Hello players who overthink their session zeros, and DMs who don't know what the fuck
a session zero is- Welcome to our own session zero here at the table... that's your line! I'm
okay with that I can say that I'm okay yeah you can say that's why I don't know why I really
hello players who overthink their session zeros and DMs who don't know what the fuck a session
zero is welcome to our own session zero here at the table I'm Robert Lopez forever overworked
DM and I'm Maddie Conway and much like my first session at a new table I do not like the way the
person next to me smells right now so what is table talk what even is this podcast about Maddi
well I'm glad you asked welcome to table talk this is my personal pet project that I've been
working on for some time now it's a fun little laid-back podcast about all things D&D and tabletop
game related hosted by your hopefully new favorite player in DM who are always trying to fuck each
other over across the table so before getting into the game we figured that you all might want to
know a little bit more about us who we are our experiences and what exactly makes us qualify to
speak into microphones in an empty room across from a couple of laptops about your favorite
pastime hobby Dungeons and Dragons so you know what our names are so we're gonna tell you guys a
little bit about who we are kind of where our backgrounds are at so I started playing God
Dungeons and Dragons my I want to say like junior senior year of high school we used to make fun of
it and say that shit was for nerds we all played like role-playing RPGs and shit like that on like
PlayStation Xbox PC and then eventually we like moved into kind of the real space and the real
thing and we tried our first campaign and like the four or five of my friends from high school we
absolutely fell in love with it and just kind of kept playing as time has gone on I am like on
again off again player in DM but most recently I've been like DM a lot and I met Madison specifically
as a player for the first time whenever we studied abroad together I had never been a DM and then we
were looking for a group all staying in the same place to like play Dungeons and Dragons 95% of
the people fucked off and didn't get involved in it in true D&D fashion in true D&D fashion with
scheduling it never goes right and having never been a DM I said sure I'll be a DM for a bunch of
people that have never played the game before and then we wound up with like five or six people all
at this longest table and that's kind of where my like start as a DM happened wasn't a foreign
country with people I've never played before or known in a role that I had no business taking on
but it worked out pretty well because we're here now we're talking we played that campaign for
well over a year yeah we played it for what two three semesters yeah played it for three
semesters back to back and then did some things like over breaks and stuff which was fun it was a
lot of fun I come from a very different background than Robert does when it comes to tabletop gaming
and D&D in general I come from a theater background so that didn't really give me a lot of time in
high school to have any other interests as I was like at the school until like 8 30 most nights I
think I tried to play D&D or like some type of like tabletop RPG in high school and it just in
true fashion fucked off and fell apart and no one was able to make it so I come from a really
strong background in performing in improv I do a lot of like storytelling things I've done a lot
of collaborative online story content that makes it sound like I did something buried deep
yes I so there was so it was basically D&D without rolling the dice like making my own
original characters it's not anything that I'm like far removed from so I really only started
playing D&D got like a year and a half ago yeah and that was with Robert when we made a little D&D
club and I ended up playing that character like my very first character ever which do I suggest
everyone's first campaign goes on for two years probably also the only character in the entire
campaign as a player to not no correction not to not die but to not play a new character I second
version of it I refused during the second branch I said I'm playing the same exact character and I
did and I played that character for like well over a year and she did die she killed herself
specifically but she came back to life just we came back from multiple death saving throws
after being like lampooned by most I was ridiculously high-level enemies and then just like walked
back up and kept going yeah that's wild magic amount of times I tried to come out and at the
table is unreal when I got to the point really before I was like I'm going out of my way you're
gonna die like I'm gonna get a team party kill it's gonna happen which is never fucking happened
which was a full flip from when we were playing back when we were abroad and I decided that we
were taking too long to like do things as a party and I just decided that I was just gonna start
like touching things or grabbing things or like trying to do magical things don't be that person
don't that person table when everyone else is sitting there trying to think and formulate a
plan like the wizards in his little fucking book looking at his notes trying to figure out what
utility spell to use to unlock the door and the barbarian is like sitting there with his thumb
up his ass and everyone else is like really trying to think and talk it out don't be the person to
just walk out the door and press the fucking button or pull the lever I mean yeah sometimes it works
right fully work yeah but sometimes it doesn't work and it gets everybody else in your party killed
that is true but uh yeah he at one point did have like a real-life conversation with me saying like
you need to play smarter or you're going to die and I'm gonna kill you to send a message yeah I mean
we kind of talked about different players at this point like it is a DM the people that I've watched
outside of like a couple of my best friends like Bernaline Mulligan um uh is Matt Mercer yeah Matt
Mercer and like I like the more serious there are real-world consequences I mean real-world right
you live in a made-up fucking make-believe fantasy world but real-world consequences to your actions
and that's very hard to do with new players that don't know what they're doing because it's like I
would love for you to actually have a consequence to seeing something hilariously stupid to the
person that like has mappings of what like weapons of mass destruction but I can't because you don't
know what rolling for initiative is yet no like you've never touched a combat session and I would
love for you to face the consequences of your actions but you can't yeah I was coming in and
the way I kind of like got into like the Indian stuff is like I obviously I knew about it and
then everyone started like talking about it again when stranger things came out um but I got like
really into like dimension 20 I still haven't watched stranger things I refuse to I watched the
