Hello, players who have a Spotify playlist dedicated to each individual session.
And DMs who shoot for a TPK every single session.
Welcome back to Table Talk.
I'm Maddie Conway.
And I'm Robert Lopez.
What do we have on the- I almost said docket.
Is docket the right word?
Yeah, like what's on the docket today I guess is-
Yeah, what are we doing?
Talking about natural failures and just failing at the table in general.
It's a fun life topic that people like to talk about in entrepreneurship like failing forward.
Which I have talked about because in my real like normal person day, people call me an
entrepreneur so I've talked about it.
But this is more of like how do you walk away from a natural one at the table and not just
be shitty the whole rest of the session?
Or as a DM, how do you not succumb to that peer pressure even if it's not deliberate
and like let your player off easier when you already set a consequence for that role?
Yeah.
That's the things we're going to be talking about today.
Kind of a heavier topic.
Yeah, it sounds a lot like scarier than it actually is.
It's just something important to think about before you I think go to a table if you can.
And it's just dealing with failure at the table sucks especially when it's in a key
moment or when you're really attached to the character.
And it's like just as fun as it is rolling a natural 20 on like the game changing throw.
It's also game changing if you roll a natural one.
And it kills you inside.
Because like when you're looking at these games you're thinking about all of the high
highs and you're thinking about all of the cool things you've done.
And then you also have those moments and you forget about them eventually in the same way
that you like forget about a lot of your like real failures in life and you remember your
successes and blah blah blah.
Yeah, you just suppress all those bad things in your life.
This is another one of those.
You suppress them.
You definitely do.
You bury them.
And there's also like opportunities to turn those failures into just as memorable of
moments and not always in a negative way as those successes.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Failure is inevitable.
Accept it.
Live with it.
Internalize it.
Box it up and put it in a place where you're not going to touch it for another like 10 years
until you're in like a therapy office.
Yeah, unless it's incredibly consequential for the next several sessions.
Well, yeah.
In which case you can't run away from it unless you just decide to not show up to the table.
Yeah.
So from the deems perspective, I think failure is again, it hurts me as much as it does you
all watching you fail a role like that.
I don't think we've had any crazy critical failures at the table.
I feel like we've had more critical successes than we have failures.
Most of our like big failures, you've found a way to like.
Yeah, try and curve them a little bit or give you an opportunity out of it.
So that's the thing about setting rules and setting DCs for things or consequences ahead
of time.
There was a time where as a DM, I really, I felt like everything that I was watching
in real plays like dimension 20 or critical role, I was like, wow, they must have had like
that consequence set up way in advance or that mechanic like set up way in advance.
And then you like you watch interviews with those people or those DMs and it's like, no,
I kind of came up with that consequence like on the fly or in the moment.
And so I think as a DM being easier on yourself and not going into it saying, okay, if they
roll a natural failure, it's going to end the game because it's like fun as that is
in theory to be like, yeah, real world consequences, bitches.
It also sucks in practice.
Yeah.
It also kind of sucks in practice because it's one of those things you never actually
expect it to happen.
Yeah.
And then you have characters or when you have PCs, Jesus Christ, when you have players
make backup PCs and sets this tone in everyone's head where it's like, cool, people are probably
going to die.
Yeah.
And then the last campaign that I ran or I guess like episode, if you will, of the campaign
that I ran, people died, several people died actually, very early on too, which is what
fucking threw me for a loop.
But anyways, it's just kind of one of those things is a DM, try not to set super concrete
consequences.
Unless you've established it with your table beforehand.
Hey guys, this is going to be one of those roles where like we could be done with this
game tonight.
That could happen.
That shit is so scary.
Instead of being like, okay, here's this really consequential role.
Hope you don't roll bad.
And then they get a natural one and then you're like, surprise, bitch, game's over.
Yeah.
I think that kind of sucks.
If you're like letting that surprise failure be like the consequences of one.
I think I like the idea of like keeping it loose of like if you roll a nat one in combat,
like obviously there's a lot of things that can happen.
Some people do it where like you end up like hurting yourself or this, that or the other.
Yeah.
So those are those, those ones can be funny.
Talking about like ability, natural ones or like roll the hit natural ones.
So like when people fail, when people get a natural one on rolling to hit something,
my consequence is usually hitting something else or like losing their weapon or falling
prone.
Like you swing so hard and miss, you fall to the ground.
The amount of times that has happened to me at the table.
Yeah.
A lot of natural ones to hit.
It's common that happens, but like same thing with ability checks.
If it's like a natural one on dexterity, you go prone, you know, like it doesn't have to
be cool.
You lose both your fucking legs.
Yeah.
It's like that's a lot.
You're now a paraplegic.
And I think there's also the idea, at least for me as a player, that like every time I
fail or like roll poorly, and maybe this is just me because I've got like my, definitely
my own like internalized issues going on, which is something I feel like I need to preface
before going into this as someone with a very complicated relationship with failure.
That if my character fails, I feel like it's directly my fault or like maybe that's just
because I'm like feeling like as the character or whatever.
I think, but it makes me feel like, Oh my God, I failed.
And I think that there's other ways to like, I think that's a pretty common experience
though.
You know, you're the one that made the character.
You spent hours presumably into the backstory into the pluses you had to the role.
You've role played your character up to that moment to be the person that makes that choice
that makes that role.
And at the end of the day, unless somebody else is rolling for you, which means it's
not your critical failure, you're the one that rolled dice.
Yeah.
Now some people are like, Yeah, but making the dice is cursed or the dice is bad or the
dice wanted to hurt me this session, which to each their own, I mean, I'm not here to
debate dice superstitions.
I however, comma, like it's your hand that rolled them and it left.
So I mean, it kind of is your fault, but also recognize I'm the problem when I roll for
it.
It's also a random chance kind of thing.
Like you can't will a natural 20 into existence.
Same way you can't will a natural one into existence.
The only way it's going to happen is if you shake it up in your hand and then you're one
of those motherfuckers that just drops it instead of rolling.
I've seen that happen.
You just rolling your hand and then you just open your hand and drop.
It's like cool.
It landed on a number.
There was no roll to that motherfucker like sure.
You rolled it in your hand a couple of times, but when it hit the table and just sat there.
Yeah.
Do it again.
Absolutely not.
There's so many different ways to roll dice and I've seen some very interesting ones and
I always like, I like to think that the way you roll like says something about you, but
I don't know what that means.
But one of the other things with failure is like, I think there's also failures that
are not always your fault.
