M: Hello players who refuse to buy a physical source book,
R: and DM's who will literally write their own source book for every single campaign-
Welcome back to Table Talk.
Today's theme is all about D&D.
What is it?
That's Madison Conway and on Robert Lopez.
And today we're talking about what is D&D with a little drop of tabletop RPGs in general.
The podcast will mostly focus on D&D because it's what we have the most experience with.
But there is kind of like this theme of tabletop RPGs as a whole because a lot of them are
similar and that you're at a table and you are role playing.
That's what RPG means, role playing game.
So what is D&D?
D&D or Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role playing game by Wizards of the Coast.
They're kind of like the biggest name in tabletop games.
Oh yeah, 100%.
I mean they own more than just Dungeons and Dragons.
That's just the biggest, one of the biggest TTRPGs out there and has been for quite a
while.
Fun fact, we are on 5E, so fifth edition, which means there have been four previous editions
to this.
And some people actually like to go back and run campaigns in old editions because the rules
are different and the spell lists are a little different.
Like third edition is incredibly popular.
Like the races are different, backgrounds are different, stats are different.
Now it's like Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Sterity and Constitution and it
used to be like, oh there were some weird ones.
I don't remember what they were exactly and that's probably something I should have looked
up to have before this episode.
But stats were completely different.
So like everything changes a little bit from edition to edition.
And third edition was a lot less balanced.
Fifth edition characters at level 20 and like creatures at CR 30, so challenge rating of
30 are a lot less broken than what they were in third edition because Wizards hadn't quite
put like the brakes on what you could do.
And so you just have these like insane stat rolls and abilities and just nutty stuff in
third edition that they toned down significantly in fifth edition.
Or she can still definitely break characters in 5E.
Oh, 100%.
And taxing is something that will never leave the hobby.
So what is a tabletop role playing game?
It's hard to find like an actual definition on the internet that's not just like a bunch
of jargon being thrown at you.
And they all do different things.
So our kind of definition for it is a tabletop role playing game in which players create
a character and take on that character, describe what they do, their actions, make choices for
them and it's traditionally run by a Game Master or GM of some kind who controls the
game by describing the world, creating the world, the situations and the conflict that
the characters find themselves in.
Yeah, so some of them are very character creation heavy like Dungeons and Dragons,
kids on bikes, but then others like Alien, which we attempted to play over the summer
but did not, have like pre-constructed characters where you'll have a list of people or creatures
or whoever you can pick from and then it'll give you like a rundown list of what their
abilities are, what their personalities like, what their role in the group is.
So some of them are a lot more accessible than D&D or even in kids on bikes, but at
the same time you can also buy over called one shots for those where they literally come
pre-made.
So it's still fifth edition systems or still kids on bike systems, but you already have
a character to play.
There are just some that are a little more optimized for like sitting down for a couple
of hours at a time versus like playing something out for a month or a year or two years.
I'll say they really range in the time span that they can take up because there are some
that are designed for like, yeah, you just sit down for an afternoon, you play with your
friends and that's it.
And then you can also like, I think Dungeons and Dragons is especially suited for this,
like you can make something that lasts an afternoon or you can make something that lasts
for like multiple years if you wanted to.
If you could manage the schedules, which would be the most impressive part of that.
Yeah.
And the two primary differences in, I guess what people call them, you would have a campaign,
which is anything in my opinion longer than like a month and then a one shot, which could
be six to eight hours worth of playing.
Sometimes you can chain one shots.
Other people will make campaigns off of one shots.
I've done the opposite.
I've made one shots off of campaigns.
Yeah.
Shout out to DM's little tip from me.
If you create all this content that nobody touches or finds or is interested in and they
still want to play a little bit more, or even if you just want to pick a whole new group
of people, you still get to live out all of that hard work and content that you created
in the form of a one shot by just basically giving them a tiny little shitty hook in this
little town that nobody explored with NPCs you wrote everything for that they just never
touched in the main campaign.
It's wonderful.
I can also, if you wanted to give you the opportunity to play characters that you've
played in a campaign that you're like, okay, we've kind of exhausted this character and
their story here.
Let's do a random one shot where it's like 20 years in the future and they're fully retired
and they're like, oh, hey, revisiting a plot hook.
Yeah.
One shots are fun for doing like level 20 characters or a very quick like level 20 can
make.
I mean, once you hit level 20, which we'll talk about character creation more towards
the end of the next episode, but once you hit level 20 as a player, it truly the amount
of shit you have to manage becomes insane.
It's one of the least optimized aspects of the game, but some other popular examples
of TT RPGs to get back on track.
You have like the Empire of the Masquerade Pathfinder, which is kind of like D&D adjacent
kids on bikes, Warhammer 40K to an extent.
It's more like, it's not so much role playing in that sense.
I mean, I guess it is because you like take the assumed role like a commander and you
have your armies and you build them.
And sometimes like a Warhammer 40K battle can take hours, days, months, whatever, depending
on the scale of it.
But it's just kind of another example of not straight up role playing in the way that
you would like embody a character that's more like taking the seat of a commander and then
like throwing these two fantasy armies at each other that you spent fucking, I don't
know, 72 hours hand painting just for you to be done in like an hour.
A quick shout out to kids on bikes, their website, which is there from Hunters Entertainment,
who does some other games like Alice is Missing, which is also really good.
They have a ton of free resources on their website and they've got like basically free
source books or like sample source books of the way to run their games, premade characters,
all that stuff.
So I am always going to hype them up because they've got a bunch of free, super accessible
stuff.
The next kind of question that we wanted to hit was how do you get into D&D?
It feels like something that's like really intimidating because it's often a world full
of people who have been in this world doing this thing, been interested in this topic
for years and years.
And it used to be-
Yeah, there's always the backstory of like I started playing in my grandmother's basement
when I was, but a wee boy and we played 72 campaigns and I never played a different character
and I've never DMed.
It used to be very like you could buy a source book or like I like neckbeards.
I'm a woman in a gaming space so I'm always going to kind of make that joke because there's
some crappy people out there sometimes.
But in like talking about stranger things, D&D has kind of been brought to the forefront
in a lot of ways, not just because of stranger things obviously.