first season and I did not watch anything since and I feel kind of bad about that I won't do it
and fuck the people that are like yeah bro stranger things brought D&D back motherfucker
these are hard to be neckbeards have been neckbeards have been playing this shit in their
mother's basement for years all stranger things did was give an excuse for people that like aren't
neckbeards to play the game without repercussions listen I'm not gonna like no I'm not I'm not
coming at you I'm just saying stranger things needs to back the fuck off I want to be successful
and also be like still be considered no one consider I'm an angry person and I like to
complain that's my image I'm well aware fuck stranger things okay I've never seen it I'm
told it's amazing but just that particular aspect of it yeah I will say it did get a lot of the
credit for like bringing it back to the mainstream but I think that it's also I can't say it didn't
it didn't do a little bit however it didn't like reinvent the fucking hobby like nothing
that's why V has changed except for when sorcerers was like hey we're gonna copyright everything
you've ever done I guess I'm saying it I mean they did it did they not or at least they tried to
they were like hey guys guess what we're gonna take all of your content because somebody in
their basement made the game and then we bought the game from the person that made it so now you
can't use the system so then everybody around the world was like cool we're gonna call it like
fucking penguin five and that's gonna be the new system I mean it's gonna be every single mechanic
everything else is the same but the name is different um oh going back to the
this is also a podcast hosted by two people with severe ADHD so know that going into this
I mean we have like things in front of us to remember the topics that we're supposed to hit
and things you want to talk about and most other episodes will be a little more structured than
this but like this one in particular is going to be very chaotic because it's just shotgunning all
of you with information about who we are yeah what this is going to be what we're like what your
expectations should be of us as people I mean it should be very well this this is a good example
it is there's going to be arguing there's going to be hard opinions that come out of nowhere um
and it's gonna be really scary we talked about it so we were like so do we do we cut ties with
sorcerers we both agreed no but right now I've made the decision I think we should they sent the
fucking pinkertons to a man's house because he got sent the wrong box of cardboard I mean sorcerers
I'm not gonna diss the hobby I play on all the time I've sent hundreds of dollars into it I play
on all the time however thousands of dollars it's still sorcerers and they still sent the pinkertons
to a man's house that's how I learned the pinkertons we're still around oh yeah I think that's when
like 95 percent of people on tiktok learned that the pinkertons were real I was I thought they died
it's a crazy concept I thought they were like a red dead redemption invention like that's
where they lived and died and then they were like no actually sorcerers hired them like who I think
it's funny or too much and they were just from like red demredition they're they only exist in a
video okay sorcerers decided that they needed something like truly hardcore and out of this world
to track time this man like they could have sent literally any body they could have sent like a
cease and desist letter and been like email take your videos down or we're gonna sue you
no they sent like cartoon bodyguards that only protect the rich historically and currently
to his house and then we're like flabbergasted when everybody was like oh my god you're terrible
people and they're like but we had to get our ship back and they said no more gaming license and
then everyone said fuck you and now we have our penguin five and they were like well I guess you're
gonna call it penguin five we'll hand it back other systems if we're talking about like ways to
branch out of just kids on bikes kids on bikes kids on bikes is my favorite I tried to um stranger
things before it was a real thing mother fuckers it is truly it's just it's kids on bikes original
system is basically stranger things it's like you're a kid in the 80s in a little town I really
like the system is super unique it's super fun and it's super simple so I suggest anyone who
wants to get into like tabletop games and like dnd because dnd has an ungodly amount of rules that
you have to like know and you don't have to memorize them but like you yeah basically I mean I've
been a dm for almost two years now which I mean isn't that long when you look at somebody like
Brennan or Matt yeah we've been doing it for centuries not but like for the first time in
any of our experiences both as players and as a dm we had to figure out how to manually do a character
sheet and that was god awful yeah so learning so I always suggest kids on bikes it's super fun
they've got a bunch of different ones there's kids on bikes there's kids on brooms which is using
an app does not knock off beyond unless you have the $30 to spend out in a month absolutely not but
like using apps really it's easier I understand like the old heads are like oh my god you're pinning
paper motherfucker I'm not going to have to add my proficiency bonus every time I level up to remember
how I can talk to animals so yeah for our our new campaign that we're doing that we're starting
we had our session zero for it uh Saturday at 8 a.m uh this motherfucker had to call me to wake me up
and we live in the same house yes we do um but I was not getting up that early uh and then I
did get up that early and we're doing it again this weekend yes we are we're back an hour though
we're doing nine nine yeah we're doing nine uh shut out we're just having real like yeah that's
what this is going to be though like we have lives outside of this podcast shut up fifth edition
character sheet you can get it on literally any app store they're not we're not sponsored we're not
paid but like they should pay us it's free and then it's like 99 cents or five dollars or some
shit like that to upgrade and you get like infinite characters it does everything that dnd beyond does
for you but for free and it's formatted so much better and so much better they like they keep
updating homebrew stuff that gets put out in like really popular manuals uh and books put out by
different people so like you have more than just dnd beyond yeah if you pay the 99 cents for the app
you're gonna get all of the content that is paywall which when I suggested that everybody at the table
that I first I was 99 you gotta play it you gotta pay a dollar to get into the hobby and I was like
motherfucker do you want a smooth experience because I want a smooth experience yeah learning how to
do character sheets is already like a bitch and a half yeah so then you have like this nice little
tool that you'll have with you everywhere because your radiation and emitting phone that's burning