It's like you have a character and you built this character to do one goddamn thing or
be good at like one goddamn thing.
Say you have a bard and they have like a plus.
My immediate thought was when you were trying to fight that crab.
The fucking crab.
Okay.
I had built her.
Not a failure at all.
It was not a failure.
It was just, I could not roll decent for the life of me.
Nothing was hitting.
Nothing was happening.
And I was so pissed.
And it was like one of those things where like it's hard to, and how do you not let these
failures that you're having at the table affect your mood?
I'm someone who like, I get in a funk and I'm trying to fix that and like work out of
that.
But like, I just catched.
Difficult though.
Awful and I couldn't do anything.
And I was like, well, this is the one thing I fucking built her for was to be good at
like this type of fighting, but I just couldn't land a goddamn hit.
And it was like.
Well, in that encounter specifically, I didn't, I didn't have a plan that wasn't at all what
I was, what I wanted to happen, but it's, you know, it's what Sam decided to do.
Uh, and so it happened that way.
And then suddenly there's this encounter that is very much geared for like one, maybe two
specific kinds of people in the party.
But like if you're pure meleeing incorrect, right?
When you have a, things got a movement speed of like 40 and it has three different ways
to keep you from moving.
So like good luck getting close to it.
So it's just double action dash every single turn just to stay with it.
And it was miserable.
And so that I think talking about that from the DM perspective, I don't, I didn't feel
as bad about it because it wasn't something that I had like, yes, I made the choice to
the DM to be like, and there's this crap there.
However, comma, it wasn't like a focal point.
It wasn't a planned encounter.
I think with your planned encounters as a DM, making sure that everybody has an opportunity
to interact so that it doesn't feel like a failure to them.
Like and that's difficult in giving, setting up an encounter where there's an enemy type
for each player or there's a mechanic that works well for each player is difficult, depending
on how many players you have at the table, especially if your players are all very different
in fighting style and play style.
But like if your, if your BBG in the final fight can fly sucks to be a barbarian.
Yeah.
Like cool.
He's a flyer with crazy powerful magic.
He's got a range of like 150 feet with spell sniper.
He doesn't even have to get close to you.
Yeah.
So then what do you do as a barbarian?
Do you just sit there on the ground and be like, well guys, I'm here to help us.
I'm here to do medicine checks.
It's one of those things where like if you get yourself in a pinch and you're like, fuck,
well, I don't know what there is for me to do.
And it's hard to not feel like kind of in a funk with that.
Yeah.
And then I think it's also recognizing that like failure isn't always your fault.
And even when you roll like a nat one, it doesn't always have to be like your direct
fault.
Like it's not always like, Oh, well you slip on a banana peel and you're fucking stupid.
It could be a thing of like, if you're a bard and you built this character to be, to be
great at performing, but you roll a fucking nat one on like in a tavern trying to impress
a crowd.
Now it's funny.
That's funny.
It's not you who's like, and like maybe the players have in a bad day and it's like, okay,
well maybe it's not you that are the problem.
Maybe this crowd only listens to country music.
Yeah, this crowd actually sucks.
And you can't play country music.
So they just don't fucking like you.
And that way it's like, it's not your fault as a player or like as a character, but also
there's consequences and sometimes failure can be fucking hilarious.
I think that's genuinely where some of like funniest moments that you have at the table
come from somebody rolling a nat one on something and being like, you don't know where the fuck
you are, man.
Or like even turning, I think as a DM, there are plenty of ways you can turn that ones
into successes in their own right or giving them the wrong answer or the right answer
with like the wrong question, that kind of a thing.
Like what same thing was Sam that same one shot.
He ended up getting the right answer on like a really wrong hunch.
And I think there are plenty of ways as a DM where you can redirect it so that it's
like, cool.
Like you've rolled a nat one, you guys are fucked, the story's over, merry Christmas,
you're not going to be able to progress anything like that shit.
I love all of you DMs that are listening.
If you do that, you're a shit person.
I understand sending real world consequences, but like at the end of the day, as fun as
this is for you, it's also supposed to be fun for the players.
Let them fucking breathe.
Yes, it's a natural one.
Yes, there should be a real world consequences to that, but it should not throw off the entire
session or the point of the campaign or the one shot doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Unless that's been discussed beforehand, like, hey, table, this is a roll.
If you fuck it up, everything is going to be very different and it's all going to suck.
At least they know.
But if it's like you rolled a natural one on this really casual perception check, merry
Christmas, the BBG is actually right behind you and is going to kill your whole family.
Yeah, like that's so much.
Okay, eat a dick.
Like really?
So much.
Natural one.
It's also a thing of like, I think, oh my God, I completely lost my thought.
Nevermind, fuck me, I guess.
You can say while you're trying to think of it, also a fun resource for DMs.
There are plenty of natural one PDFs that you can find online or in game stores as well
that they sell in little card packs.
Same thing for natural 20s.
They're called like critical fail and critical 20 boxes or like outcomes.
They're kind of, it's kind of set up like a D100 table, but basically it gives you a
bunch of different fails, like failures that the player could have failed.
So depending on how nice the PDF and or box of cards is, it'll have like a list of potential
failure outcomes for every ability check, roles to hit, that kind of a thing.
And even sometimes on that saving throws, which depending on the table you're playing
at is either you die or you lose two.
I'm a lose two kind of person.
I don't think a natural failure should just automatically fucking kill you, but it also
depends on the setting I'm playing in.
Maybe there's one where it is.
Anyways.
So that little box or basically that little PDF that you can have pulled up is really
helpful if you're having a hard time thinking of like more creative and more fun natural
failures or natural successes.
So you would just go to like scroll over to where it says natural failure for like strength
checks, scroll down.
One of them might be like you hit the thing so hard, your sword breaks, or like you grip
the handle of this thing so hard, did it breaks?
Or it could be like, like you just, you overdo it like natural failures don't always have
to be.
It's not like something you're just like really sore and you have disadvantage on your next
like two strength checks.
Yeah.
Like natural failures don't always have to be super, super negative.
They can also be fun in terms of flavor.
And can be like, cool on a natural failure, you do double the damage on this.
Like, you don't know, you do like double damage on your next hit, but the next time you hit
something, your sword breaks.
And so those are sometimes the more creative ways as a DM to then give somebody a natural
failure where it's a cool moment for them as a character.
It sucks because it's a natural one.
You rolled the dice, you didn't get the good side of it.
But also here's something a little fun to like loosen, you know, like lessen the blow
of losing your weapon.