But these are just, we compiled kind of like a list of resources that you could like look
to if you want to learn more about D&D and then also how to get into D&D because there's
a couple different ways to do that.
Yeah, so one of the easiest ways to like start, one of the easiest ways to start like where
you're from I guess is by going to like a local gaming store or a gaming cafe.
Jesus, sorry.
Both of those are really good options.
Holy fuck.
Okay, you can take a-
Yeah, I'm going to let you take over while I try and clear whatever the fuck is in my
throat.
Sorry guys.
Check out your local game shops.
Those are probably going to be your best resources.
Best places are going to have an open night for like RPG games or TT RPG games, especially
Dungeons and Dragons where you can meet new people who want to play.
We've got a store in Evansville called The Gaming Guild.
I know Wednesday nights they do an open RPG night.
You can go, you can meet people.
If that seems intimidating to you, which that's A-okay.
If you're in school, check out, you know, the resources at school.
There might be a club.
I think there's a D&D club on our campus.
I think there's a D&D club, there's also just like a gamer society type deal where I think
they do a couple of different TT RPGs here and there, but that just kind of makes up
everything.
Also shout out to Book Broker here in Evansville.
This store has been around for a very long time.
I don't necessarily think that they host any like open nights like Game and Guild night,
but they have a lot of D&D source books.
And what I will say is that while some places like maybe Barnes and Noble's or something
like that will like to scourge, you know, cracking, opening a book, taking notes and
then putting it back on the shelf like a Book Broker or a Game and Guild.
And usually your local game stores are cool if you just take a book and sit down with
it and put it back because they're expensive, especially ones that comes from Wizards of
the Coast, nothing against it.
I mean, the amount of content they put in those books is insane, but $50 is not the
most accessible way to get into a hobby for the first time.
So like, yeah, it might feel a little awkward to like pull up to a gaming store or Barnes
and Noble's or wherever and take a source book down to one of their tables and sit down
and take some notes, but no one's going to tell you no.
And there should be no shame.
When you live in a capitalist capitalistic society, there should be no shame in not
shelling out $50 immediately.
When you live in a capitalist society, like, don't be afraid to steal.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know if we're allowed to say that, but I mean, don't be afraid to steal on a
capitalist.
Yeah, no, fair enough.
Don't steal from Wizards of the Coast or the people that write the source books.
Yes, we'll say that.
Don't be afraid to steal other non related brand things.
And you know, if you go on the Internet and you look up PDFs of things, you know, maybe
they exist, maybe they don't.
I can't say that they do.
Oh, yeah, I've never used a PDF that was an exact rip of a $50 source book for a campaign
I did like a semester ago.
I've never done that.
Why would I do that?
Why would I ever do that?
Why would I ever type in the name of the source book verbatim and then just put free
PDF at the end of it?
That sounds like an insane thing to do.
So like totally don't do what you do with your college textbooks and just search it and
see if you can read it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Shout out to somebody in my social problems classes semester.
I'm not going to name that person, but they straight up dropped the PDF for the whole
class and the group email.
$120 for the textbook.
$50 if you wanted to rent it online.
Renting online for that much money is such bullshit.
Like, what?
So funny.
What?
I think that shit cracks me up that there's such things as renting online.
Like Amazon lets you rent movies for like $5 or buy it for $15 and I'm like, what?
I already paid you for subscription.
It's like screen grabbing the entire film.
Literally.
Nothing, nothing is stopping you.
That's the answer.
Another way you can get into Tabletop RPG specifically D&D is through watching things.
Legend of the Vox Machina on Amazon Prime is like an animated campaign of something that
Critical Role did.
It was one of their first campaigns that they ever did and it got its full like only animated
show voice by all the original cast members because a lot of them are voice actors in
their spare time.
Yes.
And their voice actors who play D&D in their spare time.
Yeah, no, that's fair.
Alex Mercer has been in everything.
If anybody plays any video games or watches like any TV shows, you would recognize his
voice very quickly.
He's McCree in Overwatch.
He's been in a lot of different things that I play.
But Legend of the Vox Machina is probably one of the easiest and most accessible like traditional
straight up D&D campaigns.
It revolves around dragons, not a huge spoiler you kind of find out at the end.
There's also like a sub theme of dragons.
But like you have your rogue and your archer and your ballad in and your barbarian.
It is a very classic D&D but it also feel it's so it's that like high fantasy setting
but it doesn't feel stifling or like discouraging in a way that a lot of for me like I know
it sounds stupid to say is someone who's like really into D&D and these kinds of things.
I'm not the biggest fan of high fantasy.
Yeah, I have some people we play with that are like, when are we going to go back to
a high fantasy setting?
I'm like, listen, it's been the horse beaten.
There's zero meat left on this dead horse.
The horse is like ashes, like the bones have been destroyed.
High fantasy is cool.
It's engraved at this point.
But like at a certain point you got to look to more avenues than like an elf with a bow
who calls himself Legolas after a popular character in Lord of the Rings.
Yeah.
Like, you know, I will say something critical role does very well and in this show specifically
is it makes that high fantasy setting feel more modern and less stifling.
So it's fun.
There's comedy in it.
There's equal rights in it, which is one of the things that I also quite a bit of your
way from with high fantasy is there's always like this weird like we're going to add fantasy
racism in or we're going to have like three women in it and they never speak to each other.
Shout out Lord of the Rings.
Oh my God.
What is it?
The Bethel test or the back?
The Bechdel test.
Yeah, the Bechdel test, which it somehow passes.
Oh, because there's like one.
There's, oh my God.
Conversation.
Several compilations on Tech Talk.
I literally saw one again last night and it was like Lord of the Rings, but every time
two women interact on screen and there's exactly one interaction at the very beginning and
then roll credits.
Yeah, it's don't be that person.
Not to shit on the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
It's great.
It did a lot for what it was.
Several, well, one of my roommates, one of my old roommates, I guess they're both obsessed
one of my best friends obsessed not with the trilogy itself with the books as well.
But they did a lot for like portraying that that high fantasy.
So his, his version of it is very different than just straight up traditional high fantasy,
but it could be a cool starting point if you're just looking to see what that could be.