a hole in your leg is that's not an actual stand-by hold like podcasts that's not a stand-by hold it
sounds like a terrifying I don't think I mean phones there's a little bit of radiation right but like
not enough to burn a hole in your leg I've lived I'm scared this is gonna go far right real fast
when you're talking about okay let me come over it really then I think far right and far left either
side of it they're lunatics they're crazy they're clowns they're puppets they're like they're
legitimately like sesame street level characters of garbage except for the fact that they hold
positions and offices that can like destroy lives yeah politics we won't talk about it that much but
like wizards kind of falls in that but yeah kids on bikes 5e oh kids on bikes kids on bikes has one
called kids on brooms which is a knockoff of that one turf's property I don't even know how kids on
brooms is it's it's kids on bikes version of the I don't want to know it's I mean yeah probably
because she's not gonna right they have a page about like inclusive gaming and so JK Rowling's
not gonna pack that right no yeah see listen um you don't want it to be political and then you
talk about JK Rowling who literally muggles black people don't exist in her universe either like
and if you if you want to talk about like politics and D&D and JK Rowling I've I don't know why I'm
plugging dimension 20 like they need to be plugged from yeah they're like a dream but more her dream
less absolutely my knowledge that I'm never gonna reach that level but like if I did listen I'm
trying to be a professional actor and if I could just switch that to professional D&D player I would
in a heartbeat I don't know I think I would too I'm like trying to get a job in like saving the world
and if I can do it being a professional DM I'll be damn like you're here in it here folks you
have to get this podcast successful so he can save the world and I get to play D&D for money
those are his dreams but uh there uh what's it uh misfits and magic is amazing um it's really
really good it's a great introduction to the kids on bike system it's a super fun system um so that's
one of my personal favorites um in terms of like other games we play like just about every we've
played just about every board game in general under the sun we yeah we I will I will emphasize
every time we say this is somebody specifically somebody across the counter in a game shop they're
like so you play katon we've never played katon so we can't say we've touched them all because
that's like the grandfather with all 78 fucking expansions that cost as much as my left nut yeah
so no we haven't played all of them but we played a lot of them yes um which maybe we'll
do a whole episode about um board games and stuff but I know that uh magic is also something that
like we as a group kind of I don't play magic and I want that to be very clear I played magic very
briefly but I'm in my hot girl era and I do not play magic the gathering in my hot girl era we got
good at it not that someone else can't I when we first started playing um and it was it was his
fiance that actually like told us about I don't know she got us into uh she regressed it every day
because we've spent I think collectively we've probably spent thousands of dollars no I know
we have we've spent thousands of dollars yeah it's bad um but yeah she taught us when we at the same
time that we decided to pick up dnd we also decided to pick up a holy like a whole another system that
has a mountain of rules yeah which is magic the gathering and it's just exploded when we were
thousands of cards playing and we didn't really understand how to play I was like okay yeah I'll
play and I was winning all the time and it pissed Robert specifically off because I would get very
competitive and Madison also wins it almost every board game we play it's only when okay I was gonna
say only when they're trivia based but that's not true because I always win at Lords of Waterdeep
and it's my game that my fiance bought for me and then I lost the first game I played it's a dnd
it's Wizards of the Coast so I mean this is a fun game um but it's like a board game board game and
I don't even know how to describe it it's like monopoly but it's more it's more incentivized for
you to stab people in the ass yeah and I it was the same buying property thing I mean there's no
hotels there's brothels but there's no hotels right so I think was it your birthday that we were
playing it and I just I kept winning every single time and I felt so awful and I leaned over and I
can't remember who I told but I was like I'm gonna throw this next game because I feel really bad
about winning every game and that was the first one Robert won yeah okay I like took that shit to
the grave I have witnesses I have witnesses that would gladly if it's first of all if it's my fiance
absolutely not she takes sides in everything it was yeah I don't fucking trust her I mean I trust
her with my life but I don't trust her with that yeah we sabotage you regularly I'm aware listen
we have this we've also had some games of monopoly they get fun story I'm highly successful at everything
I've ever done in my entire life and it bothers the shit out of everybody in my house with the
exception of one of my roommates um and so my fiance and Madison like to just pray on my downfall
all the time but it's always like I hope you stub your toe tomorrow or like step in a lego
and I'll be damn if I don't crunch my fucking toes on every staircase in table in chair in my house
multiple times a day I think it's a truly if there's bad karma it comes in the way of removing
my toenails because I'll be damned if it doesn't happen all the time that's an awful thing here
moving my toes monopoly is probably the messiest game that we play and I that's including D&D
when Robert has gone on the record to say he is a personal vendetta where his only goal this session
is to kill us oh yeah I mean I think listen as a dm I think you get to a point where like you've
designed you design this really in-depth super challenging like combat session or puzzle or
literally literally anything well I mean there's that there's the example I think you're thinking
of and then there's just generally when you make a really complex convoluted like mastermind who's
behind the screen type shit and then one of your players walks up and either rolls at e20
or has a spell on their spell list that you didn't check beforehand and they're like oh that that's
what we needed to do the first action or like the second action and you're like sure fuck the two
hours of my life I spent on planning this I don't need it I don't need the satisfaction to see this
happen at all and then you go into the next session and you're like all of you are gonna die
because I can make that happen I am legally allowed to make that happen one of my personal
favorites was the the the character that Robert truly wanted to kill her name was Magnolia that
was when I died I got my satisfaction yeah but I killed myself so was it satisfaction I presented
