeless geyser.
I'm not even sure they're homeless.
I don't know if it's for the people that obviously don't know London.
This won't sound fucking familiar at all.
But the A406 is a road in London, just a ring road that fucking circles around London.
And there's just homeless people dotted around.
But I'm pretty sure they're not homeless.
And they just stand there with cups fucking at the traffic lights begging for money basically.
They always pretend they've got a hobble on or they're fucking missing a leg or some shit.
It's all bollocks.
He's got his cup in his hand.
It's all bollocks.
And this geyser pulled up, we pulled up with the lights.
This old geyser, homeless geyser has come over with his cup.
Connor's got the windows down.
I said, here we go.
Here we go.
And normally you ignore him and just go, I ain't got anything for you, mate.
See you later.
And he comes over and starts shaking his cup.
And Connor's like, I ain't got anything for you, mate.
And he was like, unless you can give us something.
The geyser starts laughing and hobbled off.
Just asked the geyser for a bit of sucky sucky.
Suck this and give you a quid.
I've just never.
The fact that he laughed as well.
He's like, I ain't got anything for you, mate, unless you can give me something.
Asking a homeless geyser.
Just wanted him to give me a show or some sort of entertainment.
So stupid, innit?
So stupid.
But yeah, if you're thinking about playing D&D, then I urge you to play D&D.
If you're like me, a purely video game gamer, and you're thinking about branching into other
areas of gaming.
Even then, there's other things outside of D&D.
If high fantasy isn't the one you want to go for, there are a lot more ones out there
that have different options.
So like the alternative to D&D is Pathfinder, which is the same thing, but it's a slightly
different system.
There's a lot more customisation.
If you don't like D&D, try Pathfinder.
If you don't like Pathfinder, play D&D.
But then there's other stuff.
I told you the other day, or whenever it was, I think it was yesterday, I mentioned that
there's a Lord of the Rings game.
There's different ones.
The one I've got is a D6 style game, which plays slightly differently than D&D because
that's D20, whereas this is D6.
There's again, the other one like Call of Cthulhu is another one.
That doesn't play at all like D&D.
That's more mysteries and supernatural and spooky shit.
My pal picked up Mothership, which is meant to be more like science fiction horror.
And that plays again differently.
If you find your niche about how you want to play, but if you're recommending playing
D&D, there's easily a recommendation to play any sort of tabletop game.
Freedom's there.
Opening up the world of possibility that like what you said before, it's like, I don't know
what I can do.
And you turn around and go, well, you can do anything.
There is a structure to it, but ultimately like...
Test the boundaries of that structure.
Push the boundaries and we'll see how far we can do.
Can Daryl's character spit on your character's head?
Yes, he can.
Can you bathe in a horse trough?
Yes, you can.
Can he wipe the come up with his bellend with the curtains?
Yes, he can.
Yeah.
Can Ash fall down a pit of a wall?
Of course he can.
Like we said before, and I think I've said it before, it is what you make of it.
But you have to want to commit to it, which you guys all are in that aspect of.
But again, it will come, like for you, it will come that you'll be more comfortable,
more open and like you'll start to figure it.
I think Alicia said it and pointed it out and said it, she felt like it helps you guys
to see that there's other things you can be asking and doing.
Yeah, definitely.
Like, you know, you guys are looking at it really linear and going, well, we've got to
get from A to B or we've got to get through here or we can see a pathway that we can go
and we just walk up it or we interact with it.
And it doesn't go well that if you start to look off the beaten path and, you know, ask
different questions or look at things you've got or things you can acquire.
Like I said to you guys, look at your equipment or think about having additional equipment
because you can these situations you can, you can think outside the box and go, well,
I can avoid all of this bullshit just by doing this.
Yeah.
That, you know, it's the, the world's your oyster as players fundamentally.
And I'm trying not to be, I'm not trying to be a hardline DM and say, no, you can't do
that or fucking whatever.
And just be like, let's, let's roll with it and see what's happening.
And I'll let you guys experience things as new players and try and help you and give
you every little bit of information that I know and can think of that's going to help
you get through it because it's a lot to take in straight off the bat.
There's a lot to take in, but we're doing it.
Well, we're getting there.
We are getting there.
I'm going to have to leave it because I really need a poo.
Oh, look at him.
So that's what you were shuffling for.
Your eyes will get all squinting glazed over and hold the poo in.
Shuffle it in.
Just shit yourself.
Live on pod.
Could you imagine?
No one would know.
Right.
Well, we'll call it there then.
See you later everyone.
See ya.
She's about to miss her shit uncle.
She's about to miss her God.
I've got to stop him.