Hello, players who spend hours on character creation only to be killed in session 3.
And DMs who will spend hours working with a player just for them to play fucking Batman.
Welcome back to Table Talk.
I'm Maddie Conway.
And I'm Robert Lopez.
Look at that.
I got the intro this time.
Get it.
What are we talking about today?
We are talking about character creation.
This one is probably going to be a two-parter just because we still don't have the only
fuck camera, the videoing equipment.
Just because we want to be able to physically walk you guys through what that character
creation looks like on a sheet of which there are many.
Of course, just the traditional D&D, the Coast one that we'll probably use or use one adjacent
to that to walk you guys through.
But the first part for today, we're just going to talk about flavor.
And also what races you can choose from, things about classes, backgrounds, how to make your
character dynamic, which is a scary word for most first-time players.
I don't think most people that are in the D&D space that create characters know what
that word means.
No offense to everybody.
But there are certain people that play the game that are responsible for Wizards of the
Coast, including flaws, bonds, character traits on their sheet because they know that there
are motherfuckers that don't know how to role-play.
And we'll do a whole episode about role-playing and things at the table because that is, I
feel like my two specialties coming into this are making characters and also role-playing
because of actor brain.
Being a theater kid.
Character creation is one of my favorite things in the world.
I'm someone who, like, if there's a game where you get to make a character and design
your avatar, I'm not playing the game.
I'm playing Sims with that game.
I have fun facts.
I have 10,000 mods, over 10,000 mods on my Sims 4 game, and my computer screams at me
in begs to be put down any time I try to open it.
She's got old Yeller for a laptop, dude.
And my car and her laptop are in a race to see which one croaks first.
Oh, the car's going first.
The car's definitely going first, but that's neither here nor there.
So we're going to start with races.
At some point, we'll do, like, in a later episode, we'll talk about kind of like some
of our favorite character builds, like which races really love, why we love them, getting
to all the subraces and subclasses, but today's just going to be like a high-level overview
with maybe a little bit of, and I really like that subrace, or I really like that subclass.
Next.
Yes.
So in the player's handbook, there are nine races.
Outside of those nine races, they have then added 34 official races outside of that.
We're going to cover the nine in the player's handbook for now.
I mean, I'll probably mention my favorite ones from outside of the player's handbook,
but we're not going to be going into detail about those.
But those nine races are going to be kind of the base.
Those are going to be the common races.
That's where you're going to find in like just about every universe in most towns.
Some, it depends on who your DM is for how common some of these races are.
Yeah.
And every race has like their own backstory in terms of like where they sit in the current
lore and canon, I guess you can say, and Wizards of the Coast, D&D Beyond, official like setting
or setting's plural.
Every book is basically a different fucking plane, but they're all like, they all kind
of happen simultaneously.
But like on a certain plane in a certain book, Dragonborn might be like, or Scaly Motherfuckers
that we'll talk about first, Dragonborn might be like completely extinct or might have been
like hunted out of the realm because they're kind of like dragons and in every match.
Or just not welcome because they're kind of like, Dragonborns are.
Because they look like reptiles.
Yeah.
They look like dragon people.
They look like a, don't they literally come from like fucking a dragon?
Yeah, I can talk about more, I guess some of the background behind Dragonborn just because
having walked the same person through multiple Dragonborn creation, like characters, it's
a favorite race.
I'd say it's a fan favorite just because it, well, they're dragons.
So the whole thing behind Dragonborn is that basically, and anybody that listens to this
that knows more than me, I'm sorry, I'm not going to correct myself, they are like the
distant, distant, distant, distant, distant, very distant, like essentially the difference
between like apes and people, if you believe in evolution.
That's like the difference between Dragonborn and straight up dragons.
They've basically like, after breeding with different races, some magical bullshit, some
bloodline crossing, they were deluded to a, deluded, right?
Jesus Christ.
Yes, I realize it sounds fucked up.
They're like deluded down to being more like humanoid.
They're still like on average six feet tall, close to 250, like it doesn't matter.
They're big guys.
Yeah.
And they also age super quick.
So they go from like, they're considered like full adults by the time they hit 15 and
they're teenagers when they're three.
Yeah.
No, it's crazy.
They grow up incredibly fast.
I haven't pulled up now and I was just reading that for the first time.
Yeah.
No, they grow up incredibly quick.
That's insane.
So then their main thing is that you can choose an ancestry, right?
So I mentioned that like they're the like ancient, ancient, ancient grand, grand, grand,
grand, grand children of like original dragons and so different like lineages of dragons,
sometimes they're called clans.
Our villages have like a different ancestral, like original dragon.
And we'll talk more about all the different dragons.
There are like, I'm sure we go over like a monstrous episode, but basically you get
to choose an element that your ancestry, like what main dragon did your guy come from?
And then depending on which like dragon you choose, it could be gold, it could be bronze,
copper, white, blue, green, red, the list goes on.
You get a different resistance.
So damage resistance, right?
Like acid, lightning, fire, or then.
Yeah.
So if you choose a red dragon, which is the most popular common kind of dragon that was
into the coast puts on everything.
Because it's iconic, you know, for the, for the hobby, you get resistance to fire damage.
And that means that anytime somebody does fire damage to you, you have it automatically.
Which is really nice if you know that you're going to be fighting something like demons
or devils or anyone.
If you're playing in like a fire heavy setting or even just a fantasy heavy setting, you
will always be the dragon.
There's always going to be some fucking fire.
Yeah.
And then you get a breath weapon that comes along with that that basically means you get
to breathe the element that you pick.
So if you choose blue, blue is lightning, you get lightning breath, and then you get
like a different damage that comes with that and a different element and that sort of stuff.
And it's always nice to have a natural weapon.
And to have a natural resistance as well.
Like it's pretty nice.
You get a bonus to your strength by two and a charisma by one.
So they have sort of like mechanical bonus to, or like a feel for that.
And we'll talk about ability scores more in the next episode.
But essentially you have your six categories, wisdom, intelligence, strength.
Oh wait, wisdom, intelligence, strength.
Wait, let me get there.
Holy fuck, charisma.
I was about to say, can I jump in here?
Constitution.
Yep.
Dexterity.
Yes.
There you go.
So those are your six ability scores.
They sound exactly like what they do.
Wisdom is how intuitive you are.
Dexterity is how nimble and fast you are, how quick you are to maneuver.
Strength is just how raw you are.
Like how big are your biceps.
Intelligence is like how hard of a hit you can take.
Although the funny thing is, dexterity is what determines how hard it is for somebody
to hit you.
Not your constitution.
Which is so confusing.
Silly.
And we'll talk about it later.
But it's just funny how thick you are is not what determines how hard you get hit.
It's a little ridiculous.
Intelligence are things like magic.
And for some reason I think nature and animal handling.
No, nature's wisdom, animal handling is intelligence.
Which is.
Religion is intelligence.
Medicine is wisdom, I think.
Yeah, medicine's wisdom.
These are the things that we're talking about by the way.
Those are called skills.
So there are skills that fall under each ability tree.
And those like your, those skills determine how well like what you add when you roll
a d20.
Yeah, so if you roll an ability check, then you'll add whatever that is to it.
You can get things like proficiency bonuses or just natural bonuses to certain things.
Which we will go into more detail in like the character episode.
You're going to hear that a lot.
Because there are a lot of things that we don't want to touch until we can physically
walk you through it.
But yeah.
Those are just things to keep in mind.
Those are kind of what all the stats do.