you with the opportunity to do so so yeah a little okay well there was a she was like in a room and
it was this puzzle oh it was like the clockwork puzzle thing yeah it was supposed to be this really
complicated puzzle and it was supposed to be really cool and my character had been separated I was the
only person there and like she had a broken leg then of course I present her with all these really
intelligent like inspector like you should roll an intelligence check and our connexat can investigate
and go into the second layer to the third layer to activate the fourth and and then of course the
last option I presented is there's this giant like stone slab that's going at like mock speed and if
you if he gets like if you clip you're either losing a limb in your life and she goes yeah I'll try it
and then guess what happens I rolled a net 20 and I can't tell her no and I bypassed the entire
puzzle and just was just like walking in a hallway just slid under the fucking moxins don't okay that
didn't upset me that much because it came out of a book that um Dakota one of her roommates and also
players at the table uh in our current campaign both of my campaigns actually I'm not damning both
but I'm damning one I'm playing on the other he's playing on that one too uh he gave me like a like
a dungeon masters like trap and puzzle and dungeon whatever the fuck for my birthday and I literally
just pulled it out because I was like back rooms bitch here's a puzzle from the back rooms and then
she just slid underneath it so I wasn't as mad at that as I have been at some other things that was
just like that's a terrible way I'll give you another one tomorrow like you know I mean other
experiences with puzzles and players um god forbid if you give them anything that's related to a cipher
or like a one plus x equals two oh my god it's gonna take them literally 45 minutes to figure out the
world's simplest puzzle it's like here's five flowers they all have a different color now there's
an object in the room that correlates with those colors or maybe maybe there's something like a
cauldron in the center that's like you need to have one of each color in this pot and they're like
what were the flowers called again it was what fucking continent did they come from really it was
four grown men it was four can I do a history check on the uh on the origin of the color yellow
and they were just straight they were fucking baffled but this was the puzzle they had while I was
dealing with the clock shit that I just bounced through she got through that a lot quicker than
it I mean they literally did a long rest in the middle of the puzzle to get their spell slots back
they're like well we're getting nowhere with this long rest yeah it that one was bad so yeah it took
them forever it was literally just like a little shitty cipher that came out of that same book and
the amount of times I had to repeat and like redraw like you wrote it down in a way that gave away
the answer and then I accidentally wrote the cipher down in a way that you could put it together
easier and I didn't even mean to do that and they were literally looking at it for like 30
it was bad sometimes just be aware that sometimes you have to you don't have to dumb things down
but you do need to like hook line and sinker because sometimes it doesn't always right sometimes the
ridges aren't always there sometimes it's just a fucking it's a smooth plateau up there and you
got to you got to do a little bit of dickin yeah there was oh my god the so I'm like I'm the note
taker at our table which is I guess that's another thing about me like qualifies me talk I'm an obsessive
note taker my notes for each session that this is not every session every session will be like we
have a list of topics that we want to do and one of those things is like we've talked about one of
the importance of note taking we've talked about doing like a small series with like table etiquette
so like how to act as a player the first time you're at a table how to act as a dm don't be Batman
don't be Batman but then also don't be Batman as a dm because then somebody makes it really stupid
like I was watching a thing with with Bernadine Mulligan and he was talking about the first time
he like ever dm'd or one of the first time he ever dm'd and he wrote like the whole thing with like
there was like doors or some shit and a princess and players and they were supposed to go through
with it and there was the hook and he planned like this whole world and adventure and quest
and then they just decided to like steal the fucking bride and leave and then he had nothing
prepared um I that I've taken that to heart I prepare so little for my sessions outside of like
location names and maybe NPC names um but yeah don't be Batman on either side of the screen
because we don't like somebody that takes two years to plan a turn and then take away all the
fun from everyone else but we also don't like the person uh that doesn't let the players choose the
fucking story which is what the whole game is about yeah so we've got most other episodes will be
structured this one is this one's just talking not I don't even remember what I was gonna say
um we're gonna do like a class and race breakdown talking about like what our favorites are what's
most infuriating to a DM which just very quickly has a race if you play a war for it get fucked um
didn't you suggest the last person at our table who played a war for it I'm pretty sure you were
the one that took just it how to do combat yeah because I mean it just fit who we was looking for
combat and magic how the fuck that works uh that's the one thing where I will shout out to like
kids on bikes and kids on brooms is that the combat is so much simpler and it's so much it's so
so much more cinematic and story driven there's there's no system for combat it is just real
scores against each other yeah you just roll like a minor mechanic in the in the fucking dumpster fire
that is action economy and dnd is grapple where you roll two strength scores against each other
and you see who wins and if somebody wins like the person attempting to grapple if they get like
if their strength score is higher than congratulations you've been fucking grappled yeah that's the
that's the entire combat system in kids on bikes and kids on brooms and I don't have a problem with
that but that's yeah I started shout out to them for making a combat system that doesn't take 45
fucking minutes to play out yeah and it's it's like my four players versus a litch merry christmas
you've earned yourself a two hour combat session almost every combat station combat session that
we've done at our table has been like oh it's not going to be that bad it's just going to be like a
short combat session we're going to get to like other things because we play long sessions like
half the time we end up playing for like four to five hours like the dimension 24 matt where it's
where you have like a long session of narrative and a long session of combat tends to work pretty
well through to life you just kind of have to you really have to plan out just how long it's
