Probability of Demise

Welcome adventurers to Probability of Demise, the podcast where critical fumbles meet critical facepalms. Join us as we delve into the darkest dungeons, slay the stupidest gremlins, and roll enough ones to make a beholder weep. Forget epic storylines and heroic deeds. Here we celebrate the chaotic beauty of bad roles, questionable decisions, and characters with more charisma than sense.

We'll be your dungeon masters of disappointment, guiding you through campaigns where the only guaranteed treasure is a mountain of laughter, and maybe some psychic scarring. So grab your Nat 1 dice, strap on your anxiety helmets, and prepare to witness the glorious trainwreck that is our D and D journey, because, in the end, Even if your character dies face first into a pile of pudding, at least you'll have the Dice God's permission to laugh your ass off.

The

familiar chime of the doorbell at Cecilia's Seaside Sundries and of S's rings one last time as our group assembles. The salty sea breeze drifts through the open windows carrying with it the echoes of countless battles, alliances, and mysteries investigated. Welcome, dear friends. Tonight marks not an ending but a celebration, and it's a moment to honor the epic tale we've woven together over 38 sessions, countless dice rolls, and shared memories.

Here we are, surrounded by Celia's curious collection of seashells and sundries see, I did know what it was where our story first began. Tonight, we'll unravel the intricate threads of our campaign, from those first tentative steps into investigating the high magic city of Overton, to our climactic finale.

Goodbye. The beginning. Chronicle the evolution of our heroes, their triumphs, their sacrifices, and the moments that transformed them. Share the untold tales, the near misses, and the happy accidents that have shaped our narrative. I'll also invite everyone to peek behind the DM screen to understand the gears and levers that drove our story forward.

Speculate on the futures of our characters and the world they've left their mark upon. And, most important, subscribe. Celebrate the real magic, the friendships we forge as a pod, and hopefully your own pods. The artifacts of our adventure surround us, dog eared character sheets, battle worn dice, and maps marked with the footprints of destiny.

Each item tells a story, each memory builds upon the last, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. So, Raise your mugs. Investigators. Whether you've wielded cutting words or rainbow spells, played tinkerer or investigator, your contribution to this tale has been invaluable. The candles flicker.

The dice await their final role in the story of probability of demise. prepares to reveal its deepest secrets. Hey, work. What's the name of the podcast again?

Word of the day! Ah! That's me! It's the very last one of me too. Uh, for a bit. Uh. So, welcome, once again, fellow leon deers. How do you pluralize? Players, anyways. Dungeon dovers. Dungeon D Dwell Dwell Dwellvers. Wow, none of us can talk today. Um Well, two are down. Two left to go. We'll see how the other two fare.

So today's word, uh, I'm not gonna lie with you folks. I tried to be really fancy. I tried to find a really fancy word that meant, like, coming to an end, a conclusion, but like, a word we don't know. So, uh, I'm not gonna lie with you. I couldn't find one. So if you know a really fancy word that revolves around ending, comment and let me know because I couldn't find anything myself.

Decapitation. No. Oh.

Today's word is It is, um, jocular, it is, oh, also, I forgot, tis my nature, once again, ba ba ba, D100,

cause I already rolled, so I forgot. And today's number Didn't you just tell us that you were cheating the system by trying to find a different word? That is true, I did like, cheat and wanted to like, find a special word. This week's rule was meaningless. This week's roll was gonna be meaningless, but turned out not to be because I can't find a word.

Today's number was 52, which now we all know was, I just randomly rolled so that I had a number. But I did roll, uh, and the word was jocular, like I said. Which means, ahem, loading, loading. Rawhide. It does not mean rawhide. No. You could be a jocular rawhider. Urgh. So, jocular means humorous or playful, uh, and used in a sentence, our very last sentence.

The jocular halfling kept the party spirits high with his clever jokes, even in the midst of their most dangerous quest yet. Voila. Is this the last word of the day? For now. For now. I love how she keeps saying it's the last word of the day, and I'm kind of like, are you sure? Well, next time, folks, we should have a new.

A new, a new thing. I don't know what. A new thing. Hmm. A new segment. Fans, let us know what the new segment should be. I think it should be Jason teaching us a new dance move every week. Nobody wants to see that. I've only got one guess. This is the mashed potato, and this is how you do it. And then Jason must demonstrate.