And charisma is also like.
Charisma is just how, how well can you talk?
Can you roll to get out of a situation by talking to somebody?
Deception, persuasion, performance.
Intimidation is also charisma stat.
I refuse to play a low charisma character.
And I don't know why because I'm not charismatic in real life.
But like I will die before I play a low charisma character.
A low charisma character.
So yeah, Dragonborn, every one of these races is going to have some kind of a plus to their
ability stats right out of the gate.
And that means that whenever you start assigning scores later on the character sheet, you get
an automatic bump to those things.
Which is very nice because, no, that's getting too much into the game.
That's why I'm just trying to hit the high level stuff.
Next.
Dwarves.
They're hearty, heavy, and handy.
I wrote that description myself.
We had one person play, it wasn't one of the people who were given.
In the one shot.
Yeah.
In the one shot, same as the dwarf.
That's the only dwarf that we've come in contact with.
It's a very traditional fantasy race, but no one has played one yet.
Besides the one shot that we did.
So dwarves are exactly what I said they were.
They are very thick, they're short.
I'm pretty sure they have same movement speed, maybe slightly less.
I'll pull it up with my little laptop here to make sure I'm not telling you some bullshit.
Yeah, slightly less, 25 instead of 30.
So they can move 25 feet in turn instead of 30.
But they never reduce speed by wearing heavy armor.
Yeah, so sometimes when you put on heavy things like it would in real life, it's going to
make you a lot slower and dwarves because they are so goddamn hardy.
They don't care.
Their legs are already stubbing short enough that there's no, like they're not going to
be thrown off by that armor.
They get their bonus to constitution.
So they're big boys.
They're usually the races that you'll pair with like fun like tinkerer classes like
Artificer.
They, they have a lot of different fun bonuses.
They have a couple of their sub races or they're like special, I guess, different differentiation
is like hill versus mountain.
So you have a hill dwarf and you have a mountain dwarf and then you have what are called Dwargar.
I'm not going to get into the specifics of the sub races because you don't really have
time for that.
But each sub race for a particular race itself basically comes with a different set of bonuses
that get added on or flavor text or background.
So when I mentioned the ancestry, like the element you can choose for your dragonborn,
that's a sub race.
It just so happens for dragonborn.
There are a lot more important than they are for other races.
Yeah, some of them are a little bit more throwaway like some of the elf ones.
Yeah, like a hill versus mountain dwarf might be like you don't have to suffer whatever,
whatever on mountainous terrain.
I'll say hill dwarf, you get like a plus one to wisdom and your hit point max goes up
one every level and then the mountain dwarf strength goes, oh, strength goes up by two
and proficiency with light and medium are.
Yeah.
So your sub races do end up making a lot of difference in the long run just for the sake
of keeping this episode to a decent time.
You're not going to hit on all of them because some of these races have a lot.
Oh, yeah.
That's why I skipped over dragonborn.
There are like nine or 10.
Dragonborn, tiefling elves, there's a hundred of them.
I don't even think I put tieflings on here.
I've got tieflings.
Oh, sick.
We have paper.
We have our computers in laptops.
We have notes because this is a research-having episode.
Be it doors or your tinky little Lord of the Rings mountain boys.
They come with a proficiency in one of your choice of tools.
So that goes into like that tinkering thing.
You get advantage on saving throws against poison.
You get proficiency with any axes or hammers.
It looks like.
Which is pretty nice to get is just like a standard race.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're also in that traditional fantasy.
They used to have vast kingdoms and were on top of the world and then some magic bullshit
went wrong and now they're scattered throughout the lands and various villages.
Only that's the kind of vibe you're going to get in a fantasy universe with the dwarves.
They're always put in this used to be the absolute pinnacle of civilization and then
something stupid happened and now they're scattered.
Which happens to so many races.
It does in a lot of different settings.
It really just depends on what planet setting you're in and they're like, well actually
this race got nuked.
Oh yeah.
And there's some that are a lot more common in other places than others.
Like coming up to our next race, elves.
We played in, we played some in Eberron and in the city that we were playing in.
Elves were like the minority, which is really odd.
Yeah, humans were the like the norm.
Yeah.
On top.
I love playing elves.
Yeah.
Mostly because.
You want to talk about elves?
Yes.
So elves are exactly kind of what you're thinking of.
Like they're normally like slender and taller and they look like, really they look like
whatever you want them to look like.
But like the motherfucker from.
Lord of the Rings.
Yeah.
Like a list?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Like that kind of thing.
Like the tall, like bleach blonde hair, pretty, can jump on rocks, midair.
Yeah.
I mean they get plus two to decks.
So they can jump and do that bullshit.
They're also annoying and they never have to sleep.
Yes.
They instead of, so every character has to take like long rests and everything.
And like, you know, sleep, eat, breathe.
Elves instead of sleeping, they meditate for four hours and that is equal to a long rest
from them.
So they could technically do a long rest and then while the rest of the party is resting,
they would have like four hours at that time.
They'd have like an extra couple of hours to go.
And then this will be a mechanic when we start talking about just like playing in a campaign.
But when you don't sleep for reference, why that's beneficial, you start to suffer points
of exhaustion past, I think, 24 hours.
It's really, it really depends on your DM.
Like some DMs are going to be hardline.
We've hit 23 hours and 59 minutes.
If you guys don't sleep right now, point of exhaustion.
Other people are going to be like, well, you guys had coffee in the morning.
You're okay.
There's adrenaline in your system.
But what a point of exhaustion does is for every point of exhaustion, you start to suffer
some serious disadvantages.
I think there's like five levels.
Three, I think.
Yeah, you don't get that many.
So like, I think at level one, you start getting disadvantage on certain checks at
level two.
I think your movement speed is halved and you keep the disadvantages.
And then I think when you hit three levels, you just die.
Yeah.
Yeah, you just, you die.
You hit death saving throws.
So that's why the not having to sleep slash sleeping very a lot shorter than other people
is beneficial.
Yeah.
Because sometimes sleep is a place a big thing.
Yeah.
It's also kind of a fun role play moment because it was always a thing of like when our party
was resting.
I've played it.
People always role play it in like a fucking edgy way.
It's like, I'm going to just meditate with my eyes open and stare at the door and make
sure no monsters try to jump us in the middle of the night.
See, that's the polite way to do it.
Mine was more like, I'm just going to wander.
Another thing about elves that I really like their age, so they can age up to about like
750 years old as long as they're like in their like home.
Yeah.
So elves like a lot of other races have home planes or home realms.
It just kind of depends.
And elves when they are living actively on their home plan or home realm do not.
Yeah.
They're not aged.
They're effectively immortal.
Yeah.
If they're in their home world, they're immortal outside of their home world.
They still age slowly.
Yeah.
Very slowly.
They just age adulthood around the age of 100 and they live to be about 750 when they're
outside of their home world.
Is that anointing and stereotype you always see on the shows and it's like, oh, you're
like a kid.
And they're like, yeah, I am.
I'm like 160 years old and everybody in the party is like their mouth drops and go, you're
160 years old.
Grow the fuck up, bro.
No one does that at the table, by the way, when you're like playing a young character
and you're like, I'm actually hundreds of years old.
Yeah.
When you like play it like an edgy vampire and they're like, wow, you look like a kid
and you're like, I'm 670 and they're like, cool, cool beans, bro.
Yeah, like no one cares.
Yep.
I can kill people just the same as you.
Yeah.