And then another thing to watch also on Amazon Prime.
I don't know if we mentioned that for Legend of Vox Machina is Dungeons and Dragons honor
among thieves.
My whole house went and watched that and theaters along with the other people that we play with.
This is a quick sidebar.
My favorite interaction from that night was it was like a whole big group of us that went
there were like eight or nine of us.
And there weren't very many people in the theater.
No, it was a very, very late showing and the movie like started late because it was like
broken.
We go outside and we're like, oh, let's try and get like a group picture in front of
the sign.
It'll be cute.
I'm like propping up my like phone to like try and take a video or a picture or I was
taking a video and then we were going to take pictures from it.
And then a group was walking by and they said, oh, we can take your picture.
And we're like, oh, great.
Thank you so much.
And they said, oh, it's so exciting to see nerds out together in public.
And I just that was a wild sentence to say to a group.
I don't remember being a crime.
No, I don't remember that at all.
Like every day.
I mean, I feel like they had to have been urged to.
I'm confident that I hope they were.
Otherwise that's just a crazy thing to say to someone.
But I think about that interaction a lot.
So that's anyway, D&D movie was great.
There are too many ways I would love to spin that and flip it back, but all of them would
be offensive to at least one group of listeners.
So I'm not going to do that.
That would be why.
Don't don't say that shit.
Don't say that shit in public.
Don't say that shit in public unless you want someone to throw it back.
I'm not afraid to throw it back.
Generally I don't until the people walk away, but I will.
And yeah, I will do it behind your back and you will feel bad.
Yeah, it's it's rough.
Anyways, Dungeons and Dragons are among these.
Better than we thought it was going to be.
Way better than we thought it was going to be.
It also showcases a lot of those.
Like it's like the classic D&D setting.
It's like, what is it?
Neverwinter.
Yeah, it's the sort of it's the sort of coast and then neverwinter is like the main city
it takes place in.
Yeah.
And it's just a really solid movie.
You can see the moments where like it's something that's great that kind of gets you into the
world and into the feeling as someone who doesn't play the game or know a lot about
the game.
And then as a player, you can also sit there and you can.
I've watched it like four or five times at this point.
And I noticed new things every time of like when you watch the fight scenes, they all
go in order like initiative order and they follow that order.
And then you see like each of the spells and it is an actual spell in 5e that you can like
be like, oh, that was Frostfinger or whatever it's called.
And then Green Spectral Blade and they were very and you can tell that they were very
intentional with what was used and what wasn't, which was nice.
You can tell when somebody failed and you can tell when someone succeeded like really
well.
And that's the part where one of the characters like throws a potato and like clock somebody
in head and you're like, okay, so that was like a bullshit Nat 20 role out of nowhere.
Another form of like media to kind of consume and probably the most popular of V&D media
are actual plays.
Real playthroughs with real people at the table.
So the biggest of those is going to be critical role, which we talked a little bit about before.
One of the first to really go public with it and get monetized and oh yeah, it is a
group of famous voice actors.
It's got Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Mercer Ray.
If you like Last of Us, both Abby and Ellie are Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson.
My favorite games such as of all time.
I'm a PlayStation fanboys.
I know I've played both Last of Us and Last of Us 2.
I have every addition that exists of both of those games, not like collectors, but they
had a PS4 and then a PS4 and then they had a PS5 upgrade and a PS5 upgrade.
And they were both like complete remasters from the ground up the way that I spent $70
on one game that I already owned and then another $70 on another game that I already
owned just to see it in better like definition and picture.
I want to criticize it, but I sat there and watched you play through the entire of the
Last of Us because I wanted to play the game.
But I'm not personally.
Yeah, we never finished Last of Us 2 because that one hurts.
But I would be like, don't play the game when I'm not here because I want to watch.
The quality was fucking insane.
Amazing.
Shout out to those voice actors for bringing so much trauma to our screens but in a wonderful,
amazing way.
Yes, and they are wonderful actors.
And some of their moments watching, it's so emotional watching them.
They're wonderful players.
They're professionals at it.
They get joined by lots of different people.
So you know, Erica Ishii, who I personally love, another great voice actor.
Brittany Mulligan has joined them.
Abreya Aayanger has joined them.
But Legend of the Vox Machina was the show that we talked about earlier was based off
of their campaign one, which is I'm Still Making My Room.
And Toe Dori, which now has all of its own merch and branding and many figures and shit
in the gaming store.
It's so cool to see.
Where's Dimension 20's figures and minis and merchandise in the store?
I'm still waiting to see.
Dimension 20 has too many hard opinions to have a partnership with Those Who's at the
Coast.
No, that's fair.
That's fair.
I think, personally, I think that's why.
But speaking of Erica Ishii, Brittany Mulligan, and I can't.
Oh, wait, wait, wait.
When did we go there?
I do want to say Abreya Aayanger.
Abreya.
Is it Abreya?
Abreya.
Okay.
I love them so much.
Oh, but you can find Critical Role for free on YouTube.
You can find all of it.
There are like hundreds of hours of content for you to watch through if you want or you
can look up like summary ones or straight up sometimes watching those is exhausting.
You can go to the Wiki page and like read a summary.
But speaking of those people, Robert.
Dimension 20, which is becoming sort of a fan favorite mostly because of how different
it is from a lot of the other D&D spaces that are out there.
Just in terms of their world's building and their DM, Brittany Mulligan in particular,
has like really popularized their brand of doing it, kind of like Critical Role has
done it.
Their first campaign was Fantasy High and it was really, really good.
It was amazing.
It set the tone perfectly for what they wanted to do with the rest of their campaign.
So Critical Role is very much bound in like this traditional D&D space, high fantasy
ask or high fantasy adjacent, not to say that that's all they do.
And they're amazing at it.
And so I think Dimension 20 and Brittany Mulligan specifically really wanted to take them like
their brand of it in a direction where it was like off D&D or more modern settings or
more different settings.
I think the original concept was like if Dungeons and Dragons was set in like a John Hughes
coming of age movie.
Yeah, 100%.
And Fantasy High like is one of the best, in my opinion, one of the best intros to like
actual plays and what D&D can be in a non-traditional fantasy setting.