Yeah.
And also speaking of like creative ways to fail, sometimes you're going to fail so spectacularly
hard at something so inconsequential.
I had advantage on like a perception check in this room and I rolled two nap ones.
Which is insane by the way.
Which is nuts.
And it was a moment where all of us at the table just kind of like looked at each other
and were like, well, how the fuck do we proceed?
How do we make negative consequences?
Because it would be one thing if it was just a nat one of like, you don't notice anything,
you're baffled.
But two nat ones is crazy.
And so being like, I guess you have a stroke?
You have a stroke.
Yeah.
Your eyes stop working, you've suddenly gone blind.
You pass out.
Yeah.
And dealing with critical failures, man, gets really fucking difficult when it's something
super simple.
Like it could totally be just, hey, you walk in this room, do you want to investigate?
Yeah, I'll roll an investigation check.
Sick.
We'll call it DC like five to notice this huge painting on the wall.
Two natural ones.
How do you even proceed?
It's like, so are you just blind then?
Are you incapable of seeing the giant thing on the wall in front of you?
You think it's a window.
And that's kind of where you have to take it, man.
Like you just got to throw it in a funnier direction.
Like that's always been my take or my direction if somebody naturally fails at something really
fucking easy.
I'm like, me as a DM and you as a player understand that there's no reason you should not have
been able to see the thing in front of you.
But today, you don't.
And here's a funny consequence of not seeing that.
And it could be like, it could even be something funny and like, oh, they trigger a trap?
Or they read into the image in like a wrong way.
They think it's their father instead of the BBG.
And like maybe there's a fun connection there you can make.
Like there are plenty of fun ways you can throw natural ones when you're failing at
really fucking mundane stuff.
It's like, look at me a dexterity like five check to clear this like two inch gap between
these buildings.
Natural one.
Cool.
Your shoes come off or something.
I don't fucking know.
But I'm not going to have you like fall into the street below and kill yourself.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure it was in fantasy high the first time that like Gorgug is like, are
you my dad was because of a natural one?
Yeah, they were all that one coming like his stick.
You'd ask everybody if it was really one of the funniest fucking things in like it was
a bit.
100% of it.
Yeah.
Natural ones turn into bits really quick.
Oh yeah.
Especially if it's like a routine thing.
And I think it's also a thing of like gauging where your players are at.
It's like, OK, has this player been doing OK today?
Have they been rolling decent or has everything that they've done today failed spectacularly?
Yeah.
100% reading your players like feelings and emotions and like perceived luck at the table
is definitely a big thing.
Because like if somebody has been rolling really well today, they've done super good
in the combat encounter, they helped solve the puzzle.
Maybe on a natural one, I don't mind giving them some really shitty consequences because
it's like it's not that you didn't try.
It's just the role of the dice.
And that makes it a little easier than for that player to take it at face value and say,
yeah, shitty things happen.
It's a real world.
It's made believe in our head.
But it's a real world.
It also makes those failures easier to laugh at and take.
Or it's like, yeah, I beat his ass like two, three different ways.
He was at one HP.
I rolled a nat one.
It's a cinematic moment.
He like reaches up and stabs me right as I'm about to finish him off.
Dun, dun, dun.
Big bad, evil, evil character moment, whatever.
But now it's like set up for later encounters.
So versus like if they're rolling shit the whole time.
Maybe.
Yeah.
If it's been bad the whole way around.
It's like, well, you fall on your face.
Yeah.
Don't bully your players because of natural ones.
Like unless they can take it in which case maybe you do and it's fun.
And I wish I had advice for players on like not feeling shitty and grumpy at the table
when you keep failing.
It's difficult.
I wish that I did have that advice because I would take it myself.
I'm just personally, I know that's an issue with our table and I just try to like breathe
through it and be like, yeah, it's fine.
I think it's fine.
I think the easiest way for me as a player when I've played and I've hit natural ones
is to instead of immediately going into I hate my life, I roll the natural one.
Everything sucks.
I try and take it in and like, okay, what does this mean for my character?
What does this mean for the campaign?
Like I try and like desensitize, I guess, and take it more and like, like what is this
set up for me now?
Like I'm a terrible player or you know, I've a bad person, I rolled shit on this role.
It's okay.
So what does this, what does this do for me next?
If you're like a paladin or a clearing.
Yeah, if I roll the natural one on wisdom, like let's say that it's, I'm trying to decide
as a paladin whether or not to kill somebody.
And my DM gives me a wisdom saving throw to it.
And it's like, I don't know, we'll call it like DC 10.
I'll say DC 10 to make the decision yourself or like to like lean more into your paladin
like a holy vows or like below a 10 you like given to the darker side of things.
And on a natural one, I think then is a really fun role playing moment for you as a paladin.
Like you're just fully overcome with emotion and like you do the rash thing and you kill
the person.
Now that might make you like an Oastbreaker paladin or it might send you on a separate
side quest to like retake your vows, maybe you choose to go without an oath altogether
until you can like redeem yourself.
So I think there are plenty of ways to as a player where you can take it and stride and
be like, this could be a really fun arc for the character like that's, I also have an
easier time desensitizing myself and detaching myself from the PCs that I play.
Like I get into them, don't get me wrong.
But I think I'm still very much looking at it as like me playing the Sims kind of person
where it's like, this is a little me that I'm just moving around in this world and like,
yes, I am autonomous as this character, but also I'm not that character.
I'm incapable of doing all these crazy wacky magical things in this fantasy universe, not
even close to who I am in real life.
So we're going to take it dark, dark horse route is what it is.
Sounds fun for my character.
Fuck it.
See, mine's like, you know, when you're a kid and you go to a movie and you like watch
an action movie or something and you come out and you're like, I can do that.
Like I could be like a fucking ninja or like swordfight or like any of that shit and you're
just like that blind like confidence.
That's how I feel at the table when it's like, I'm like, no, I could do that in real
life.
No, I can't.
I fully can't.
I can't do any of the things.
But you get into it.
I mean, that's what makes for some fun role play though when your characters or when your
players really believe like not that they are the character because that's like acting.
That's like DID, right?
But not to shed on DID.
I know plenty of people that have it.
But anyways, like there's a line I think to be crossed and also to not be crossed when
it comes to like players getting into character because sometimes the character that they're
playing is not a wonderful person.
And so it's just a garbage experience for everybody else to be at the table.
It's like, okay, I am so happy for you that you have found your your peace.
Your niche.
Your niche is this really not cool character as a person because like sure, bad people exist.