Please like, comment, subscribe, and in your comment, I would like a list of dance moves and which one of our fabulous cast members should have to do the dance move. It's going to say Jason every time, if we do that, only one of us is a professional dancer. So we know who's not being selected, get the pro over there.

If it's churn the butter, I'm there.

We should just all do our most terrible. Well, anyways, welcome. We're going to go ahead and jump into the campaign. Uh, you all know what we've been up to. We started off. As we ended, quite literally. So, I don't know, does anybody have any thoughts about the plot and what occurred? The, any thoughts about what the plot and what, sorry?

The plot in general, the main plot, like this whole story that we went through. We went through this storyline where, um, And it, it, initially, I intended this to be, like, Lots of individual, um, Cases? Sleuthing situations. But, Y'all are very fun to follow character wise, and then you end up And can't make a decision as a group.

Well, and, you know, stories happen. So, it is fun, but I, I, we, we, we have not lent ourselves towards an episodic nature. I

think the first session, it took us most of the session just to, Get everybody together and that was a little bit my fault and then second session We just wanted to give the world an example of why you, why so many campaigns start with, so you find yourself in a tavern because then you're all in the fucking tavern and you just have to meet instead of being on three different parts of a city and have to find reasons to push us together.

Good times. I got to do it twice though. Dear Sticky Beak. Yeah, you did. Um, so any, Oh, speaking of Sticky Beak, I don't think I have it near me right now. Um, but somebody in my local area who watches our podcast found me a Sticky Beak mask at Spirit Halloween of all places and gave it to me like a week and a half ago, two weeks ago.

And I was trying to find a reason to wear it and I kept forgetting.

So somewhere in here, there's a Sticky Beak mask, my nostalgia for this campaign. Do you need a minute? Do you want to go find it? No. I don't want to look for anything right now. Um, Alright, well, so like, the overall plot was, discover who killed Grant. Mhm. Which I feel like we lost sometimes. We literally lost the plot.

But that's not you, that's us, um, Hyperfixating on little things. Yeah. It's also super fun to follow where you're all going, because Sometimes what you're doing is just very entertaining, and for me, I really enjoyed exploring the city with your eyeballs. Hm. Like, you all got me to places in the city that I hadn't really thought about that deeply, I just kind of had some quick notes, and then you went to them, and I was like, oh, well, where would they go if they did that?

And, like, following the only one who can remember the neighborhood names. I had neighborhood names, but I didn't have like a lot of details on each of them. I just had kind of a brief, like, I don't know, it's kind of one of those crazy things where you're just like, Oh yeah, they're going to go there. So I'm going to write this up before the next session because I don't know what's there.

You know, I will say that there's only really one place that I could have used just a little bit less. Thought into the bone the bone place. What's his faces? Ah, no, not no, not even no, no, the magic shop, the magic shop really got to you. I were making it up on the spot too. I bet just like, oh, what else can I add?

Oh, I know because they had it. They had visualizations already to go. Oh, that is true. No, no, no. That, that, that. Like the stool made of legs. That is true. That's one of those situations where as a DM you become really, um, like I didn't have the smithy, the bakery that also had the library or the magic shop thought out.

And then when I knew that's what you're going to be doing, you're going to be engaging with those things. I've spent that week writing them up. And coming up with ideas and then I got stuck, like obsessed with this whole body horror pun based magic shop and I just couldn't let it go. Like I had fun with the bakery with the, with, with the book, like I, I think that was inspired by all the TikToks where they were talking about the plant people who talk about nurseries as the plant shelter.

Oh, I was thinking, what would it be like the book version of that? What's the person who like obsessively collects and takes care of books, but not in a library way where it's shared, but more of like a, I'm protecting them. This is the shelter for the books. That was a really good. The book rescue. The book rescue.

That was a really good concept. I really enjoyed that, that NPC and that, uh, that little story moment. I think, I think in terms of like the overall Stupid son. I rolled an intelligence stat for that character because I thought you might fight him and her. They could have been antagonists. I have never rolled so bad on stats.

He was crap. I don't know. Like, not even, like, a bad roll, oh, I can re roll this because I rolled so horribly, it's just like, I think it was, the first time I did it, I did like, a 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, something, it was like all super low. So then I re rolled it again, and I still got, I think the highest stat I had for him was a 12.

Woof. Yeah. I was like, hell, what? He's doomed.