going to take people to get through a combat session in respect to narrative because with players
and kind of narrative you can let the players take it as long as far as you want them to
or as they want to combat on the other hand that's entirely up to you yeah you can decide if they
spend two hours trying to kill one creature and it's 50 fucking goons or if it's like 45 minutes
in a really fun story driven encounter i've done both mostly because the first one with the 50 goons
and the one big guy i kept giving them big creatures and they were like no don't give us big creatures
give us goons wanted goons we will know i said okay we wanted to lower level goons and they were
lower level they had a quarter of your hit points they were fun to kill yeah they died easy it was
like two swings and they were dead but i gave them a shit ton of them because they wanted a lot of
goons yeah i wanted to show them what the negative consequences of asking for goons i personally
enjoyed that combat encounter it was fun it was a lot more creative than some of the other ones
that was also one of the ones where i rolled well and i have a love hate relationship with combat
because i there's some sessions where i just i like it like mirf i cannot get a decent role for
the life of me and it's gotten to the point where like i'm getting like real life that made his
role more nat ones at my table than anybody i think combined yeah but there there were during a one
shot we did recently i built this character and i made the mistake of playing just like a full
rogue with no other like multi-classic abilities which we'll talk about multi-classic episode
only played magic users yeah i decided to step out because i'm i'm a sorcerer girly i love my
sorcerers i love wild magic i love i love magic bullshit and i was like okay i'm gonna like try
and play this like really cool like swashbuckling pirate and all that and i had it so if i was like
within five feet of you you were like i was leveling you yeah no she could do like serious
damage to some really high health and like high ac creatures when she could get to them
we were fighting this fucking crab and it wasn't even a planned combat encounter this was like one
of our party members was up near it and like turned to a bird colossal crab stats as he was
making the decision on what to do with it and then it turned into this really long the combat
encounter was so long and i kept getting like and the crab was running the whole time and normally
i would just be like okay run away but he had one of our fucking people in his goddamn claw and we
needed everyone for this particular thing because it was just like a little one shot and all the
party had to be together because of a curse blah blah d&d bullshit and this crab starts like running
back and i'm like well fuck i can't do anything from a distance so i'm running up on this thing
and it's getting to a point where it's like it has more movement speed than i do like i'm still
not near it so i like straight up for like six or seven turns just kept running and i couldn't do
anything else and it was getting to a point where the crab finally stopped moving but then
something else happened and i couldn't attack it and like yeah i like was getting like a real life
pissed and it was like to a point where robert noticed and was like are you good and i'm like
i'm fine i'm just upset right now and so about half my combat encounters go that way where it's
either i'm incapacitated in some way whether that means my character gets knocked out pinned to a
wall with a fucking javelin or some bullshit and it's it's kind of a topic that like we'll
eventually talk about because i mean we plan on doing a couple of different episodes about like
what it's like to be a dm but it's like to be a player how to do character creation how to write
a story but like i guess my piece on making fun combat encounters very quickly before it turns
into a flip so please as a dm monitor your players reactions to the things that you're you're throwing
at them and also try to keep like try to keep in your mind that not everybody is going to be suited
for the same combat encounter and therefore might have a really shitty experience like i don't hold
the crab thing against myself because the crab wasn't really my decision like yes i made it there
but i also gave a lot of warnings that like maybe don't step on the fucking beach on the magical island
and of course somebody did i mean i gave him the option to do so but you know critical thinking
skills um person who's also done something like that yeah same person who also just jumped into
a portal to hell thinking that was going to fix the problem and then it didn't but anyways as a
as a dm like it plan your combat encounters or at least throw your combat encounters in a way
that everybody can do something uh because if you have a player full of barbarians and rogues that
have no way to run or like increase their movement speed don't give them a creature that can fly or
has 50 feet of movement speed on a turn yeah because then they're just going to spend their
whole turn doing nothing and it's not fun i'll say it's also a thing of like at our table at least
like from a player perspective we're coming from a lot of people who have different histories with
like playing dnd um yeah some people are more experienced with it some people have more experience
and others i'm one of the lesser i think at this point i'm the least experienced at the table yeah
because i guess dakota's played before yeah like a little bit twice yeah and so even though i've
got the least amount of like actual play experience i'm still like very obsessive about dnd and i'd
like been into it for a really long really long time i just couldn't find anyone to play with
blah blah blah yeah i mean it's like the beat of the hobby is finding people to play with yeah so
like i know a lot about it but i don't have a lot of that experience at the table and i also come
from a point where like what i love about dnd my favorite parts of dnd even though i do enjoy combat
is the is the narrative is the storytelling is the the role playing is that having fun and creating
a narratively compelling story um because like that's all what i do i mean i with my background
in theater and my background and like creating my own original works and things like that that is my
drive versus we have some other people at the table who like combat a little bit more than they do
some other things so it's played video games and have more experience with like this kind of rim type
deal but like yes there's a story but it's the combat and the min maxing and like the multi
glassing that's like really the appeal for them yeah and i it's a balance and it's a hard balance
because not like not only are your players playing different characters but they're also just different
people very i like i'm the whole you gotta come out with a good hook so that way all your players
naturally fall in love with each other net like players characters all your pc's naturally fall
in love with each other i want to go on adventure across the stars and different lands and multiverse