You're playing one.
It is what it is.
It also doesn't mean that you need to embody everything about that character and shed
on everybody else's fun.
Yeah.
It's and maybe I'm also writing a high right now because in both of the campaigns that
I'm playing and I'm playing a very positive character, which is a change from the last
two that I played.
One was like very just exhausted and annoyed with everyone.
And then the first one was a bitch.
But it's I miss her.
And see, I would even go to sit sometimes and don't don't take this too much to heart.
Sometimes you were that player at the table where it's fully embodied that negative mindset
because you're an actor is what you do.
But that also led to everybody at the table like groaning together like, okay, we get
it.
Can we not fuck up every decision we make because you're crazy and drunk all the time
and wanting to make your own decisions.
Can we like act as a party and not do the bad thing?
Yeah.
And then Emily is like, Nope, fuck you.
Okay.
Wrong decision.
She got better at the end.
She did.
Little.
At least there in the middle.
It was, I think specifically when we were playing with Spencer, I think he was exhausted
sometimes at the end because it was like constantly being like, here's literally the best possible
decision.
I've rolled three intelligence checks.
All of them have been 25 plus.
This is what we should do.
And then I was like, Nope.
I'm just going to touch it.
Incorrect.
I'm just going to grab something.
Grabbing it.
I'm just going to just kill the bad guy without any.
Get it.
Yeah.
And it was something that I definitely learned as a player of like, and I think that was coming
from like adjusting of being an actor in like in a world where it's like, you're with
other characters.
So it doesn't.
Yeah.
And thinking of the other people at the table as these are also people playing a character
who have equal amount of interest in their characters as I have in mind.
We'll also want to be the main character.
Yeah.
It's difficult to manage that.
And just remembering that like other characters, even though they're characters are still there,
there are people playing them and there are consequences for like what you do and what
you say.
And so it was a fun thing.
It was definitely a balance of like learning that out.
And it was also, I would suggest playing a more positive character before you delve
into like playing an edgier, like bitger character.
I agree.
I think it's easier to be the happy go lucky like Elf or Nome or some show where it's like
everything is great optimism, who or even just like a character that has fun doing what
they do, like a like a grog kind of character where it's like he's not necessarily having
a lucky, but like he's so far on the everything is fun side that like he's never really that
depressing.
And so that's often easier to embody the first time around than like playing a character
who's more down in the dumps and maybe even more like kind of towards the evil side in
nature because then it just, it just gets really easy to lean into like a full villain
kind of thing.
And like if you're playing a campaign where everybody's a villain that works fine.
You're playing in a campaign where like the title for your group, they're heroes, they're
adventurers.
Maybe not.
Maybe that's not the vibe.
Being the guy that goes around and kicks puppies and shits on people for having vaginas
all the time is like maybe not the move.
You know?
Yeah.
Like there's just, there's a time and place for it.
Respectfully, this is not the time nor place.
Yeah.
It's, and it's also something that you need to like kind of talk with the people at your
table and also kind of set boundaries with people of being like, hey, because I think
it was also like me realizing, oh, I'm like an actor.
I come from an actor background.
I'm getting really into like role playing character stuff and I'm sitting at a table
full of people who are not.
Yeah.
Who are in actors.
Who are not in theater.
Who do not do that.
I'm sitting at a table with people who live normal lives and maybe.
And you are not like into the being the character of whole time fully.
So maybe coming out swinging as a bitch is not the move.
Yeah.
I think, 100%, I think respecting the fact that there are other people at the table is
huge and I think to wrap it back down to the natural failures too as a player who is not
rolling the natural failure and who is just at the table with the other person who has
rolled the natural failure, there is definitely a time and a place to be like, haha, that
sucks.
And there's also some place to be like, wow, man, like that really sucks.
Yeah.
Because it also is equally as bad when your other player looks to you and goes, really,
a natural one.
Yeah.
And everyone puts their hands in their head and is like, holy fuck, a natural one.
It's like, okay guys, I get it.
I get it.
This is just that sucks.
I'm aware this fails.
I'm aware that this is going very shit right now.
I'm the one that rolled it.
You don't have to remind me by looking at me like I've just kicked your fucking child
that I got a natural one, guys.
I get it.
I'm the one that rolled it.
Yeah.
I'm the one having consequences.
I don't know why you are upset.
Also at the same time though, having, if you're another player at the table and someone else
rolls a critical failure on something that you can tell that they're kind of upset about,
have your character be like, hey man, that really sucked.
Are you okay?
And I think that doesn't happen enough at normal tables.
People checking it.
Like PCs checking in on other PCs on a real person to person note.
I think it's very easy to, and this just depends on what kind of level of realism you want
in your campaign, right?
Like, if I see somebody truly fail, like one of my best, I don't even have any best friends,
someone that I like a coworker that I've spent, I mean, months of my life doing life or death
activities with, fail at something that's really meaningful to them as a person.
There is no world in which I as a decent person, I'm just going to fucking ignore that and
then go back to being a regular person.
You know, like I am going to go up to them, even if it's not in a super like, hey bro,
you want to sit down over a coffee and like really talk about your feelings, just kind
of like a check and be like, we'll get them next time.
Like let's see what we can do to go after them.
How do we fix this?
Like you can hop into the problem solving role too, if you don't feel comfortable doing
the like pat on the back and like really asking how they're doing.
But I feel like that's something a lot of us as players do is we leave those little
like nuggets and those little hooks for other people to question of like everyone has like,
not everyone, but a lot of people will play a character at some point with like an edgy
secret or a deep dark secret or they'll lay like very clear clues of something they want
people to ask.
And then oftentimes no one ever does because why would you?
I think a lot of that too we'll probably end up talking about in our inclusive table topping
episode, which is kind of when we're going to get into more of like ethics of being a
player, the wrongs and the right ways to do it.
But yeah, like specifically with talking about like mental illness too, I think it's a real
thing that your characters will experience because they are real people.
Like no, you don't have to be like cool, they're schizophrenic now.
But like the idea that somebody is not going to be depressed as in like the clinical symptom
of depression after failing at something that is potentially like world ending for them.
You're fucking funny.
Like you're real funny to think that your guys just going to get up and be like, well,
looks like we're going to go stab them again later.
Yeah.
And it's also the thing of like, it's cool to care guys.
It's cool for your characters to care about other people.
That's okay and not allowed.
That's difficult.
Like that intimacy I think is really hard to broach.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's just there's a lot to it.