And it still is very traditional fantasy.
Their take on it though is that like they take all of these like pre-existing like elves
and orcs and like evil bullshit and volcanoes and demons and dragons and then put it in like
a modern setting where technology exists.
Like a suburban neighborhood.
Yeah.
And then also part of that world building is like, yeah, we're one of the only places
where we just allow teenagers to do this crazy shit.
And so the whole thing is fun.
It's absolutely incredible.
You can find all of Fantasy High for free on YouTube as well.
The rest of Dimension 20, which you can find a lot of free stuff from Dimension 20 on YouTube.
Yeah.
They'll usually do like the first free episode of every campaign that they do somewhere.
The full collection is behind a like $5 paywall a month on Dropout, which used to be the College
Humor Company has rebranded to Dropout.
They've got a bunch of other shows on there.
I personally think it's really worth it.
But I know that we have our own personal like favorites in Dimension 20.
Really quick though, specifically from College Humor, like the people that they feature a
lot and most often in like their primary campaigns.
So, Venerly Milligan is almost always the DM, Lou Wilson, Emily Oxford, Ali Beardsley,
Zach, Zach Leama and then Siobhan, right?
Siobhan.
So, Jesus Christ.
You would think with as many times as I've seen her name pronounced.
I'm so sorry if Siobhan, if you ever watch this.
Please watch this.
I'm stupid.
But Siobhan Thompson are like.
And Brian Murphy.
And Brian Murphy, yeah, are like originally part of that first like cast and then continued
to do some of the most popular ones.
Now they're starting to bring in different cast members for different campaigns.
They've got lots of different guest stars, gifts, DMs, Matt Mercer DMs one for them recently
because all of their, so Dimension 20 is the name of like the series and each they have
like campaigns or seasons and they're all completely different.
So there's been ones that have been set in space.
There's ones that have been like.
Starstruck Odyssey.
My personal favorite.
Candyland, Crown of Candy.
That's my favorite.
I'll let you talk about yours first though.
Crown of Candy was traumatizing and that's why I loved them most.
Oh, it's brilliant though.
Also, Hank Green was one of the most recent stars.
Yeah, on Mentopolis.
Which is like Hank Green.
And one of my favorites so far.
Yeah, that's a kids on bike system.
So.
Oh my God, Hank Green's a phenomenal player also.
Oh yeah, Hank Green is.
And his character is literally, he just info dumps on people to like traumatize them before
he kills them.
And it's perfect because it's just.
Incredible.
It's just Hank Green whipping out random fucking facts.
Oh, and seeing Hank Green and Britain and the Milligan.
Like I guess the other is insane.
It's so good.
And like the last episode, his character met another character who is the exact same
thing.
It was like hyper fixation and cataloging of niches and they literally just threw facts
at each other like Brennan and Hank just back and forth for like five minutes.
It was incredible.
Meeting of the minds.
Absolutely.
Your favorite.
My favorite campaign was Unsleeping City, which was basically.
Was their second one, right?
Yeah, I think it was.
They had the one shot.
But that Alex Mercer played an actual character there at the table.
That was like a one shot.
Everyone was level 20.
Yeah.
Super cool to watch by the way.
I mean, that's a great place to start if you're looking to see what a one shot could look
like because they're all level 20 characters.
They all play villains and like evil characters as well.
So it's kind of like this fun to play the bad guy type deal.
Yeah, it was really cool.
But Unsleeping City is my personal favorite.
It's kind of like it's.
It's magical New York.
It's like New York exists and it's this world that also has like magic underneath the surface
that people don't see and it deals.
It's the oddest mix of people.
It's like an aging Broadway star firefighter and a firefighter who's not magical.
He's not magical.
He's just a himbo.
He's got a magical acts a rat whole thing.
A man who was turned into a rat.
I'm going to have to.
Cogrash one of my favorite characters in any campaign ever.
He's just a fucking shape shifting rat.
He's so great.
And then Pete the plug who's a drug dealer who like finds out that he's got like.
Very important magic.
It's just the world building it is beautiful.
Oh, and my how did I forget like my favorite character is Emily's character who's basic.
I think she described it as like if Fran from the nanny went on like an Amy Winehouse Bender.
She's like she's from Staten Island and she just got dumped and it's just.
What was his lose character?
Kingston Brown.
He was one of my favorites.
He was amazing.
It's just such a solid campaign.
It's such a fun world.
I love the world building in it.
I love all the voices because I'm a sucker for like accents and things like that.
It was just it was just a really compelling story.
It was really fun and there were so many Easter eggs is like someone who had a lot of a lot
of great twists and hooks and story points and it flowed very naturally.
It was super solid, but I also really do like Crown of Candy, which hey, this shit sucks.
Do you have something you want to send in to make it better?
Criticism's topics you'd like to see discussed or an advertisement you'd like to run.
Maybe you even want to sponsor an episode.
If so, shoot us a message at mc460 at evansville.edu or dms on Instagram at crescent magazine
or we'll never get better like these fucking guys.
Yeah, I will gladly talk about so I I started we started watching dimension 20 on our own.
Um, it was when we met when we studied abroad together is when we both realized that we
watched it, but we watched it originally on our own and Crown of Candy was one of the
one of the first campaigns that I had listened to all the way through.
So I listened all the way through fantasy high.
I got through Unsleeping City.
I kind of like listening to blood keep a little bit and then Crown of Candy had come out.
So for any of you that have seen Game of Thrones or know what Game of Thrones is and what it's
known for, which is lots of sex, lots of incest, lots of murder, no holds, political
intrigue, favorite characters die every other episode.
Um, bloodlines.
Yeah, bloodlines, crazy like house feuds and all that all that nutty shit.
That's basically what Crown of Candy is, but the setting is Candyland.
So it's all the grit and seriousness and like turns and just unrelenting like danger, but
set in a world of candy.
Yeah, which I think is almost exactly how Brennan introduces it.
Like it's literally just set in a world of candy.
But it's not just candy as well.
It's like the whole food pyramid is there.
So you have the Dairy Isles.
Yeah, you have the Dairy Islands.