Sorry, the rest of you were saying something and I just talked over you. My bad. No, I just, I was saying that I think, um, in terms of like the overall plot. Uh, one thing that you do really well, Rurik, is, uh, outside of the actual session, like, you remind us, like, okay, well, these are the things you have going on, like, you kind of keep us in check, um, the best that you can, and so You locked that guy in a closet seven sessions ago.

He's probably dead now. Yeah, so, um So, thank you for that, like, extra mental effort that goes into that. I think that, you know, that's not something that our viewers and listeners would necessarily know. Um, like, beyond the preparation, there's also, like, a, like, a debrief that has to happen for our own sakes.

And, uh, I think something that Jason wouldn't Also for my sake sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Because there were a couple of times in this campaign especially, I don't think it was this Strong in the last campaign, there were a couple of times where you all came in and you'd totally forgotten things that you had been big ahas in the last session.

And I'm sitting there going like, oh, uh oh, they, uh oh. And that's the reality of playing once a week and then sometimes having to take longer breaks and then playing like a slew of sessions back to back and then taking a couple of breaks. That's just the reality of how it works. And I also think that because we play this way, like in our brains, like if, if we were playing in person and not having to worry about technology or anything along those lines, or like the, you know, the, the audience factor, we would have a lot more like brain percentage to donate towards remembering things like this and like writing, writing shit down.

Um, but, uh, We do the best we can also, I think, I think something that Jason wouldn't mind me sharing just because it is funny is that, uh, As the person who has been editing the videos for the last, uh, I would say, what, four or five months? Huge shout out to Jason for doing that, um, and being amazing about it.

Um, is that he then sees all the things that we forgot, but it's too late to We've already like played the next session, so it's too late to recall those things and be like, Oh yeah, by the way, do you remember that we did this? So, yeah, we usually have about three in the bank, so I'm finding out things and we're already on from there.

It's like a whole rediscovery. I've been really enjoying. Some of Jason's messages to me at the end or of his editing mode. He's like, what about this? Whatever happened to that? I'm like, oh, y'all forgot to do it. Yes. Yeah, but that's true in D& D That's one of the fun things about this you like to pivot to whatever is most interesting to you It can be shiny object syndrome, and it's okay Speaking of the shiny object syndrome.

Is there any other? primary things around the main plot Or are we ready to pivot to the shiny object called your characters? Eight months. It's been eight months since we pivoted. Eight months. So I guess I have a question for you, if you don't mind, I guess I'm asking, I see this is later on the thing, but it pertains to this.

When you set up certain things, how far in advance do you set them up for like them to kind of happen? Like the, the floating island. Coming towards, like, the, the, the, the other floating island. How far in advance did you set that up to be integrated into the story? I had the floating island. I did not have it populated.

I just had it as a looming threat. Because I was trying to figure out like, actually, initially I threw it in, it was, it was color. It, this is supposed to be this high magic society and there's these floating citadels, but like there hadn't been another bigger city visiting. And if this is like this high magic society with floating cities around the rest of the world, probably one of those floating cities should come to this huge magical city of Underton and Overton and conduct trade.

So initially it was just going to be color. I was going to have it kind of float through some big holiday festival or something like that. I thought there might be a nice break, but as the campaign become more intense and I was looking for ways to, um, both give you a high level threat. That's really beyond your characters abilities, which is what I tried to do.

I needed to provide something that could temper that that could create spaces so you could actually survive those engagements to give this. This is a high magic society. These are, you know, people schlepping through their lives, you know, it's the average person in New York City trying to make it through working two jobs.

Um, the world is happening around them, but then they get wrapped up in something. They're, they've been somehow dragged into a police investigation as a eyewitness or whatnot. What does that feel like and look like, but also how do you make it possible for them to survive it? Because I didn't want you all to be, this was a personal choice that might not be something you all liked, but I didn't want it to be a situation where you had to be level 20 in order to survive the city.

Well I think it was an interesting juxtaposition of like, our last character were two of our, two of the three of us ascended to godhood. Like, I think um, like, I think this came up a little bit a couple episodes ago, but just about how we were always dealing with things that were like, above our pay grade.

It was just like these regular people just like trying to solve problems that were so far above them. It would be like the three of us getting together and be like, we're going to solve the Donald Trump problem. Like it's, you know, like, like, we're going to find the next candidate that can fucking get in there and fix all of this.