I think there's also like a fear sometimes of like, at least for people who aren't as
like into the world of like role play or like performing or everything of like, where do
you draw the line between the table and you and you.
And I think that's what scares a lot of people from having that check in of like when a character
fails at being like, Hey, like you good or like having like a deeper connection with.
Yeah, 100%.
And say we also have another episode where we're going to talk about role playing and
that's also really important.
I'm so excited for that episode.
But yeah, back on track with natural ones, other ways to take that.
I don't know.
Kind of natural failures are difficult, I think to manage in any way.
I'm going to say as a DM kind of wrap it back down to where I originally started talking
about don't set really difficult consequences for specific roles ahead of time, unless you
know, you want to commit to that.
Something that happened in one of Dimension 20's most recent campaigns in Montopolis was
there was a mechanic in one of the last big fights where Brennan, the DM literally straight
up asked them, he was like, Hey, here's like this mechanic is going to happen.
What do you, you as players, when the number of hits you have to take to be before you
go down?
Because they're playing on a kids on bike system where there's no real combat.
Yeah.
Well, there's no real combat.
So he just straight up asked the table.
He was like being fair and honest and realistic.
What do you all as players want like the number of hits to be before your character goes down?
And they were like three.
Yeah.
They're like three is universally, I think somebody made the joke was like 75 and then
it's like, yeah, but realistically it's three.
Like three is just kind of like the good number.
And then being like, okay, so two big hits or like two critical, or big hits.
How do you handle big hits versus small hits?
So like a critical would be like two hits.
Yeah.
And then not a critical would be like one hit.
Yeah.
And then most insane thing happened.
So yeah, I think that's the DM.
Don't be afraid to straight up just ask your players, Hey guys, there's this is mechanic
that I plan on using for this fight, or you're about to roll for this.
Like I've done this several times and I'm like, listen, you all can tell me what you
want the difficulty on this to be, and we'll roll it from there.
Just know that if you fail this, it's going to have a lot of consequences.
Yeah.
And then it's like, okay, it puts pressures on the players for sure, but it also makes
it a little more fair in the sense of like, you as a DM don't have to feel like you're
blind siding them with this crazy mechanic that if they fail, like it's going to have
a bunch of crazy stupid consequences to it, you know,
It also puts that failure on the players as well.
It's like, well, I agree to it.
So I kind of fucked myself here.
It's definitely a little bit of like plausible deniability.
Yeah.
And that's you guys.
Like you could have said, too, you could have set the DC to two group.
Like if that was a group decision, that's what it would have been.
But at the same time, but also in the context of talking about natural ones, doesn't matter
what you get.
Yeah, it's going to fucking fail no matter what.
Yeah, natural ones.
That's another interesting thing about natural ones is the way that they work mechanically.
Um, some, I think the way that they're talked about in like players and DMs handbooks is
that a natural one overrides any other role that's being made.
Same thing with natural 20s.
So like, uh, if you roll four different roles and one of them is a natural one, technically
that natural one is supposed to override all your other ones.
Same thing with the natural 20.
Uh, but it's also interesting looking at like advantage versus disadvantage.
So if you roll, uh, an ability check with disadvantage and your, your first role is a natural one,
your second role is a natural 20.
I think in that case you go out the natural one, but it's the opposite of its advantage.
If you roll a natural one and then a natural 20, you go to a natural 20.
And so mechanically too, you can make now ones work in as many different ways as you
would like them to.
And there are also several mechanics to allow people to just say no to natural ones.
Yeah.
I fuck that.
Where you can re-roll them and then you have to stick with that.
Fuck that so much.
That is such bullshit.
Yeah.
There are several characters in my campaign right now that have taken a background that
allows them to just know natural ones.
And let me talk about that for a minute.
Of course to use the second role, which is the only thing that balances that.
What as a race?
Because it's a halflings, correct?
I don't fucking know.
Could be.
I believe in the, I don't want to say this wrong.
Anyway, if you are taking a thing where you can just say fucking no to nat ones, that
is insane.
That is fucking insane.
If you think about that for five goddamn minutes, you are immune to like failure.
I mean, yeah, technically you can still fail, but like the level of failure that you're
facing is not the same as the level of failure that the person next to you can face.
It's like the idea that you can just swing a fucking bat and know that you're never
going to accidentally take your own goddamn knee out.
Well, at least there's a significantly lower chance that it will happen.
Yeah.
Mechanically too, they're just, they have classes and features and backgrounds and roles
that naturally shield you from failure more than others.
And do the people at my table have taken that background, which means that they are naturally
shielded from natural failures.
Which is bullshit.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's capped in so much that you have to take the second role and you
can't do anything to get rid of it.
But like other than that, sky's the limit, man.
Natural one, fuck you.
I don't get it.
Yeah.
And there's also other things where of like features and things you can take where you
can add dice or you can re-roll or blah, blah, blah.
And I was playing like a wild magic sorcerer.
So I was, I had a ton of features where I could just re-roll or just say no.
So I guess this is also like, I'm starting to get used to natural failures for the first
time because I almost always had something.
Not playing a character that had the ability to like re-roll a role or add a D6 to a role
or.
Cause I like almost always had one of those in my pocket or like saved or I was like,
you know.
And you finally moved into a party that doesn't have like a ridiculous amount of like Bartek
inspirations and shit like that where it's just being able to stack roles.
Now it's just like, cool.
You roll flat.
Yeah.
There's nothing you can do to like, which I mean too with them to have the ability to
give people roles that just, they don't have a lot of them to give right now.
So cause they're, you know, level fucking three, but it'll get better as time goes on.
Failure sucks.
Yeah.
No, failure does suck.
Um, holy fuck.
I feel like we've run out of the failure conversation running.
We're like barely 40 minutes in.
I know.
35.
Failure.
It feels like two sort of an episode though.
Failure, failure, failure, failure.
It sucks.
It's very fun.
I mean, we can talk about successes.
So there's the natural failure tables that you already mentioned.
They're really fun to use.
Um, if you already talked about players taking natural failures in a fun way and DMs giving
people or players natural failures in a fun way.
Uh, go on the other spectrum.
You can fudge them as well as the DM and be like, yeah, natural failure.
It technically had a consequence behind the screen, but now that consequence is significantly
less.
And actually I will say that is a DM, even if you do set a mechanic and you don't tell
your players and they get a natural one, don't be afraid to scratch the fucking mechanic.
If you know it's going to suck balls to actually go through with that happens several times
at our table of mechanics or like they rolling that one and you were like, oh, can be really
fun.