Um, you have the meatlanders.
You have the vegetarians.
You have the fruiterans.
Yeah, the fruiterans.
You can tell I've watched this multiple times.
Um, and it all centers on the main cast that comes back to play again.
Brennan, Brian, Saban, the whole rest of them, and they play like a royal family from Crown
of Candy going to like this first big, basically like inauguration of like the new king of
all of, um, I forget what the whole thing itself was called, but basically like of
everything, right?
Like the one person that's sitting on the top of it all.
Yeah.
Uh, and it starts off like very casual.
There's a lot of danger.
There's a lot of political intrigue.
Every one of Brennan's NPCs is on some fuck shit.
Absolutely.
Like he's always on some fuck shit and I really respect him for it.
I really like vibe with that, but Crown of Candy was another level and it's like some
of the coldest lines you've ever heard in your life.
One of the most unrelenting DMing and like ruthless plot points I think I've ever seen
or read.
It's so brutal.
Like a mild spoiler for like the second episode.
They're in a caravan.
They're all like relatively low level characters and Siobhan and Emily are playing two twins
and they're like the royal daughters.
I'm going to talk about a moment with those two that was one of my favorite moments for
many to keep in a lower level than like everyone else because they're children.
They do level up quicker than everyone else though.
So like they're trying like they do like the leaps to like make up in the levels.
But yeah, that was such a cool fucking touch from like a DM and a plan perspective of being
lower than everyone.
It was so cool.
It made him so well.
But like in the first combat encounter before it's even a combat encounter, one of them
was like hanging out of the carriage.
Yeah.
It shot with an arrow, dies.
Dies immediately.
Being in a loop teenager and then immediately just gets fucking socked by an arrow and goes
limp.
Yeah.
It comes back.
And there was like a real moment where that character could have died immediately.
Yeah.
And the amount of like assassination attempts that happen on like the Kings, Lou Wilson
are insane and you don't see any of them coming.
It's some of my favorite role playing from Zach Leama in like any campaign I've ever
watched him do when he did lapel, which is a chocolate fucking bunny, which is hilarious.
He has this moment with this carrot.
So I think it's like Sir Carrots in Deep Root.
Again, I've watched this too many times.
And he slaps a carrot across the face.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to say what he says in that moment because I would really
encourage you to watch it, but it's one of the most like loud, holy shit moments of the
entire campaign.
But my favorite role playing moment from that happened between the two sisters with Siobhan
Siobhan.
God, you literally you.
She's one of your favorite.
You talk about it.
Shevon, Siobhan, Siobhan, Siobhan and Emily as the two sisters.
I'm not going to say what happens, but there's a really, really, really fucked up like emotional
height to the campaign that basically kicks off the whole second act.
And it's the first time I've seen players cry at the table, like genuinely sobbing, crying
because of what happened at the table.
And I had like goosebumps watching it.
Like it made me cry because it's like, it's some of the best role playing that I've seen
it like the world building, the connections between the characters like that cast just
does such a good fucking job of getting into character as like trained actors and voice actors.
Yeah.
And I mean, a lot of them have backgrounds and like acting or improv or writing.
And I do want to quick shout out to critical role because I'm sitting through and like
watching the first campaign and stuff.
Emotional moments at the table where it's very similar to that height and it's just
like sobbing at the table and it's like, wow, these like silly games can really like affect
these silly games, these silly basement games can really make you feel things.
Like, I mean, I'm at the table crying constantly because I'm a theater and I do that.
But it's dimension 20 is phenomenal.
I don't think I'm like, I don't know.
Yeah.
Moving on from dimension 20 eventually, right?
So we do watch dimension 20 more than critical role, which should be obvious at this point.
Not to say one is better than the other.
It's just it's a personal.
It's a personal preference.
It's a personal taste thing.
But truly, I don't believe one is better than the other.
I think everyone that participates in both is amazing.
It's just one's a little more traditional, one's a little less.
Yeah.
Then the other kind of form of actual plays out there are podcast actual plays.
I'm so I know that sounds this is going to sound silly to say is someone who's currently
hosting a podcast.
I struggle a lot of the time to listen to podcasts just because I need visual stimuli.
Yeah, I don't listen to podcast that often, if ever really.
Yeah, I've listened to a couple, but at ADHD, I need something like happening, which is
why I kind of lean towards.
I'm ashamed to say that one of the only podcasts I've ever listened to was Joe Rogan.
Not because I agree with with his views, but if you just like interesting conversations
between interesting people, regardless of how bad shit and saying they are, the amount
of people that he has had on from like all different perspectives and professions and
worldviews is impressive.
There are like something like going on 2000 episodes and they're all like two and a half
hours long.
Yeah.
So I've listened to this.
That is also the same explanation my dad gives for listening to it.
Yeah.
Because I mean, I think as a as a tangent, as somebody that listens to Joe Rogan, I feel
like a lot of the times like the normal person that's not there to like watch and listen
to the politics and like be like affirmed in their views.
He is such a good host for the conversations that he has and it sucks because like he has
a lot of not so great views, but he's also really open minded.
And then he brings on like astrophysicists and vegans and vegetarians and far right
wing and far left wing, he'll bring those people to the table at the same time and moderate
a conversation or a debate.
And it's just if you ignore half the shit that comes out of his mouth, which he does
frequently say he doesn't know anything, which is why he's bringing people on his podcast.
It's enjoyable to just hear people from across the table talk.
I get that.
That's my tiny little side note about how I justify watching Joe Rogan.
We'll go back into talking about actual plays.
So actual plays, which we've had a couple of people ask us if we're going to do an actual
play.
We might get maybe in the future.
Yeah.
But for sure, we're going to spend a couple of episodes talking about our campaigns that
we've done previously.
I'll say this room is just very small.
I don't know how we would get any.
Yeah, we'd have to like borrow audio equipment and then soundproof the basement and it would
be a hot mess.
Maybe you want to keep your eye out because that's something I've been interested in.
The adventure zone, dungeons and daddies.
Yes.
The adventure zone is from, if you know the McElroy brothers from the My Brother, My
Brother and Me podcast, which is one that I've listened to, it is them and their dad
playing Dungeons and Dragons.