and be happy you know like friends and family that is easier than making players get along at the table
yeah and you have to do that as a person not as a narrator in terms of like that was a little bit
of a challenge i mean it was a it was a table full of of edgy characters which is something that we'll
get into a little bit more story which is not like that's to be expected like expect that if you're
a player sitting at a table for the first time with other first time players expect that no one's
gonna have family everyone's gonna have like a super fucked up name or backstory everyone's
gonna have some like deep dark secret that they're gonna try and whip out on the party at a random
time or a power they want to conceal from everybody yeah and it's just not gonna like those you can
try those things but oftentimes it's not that's what we don't have that chemistry with people at the
table and you don't know how to play and you like know how to play with each other not know
not know how to play but i think like even our sessions zero are with the same group of people
yeah we just have one for the first time person um all of the characters melded together in like
a surprising way got along in crazy ways because our first camp with a hook that wasn't even intended
yeah like fully accidental we went like full off track yeah and that kind of happened in our last
one shot two where we were doing we were trying to solve a puzzle and we one of the characters
rolled a nap one on intelligence and um Robert was like okay this character knows exactly what the
the answer to this puzzle is it was so not right it ended up working out perfectly but it turned into
probably the most chaotic i think one of the most fun role playing moments it was between players at
a table i've ever seen on my life it was some of the most fun it was this character was like trying
to find what was something remembrance so they needed uh so there was like this uh this thing
that they had to find they had like an ingredient list for a potion to make um for this like island
of of gorgons and whatever whatever and one of the things that they had to find was like uh like a
tear of remembrance or like a drop of of remembrance everything else on on the item list was like very
normal fetch questy find a spider that can't be caught kill a dragon that can't be slain like
stupid shit like a bit stupid shit like that um but this one was a little bit more like you had
to really think about it or just get like a solid raw investigation check in one of our
not so smart characters at the table decided he was going to step up and roll that check and got a
natural one and so there was like a literally a specific place that they had to go and then do a
specific action but the nat one i was like cool so instead of telling him he needs to go to a
lake and look into the water and sacrifice a memory you know what's shiny and reflective and you lose
memories in fucking rum you know who has a lot of rum on the boat the captain so our entire party
went the opposite direction which our entire party say one person who was like i'm gonna
think better of this and so he went to the correct place the rest of us went back to the boat and
it turned into like it was sheer chaos because half of the party well actually everyone in the party
except uh the character that i was playing was like okay we're gonna go search for the rum
and they are like just turning the ship upside down and they can't find it and the crew keeps
distracting them and then my character was like oh i got this i'll distract the captain and it
turned into it was so uncomfortable but it was also some of like i think the hardest i've laughed
at the table i would agree with that it was the funniest it was it was just it was chaos and it
ended up in the end being um the character gets the rum takes it to the location and while he's
like looking at the rum and like telling the story naked with vomit on him oh my god they were in
front of the whole dying it was it was a man died i died like i killed myself like four times during
the process because i was like i had like one hit point the entire time and i like regularly would
like knock my head back and like try and kill myself so i would go down to zero and get brought back
so that it's like constitution saving throw strength check can you kill yourself in this moment
yeah it was it was chaos but it was a lot of fun and so his uh the character who had the idea for
the rum takes it back and is telling the story to the other characters who are there and in doing
so is tech yeah ends up like sacrificing that memory into the rum which was a very backwards
way of doing it but you know we succeeded and i think that was a really cool moment and works
props to you narratively of that was like a really fun dm moment to come full circle of like okay this
is something clearly that like we have invested well over an hour into um and it was like a timed
thing of like we only had so long to do this it was the same too like there was a whole we had
a like a time thing behind it we're like you only have so many hours like once the sun sets on the
whatever day of the island and you know then it's just you're trapped here forever and then the
gorgons are gonna murder you and each of your sleep so there was also like a time aspect to it
as well which you know that's you don't have to regulate that as a dm did i hate people that are
anal like that where it's like okay every time someone takes an action a minute passes like
no just do what feels right like add the pressure as it needs to be added i'll say even the way we
did our last uh combat encounter at we did a combat encounter in our session zero for um the current
campaign that we're playing and it was it was a lot of fun it wasn't something where we were really
measuring so much it was a lot more like kids on bikes kids on rooms type deal where it was just i
was having them roll checks against each other and i didn't even really roll anything for the
villains all that much um and like the goons in the combat it was more just feeling out what the
players could do uh with some context we'll talk about it's our current campaign it's all about
superheroes and so the idea at least my idea is a dm for that is what's the point of being a superhero
if you can't do like super power level shit and if i'm gonna have to like if you have to roll a d20
every time you want to use like a lightning ability that targets the whole room to hit one person
like no that's so fucking stupid let like if if your characters are supposed to be a certain kind
of character let them be those characters and it was also a thing of like the character that i was
playing is like a relatively unexp... and we'll probably do an episode where we talk all about
our campaign that we're in currently um i'm you know breakdown of the first one for sure yeah uh
it was a very like inexperienced hero and it was fun for me as a player and me as a character to
realize like oh my gosh i can get away with so much at the table because we weren't like counting