Also, they get a fate ancestry, which you get advantage on saving throws against being
charmed and magic can't put you to sleep.
That shit when it comes in clutch comes in clutch, especially when you're dealing with
stupid magical bullshit bad guys.
Yeah.
I have beef with that one.
Very nice.
I have a proficiency in perception and there's a ton of different sub races for elves.
There's high elves, which are like the hoity-toity, the ones you think of.
They're the very uppity ones.
They get like a plus to intelligence and then they get like a can trip.
And then there's also dark elves, which I.
There's like almost always going to be an inherently more evil sub race or sub sub race
like the Dwargar that I briefly mentioned for dwarves.
These are the faction or I guess the sub race of dwarves that like to live under the regular
fucking people in a place called the under dark.
Is that what it is?
Yeah.
It was in the D&D movie if you saw that.
It's when they went down and there were the Mind Flayers and the Dragons.
So those edgy motherfuckers like to live there and they're inherently evil for fun.
In the book, they're described as having black skin.
Yeah.
And then certain dragon born ancestries.
Like a city in black.
Yeah.
Same thing.
And then the other industries are like naturally more inclined to be evil.
Yeah.
Which like it's 2023.
They just wanted to provide all of you edgelords with the opportunity to play a thoroughly
edgy character or to be like, I'm a dark elf and I'm misunderstood.
Yeah.
And then the other main sub race for elves is a wood elf, which is like it's a ranger.
Yep.
You like the woods.
It's like you're going to be a ranger.
But sea elves are classified as an entirely different race, which doesn't make any sense
to me, but there's also a bunch of other ones.
Depending on the app or the website you're looking at, they all get split up differently.
Yeah.
Gnomes.
No one at our table has ever played a gnome.
I never played with a gnome.
I didn't even know a gnome.
And like I've read the player's handbook many times.
I guess I just blanked on the fact that like gnomes were in the player's handbook.
I assumed they were an add on.
Looking at them, they like they're basically just the skinnier version of dwarves.
They're around the same height, if not a little shorter.
They weigh significantly less.
They're like if dwarves are like slow and stout and heavy, gnomes are like fast and
light and quick with an even significant height difference.
Two dwarves.
Dwarves are like four feet, maybe four and a half.
Gnomes are like two and a half, three feet.
Yeah.
And then pixies, which we don't talk about, but is a playable race.
Oh, yeah.
They're like a foot tall.
Yeah.
Gnomes middle it out.
I love fairies.
Gnomes middle it out.
They're about 40 pounds, which is crazy.
I'd say toddler.
This is the size of a toddler.
Yep.
They're always happy.
That's a fun thing about them.
So like gnomes in like the traditional D&D universe follow that like stereotype where
they're like always happy and celebrating.
Like if anybody's, oh my God, what was it?
These are the fuckers that are living in the tree.
In the tree.
Yeah.
What was that one movie?
It was literally about singing gnomes, I think.
Or are they, I don't know what the fuck they are.
Trolls?
Trolls.
Like gnomes though?
No, they're trolls.
Okay.
Right.
They are trolls.
I was thinking that they go think they're trolls.
There are.
I think there are gnomes in that universe.
Yeah.
Or whatever the bad guys were.
I watched trolls so many times I should know this.
I watched it too many times.
But anyways, the only reason to bring that up like the demeanor that the little, the actual
trolls in the trolls movie have, like they have been going lucky singing all the time,
living in harmony, that's a no.
They're just happy all the time.
They've got advantage on it, all intelligence wisdom and charisma saving throws against
magic, which is crazy.
Nuts.
Crazy.
They're the ones that live.
These are the ones that like would be your traditional.
When you think of like a Hobbit, this is like they're the ones that burrow in a hill, have
nice little homes.
Yeah.
That you would think would be the halfling.
Yeah, I was going to say.
But gnomes have more of that like in canon description of being that kind of way.
Live up to 350 years on average.
So they're also old and then it looks like there's forest, rock, forest and rock is the
like the main two subclasses, which I'm assuming are exactly what they sound like.
Oh, there's a clockwork toy one.
Yeah.
Like a little toy maker.
That's really cute.
Yeah.
It's also incredibly rare for them to be evil or to be like like Malintent or hostile.
They're just like a happy race of people.
So like when you thinking your traditional elf, which is like nose up or like a dork
or yeah, snooty, gnomes are like very much the opposite and then everything is great.
Everybody's a wonderful person.
They're naturally curious and outgoing.
So like if you're looking for a reason for your character, like a motivation, which we're
talking about here a little bit like why is my character out trying to kill bands of
orcs for money?
Well for a gnome, they wanted to see the world.
They wanted to travel.
Maybe they wanted to know what the inside of an orc looked like and didn't know it was
going to be that fucked up until they got there.
Maybe they didn't.
It's still fun.
Yeah.
So if you're just looking to play a race that doesn't give a fuck about anything and
is just happy to be there.
Gnomes.
Next up is we're getting into the half races.
Half elves.
They are half elf and half something else.
Most people use humans, but genuinely.
Why elves and half elves exists?
It annoys the absolute shit out of me.
It is.
I understand the benefits and she'll talk about them here in a second.
Yeah.
But before we even get into the benefits, I hate that elves and half elves are a thing.
But you can't just play a straight up orc.
You can only play a half orc.
Well they have it, but it's class, it's like one of the add ons, but they had like half
orc as an option in the player's handbook and they didn't come out with the option to
play an orc until much later.
Which is fucking stupid in my opinion.
Another thing to quickly note, this is what we haven't brought this up.
Some of these races have something called dark vision and basically what that means
is that you can see in the dark.
Normally what comes along with dark vision is that you cannot discern colors.
Something is like kind of like in a grayscale.
But like gnomes have dark vision.
I think some, most elves have dark vision.
All elves have dark vision.
Fairy bullshit.
I don't know if dwarves do.
I don't think dragonborn do.
Dwarves do.
But that's another thing that some races will come with is your vision.
And all that means is like if you're in a dark area, normally your vision is halved.
So like if you're in a pitch black dark cave, your vision for a normal character might be
reduced to 15 or exactly 30 feet, which means it's something that's 35 feet away from you.
You cannot see.
Which can be scary.
Dark vision on the other hand means that you can see pretty much everything around you.
You just can't tell colors.
Which sounds super helpful.
However, because most races have dark vision.
You just have to write around it as a DM.
95% of the time it doesn't matter.
Cause like you're, he's like, you're in a dark room and everyone's like, we have dark vision.
And it's like, well, fuck me.
I guess.
That's when you just start getting, you get, you give everything that you put in a room
that's a trap or a creature, you make it roll for stealth.
And then if it doesn't pass, you put it behind a rock or in a closet.
Can't see through things, motherfucker.
I will say they can't see through magical darkness.
Magical darkness is a whole another.
Oh yeah.
That's another thing.
So if you think you could see in the dark, just wait till somebody casts darkness and
then you're blind.
Yeah, that's it.
Which is so stupid.
Anyways, half elves.
Half elves.
You ever wanted to be one half of something and then another half of another thing?
I'll say most people just consider it half elf, half human, but it could be half elf,
half dragon born.
It could be half elf, half.
You can just pull some of the, you basically get to look like an elf and then pull the,
pull a bonus from a different class.
Your ears are just a little bit smaller than an elves.
They rate, it says they age more similar to humans, reaching adulthood at like 20.
But they live to about 180.
They're the size of humans.
You still have dark vision.
You still have the saving throws against being charmed and like magic can't put you to sleep.