They're really good.
I don't think I've listened to all that much of the adventure zone, but I know a ton of
people.
They're the ones that did Tiny Heist?
Yeah, they were in Tiny Heist on Dimension 20.
So if you want to see one where they, where you can see like visual while they're playing,
which is another very fast sidebar about Dimension 20, Rick Perry is the person in charge of like
the art for it in the minis on that show.
In the set design.
In sane.
It is the, I can't even verbalize.
They put off some of their campaigns.
Close this podcast and open up on Google and look up Dimension 20 minis and like Rick Perry's
work.
In set design.
It is phenomenal.
This last one from Mentopolis is probably one of the most intricate I've ever seen.
Oh my God, it's so cool looking.
It's like a Rue Goldberg machine.
Yeah.
Mentopolis has got a crazy set design.
Also, Crowd of Candy has one of the nuttiest set designs.
Yeah.
The fantasy hive was pretty good, but that was before they like really, really got into
it.
And I think they've now started putting off campaigns before like so that way they can
get Rick time to build sets in minis.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But back to the actual place.
The adventure zone is really good.
I've got a lot of mutuals who are really into it.
So I'm going to hype that up.
Dungeons and daddies.
I've got, I've listened to like the first two episodes.
I'm still working my way through it, but the cast is really solid.
I also know a lot of people who listen to that and hype it up a lot.
It's about dads who get sucked into basically a game of D&D and they try to save their kid.
That sounds actually really cool.
Yeah.
You should check it out.
I guess I should.
And we are trying to listen to more.
Yeah.
We just, we both suffer from ADHD.
Yeah.
And so it's like, we're going to get 20 minutes into a podcast episode and then we're going
to hop to something else.
So bear with us.
But then two others, not another D&D podcast, which is hosted by Brian Murphy.
Bad pod.
So that's going to have Brian Murphy and Emily Axford as well as a bunch of other wonderful
people in it.
And then worlds beyond numbers, which is a newer one that we are about to pull the trigger
and get the, yeah, subscription, the Patreon for, get to the little playwall.
And that's Erica Ishii, Abrea Einger, Lou Wilson and Brennan Lay Mulligan.
So the four of my personal favorite people in this space ever.
Yeah.
And then the next kind of area or like topic would be kind of like, how do you play a D&D?
What do you need to play?
So this is our little equipment list.
Source books, which we talked about a little bit before.
You can buy physical copies.
You can buy digital copies.
You know, you could look online and see what you find for free.
Yeah.
Peruse the internet and just innocently see what's out there floating around.
So for some source books, I know there's like DM ones and player specific ones.
Yeah.
So there are like, there's the players handbook.
There's also, and this is the ones that I'm going to list now are specifically from Wizards
of the Coast under like Dungeons and Dragons, but there's like the players handbook.
There's the Dungeons and Masters handbook.
There's, oh, what is it?
There's like a shit ton of different names for all the different expansions they've done.
There's like Xanathar's Guide to everything.
And Tosca's Cauldron of everything.
Monster's Manual.
So generally, the only one that you're going to need ever as a player, as long as your
DM has the resources they need for the campaign beforehand, the only one that you ever could
even think to look at as a player would be the players handbook.
And that's if it's your first time.
It walks you through basic character creation and how to do that on a character sheet.
It also talks about action economy, like what your actions are in combat, what initiative
is it walks you through what all your individual scores are.
Like what intelligence means, what wisdom means, what charisma means, and how to add
up those modifiers, which we recently had to do for the first time because we've been
spoiled by fun digital apps that do it for us.
But like, I don't, I've never encouraged my players to have a source book outside of that
because if you're, I don't want to say if you're a good DM, that sounds the latest.
If you're a good DM, quote on quote, you don't necessarily need to give your players a handbook
unless you just want them to be able to do some of that world building in advance.
Like I set a campaign in there, or I set part of a campaign in Theros and so I encouraged
them to go and read bits from that source book to understand more about the gods that
exist in that area and like how the system works.
And it ended up for like some, when you're doing it in a way like that, there was a pretty
cool moment where I was playing a character who was, how do I put it?
We'll talk about her eventually.
She was a thief, she was a liar, she was a cheat.
She was, everything shitty embodied but like a good person really far underneath the surface.
Very, very far.
But when we were like, you know, kind of chilling around, I was, my character was trying to
find a way to bring someone back from the dead.
I was flipping through and I found something about, oh well you, er, I went to like a cleric
office and the clerics were like, well you can ask a god for a favor and I was like,
well I don't have a good relationship with any of those.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there just so happened to be a god who literally cheated death in the setting of
Theros.
It was absolutely, it was, uh, Phenax got a deception and I like read the source book
obsessively and I was like, I brought that up at the table and I think that that ended
up being a really, really cool, uh, kind of point.
So you know, at the same time, I'm someone who likes to read and be like over informed
to the board.
You just gotta be careful about who you give EDFs and who you give source material to because
there are some motherfuckers like the person sitting next to me that if you give them a
source book and you'd say you read pages one through five and you shut the rest of it out,
they'll read the whole thing.
And then curiosity killed the campaign because now they understand your stat blocks you're
using.
They know the campaign hooks you might be pulling from.
They know that the locations on the maps you're gonna take them to.
Oh yeah.
So that's why I personally, uh, warred against handing people source books.
If you're doing it on a PDF, do like export to PDF or print to PDF and give them specific
pages you want them to see.
Which is what he had to do.
Yeah, which is what I did.
I'm a problem and I know I'm a problem, but I will also hype up for players.
If you're looking at like Xanthar's or Tasha's, they've got more like spells in there and
more race options, which I always like kind of like experimenting and going a little at
the box with those.
And it has some of my personal favorite spells.
Like I love Tasha's hideous laughter is one of my favorite spells and I keep trying to
use it and it keeps failing.
But one of these days it's gonna work.
Yeah, and what I will say about all of the information that I just talked about that
you could get from players handbook or anything like a beginner's manual.
There was not a single aspect of DND 5e when it comes to character creation or what you
need to know as a player that you cannot just fucking Google.
That is good.