Like that's, we don't know how to do that. We're just regular people. And like, that's the kind of crap that gets like thrown in the laps of these three characters. I don't think we've been actually so outrightly political in a bit. Yeah. Honestly. I think a little bit of the world, we do, uh, allude to that a lot.

Um. Yeah. I mean, y'all, if you're listening to us and you don't know our viewpoints by now, you haven't been paying attention. If you haven't figured out Homelander is not the good guy, then you're an asshole. Yes. Yes.

All right. Moving on. With that answer, let's jump into the characters. Wait, I have one, I have one little thing. I just, I found it really interesting as a player. To realize, uh, how much of a weakness murder, like not murder mysteries, Well, I guess this is a murder mystery. How, like, it's interesting, like, how some campaigns you'll feel like it's right up your alley, Everything makes sense, and you know exactly what to do, And then I get into a storyline like this, and I'm like, I am confused!

I am lost! I don't know what's happening! And it was interesting to be the player, to be like, I, I gotta do something. Or I guess I won't. Which I have done a few times in a few episodes where I was like, I just stand there and wait 'cause I don't . Well, speaking of that, how did that influence how your character evolved and grew and the relationships they had?

Um, for me and Sarah Sina and Sarah, when we first saw her, was this excited creator of things who had lost her sister. Her brother and her father was extremely dangerously ill. Yeah, uh, and I always thought of her as, uh, definitely, like, putting it in more real life terms, but like, definitely somewhere on the spectrum, you know, very much like, This one hyper fixation, she's so smart, she's so good at it, everything makes sense, and then everything else sort of doesn't make sense.

So when I didn't know what to do, in my head, I was like, well it kind of makes sense for her, cause also she always had her brother, so whenever she didn't know what to do, she would just be like, uh, what am I doing? And wait to be told, oh, go look at that, go do this, go whatever. She was, like, the little, you know, thing that ran behind him.

I mean, that type of paralysis is actually really real for neurodivergents. So, the kind of, like, the freeze where you're just like, I don't know what to do next. Like, this is completely out of my comfort zone. Um, so it's like, Oh no, I need to make dinner and I also need to do laundry and I have homework for a class and I have this thing for work and then you sit on the couch and watch seven hours of TV because you can't make a decision about what to do next.

But um, not translate that into D and D world, you know, it was like, well, I have to solve this murder and I have to, but I also have to figure out what happened to my brother and my dad is really sick, so I'm just going to stand here on the stairs. Yeah, I honestly loved. How it played out in a lot of ways, because it's when I looked at what you wrote for your character, um, you'd written that Thorin, which was your father's name originally.

I don't know if we changed it later on, but, um, I don't know, you're, he kind of had a magical version of multiple sclerosis, what the concept was, and unaware of the nature of the disease, the struggle for that, plus with your sister's death, kind of initially creating this Paul over the family, then your missing brother, Location, situation, unknown.

Um, and then being at the hospital and trying to commute there every day, like, it was a lot of messiness. And it gave me a lot of space to think about, okay, you are trying to escape from this really intense space. You're trying to find your brother, maybe because he can be the solution to everything. Your mom is, I think you wrote that she was a dedicated worker, and I took that as workaholic.

She's trying to bring in the money to pay for all the situation that's happening. And your brother owned this detective agency, which you were like, trying to keep propped up, but you just, like, it was a great thing, like, the tiefling with six horns can only balance so many things. And you can only stick six things on those horns.

And there was just too many things to stick on the horns. So I really liked that. And then, over the course of the campaign, you started to have a love interest. Yeah, it was wild, because I definitely I wasn't sure if Seraphina would even have the capacity to find other people attractive, let alone find someone who she found attractive and then, in her own weird way, would slowly started to flirt in a terrible way, to then get a kiss.

So. Uh, I mean, like I, I've always been very, very. Like, to reference Critical Role, very much like, uh, Travis on the, on the, like, I'm never gonna romance because that just feels, like, how do you, how do you make that, how do you make that happen? And the answer is, you don't. The answer is, is, is somehow it, it evolves.

Out of itself, like, like step by step, like you kind of initiated with like the, the pretty lady comments and everything. And then at, at that point, which I want everybody who's listening to this podcast and watching this. consent. I messaged Jess and I said, Hey, would it be okay if like I tried, you know, Ulua tried to romance your character.