talking as like a part of your turn and there weren't things of like okay you had your action and
your bonus action and your movement and you can't do anything else this was a very like flowy like
at one point my character was like running across the room to talk to multiple people and then
still taking an action but it it didn't feel like it was like we're doing way too much and it was
it was a fun thing of like even little attacks like you can see oh the bad guy like the the godfather
type character that we're fighting that i hit with um a little like the godfather
fucking character he's a shark by the way his name is the cod father shark he runs a criminal
underground that like smuggles shit in and out of the ports because you know he's a fucking fish
it was i it's my favorite character in the campaign and yeah yeah we're probably gonna kill him um
but like my character through what's basically the equivalent of like a baseball made of light
adam and still having him go like hey what ow yeah and like getting to be like oh my god wait i did
something it was i think it's a really cool way to do it so i'm very like in those kinds of cool
say lucy goosey with your shit yeah because i think that's what keeps it fun and fresh and engaging
and those kinds of like free play role play moments where you just kind of like let your
characters kind of do what they want but in a way that fits best in their mind um it tends to
like they figure out better ways to role play and they really figure out the character they want
because if i tell you as a player we're gonna hop into our combat session um god forbid and we've
had that happen so we have had that happen i'm gonna try avoid that happening this time but like
let's say this is like our second session this is our first real taste of combat you're an experienced
player however we're about to go into a 45 minute combat session have you ever played the game of
d&d you understand that you have a fucking spell list as long as your arm an action economy as tall
as you are like it's insane and so it it pulls you out of the role play experience and it really
forces you to be a player in a person who's trying to think about what to do with their turn
versus like what do you want to do as the character okay sick make a role you pass like yeah there's
less thought on having to plan your shit out and be a player and more emphasis on your role playing
and getting to experience the emotions as the character yeah i think that it it becomes a lot
more engaging in a different way and it's not saying that the other ways aren't fun because
sometimes it is kind of fun to like go through meticulously plan each turn and look through
your spell list and be like oh i've got the perfect really really like detect poison and disease
it's such a niche yeah until you watch like crown of candy or something yeah and then it's like
colossal story moment for several of the characters or like heat metal heat metal is in my opinion
not it's it's not good if you're playing in like a classic high fantasy setting but we had a character
who had it in this session zero and ends up fucking like melting or like heating up a car with a
character inside it to like try and melt the person and it was like a really cool badass thing
so there's some things that also like you know it changes from thing to thing and it's it's very
nice to have that satisfaction and pay off of like this very specific thing that i took three levels
ago that i haven't gotten to use it's gonna be so helpful right now and that's great but i think
that it's just one of those things like you got to kind of feel out in the moment and i think there's
also room to grow in those moments are very much like you can't really plan for them like if i take
plant growth because my character is a druid and i yeah speak with plants we'll talk all about the
first campaign we did plants were a very central theme to it and not in the way that any of you
were probably thinking or guessing however comma if you take plant growth is like a level three
druid because i'm a druid and i talk to plants and i can make them grow like you're never going to
find the moment or the combat encounter like oh i'm gonna fight a plant next session i'm gonna
take this bell and do that that's not the shit that's fun the shit that's fun is like what madison
said you take a spell at level three it's a throw away it's thematic and then you end up in a combat
encounter and you find like the perfect solution to the problem like i had one of those in the first
time i played or my first campaign that i played with my buddies um i was playing a warlock which is
fucking broken as a class but anyways i had like a spell and the whole thing was um it does psychic
damage if somebody like moves out of the illusion that you've done like it already does a lot of
damage but then it does more if they move out of it and there was a character that we had to stop it
was actually like a pc um and they are like whole thing was that they were raging out and they like
where they were stuck in this like suit of metal that was like controlling them like very berserk
anime style uh and they were like trying to attack us and if this player had genuinely attacked us
like there's nothing we could have done because the amount of perks and stacks that they had on at
that time with that armor was absurd it was a fun role playing moment but i had just taken
this spell it did a lot of damage i didn't expect to get a lot of use out of it and then we were like
one turn away and he would have like basically one tab doll three of us and i was like what if i put
him in a fucking mental cage and then part of it is that they're so terrified that they don't want
to interact with the object so it's like really difficult for you to get them to take that extra
damage but he was a stupid guy stuck in a stupid suit of metal so i was like player to dm tell me he
has to interact with these objects like he's not going to be scared he's stuck in a fucking rage
suit and dm was like yeah that makes total sense so then the other player did exactly what he would
have done like in the role playing moment and tried to attack it and like fully knocked him
unconscious with how much damage i rolled as a warlock and that like ended the encounter and
it was such a cool moment for us but like i didn't plan for that i did i never expected that spell
to be as useful as it was and yet like it's one of my favorite role playing moments at a table i
think i have ever had because it was so out of fucking nowhere so i guess the borel of this is take
one random bullshit yeah take a random spell you never think you're going to use and just
wait for the perfect moment to use it and then be like surprise motherfuckers this is my moment
we had a character who um attacks good and evil gonna kick your ass this time at our last campaign
we had a character who did not do super well in combat they were they were a squishy character
um they were a necromancer satyr um and we were fighting same campaign where like