Like straight up if you just Google like Paladin class breakdown or a Paladin advancement table
or wizard advancement table or wizard spell list.
The internet is a huge hub.
We use wiki.a lot.
Yeah.
DND.Wiki.
Or I guess wiki.dnd like any of those websites.
Wizards, I will say has their own like hosting site and app called DND Beyond.
There is a slight paywall for that.
The convenience of DND Beyond if you have the money to spend on it is that it rolls in
every source book that they've ever published as long as you buy them.
You do still have to buy them onto a player app that you can then use to do the character
creation in the building.
And it saves some of the time with trying to figure out what plugs into what because
not every app is going to be as is updated and concise as DND Beyond can be.
But if you just need the information wrong like if you just need the advancement table
or just need a list of spells.
Just Google it.
Truly just rebate them put in what you need and there will probably be a wiki. for it.
Yeah.
I personally prefer using like wiki. for my spell list because it has everything broken
down in classes in levels and everything and just a very concise.
I go to a website I think it's called like DND RPG dot bot or something like that and
it literally it does break down by like what I don't know who the author is of the website
or the publisher and what gives them the authority to do this.
But they break down every spell available for each class by level and then they break
down like the usefulness and they highlight them and like red being one star.
It's if it's blue it's got four stars.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
And so I use that to get a bit more of like an opinionated idea about it.
But when it comes to source books when it comes to material as a player I truly don't
believe you need a single goddamn thing as long as your DM has what you need in advance.
This is a game where you could dump hundreds of dollars and have a lot of physical things
into it.
Or you can spend nothing.
I think I am.
I'm not I'm not going to say that.
I was going to say something but I'm not going to say that.
I've dumped the most money personally into dice.
Yeah.
Dice is another thing that you will need which also if you don't want to RPGs are going to
have you.
Yeah.
And so they're going to vary.
Traditionally it's D4 a D6 a D8 a D10 a D12 and a D20 but not all of them are going to
use those.
And also if you don't want to spend the money on dice which fair some of them are extremely
expensive you can get them from ranging like in six dollars up to like a hundred and fifty
dollars.
Yeah.
My fiance to my fiance again for the second time she bought me a really nice pair of
dice for my birthday they think they were like a hundred and twenty or something like
that.
They were like custom resin they had this really like beautiful inlay they're like blue black
and gold I'm obsessed with the movie Avatar we had just watched Avatar way of water and
like all of those colors were very prominent and so she thought it would be like really
cool to get me a set of dice that are kind of like reminiscent from that movie and that's
exactly what I think of them every time I roll them they have like a liquid core in
them too.
But yeah there's no there's no ceiling to how expensive and how fancy and how custom
you can get with your dice but there definitely is a floor I mean some game shops like we
went to several we were in the UK I don't think I don't think I've seen this anywhere
around here but like sometimes they'll just have a bin of random misfit dice and you can
just like throw them together and they're like 10 20 cents a piece.
Yeah.
And they have similar things here but they're not.
Yeah.
I think the cheapest set I've seen around here is like five or six dollars and it's just
for like a very generic like mono colored or mono colored and speckled set of dice
but it's all you need.
And you can also just straight up go to Google and say roll like a d20.
Tell Google to roll.
And it'll do that for you.
And there are apps too that are designed specifically for that kind of thing if you
prefer it in more of like a sleek like on the go like kind of phone format.
Yeah.
Very nice.
I personally they call me a dice goblin.
I do not like.
She is a fucking dice goblin.
It's something that they've talked about on dimension 20 several times.
She's a fucking dice goblin.
She's a dice goblin.
She literally went to the game store earlier last week.
Okay.
Well and she was like if you're there when you're there be on the lookout for this color
dice for this new character that I'm playing.
I do but I buy a new set of dice for every character which I think is cool.
I think that's fine.
And then yes.
Do I also have like four or five six seven sets outside of that.
Yes.
Also are they only played two characters.
Right.
She has 10 sets.
She has two characters.
You do the math on how many of those sets were for characters.
Okay.
I did buy two sets for Magnolia.
Because you know sometimes if I'm like well she had a big story beat I'm going to buy
a new set of dice and they're all in the same color scheme.
They're all pink or like blue purple gold like flowy.
Yeah.
And but I like all my stuff to be matching and pink is my lifestyle color.
Yeah.
Really quick for me hop into the next thing I realized what I didn't talk about was what
and I'll do this very quickly what you need is a DM and turn to source books.
Source books for DMs can be a lot more crucial than for players like as a player I truly don't
believe you need a single thing as long as you have access to the Internet and your DM
knows enough about the game.
As a DM you will feel like I promise you will feel very pressured to buy a source book and
that's because unless you are somebody who enjoys world building and is good at it and
has spent a lot of time doing it it's incredibly intimidating and like you're not going to be
a Tolkien you're not going to be like a JJR Martin you're not like you're not Scorsese
you're not Christopher Nolan like please be aware that you don't need to have something
that's laid out A to Z.
One of my favorite stories to tell what this specifically is one that Brennan was talking
about one of his first campaigns when he started getting into D&D was he had the whole thing
written this like massive complex story start to finish and then basically there was one
decision that seemed pretty straightforward that his players needed to make to kick off
the rest of the campaign and they made one that he did not write or account for and then
had no material to work with.