You do have to sleep, but you get a boost to charisma.
And I will say the ability scores are nice because you get a plus two to charisma and
then two other ability scores increased by one, which isn't nothing.
And then you also get to choose depending on like what half of elf you are, some other
like things like you can choose swim speed if you're half CL, like a cantrip if you're
like high elf or something like that.
But it's pretty standard.
The bonuses are really good.
It's one of your safer classes.
Like if you just want to like middle it out, a half elf is a pretty like standard option.
Like if you're intimidated by the idea of like playing something that's like very fantasy,
you don't want to take that bitch way out of it and just be a human and get a plus one
to everything.
Cause I don't like to think about my characters.
You can play a half elf where you can choose your bonuses and still also be really broken.
Yeah.
It's just like slightly pointy ears and you sleep.
It's a safety net.
It's not bad.
It's nice.
It's fun.
It's kind of boring.
Yeah.
I don't know if half elf is anybody's favorite race.
Like why not just.
I know it's popular, but like I don't think anyone.
But why not just pick the other race as your favorite?
Like if your favorite combination is like half elf and dragonborn, just play a fucking
dragon pour.
Yeah.
And then the thing about half elves that gets me is like you only get bonuses for your elf
part.
So if you're half elf, half dragonborn, you're not getting a breath weapon.
You're just getting like the general half elf thing.
You get like proficiency in two things.
So just choose.
Just choose the other race.
Or talk to your DM and be like, Hey, I want to be half elf, half dragonborn, but I would
like to use dragonborn stats instead.
And most most DMs would be like, Yeah, cool.
That's fine.
You'll just get to use it less or some bullshit like that.
Yeah.
Or like it does half damage.
Speaking about half things, half orcs.
Yep.
We went on a tangent already, but like again, in the original nine races, they didn't do
just as straight up work.
They did a half work.
And their reasoning for that is regular orcs are too evil by nature and too stupid and
too not mainstream.
So how are we going to let players make an orc?
Well, that means that an orc fucked somebody.
We're going to have to dilute it.
Like a human woman or a human person who gives birth.
Or I mean, I guess not human doesn't have.
So half orcs are also a common thing that you'll find in lore is that they are shit
on by both of their parent races.
So half orcs are notoriously disliked by both humans and orcs.
Right.
The whole orc thing in like the D&D space is like, if you're not purebred, if you're
not big, strong and stupid like us and helping the clan and fighting in our wars, then get
fucked.
Get fucked.
And then humans are like, you don't look like me.
You look scary.
Humans are racist in most settings, including this one.
Like truly, you can't really escape it.
I mean, a lot of DMs won't role play it in, but like canon, humans don't like a lot of
people.
I mean, yeah, it's in the player's handbook about the relationships between different
races and it's like these races have beef with each other.
They even put in like some race.
Orcs just live like a sad existence.
Like some races like straight up eat each other, which honestly, it's 2023.
Cannibalism.
You don't need to have fantasy racism.
Like we already deal with that shit in real life and in the real world.
It doesn't need to leak into your D&D game, in my opinion.
That's how I feel.
Unless you were like actively doing a story point when you're like making a bigger message.
Yeah.
And every player is comfortable with it.
Man, orcs, if you have access to just like the straight up orc race, I don't know what
the difference is on book between the orc and the half orc.
But to my knowledge, there's not that much of a difference.
Like I've had somebody play a half orc before and we just role played it as a regular orc
because why would you be half of anything else?
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
But their strength score is up by two and their con is up by one.
So yeah, a lot of it is the same.
Yeah.
And say half orcs, they get a little old, they get older, a little faster than humans.
But they also don't live that much longer.
They tap out of 75.
Humans tap out later than that.
But we'll get there when we get to humans.
They're usually a little larger and like a little bulkier than humans as well.
Yeah.
A base speed of walking is 30.
They have dark vision, things to the fact that they're orcs.
Because who doesn't have dark vision?
Humans.
That's just about it.
They're proficient when intimidating people, which means that whenever you roll to intimidate
somebody, you're going to add your charisma modifier plus your proficiency bonus.
Which is nice.
Yep, it just means you get a bigger number whenever you try and intimidate somebody.
Which how fucked up is that to assign an intimidation bonus to an orc?
Like I get it, but is that not like-
No, it's-
You look scary.
Yeah, it's-
It has nothing to do with their personality and everything about the fact that they look
like an orc.
If a half orc is like intimidating a fucking dragon.
Yeah, no thanks.
They don't care.
You look the same.
You're a meal either way.
Doesn't matter what shape your ears are or what color your skin is, you're getting eaten.
You know?
Yeah.
They also-
The little is endurance and stuff.
They get to drop to one hit point instead of zero the first time it happens.
So that means like if somebody, say you're at five hit points, somebody hits you for
20, you drop to zero and then if you haven't done it yet, you get to pop back up to one
without having to go unconscious or any of that bullshit.
But you can't do it again until you do a lung rest.
Yeah.
Savage attacks, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon, you can roll one
of the damage dice and add it to the hit.
So free damage.
If you want, like, we'll get into attacks and all that in later episodes, so we'll explain
the mechanics of it.
But that's not bad.
I don't even want to talk about languages.
Can we ignore languages for now?
Because they're fucking pointless when it comes to 95% of campaigns you play on.
If you're a DM who uses languages, that is great.
That's awesome.
But we don't play at a table where we really use languages.
No, like there are fun ways to insert languages where it's like, I don't know, I used it
a couple times, but it just got to a point where it felt needless to do it, right?
I think it's a lot more fun to do a character's ability or a PC's ability to read and write
a certain language rather than speak it right.
Because it's like you can say, oh, you find this ancient home that's really important to
the campaign, but it's written in a language you don't understand.
And then you can do a fun Cthulhu Mindfuck thing where it's like, try to read it.
Roll a Constitution saving throw.
You've done that so many times.
I did it a lot in the first campaign.
But you fail magic, or not magic, Jesus Christ, Merry Christmas.
50 points of damage.
It breaks your mind.
That's fun, but when it comes to just speaking, unless you're playing in a world or setting
like Crown of Candy where language is really a differentiating factor between races, it
doesn't really matter.
There are also so many of them.
How are you supposed to choose?
Yeah, there's quite a few.
Which after we talk about races in classes and all that, we'll talk a little bit about
how important it is to make your character with your DM, specifically to understand the
setting, and languages, picking a language is a lot easier when you know what language
is to expect.
There's no reason for you to choose thieves' cant and common, and then also like, what is
it, Draconic, demonic, shit like that, Abyssal, if you're playing in a campaign setting in
Elven City.
Yeah, like just-
But if you don't talk to your DM, you don't know that.
Next up is Halflings.
The Hobbits.
Yeah, very much Hobbit vibes.
They're also another little class.
They're about the same size as Gnomes.
They're like three feet tall, 40 pounds.
They're like a weird love child of dwarves, gnomes, and humans.
They kind of do it all.
They're one of the most, if not the most common race, I want to say in the D&D setting.
Halflings and humans, I think, are pretty up there.
Yeah, I'll say their big ability that makes them one of the top picks for a lot of people
is the lucky feature.
Which is if you roll a one on an attack roll, ability check or something, if you ever roll
like a nat one, you get to re-roll it, which-
You have to keep the roll though.
Yeah, but I mean, rolling two nat ones in a row, which has happened at our table-
It has happened, actually.
More than once.
Happened more than you think it would.