But that's because they're theory.
They become a lot more dangerous when they become like actually played or enacted.
Yeah.
Like, cool.
And there's really fun mechanic behind the screen.
If they roll a natural one on this, the world blows the fuck up and that's the end of the
campaign because it's like a really consequential realistic world.
And then everybody rolls an at one and it's like, well, I don't actually want the campaign
to end right now.
So like maybe they just get teleported somewhere or like somebody dies, call it a day there.
Like, don't be afraid to just scratch out a number.
Um, as Brennan and Matt have both talked about this several times, basing like creature health
on what feels right.
Just adding zeros or removing them whenever it needs to happen.
And like I've done that several times.
I'm like, I don't want this thing to die in two hits.
I've spent too much time on it.
I'm going to add a zero or I'm going to add a one to the front of the number versus also
had a thing of like, oh, everyone is down and they are not.
Yeah.
Versus like this thing still has 400 health and two of my players are down and three of
them are up with no spell slots.
Maybe this thing is going to make the decision to leave.
And that's when I'll start giving my creature wisdom saving throws to determine whether or
not it wants to leave.
Yeah.
Because I mean, in the way that I do that to not like, fib it too much is, okay, this
thing has effectively won the fight.
How intelligent is it and how smart is it to know that if it leaves right now, like
it's a goal will be achieved.
Uh, and depending on how stupid the monster is, that's not really something I'm going
to roll because like if this is, if this thing's only like prerogative is to eat and
reproduce, then no, it's not going to leave the party of five with three of them down.
It's going to finish eating them.
Um, because that's what it's doing.
But if it's an intelligent, you know, if it's an intelligent creature, maybe it's like,
cool, it's not really worth it to stick around or in the time that they're going to spend
reviving each other, I could already get halfway through my master plan.
And so then it's like rolling wisdom saving throws on my end as a DM for my creatures
and for my, uh, my baby Gs to be like, cool, maybe it's very obvious that the players need
a breath right now.
I know that like it'll make sense of this guy just fucking skedaddles because that's
his whole character thing.
He skedaddles.
He's a little fucking rat and skedadler.
He's, he's a rat.
He leaves.
He goes like he's intelligent.
He, he's all about getting his goals done.
Fuck killing a party.
If I can just go and do the thing I was here to do anyways.
Yeah.
And he skedaddles.
And that was always an interesting thing of like during the, the last fight, it came
down to that bad guy in particular, um, was alive, but with just enough health left, like
one hit would have taken him down and our paladin, it was his turn.
The rest of us were down.
Um, and one of our players had just like died, died like real life died.
Yep.
And there was the one, one more action left and it was a thing of like, are we going to
save the party member from like permadeath or the multiverse or stop the bad guy.
And we chose to save the player.
Yeah.
The consequences in that campaign get a little crazy.
Yeah.
It went from like, oh, we're just like, we're going around.
Oh, I'm going to save my city.
Oh, wait.
All of existence.
That's what you said.
And all of, all of fucking existence.
And we're not characters that give a flying fuck about all of existence.
Like we're here.
And we found out about the all of existence thing, literally like three sessions from
the last session.
So if the stakes just went from like, oh yeah, this world, that world, these worlds
can die.
They'll probably be fine.
All the ones you like are good.
All of them.
Poof.
All of them.
And you find this out, that's someone telling you, hey, if you don't do this, everything
is going to like explode.
Yeah.
That was me saying, listen guys, I would, I would love if we had had four more sessions
for me to give this to you in a nice digestible story, like appropriate way.
We do not.
We have people graduating.
We have three sessions left.
Everybody is leaving.
I want to make sure that the people that have been here from the start can actually see
it to the end.
So here's all of this really fucking important information that you all have been asking
questions about for like two semesters now.
Go save the world.
Which was fun, but also so stressful, which was good.
It was a high stress situation for sure.
But it was a lot of us like digging around in those sessions before the end.
And then it's like, that was the first time we had had like a shopping episode.
Yeah.
I gave them a slice of life episode of like basically two sessions before the whole thing.
And then because I was like, they haven't really had a chance to do anything fun.
Pretty much since we started the campaign, it's all been very high consequences, high
stakes.
So like fuck it, go shopping in Theros, which is just mock ancient Greece.
And it was just a very fun haircut.
It was just a very fun whiplash from like going on this cute little shopping adventure.
They all have new outfits and you know, got their hair done.
And then the next day one of them was trying to basically parlay with a God of Death.
It worked.
Stealing a knife that could resurrect a character or being.
And then also 1v1ing a demigod in an arena and losing by a hair after it cheated.
Then it was all very quick and fast.
And then straight resurrecting a God immediately.
Which I mean that's how life works.
There's a rectum too, guys.
One with a knife and the other one, I don't know.
Oh the plant thing.
Yeah, well, a knit hug.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
One of my characters just straight up used a mechanic to kill themselves to bring a reptile
back to life.
That was a theme in our campaign of people killing themselves to bring other characters.
And then a God got rezed with a knife.
And it almost, almost took over one of our player characters.
And I would have loved it if that had happened, but it fucking didn't.
It did not happen.
And I was so upset.
I was so pissed.
God damn it.
You see, that's an idea you do the one-shot spinoffs.
Yeah, no, no, no.
Like the multiverse, where like this is what happened if this would have succeeded.
Which I mean, there's no reason you can't do that if you're like in a world that you
really like.
No, 100%.
Don't be afraid to do one-shots with some of those hooks that maybe got missed or not
stepped on the way that you would have liked them to been stepped on, you know?
Listen, if the Marvel movies are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want.
That fucking shit show of a universe that is currently.
Yeah, I've fallen off this.
A new Loki episode came out.
Apparently it's got like a five everywhere.
Everyone's like, yeah, they lost a director that made it cool.
He's just now like Marvel's way of saying, look at these things that are going to happen
later.
Yeah, listen, I have conflicted feelings on the concept of the multiverse.
Or in media, I'm not getting into the real world multiverse shit.
Yeah.
But like, listen, if Marvel and DC comics are allowed to look and operate the way that
they do with, hey, fuck you, anything goes, you can make a one-shot based off of one specific
choice with the same characters and be like, cool, everything is the same except there's
going to be like a different thing happens.
And then we're going to do like a little one-shot like.
Listen, they straight up fucking bailed on a city getting absolutely obliterated by
Tia Matt with like a single head left.
I didn't know her.
Homie was like the main guy there who was like the prince underneath the queen.