plants are very central theme but like none of us thought we were going to be fighting them so
we none of us took any likes because i've never it's like uh the plants were important but not
like you never interact with them you couldn't really speak to them they weren't part of combat
and then suddenly they were and we're fighting these plant people and he pulls blight out of his
ass and it's just doing like 80 something damage blight for those that have never touched the game
it basically says you sap the moisture out of anything living and then it does a lot of damage
specifically with plants it does like double the amount of damage because i don't know if you know
this plants are mostly made out of water yeah so then you give the fucking druid who's got a
ridiculous amount of spell slots and nothing else to use the spell slots on like the fucking blight
against a bunch of plants and suddenly he's like a one-man army against this whole unique in combat
and it was insane and robin was real life upset a little bit um because like yes i want you to
succeed at the players but i want you to do it my way not your way do it my way do it the hard way
be creative that's one of the fun things at our table is that even between the two of us we are
two very very stubborn motherfuckers and like to do things our way and that creates some really fun
tension in game um which has just been at the table yeah we don't fight i mean we do fight in
real life but that's about other things yeah um and it creates a really fun contrast so it is fun
to like genuinely kind of prey on people's downfall sometimes within within reason or like both the
bear like yeah oh there were things i would do specifically because i'm like i know this is gonna
like you won't piss you off so like i my character at the time had a power where i could just
fucking leave like i could just teleport no spell slot no nothing or on crack yeah and it was a power
that he gave me um part of her character stack and then it suddenly became like the focal point of
the entire campaign yeah it was a thing of like like take the back rooms and then multiply that
concept times infinity and then give a player the ability to navigate that shit perfectly with no
spell like not a spell slot just a roll the dice just i don't know i'm gonna vibe check and i'm gonna
leave yeah i'm gonna feel this i'm gonna feel this out and then suddenly i'm just gonna solve all
the fucking problems the party has yeah that that did cause sometimes i use that because i was like
i know this is like purposely gonna piss you off and then other times i was like okay all right
yeah and it's the the one thing that i don't like is sometimes the relationship between player and
dm is so combative that it's not fun because it's like okay you're making this world where not a
single one of us is having fun like we're being bullied like it's just it's not it's not fun and
it's it's difficult as a player to approach a dm or your dm who's taking the time out of their
schedule to write this story for you and your friends and be like hey i really don't like what
you're doing because it's it feels like you're shitting on everything they've done and to an
extent it is but also learn how to take critical fucking feedback like you're an adult hopefully
and you have critical thinking skills and take a moment to go maybe i don't want to make a world
where everybody in it hates my players for no goddamn reason you know yeah like just don't do
that it's at the end of the day dnd and like most tabletop games um that i'm aware of at least are
a collaborative thing it is a have a positive relationship with your dm as a player and vice
versa it makes it a lot more fun so when i do get upset at madison i can give her a fun challenging
story point and not ruin the whole campaign you know um and i think that's something that we kind of
have at least are attempting to show in our podcast of you know um the thing i think makes this a
i want to say there's a million dnd podcasts out there there's a million the actual plays and
everything see a lot of them are the actual plays and i think the where we're trying to be different
right um is it's it's all conversation like maybe we'll show you guys a little bit of what it's like
for us to play at a table or something but like it's it's all conversation it's all tips and tricks
it's how to get into this like impenetrable fucking hobby that takes years to learn and it's so
intimidating and the the goal of this is to make it more digestible and more approachable and feel
like you can get your foot in the door and i think another one of the perks of this is it's
coming from the perspective of two different hosts one person who is a player and one person who dms
more um and showcasing that collaborative thing and like you can have these conversations with
your dm outside of the table and like have these collaborative conversations and i think that's
at least one of the things that i really want to do is show like the both sides of the coin and that
one isn't more mystical than the other and you can't blame the other for all of the problems that
you feel like you're having at the table and you can just like work together man shout out to the
title episode behind the screen across the table right like that's the whole concept yeah we wanted
you to be able to see what's going on behind the screen and understand how to be the man behind
the curtain but then also how to like engage as a player and how to have fun with the content you're
given and just how to like it into the hobby yeah so awesome i think we're probably over the time
that we thought we were gonna be this was supposed to be 30 minutes yeah 30 to 45 and we're looking
at 50 right now on the counter so anyways thanks for tuning in for our session zero here at table
talk we will hopefully have a lot more content coming for you guys very very soon we have a
long list of episodes episode titles shout out to chat gpt we'll talk about ai in a future episode
um what a way to end it with a yeah yeah hot topic there dm hook baby we're gonna talk about ai but
anyways i hope you guys have a wonderful day night evening uh roll a couple of nat 20s throw the
nat ones at your dm i am personally pro getting a giant like d20 to throw at your dm whenever
something a soft one a plushie not a real resin one real resin one with sharp edges and everything
yeah i don't condone physical violence we'll talk about dice in a later day but fuck resin dice bro
those things will cut you like no or cut robert hit stop before he was supposed to so we didn't
get to record an outro so now we have to go back in and fix that um thank you for tuning into table
talk we really appreciate your support um and up next thursday i believe we should have our next
episode coming out what episode is that gonna be robert all about dnd and that includes character
creation behind the screen is the dm how to make a world how to not be an asshole at the table my
personal favorite topic thank you all so much again for tuning in and thank you for your support i'm
mattie and i'm robert see you next week