But that is such a great thing because that can keep you from straight up dying.
If you roll a nat one at the wrong time, you're dead, like straight up.
Like I know what I'm doing death saving throws.
I think the way- it might be the way you're supposed to do it, it might just be the way
the most teams do it.
Like if you're dying, we haven't talked about death saving throws, if you get hit to zero
hit points, you go into death saving throws, if you're not automatically killed, what that
means is that you have three chances, potentially as many as six, to survive.
So you need to roll a d20, you might get a plus to this, you might not, generally speaking,
the DC is- what is it?
Is it 9 and below or 10 and below you fail?
10 and below you fail.
Yeah, so if you roll a 10 or below on that d20, regardless of bonuses, whatever, whatever,
you get a failed saving throw.
And if you roll above a 10, congratulations, you're one step closer to stabilizing yourself.
So when you're talking about death saving throws dying, it can be pretty nice to not
have to go into that downstate.
But like talking about natural ones, if you're rolling natural one on death saving throws,
some people play that is you've died, you don't get to roll anymore, other people roll
play it or other people play it as if you get a natural one that's two minuses instead
of one, whereas a natural 20 is two positives.
So that's kind of a time that maybe you don't want to take a nap one.
Or in your alleybeards, can I roll a nat 20 and just come back to life?
And then come back to life.
And then you change the entire religion of the world.
This is why you don't make deals with your players.
DMs, don't do it.
If they ask, if they can roll a nat 20 and do it, don't say yes, because it's going
to happen.
I'm waiting for the day that happens.
Or do it and it's fun, I guess.
I'm just not a fan of that.
I think it can be fun.
It can be fun in the right moment.
But then there are also other times where it's a big story moment and it's like, hey
man, can I just fuck up this really cool combat encounter you've done for us where there are
real consequences of a rolling natural 20?
I think like picking and shooting.
I remember that.
Like the way Allie Beardsley did it was like, I create God and come back to life.
Well, that wasn't like.
That happens later, but she comes back to life, whatever, spoiler, I guess.
She was also already stabilized.
Right.
And then just came back because she needed to come back.
Yeah.
I mean, that was it.
And it was a cool moment.
It was super awesome.
But yeah, everything about halflings, kind of like you get advantage on like saving throws
against being frightened.
They're kind, they're curious, they're nice.
You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than you, which is
going to be just about every single one of them, which isn't bad because that's going
to help.
Small or medium?
They're small.
Oh yeah.
So they're also sizes to every race.
They're like 40 pounds.
Small.
So when you're talking about grids, really the only time small, medium, large apply also
certain spells only work depending on the sizes of the things that you're trying to move.
Some races are small, which means they take up basically less than like when you're moving
it on a grid, small still takes up five, like a five by five block, but it means that you
get to move in and out of certain spaces a lot easier.
It means that you're lighter.
It means you're like hard to catch, but really large creatures.
Yeah.
You're medium, you're normal size, you're a human, you're like five foot.
You're human, Jason.
Yeah.
Or humanoid, I think is the better term, right?
Because I mean there are terms of like there's humanoid, there's fey, there's blah, blah,
blah.
Yeah.
Generally speaking, medium, you're like kind of an average build of what you would think
like a human would be.
So somewhere between like a five foot nothing and 120 pounds to like six foot five, 250
pounds.
You're somewhere in that range, which means most of everything that you interact with
is going to apply to you and then there was large.
Is there even a race where you get to be large?
Is there a playable race?
I think so.
I think some of the monstrous races, I think orcs might be.
I'm going to look.
Yeah.
I know the elephant, whatever they're called, like the elephant, they're some sort of that.
Yeah.
Those are, they're large.
The turtles are large.
They're large.
I'm pretty sure they are.
Damn.
Yeah.
But I don't think any of the traditional races are large.
No.
I think they all cap out at medium.
But yeah, they're sizes to things.
Halflings are small.
Yeah.
The ones for the like sub races for them are like light foot or stout, which is literally
like the build.
Light foot are going to be tinier.
Stout are going to be a little bit more like.
Little thick.
Yeah.
Little meat on a bone.
Yeah.
They look a little bit less like a toddler.
Yep.
Then our humans.
They're humans.
We can go to the next thing.
Hey, this shit sucks.
Do you have something you want to send in to make it better?
Criticisms, 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 dmsoninstagram at crescentmagazine.
Or we'll never get better like these fucking guys.
The benefits of playing a human is that your ability score, all of them increased by one.
Yeah.
It's a nice way out of like, well, I've rolled, if you roll for your ability scores instead
of doing point by it, which we'll talk about in character sheet.
Let's just say you have really shit ability scores to place.
Cool.
I want to be a human.
I don't really want to have to worry about the fact that I have like six tins across
the board.
Yeah.
But that's like literally it.
I mean, you can do a variant human, which basically means that you get like a feat at
level one, which is nice.
Humans are the most customizable.
I guess what I'll give them.
The most customizable race in terms of the benefits and the sort of the downfalls that
you can take with them.
Yeah.
They're like their description.
They're vanilla.
Like they're the most.
You have all of these ice cream flavors.
They're the vanilla.
Yeah.
And they're like the most adaptable and the most ambitious and like the most different.
I mean, hopefully if you're listening to the podcast, you know what a human looks like.
You also know how diverse humans can be.
Yes.
And so that's the benefit.
You can essentially be any, any one out of the several billion people that exist on
this earth and also many that don't.
Yeah.
So you can be anything you want.
Next up is tiefling, which is a lot of people's favorite.
Yeah.
The edgy little motherfuckers.
Tiefling.
They're basically the.
If you ever wanted to play somebody with horns.
Yeah.
They're the bloodline of like they have some type of.
It's devils, right?
Yeah.
I was going to say.
There's a big differentiation.
There's a difference between devils and demons.
So really quick.
Devils are generally seen as more intelligent.
They have like a hierarchy when it comes to their like social structure and power structure
and demons are the opposite.
They're chaotic.
They fight each other.
They eat each other.
They're the ones that speak a pistol.
They live like on a completely different plane.
Holy separate.
Most characters, creatures, whatever the fuck you encounter are going to be devils, not
demons.
Demons are not that common.
Yeah.
Tieflings are.
They they're humanoid looking, but they've got like horns and tails.
And no matter what anyone says, your tiefling can be any fucking color you want.
Mine was purple.
I played a purple one.
I would love to play a pink tiefling.
I played an albino tiefling.
I played my first campaign.
I don't know if this was legal.
I played a half tiefling half ASMR, which ASMR is not in the original set of races.
It's one of my favorite though.
You basically just get to play like an angel, like angel descendant kind of thing.
And I play like a half tiefling half angel to have like that dynamic.
And that was pretty cool.
But yeah, tieflings are their ancestry in terms of how they've gotten to the way they
are is very similar to Dragonborn.
Dragonborn is more of a biological dilution.
And tieflings are oftentimes more of a magical offspring of something because devils.
Because devils typically cannot produce more of anything that doesn't look like them.
And some of it's like a thing where they'll be like, oh, well, the magical blood can
lay dormant.
So like maybe both of your parents were human, but then you came out and you started growing
horns.
Yeah.
So like Dragonborn, half orcs, half elves, all of those are very blood related.
Tiefling is the more like magical.
I'm a mix of different things.
And there's a little sprinkle of devil magic in there.
Like it could be like your mom made a deal with the devil and you came out like that.
So it doesn't always happen.
Came out with horns and a tail and scales and all this other dumb shit.