Basically it was like, cool, we failed.
Like that was actually a fun thing to tie it back to failure.
They failed the hardest fuck in that encounter.
Yeah, I was going to say that was probably our biggest.
That was like an ultimate failure.
Didn't you roll like a nat one in it?
It was all bad.
So Bahamut and Tia Matt were fighting while we were also doing our own giant fucking fight.
Which Tia Matt and Bahamut for those that know D&D, you'll recognize those names as
being two like CR 35 creatures that should not be rolled into a very casual campaign.
They were brought in because there was a character that liked dragons and then died like four
sessions later.
Yeah.
So then I was stuck with having these like multi-versal level dragon character.
He had two dragons.
Yeah, and then I was stuck with having these multi-versal level fucking beings in my campaign
with no reason to be there because the dragon guy left.
Well, he died.
Yeah.
But was gone.
So now it's just like, cool, I've introduced Tia Matt, I've introduced Bahamut.
They're both CR level 35s.
They're both gods way above anything my players can handle.
And they both have vested interest in everything that my players are doing.
Yeah.
And I mean, I could just writers haul my way out of it and just say, cool, didn't happen.
But they very much did happen.
They interacted with a version of Tia Matt several sessions earlier, like the second
or third session of the whole campaign.
They physically talked to Bahamut and I introduced this really cool dragon monk bitch who also
got fucking fried because of my decisions.
Yeah.
Source players, man.
They fucked it all up.
Truly, my players in that campaign and that second part of the campaign made so many fucking
shit decisions.
But I mean, the failures led to cool things at the end of the day.
Like they led to a lot of fights that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
But in that particular moment, it was basically two fights between, or a fight between Bahamut
or Bahamut having the fucking cause, I just say Bahamut and Tia Matt.
And essentially they could throw up spell slots and actions to then give pluses to Bahamut
fighting Tia Matt.
And I rolled a natural one.
I feel like it was, we had a, like it was the first one to five.
Yeah.
I think I rolled two natural ones on Bahamut's end.
And that was with us sending up lots of spell slots.
And I, he got fucking thrashed.
Yeah.
It was brutal.
Absolutely.
I mean, Tia Matt came around, came away with one head, which for those of you Tia Matt
is basically like a five headed chromatic dragon, she's like the mother of all metal
type dragons.
She's evil by heart.
She has a brother called Bahamut who is then like the God of all like good nature dragons,
like gold and gold.
There aren't too many of the good nature dragons and they're like locked in an eternal conflict.
I'll say the way-
Is there two obscenities of the coin?
That particular session, I think of it as kind of like our mid season finale.
We played it while we were on spring break and we had like rented a cabin and it was
the way that it ended sucked.
It was really cool.
But that campaign had so much, that session had so much failure in it.
Like when I think of that session, it was, so we start this fight and then our baby
is being-
Listen, as Kee-Loy, I was like, and I would have gotten away with it too, because I was
so fucking close to getting away with it.
And it was, it was the bad guy, Kee-Loy showed up and then he ended up fighting on what we
thought was our side as we're having our own big battle.
And then in the middle of our fucking fight, the dragons come in, so that's happening.
And then we as individual players, my character started having like some legit failure because
Kee-Loy was trying to fucking eat her out.
Yeah, basically take her over and then kidnap her ass.
In the middle of the fight.
And I just, I could not-
Nobody had a way to know.
I couldn't roll out of it.
And it was, it was dominate persons.
And so there was like nothing-
What had gotten away with it too?
That I could do.
And it was a thing of like-
One of the fuckers.
One of the characters was like, not bullshit.
You, she would never stand next to you, let alone like-
Yeah, there was some-
Be silent.
She's been quiet for too long.
Between those two characters and he made an insight check and I was like, damn.
Damn.
So he starts trying to like fight him and turns and starts fighting Kee-Loy.
And so he's also trying to like fight these two different things.
It's so funny because he had like no fucking health and like two spells left and I was
like, listen, if you fight him, I'm not, I'm not even gonna sugarcoat it with you.
If you fight him, you will die.
And he goes, I don't care.
Yeah.
I don't like him anymore.
He just went, no.
Fucking final straw.
My city is destroyed.
I'm gonna go with this.
And started boxing him.
And we killed him.
We very quickly-
I don't even remember what happened to killing him that such and he fucking died.
He had eaten.
Yeah.
We very quickly realized as he was like, as Robert was like, I'm gonna love it with
you guys.
You might kill him right now and I want you all to know that.
And I panicked because I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We can't kill him yet.
So I'm trying to tell everyone-
There are so many answers that he had that everybody at the table was like, no.
He had that everybody at the table needed specifically her.
And he died.
He got fucking eaten.
And it was a thing of like, I was like, no, please don't kill him.
And it was like, I'm sorry.
And then like one more stab.
And then it became a thing of, okay, I've got like no spell slots left.
I banished one of the three fucking dragons that were in that fight.
And I'm like, I need, he's had two positive like death saves.
So I was like, okay, he's good.
And then I rolled reincarnate.
And I was like, okay, cool.
I need some spell slots so I can get him out of here.
And I instead of like making that decision, I ended up failing because I killed myself
and I came back and then I didn't think about concentration that had banished one of the
dragons.
It comes back immediately eats him.
So we failed.
We like full, we won.
Zero holds bar on that.
We won.
We all survived.
We survived.
But it was still every part of that was like seeped in failure.
And it was the thing of all of us being like, well, what the fuck do we do now?
But then it ended up setting up this like completely new path that the story would not
have taken otherwise.
So I've, failure leads to more success.
It just sucks in the moment.
It's good at like twisting it that way.
That session went fucking nutty.
Session was not really supposed to be as crazy as it was, but I mean, I was trying to answer
a lot of questions and tie off a lot of different branches at the same time.
I was tired of doing the team at and Bahamas stuff.
I was like, that's, it's got to come to a head.
It's going to be really cool to have them as like a backdrop in the city.
Yeah, they did.
They come down the one end.
Just like a bunch of different stuff, man.
And then of course, Kilo being there or Loki, like the big bad guy for the whole campaign
showing up as well and being like, listen, I want this thing to be like as preserved
as you do.
Or I also want to get rid of it, whatever.
I also don't fuck with that giant lizard thing over there and I'm going to help you
kill it.
And I'll be damned if he didn't almost kill it.
Like truly it was, it was two gods, no, four, four gods.
Four gods in that fight.
Four gods and what?
Four level.
I think all were level 10.