And I'm so glad that I had watched and listened to that before I became a DM because it really
helped me not over prepare but in terms of source books in terms of source materials
do the same thing we talked about with players just search up what you're looking for maybe
throw in the word PDF behind it maybe you don't that's up to you it depends on how ethical
your feeling and then there you go you have everything you need don't please please please
don't play story point for story point out of a source book unless you're just that uncomfortable
with it because I promise you will hit a wall very quickly where your players want to completely
go off the beaten path that your source book is telling you to go down and it's going to
be really difficult to get them back on I mean every group is a little different some
some get more engaged with that traditional storytelling but a lot of the storytelling
in source books is very one dimensional and so it's it gets really easy for players to
find ways to poke holes in that and to just fly off in another direction so if you're
going to use a source book use it loosely use the maps use the world building use the
NPCs and the stat blocks and the gods and this and that but try to avoid just straight
up ripping the story from the book and having the players play that out let them tell their
own story and that honestly takes so much away from you as a DM in terms of responsibilities
you if you let your players tell the story at the table and just improv and role play
which is easier said than done but truly just have the world in your head and then let the
players figure out the story for themselves and insert your hooks in your beats and your
points and you'll find that the players will we'll find the story that we want to tell
yeah 100% like and it feels more engaging I think as players and I don't know from the
DM side but it's really interesting to also be like I had a hand in creating this there
will be another episode where we do more breakdowns on what like a world building is like as a
DM and stuff like that so I won't I won't continue to like belabor the point right but when it
comes to source books again for the 16th time don't buy them if you don't absolutely need
them yeah another thing that you might need our friends and a DM or just people to play
with which we kind of talked about earlier before you will run into scheduling problems
it will be an issue know that I tried to do a fucking Google calendar and insert everyone's
availability into it and I thought I was gonna have a seizure looking at it like it was bad
it is always going to be an issue we've got two of the people that we play with work night
shift and then some of us swing shift the other one works straight up night shift and
none of the days of line it's gonna be something that happens sometimes you just have to play
D&D at eight in the morning on Saturdays next thing you'll need is a notebook or a laptop
notebook if you're old-fashioned if you want to do pencil and paper you're more than welcome
to do pencil and paper I personally lean more towards a laptop because I'm an obsessive
note-taker and I like to type up all of my notes really quickly and I feel like it's
easier sometimes to find information on here because character sheets can look very very
overwhelming I just designed new character sheets for the campaign we're playing currently
because it was just kind of a stroke to look at you're packing so much information on one
thing so I'm always gonna hype up apps and the internet and the computer yeah I use a
combination between a notebook and a laptop yeah and a calculator you know I'm bad at
math I failed math and high so that's a Google see your calculator app on your iPhone or
Android so when I roll you know like 8d6 plus 2d4 and then of course you're always gonna
have that person that wants to count up on the dice themselves and be like look I learned
how to do quick math yes we have several people at the table there like that and I'm like
I can type in as you're typing in the numbers in your calculator they're like 5 plus 6 plus
7 plus 10 plus 25 plus 67 and it's like homie like I'm literally putting it in the calculator
you're gonna have to do this again yeah gonna look to me at the end of this and go am I
right we can avoid this whole interaction let people add up their own numbers unless
they ask for help yeah yeah yeah then kind of after that our character sheets in a character
is kind of the last thing yeah well actually before that there's the debate with many's
I personally like many's or having some type of like physical thing but they are not necessary
at all I don't think critical role uses many's at all you can do like full imagination and
D&D is still very much one of those games where as long as you have a little bit of game
sense you can do the whole thing in your fucking head you don't have to have a battle map you
don't have to have a dry erase board you don't have to have a fun TV screen you don't even
have to have like a digital thing like as long as you got your imagination and you can think
about shit you've seen in a video game or movie you're solid which like you really if
you want something physical and you're looking for like the easiest option a whiteboard yeah
whiteboard erase markers and then like monopoly pieces you can get your many's bundles of battle
maps for like 15 bucks off Amazon and it's like six battle maps and each of them are
dry erase with your little your little five by your squares and then they flip and then
you have another biome or like kind of environment on the back those are easy if you can show
up like 16 bucks right now we we've pimped the basement out play on a shitty TV yeah
we're playing on an old TV and we just hook up laptops to it and it makes us feel super
classy in like high class like those digital like game tops which are not necessary but
also I'm obsessed with all of the like fancy D&D and then click side now with digital
digital tabletops you can literally make any number of maps and play like it's a rabbit
hole it really is rabbit hole but the amount of applications and websites that exist for
you to play everything fully digitally and have that experience be absolutely fucking
nutty yeah is unreal so if you just even if you guys want to play in person set everybody
up with a laptop or a cell phone or some kind of a screen and then you can do it all there
for free I mean obviously you need a laptop with them you know the phones whatever but
yeah that's that's the other way you don't want to just try and figure out okay this
person's diagonally 15 feet for me so what is my spell range diagonal means they're 10
feet not actually five feet what does that even mean yeah that can get difficult but
it's doable yeah so then yeah last things you'll need are a character and character sheets
which is what we're gonna kind of like talk about next episode because it's a whole can
of worms oh yeah I personally I spend a lot of time on character creation I spend a lot
of time on background that's unnecessary yeah then you have people like one of the one of
the people that plays at our table is also one of our our roommates Dakota who will make
like 75 characters in 30 minutes that are all like slightly different like not even that
difference slightly different than the person there than literally the character he made
two minutes ago yeah but it's like a completely different class and race and he's just like
cool I'm ready to go like cool you want to like TPK us you want to wipe the whole party
I got another one right here yeah it's like playing cards oh yeah yeah yeah we'll also
deal with talking about you know like classes and races and subclasses and all of those
like fun things which are all things that go into character creation which make it more
than just filling out a random sheet because you can make you can be as invested in your
character as you want to be I choose to be over invested yeah and work I mean we'll talk
about it next time but like don't be afraid to ask your DM yeah be afraid to watch a video
don't you know like adventuring Academy with dimension 20 anything on credit roll like
just you don't know how to do it look at the fuck up it's a big hobby people have done
it for years before us well it's about that time that it is thank y'all for tuning in
for another exciting episode of table talk like I totally remembered to say in the intro
I'm Maddie and this is Robert and what do we have coming up next week so we are going
to continue our all about D&D series and specifically talk about world building so we originally
wanted to do character creation for you guys but we don't have our hands on any like rate
recording equipment right now so we're gonna put that off video specifically yeah for yeah
for video because clearly the audio recording anyways we want you guys to be able to follow
along as we literally do the character creation and so yeah we're gonna we're gonna switch
it up into world building first and talk about that from like a DM's perspective and then
like how as a player you work that in and it's kind of a situation on which one comes
first because without a world you don't know how to properly guide your characters or your
players are making a PC but also without your PC you don't really know what direction to
take the world in so it's kind of like a which came first taking the eggs with you the world
building is one of my favorite things about D&D so I am super excited see y'all next Thursday
bye bye