Words has written in that like most people are like that people are racist to tieflings,
that people are distrusting of them because they are devils.
Nobody in any D&D slash like Wizards of the Coast setting likes devils.
Why would you?
I mean, unless you're like a cult or a warlock or some shit, but like if you're devil associated,
no one likes you.
You bring the bad news and tieflings have the disadvantage of being descendants of devils
in some way.
But about the same size as humans, they get dark vision, they get hellish resistance,
resistance fire damage.
And then depending on a lot like Dragonborn, depending on what their bloodline is, you're
going to get like your real benefits, which are often times it's going to be a can trip
of some kind.
And then once you reach third level, you can cast a spell as a second level spell slot
once per day.
And then I think bonuses as you go up and then you also get a plus to something.
So tieflings are fun.
They're very customizable also.
But that's it's also a very like classic D&D race.
Yeah, but those are like all of the for those of you that have played or seen anything about
Baldur's Gate 3, the hot tiefling woman that everybody is having rampant sex with.
Yeah.
His name escapes me right now.
Sarts of the Kay.
Yeah, something.
She's a tiefling.
She's like she's on she's in Magic the Gathering is a is a fucking creature.
She's in their official canon.
She's a very popular, well known textbook example of a tiefling.
Yeah.
You can watch your character have sex with her if you'd like to do that on Baldur's
Gate 3.
Baldur's Gate is wild.
Can also fuck a vampire and a bear.
Yeah, I'm waiting on getting that game because I know everything else sucked into it.
I refuse to pick it up on the principle that I'm already in two campaigns.
I do not have the time or mental energy to play another campaign by myself or with other
people.
One of my friends that we live with one of our roommates, Elijah, was like, yeah, you
could get it and then just like play with other people because it's go up.
I don't care, motherfucker.
It's still going to take me hours to make my character and I'm going to be paralyzed
with decision.
Yeah, I'm going to spend the whole time.
I'm just going to make characters over and over.
That's my favorite part.
Not going to do it.
But some of the exotic races, this is an even briefer overview because I just wanted to
like shout out some of my favorites.
They were 34 official races.
By the way, in addition to the traditional nine, not including sub races.
I really like reborn.
They're basically like Frankenstein's monster or like someone who has died and like come
back to life in some way.
They don't have to eat, sleep, breathe.
They are some of the most annoying fucking PCs I have had to deal with at a table.
She's got her mouth open.
She's like, because she played a reborn in our one shot and she was great.
However, comma, the not needing to function like every other fucking character in the
setting is infuriating as a DM.
It's like, why are you even fucking here?
Well, I had a like, she had a reason.
She was brought back to life for a reason.
Other women's really born basically dying, come back on some bullshit.
They usually don't remember anything about their previous life and then they just get
to be broken as a race.
Yeah.
Oh, deathless nature is you.
So you basically escape death.
You get advantage on saving throws against disease and poison resistance to poison damage
advantage on death saving throws, which is amazing.
When I was playing a reborn character, I was sitting at one point for like more than half
of the of the one shot.
I was killing myself because I knew that I could roll out of it.
You don't need to eat, drink or breathe and you don't need to sleep.
Magic can't put you to sleep and you can finish a long magic camp for hours.
That's fucking ridiculous.
I mean, it's the same way with elves.
Yeah.
That also is stupid.
I don't know.
I think it's just as a DM that likes to do fun things to their players when a race, perk,
that is unimportant suddenly just gets thrown on my face.
Hey, actually, I can't be put to sleep by magical but then give fucked man.
Get fucked.
Eat rocks.
Leave the table.
This is a conversation that Robert has had at the table.
This is like real dialogue of like get fucked.
It's infuriating.
You also get something called knowledge from a past life where you basically get like a
glimpse from your past life and you make an ability check and you can roll a d6 like
from consistency values today.
Yeah.
So you could be like, your backstory is tied to something key to the campaign because I
like to do things like that as a DM.
And then they just get to roll to remember it.
Yeah, sorry.
I've been, I've had amnesia for 70 years of my reborn life.
They're also immortal.
And in this instance, I'm going to remember the one key fucking fact that's holding the
whole thing together.
Yeah.
No, no, you don't.
They're very broken.
And that's why they're not a typical race that you can just like play all the time.
I was, and I did not, I was playing a balanced character because she was shit at literally
everything else.
Yeah.
Reborn, Warforge, which also I think Warforge is single handedly, the most in my opinion,
the most broken race that you can play as in D&D period point blank end of story.
Warforge have benefits and advantages and ability score improvements like a motherfucker.
Like think about all of the advantages that we've talked about that come with every other
race with the exception of the dragonborn and then assign that to a fucking race that
has and does it all.
They're big robots.
They're robots.
And they don't even have to be big robots.
Their speed can be anything you want it to be.
Wait.
But not speed, sorry, their size, generally speaking, people will play them all different
sizes, traditionally their medium.
But I don't know a single person that's played a Warforge and had their weight be equivalent
to a five foot even.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
They're always like seven foot just under the eight foot thing to be large and then
500 pounds.
They don't have to take a long rest.
They get to do the same shit that El's get to do, but better.
They can put themselves in a...
And they do it, they've got it in six hours.
Yeah.
And be awake and present and coherent the whole fucking time.
It's called centuries rest.
You basically put yourself in rest mode, but your eyes get to stay open the whole time.
That's nice.
Doesn't make you unconscious.
You can hear and see everything as normal.
You have a natural resistance to any number of fucking things.
You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, resistance to all poison damage.
You don't need to eat, drink or breathe.
You are immune to all disease.
You don't need to sleep.
Magic cannot put you to sleep.
Your body has a built-in, basically, AC, which is stupid.
You get a plus one bonus to all of your armor class.
It does not matter what you're wearing.
It is more difficult in that any armor you wear is a war forge you have to bolt into
yourself.
Boohoo.
You had to spend one long rest, one down time putting on a suit of armor that's taken
your AC.
You already have to do your tuning to things anyway.
Exactly.
You've just made yourself better.
Yeah.
It's also one of those things that these are setting specific races.
That one was from Eberron.
Reborn was Raven.
Anyways, I have beef with war forge.
It is what it is.
They're broken.
A lot of people like to min-max with them.
You basically just get to say no to everything you're dealing with, like you to roll or do
or suffer from.
Yeah.
There's Eric Cochran, bird people.
You can fly.
I think it's a movie.
What is the name?
Gerald or Gerard or some shit like that?
Jarnathan.
Yeah.
Which definitely is Jarnathan.
Jarnathan.
Which is definitely a name that like they were like, okay, so what's his name?
Jarnathan.
Yep.
What was that?
Yeah, they're birds.
I said what I said.
They're bird people.
They can fly.
So if you want to fly, there you go.
Asimar, like I mentioned earlier, they're angels.
They're like, what tieflings are to devils, Asimar are to angels.
So they're like the descendants magically most often of some sort of deity or angelic
race.
You have fairies, fairies and pixies, they're interchangeable.
They're small, they're tiny.
They don't have a lot of race bonuses, but you can fly.
Yep.
If you're picking a race, they can fly.
Expect to have significantly less benefits than other races because being able to just
fly as a character trait is ridiculous.
There's Eldren, which are basically elves.
They're like elves from the Feywild, which is where fairies and shitter from.
Fairies, saders, a lot of what you think in traditional Greek mythology, a lot of those
things come from the Feywild.
But Eldren are basically elves, but they're like seasons.