Like, yeah, like level 10, level 15 characters, which should not be a group that's fighting
together.
And then you also include all of the like plant defenses that were deployed as well that were
all trying to fight you guys.
Like it was fucking pandemonium of a fight.
There were so many things that were happening and so many like things at risk in that particular
fight and yeah, they lost.
They straight up failed.
And it's like Bahamut ends up losing at the last minute.
Kilo is eaten, which like for everybody else, they were like, whoa.
And then for Magnolia, she was like, no, because like the plan was to keep him alive
long enough to get several pieces of key information because he basically was the only person that
knew the answers to the questions the party needed, but everyone else just hated him so
much.
They were like, we're not going to interfere.
And then he got fucking eaten.
Well, that's another thing with playing with guys at the table.
Blind rage overtakes everything else.
Oh, 100%.
Yep.
It's like it's their, it's their moment to hit stuff and hit them.
Hit him.
Yeah, but you forgetting about banish being a concentration spell and then killing yourself
was such.
And that wasn't even a, that wasn't even a role failure.
That was a me, Madison Conway.
Such a fucking moment.
That was a me failure.
That was, yeah, I forgot that this is a concentration spell and not permanent.
So I'm going to kill myself.
And then Robert was like, show and like everyone else kind of forgot about it too.
So as Robert's narrating this really cool thing where like I came back to life and everyone
was like, holy shit, what the fuck?
And then he's like, and then the dragon comes back and everyone was like, what?
Cause this thing was not, not even close to death.
Like it was a fun stat block I found for a knit hog and God of War Ragnarok, which is
one of my favorite fucking game series of all time.
I have a PS5 controller that is like the limited edition.
Anyways, that's God of War dice box.
Yeah.
God of War dice box that Maddie made.
Yeah.
Shout out Maddie.
I make dice boxes.
If you want a dice box, email me.
One of my favorite fucking series of all time.
Anyways, there was a character, I mean, a lot of the campaign was inspired by that game
actually.
And knit hog specifically, I knew I wanted to be a character that was involved because
knit hog and mythology, she protects the world tree.
And this weird kind of like symbiotic and also parasitic way.
So the way that knit hogs Lord go is that her and basically her spawn sit at the foot
of the world tree and basically gnaw on rogue branches to keep it in check.
She's animalistic, but she's also intelligent.
So like she will eat the branches to keep them from going places they shouldn't, but
also she will physically attack anybody that tries to otherwise fuck with the world tree
or the Idrisil, as it's called in Norse mythology.
So the way that I had set it up was the tree basically got yanked and her natural instincts
kicked in to protect it no matter where it went.
And the issue was that its branches were now spreading to places it shouldn't be.
And so they were basically tasked with removing a branch of the Idrisil from a particular
realm.
And the second they stepped up to do that, knit hog who's this like basically CR 20 ridiculously
broken legendary action to resistance character.
Fuck legendary.
Shows up and is like cool.
Like is this, and I even gave them a moment I was like listen if you don't attack her
or the branch she's not going to attack you.
And they were like well we're here to do a job.
And then combat started and she started fucking people up.
Which is what she was designed to do.
But then of course this also presents the BBEG with an opportunity to kill one of his
main obstacles, which is this CR 20 god level being that's always there to try and fuck
up anything he wants to do.
So this was a DM being like y'all are going to die so quickly I'm going to throw you a
bone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then that's almost exactly what it was to do.
I was like there's no way they're going to win this fight.
Who's the only other person that would have a vested interest and could in theory 1v1
knit hog.
And the only person that came to mind was the BBEG Kilo and I was like fuck it we're
going to give him a shit ton of magical items and we're going to bump him up a shit ton.
He's here he's showing up he's fighting with you.
And he came in started beating his shit on a knit hog and then immediately he was like
cool I'm going to take Magnolia deuces.
Yeah.
Surprise bitches.
Like the whole time after all of us were like hey we don't trust you and he's like
nah nah I'm I'm chill now.
I'm cool now.
Listen we have mutual interest right now.
I'm cool now I'm just going to do a little bit of light kidnapping in the middle.
Yeah pull the wool over.
And then of course knit hog gets banished.
Kilo goes down.
Kilo is trying to be aroused.
Madison kills herself to come back with full spell slots and everyone forgets that the
knit hog who's still basically at above half health and doing like 50-60 damage a turn
to everything not just like individual characters because she had a lot of like AOE spells comes
back her immediate motivation eat the motherfucker that's been 1v1ing her successfully and that's
what she did.
Her first action back was to basically open this little pouch on her like throat area and
suck this motherfucker into like a mini realm that she has inside of herself so that he
would never be able to come back.
Like the instinctual like and I even did wisdom saving throw on her behalf.
I was like what does she do now that she's back does she try and fight the players or
does she go for Kilo.
And she failed the wisdom saving throw so I was like cool this is a character who's enraged
at being hit and beaten and bruised over trying to do her ancestral job.
She's going for the one person in this fight that has been able to actually like hold a
candle to her abilities and that's what she did.
Yeah and it was like that was one that was.
That's like if it had been a success all failure the success in that moment would have been
her going for the players instead.
Yeah which they would have died but also Kilo would have lived because he was he had two
positives and no negatives yet and he's got fucking.
Yeah that's what I just got in looking back it was like me like fit and that's another
like failure at the table that's not just rolling in that one that we haven't really
like talked about much which is like you as a player making a decision that wow that was
a decision and I've made plenty of those almost exclusively as Magnolia and that was one of
those moments where that was something that I like legit like almost lost sleepover of
being like why did I do that why did I not just take the second to like heal or stabilize
this character and instead was like nope I randomly had a wild magic surge to reincarnate
so I'm just going to take advantage of that and do that instead and it fucked everything
over like we would have succeeded in that fight and it would have been a thing of I
bottom it probably would not have succeeded but we as players would have succeeded we
would have kept the people that we needed to keep alive and we would have been able
to like get out of that fight with not as many bruises and cuts as we did but that's
just not how it went.
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 DM us on instagram at crescent magazine
or we'll never get better like these fucking guys.
Cool so we totally stalled I had to leave the room take a phone call but it's about the
time for us to end it anyway so thank you all for tuning in to another episode of table
talk talking about natural failures.
Our own ships with failure.
Yeah we got pretty deep hopefully this episode will be coming out after the character sheet
episode because we're gonna get that filmed and done eventually we're gonna do it but
if it doesn't it doesn't it'll come out after but anyways see you all next time thanks for
listening in bye bye.