So there's autumn, winter, spring and summer, and they each have an emotion tied to it.
It's cute.
So you can change.
It's funny.
The bonus for each of those things that changes when you change.
As an action, you can switch your thing.
It's just a funky little race.
Genasi are elemental people.
There's air or fire water.
You're made of those elements.
Goliaths are a very classic D&D.
Goliaths are basically, they're really big.
They're, truly, it's kind of hard to describe them.
They're basically-
They remind me of orcs.
They're like if orcs and dwarves had a love child in terms of the hardiness.
They're really tall.
They're usually lean.
They live very passive lives.
They're a very popular option for any fighter, any fighting or druid-based class.
They're usually very kind, very neutral, mannered and natured.
They're not big conversationalists.
They travel in clans.
They're kind of an oddball when you're trying to compare them to a different race.
They're unique, but also a lot of their benefits are basically just grabs from other races.
They just kind of roll it into a bigger looking-
Oh, isn't fucking- what's his name from Vox Machina?
Isn't he a Goliath?
Yeah, Grog's a Goliath.
They're like big, some oftentimes characterized as stupid, big, stupid, nature-bound fighters.
They're like smarter orcs and cooler and with none of the disadvantages in terms of racism.
There's Saters.
There's this race called Owlin, which are like these big fucking owls.
Like the owl from Winnie the Pooh.
The owl from Winnie the Pooh.
It's that.
There's one I can't remember what they're called.
I think it might be Herringon and their big rabbits, which is from the Feywild expansion.
Yeah, okay.
That is what they are.
And there's Triton people, which are like fishy-
Tritons are cool, man.
Tritons are also another really-
They feel a lot about that campaign.
Tritons are also a very popular min-max race.
They have a long list of benefits, and they're just kind of cool to role-play as.
Yeah, but you can also play like a Minotaur, a Shifter, which is like a werewolf, a changeling,
which is like a- kind of exactly what it sounds like, like a shapeshifter.
Goblins, centaurs, all that good stuff.
Yep, yep.
So, I think based on looking at the time, we might want to go ahead and just make it
a two-parter.
Yeah, so I guess this episode was just about races.
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, there's a- Jesus Christ, there's a lot to talk about though, right?
Yeah, there's so much in this that it's hard to like-
Get it in like a bite-size bit, you know?
Yeah.
So yeah, now we're on races, but it is what it is.
I mean, we talked about a bunch of other things, too, but I think the next one then
we'll go over classes and backgrounds, slash backstories, and that'll be like alignment,
flaws, quirks, strengths, weaknesses, where are they from, what led them to this point,
how did they get here?
Yeah.
When you talk about backgrounds, some examples, Acolyte, Folk Hero, Guild, Ordison, Noble,
Herman, Outlander, so like what is their- what are their job?
Yeah.
What are they doing their day to day?
What did you do before you decided to go on this adventure?
Yeah, decided to become like a full-time murder hobo.
What was your- what was your like- what was your profession before then?
Yeah.
And don't worry if you were a child and your response to that question is, oh, I didn't
really do anything.
What does your parents do, motherfucker?
Like just pick somebody else.
In worst case, you can do Urgent.
Or just pick whatever the benefit that you want is, because most of them are like a professional
person.
Outlander, Herman, Ian, you can find them.
And backgrounds in my opinion-
Or Urgent.
When we get to them truly are not that important most of the time, unless your DM is really,
really on about using the benefits that come with the background, it's not-
Most of the time it's going to be a happy surprise.
Yeah, it's not really going to be a super popular thing.
Oftentimes when we start talking about backgrounds, backstories, when we talk about alignment,
motivations, family, friends, flaws, quirks, all that stuff, it's really only there to
help you role play the character.
And they just give you some benefits for having them on the paper.
You know, like it helps to know that maybe your background is an entertainer.
Know that doesn't mean anything, but like you're a bard, you're an entertainer, it's
your natural background.
You guys need to shack up at a village in the middle of fuck nowhere.
And the bartender's like, I'll give you a room if you can put on a good show.
Merry Christmas, your entertainer background worked out well, but it would have worked
out well anyways, because that's who your character is.
And sometimes you can also do a background of something that doesn't fit the traditional
class.
Like my character was a jester, was like a very much a performer, but she was a sorcerer.
So she didn't have like, like she wasn't a bard.
And the entertainer background helped her kind of like have that ability to do those
things without being a bard.
So if there's something that you like a flavor or a personality you want your character to
have that doesn't match the class that they are, I think backgrounds are a great way to
kind of like.
And I think that there's that extra layer of like official customization.
There's, I think the natural progression starts happening with a lot of players once they
get their first campaign or two under their belt and that you really don't, you don't
spend the time to look at your background.
You don't really look at your, your bonds or your flaws or any of the shit they have
with the whole bottom half of the paper.
Those are just to kind of help you get started.
Those are just to give you direction.
And so I think what happens to a lot of players, once you've done it a couple of times, you
don't even look at those things anymore.
You just put it all into the lore and the background and so on and so forth.
Yeah.
So I mean, they're not that important, but they will help you if it's your first time.
Oh yeah, for sure.
So yeah, I think we need to go ahead and just wrap it up then.
Yeah.
Thank you all for tuning in to our first two parter, potentially three parter, because
I guess we'll have to do a third small one about how to do the actual character shades.
Maybe this is just the new direction of the podcast.
Actually we're changing the name.
This is, instead of table talk, this is just character creation.
Yeah.
No, that's fair.
I mean, it's just, it's a big thing.
And you don't really have to do more than one episode on world building, right?
Because it's like, you get your big things out there and outside of me fully walking
through the process of creating a world.
Yeah.
There are not a lot of tips and tricks I can give you.
It's just kind of something that comes naturally, right?
It's just, it's like writing a story using your imagination.
Like character creation is very much that you can be walked through.
And character creation requires so much more attention, in my opinion, so much more attention
to detail and it requires, there's a lot more like official step.
There are a lot more official steps to doing character creation.
Because we're in world building, it's like, it's all flavor.
You get to choose the mechanics and you get to choose what happens.
It's even less work if you just buy like a book, if you buy a source book, because then
it's like, you have the whole thing laid out for you, you just got to put sticky notes
on the pages you want to pay attention to.
Yeah, but these are, it's like code.
It is basically writing the code for your character, but instead of running it through
a computer, you're running it through a person.
I'm not required to roll any dice or point by to figure out how my world is going to
look.
I don't need to pick a race to figure out what my world is going to look like.
You know, like oftentimes the process works kind of in reverse, in my opinion, for a DM.
So like I came up with the concept for both of the worlds that we've done now, or both
so I guess the settings that we've done now, separate from the players.
But everything that filled up that space outside of just the broad setting, it was directly
based on who my players chose to be, who they picked.
Like I did character creation a little bit today with somebody who will be joining our
campaign either this Saturday or next Saturday, we'll see which one.
But a lot of the conversation I was having with him wasn't even about what was going
on the paper, it was like, okay, this is the idea for the character I have in mind.
That race fits best, what class fits best.
Okay, I've rolled my ability scores.
Do we think this person, this character is more smart?
Are they stupid?
Yes, they need to cast, you know, their casting ability or whatever is this, so we need to
just dump a high stat into that.
But everything else is like, what makes sense for this character to have?
And then when we get to their background and we start talking about their backstory, all
of my questions are like, okay, so do you think that maybe your family is like a big player
in the space?
Do they own a business?
So do you think maybe that best friend, did you lose them recently?
Are they like your ride or die?
Maybe they work for like a rival company or they're like the number one superhero.
And then that's what becomes my canon for the setting I'm making for them.
Not everything I did beforehand.
You know, like I got the bones and they put the meat.
Yeah?
It's a weird kind of reverse process.
And I think it's really cool and it's also been so awesome as a player and also just as
someone who likes D&D and likes world building and stuff to see the way that those build.
Because I think you do that very well.
And like melting the characters into the world because it makes you as a player feel fucking
awesome when that happens because you feel like you are in a world, not like a generic
world that you were just thrown into.
You feel like you were in a world where you matter and where like you are important and
you are needed and necessary.
And I think that that adds to this feeling of like this fantasy of like when you're
looking at like escape is a media and you're looking at fantasy media.
Part of the appeal is like these people are important and it's like that whole chosen
one trope or like the found family that is like a core group that helps take down a bad
guy.
These are important people and they feel important to the world.
Yeah, 100%.
It's, I don't know, it's that kind of more casual side I think of the character creation
is just it's a lot more organic as a process.
It's very much away from paper.
And it's fun, it's fun for me to as a DM to come in with a concept and then have you
all be the ones to fill up everything in the middle.
And then it's like, okay, I just finished my conversation today with with Ben, one of
my friends from high school that's been in another campaign that I've actively been in
since around my freshman year of college.
He's joining ours are the one that's mostly based with people and they're living in the
house.
And like immediately after he left, I started writing connections.
I was like, okay, like I've just created all of these new characters.
I figured out a new hook for a storyline.
I know where he's going to fit in where we're at currently.
And then like I just took off from there and I'm not I'm not writing things like, okay,
he's going to come in at this point and they're all going to side with him and then they're
going to go here and discover this thing.
Yeah, because you can't control that.
Yeah, I'm very much like I'm connecting world events to each other and I'm connecting characters
that they've just created at the table to other characters that somebody created yesterday.
So that way whenever they start playing and they start getting in the world, they feel
immersed and not just like they were dropped in a setting that already existed.
Because depending on your setting and how your characters are in it, right?
Like if it's I have five adventurers, this is the first time they've ever been to Fairhaven.
You can do whatever the fuck you want with Fairhaven because they don't have any preconceptions
of what Fairhaven is supposed to be.
Yeah, they don't have any people there that they care about.
They don't have any shops that they're in love with.
They don't have any jobs that they love to work.
They don't have spells that they learn in the back of a shop at this one place, at this
one age.
None of that's there.
You have free reign to do whatever you want with the setting.
But when you're trying to put players in a world where they're supposed to feel already
immersed and pre-existing, those connections become infinitely more important.
Because if it's just if they don't know anything about the setting they're playing in, let alone
the characters they're at the table with and they're all supposed to share the same space
for several years.
Like you as a DM look a little fucking silly when they don't know the answers to some really
basic ass questions.
Yeah, I'll say it was interesting.
Is vigilance-yism okay?
Yeah.
In our last campaign when you were talking about Fairhaven, we had three characters at
our table who were who ended up being from Fairhaven.
Yeah, who are from Fairhaven.
But three completely different time periods, which is also a way that if you like I thought
was a nice way around of like we all lived in very different versions of the city.
One of the characters lived before it was a city.
It was all like pastors and stuff.
My character was from about 100, 200 years previous to the next character.
Yeah, the next character that was introduced.
Part of the royal family in the city.
And that's kind of a cool way to do it, you know, where everything's kind of chopped up
in that way.
So it's not to say that you can't have characters from the same place that would have no idea.
Like none of my PCs in this one, right?
They don't know each other.
This is the first time they've met.
We haven't even met yet.
Yeah, they haven't even really met yet.
I mean Madison's character kind of knows like she's a comic book nerd and so she knows
a lot about the players in the space, but none of the people right now in the combat
encounter that we're about to go into are big enough names for her to know.
She kind of knows one of them, but not for a positive reason.
Yeah, not for positive reason.
Yeah, Batman S character.
Like why are you beating up poor people in my neighborhood?
Yeah, like I don't want people to think that like the takeaway from that is okay as a DM
I need to make sure that they're all siblings and make this rich family history and this
is where they went to elementary school and middle and high school and this is where they
went to college and they all studied these subjects and you remember that one professor
that you used to shit on?
You don't have to go that goddamn far.
No.
You just need to know what motivates them and oftentimes what motivates us is people
and what makes our personality or the interactions and the experiences that we've had throughout
our lives.
And so without those experiences, at least pre-written or preconceived, it makes it infinitely
harder for players to role play and it makes it even harder for DMs to really give them
story driven moments.
So anyways, that's my little spiel about character creation and working with your DM and connecting
the dots.
It's pretty fun.
Yeah.
But I think we're finally, I think the third or fourth goodbye is going to try and end
here.
It's a very Midwestern style.
Every one of our endings, except for the one that we had to redo, have all been very
like.
Bye.
Oh and another thing.
Yeah, the Midwest, the Southern Goodbye, they're trying to get off the phone with your grandma.
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm like, goodbye, but what about this?
Oh wait, no, bye.
Oh my God, or when they follow you to the fucking driveway?
When they follow you out of the house to the, well I have to walk you to the car.
It's like you don't have to, because then we're going to spend 20 minutes standing outside
the car.
Yeah, I don't think you understand.
The door is half open.
I've initiated a task, or the end goal of that task, is to fucking leave.
It's to leave you.
It's to get away from you.
Okay, you're making it sound like you hate people.
No, but like when you say, okay, I'm going to leave the house, it means you're leaving
the people and the house.
Yeah.
Why are you following me like a stalker to my car?
Sorry, I have an interesting relationship with my family, but I'm a very independent
person, especially when it comes to my family.
I have family time, me time, friend time, fiance time.
My times often don't intermingle.
And that's just, I like it that way.
I like to be very independent and keep everything very separate.
And so when they walk me to the car, I'm like, I'm rolling up the window.
I'm, I'm slow opening the car door so that you can see that I'm not trying to ignore
you.
Now I'm putting my first leg in.
Now I'm putting my second leg in.
It is a wildly-
I'm shutting the door.
Being in the room with him when his family is there is one of the oddest experiences.
We have a very, we have a very like best friends and high school relationship.
Like we swear at each other, around each other.
We make very interesting and derogatory comments about one another.
And it's never crossed the point of like emotionally, verbally, or physically abusive
or anything like that.
Just to clarify, because sometimes, you know, you can't really tell the difference, but
with us truly, it's just, we had, we got very close, the three or four of us that are fucking
left when I was in high school.
And I just, I got to a point where I was like, okay, I understand that you all think I'm
a child, but I'm basically an adult.
Like I'm doing adult things.
I have adult trauma.
Right?
I've lived through just as many traumatic experiences as you have.
I too am struggling in taking care of myself.
I don't care if you think I shouldn't say God damn it.
Sorry.
I'm not, I'm not going to withhold that.
I'm trying to survive high school, keep my friends from ODing on the weekends, and also
make it home in time to eat dinner.
I don't care what you think about the fact that I swear in front of you.
Sorry.
See, I, I can't say curse words in front of my parents.
Anyways, I think count number four or five.
Goodbye.
See you next Thursday, where we will hit you in part two.
Yeah, talking about.
Character creation.
Yeah, talking all about everything else that I've already mentioned.
I'm going to say goodbye and mean it this time.
Goodbye.
Bye.