So after that point it was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to relax into this a little bit and like actually try to flirt, which, uh, heavily out of practice. I mean, what I've learned is that Asher and Tanzanite were together, and Ulua and Seraphina were together, so now we're all married. I think that's how this turns out.

Yes, that's our multi generational polycule. Which is so crazy, because I always go in being like, no love interest, and yet I always end up with one. Well, yeah. My one fear is that one of you is going to start romancing one of the NPCs, And I won't remember that, like, because that's just not my brain space to think through it.

So I'm like, Oh, flirting. How does that work again? I mean, that's how I felt about it. Googling how to flirt. I mean, honestly, it could be one of those moments where I don't know if you've ever seen the outtakes from, uh, I don't know if it's Anchorman or Anchorman 2, uh, but it's, uh, Kirsten Wiig and his name from The Office.

Steve Carell? Yeah, Steve Carell, like there to flirting is like, I mean, it's just comedy gold, but for some people like that's what it is. It's just like taking a genuine interest in what the other person has to say or like not even caring what they say, just being enamored with them. So anyways, um, to come to the pants party, speaking of flirting and transitioning over to a Ulua for a second, Ulua had a.

intense backstory that you shared with me, and we really barely dipped a pinky toe in it. If you compare it to like, Seraphina's backstory, we kind of got there. We kind of got into everything at some point. But Ulua had this really tragic past. We had this whole concept of the comp share thing that we didn't really talk in depth, but we just kind of like marinated at the top of it.

Yeah. There was hints to what it was about, but I kind of liked that we never really Discuss that, but would you like to talk about her history and what made her, her? I mean, sure. Um, I, you know, and you never know, this could be something that could be used in, in other ways. Uh, you have my full permission.

Uh, I can also share it with Jason if it's something you ever wanted, if he decides to DM me. It's, you know, Or if I ever write a book about one of our campaigns, like I keep saying I'm going to do it. Um, so something that, you know, is, is more unique about the world of Overton now is the, how the, you know, the races or the different varieties of humanoids, uh, that emerged after this climate crisis, um, is that they started to intermingle even more.

And so, and there were other nomadic people, which if you ever are interested about it, you can go to, uh, there is a website that has all that lore that Rurik may or may not have filled out. That should get listed on our website, website, I think, for, for the people to read, for people who are really interested.

Um, I have to turn it on. Um, so the, the main thing is, is, I, it was two types of people. One focused in the sand and one focused in the water. And so, Ulua was born of a tryst between the two. Which is why I mean, she just didn't fit in between either people. And so at a very young age, she was sold off to a traveling merchant, um, to be an assistant.

And she, he, he, you know, had musical instruments and such. And so she started singing and that was how he. You know, found she had this beautiful voice. Um, he wasn't particularly a good person. Um, and she was, and I, I didn't necessarily include this in the backstory, but I, I, I kind of hope that it was maybe implied she was taken advantage of as a child, but as she got to a certain age and he no longer found a use for her, uh, he sold her into a com shar house.

And that is where she was able to take her voice and really make that what she was loved and adored for. And so, it took her a very long time to develop a sense of self that wasn't, uh, dependent on what people wanted from her. or what people were planning on taking from her. And so the, I felt it was really important for her to own being a comeshare and why, that's why Oksana was so important, because Oksana really changed the game, um, and turned being a com shar into something that was respected and revered.

And took in people who, who otherwise at the end of their usefulness would have been discarded in society. So, that, uh. It was a very interesting backstory to get to play with and tinker with. So, um. You never know, we could dig into it another, another time someday. You never know. Yeah, I mean, the origin story of Ulua.

Yeah, it was super interesting. And then, over the course of the campaign, she was kind of forced out of her space as a com shar and other things. By the needs of the group. Um, and Which is a thing that I do as a player. I tend to be very Whatever we need to do! Whatever, whatever, whatever y'all want to do!

I'm just happy to be here. I thought it was very interesting as that went on, and then the romance blossomed with Seraphina, but also just navigating the place. What is Ulua's place? Um, and it was super interesting to have two super high, um, charisma characters in the same campaign. Because there were times where you were both, like, shoving each other out of the way.

Both metaphorically and maybe really. Um, but there was interesting spaces because both of you had super high charisma. And You could probably get away with anything you ever wanted to if you could talk your way around it. Which was super fun and a little frustrating. You weren't intelligent enough to pick up on things occasionally.

I was laughing because I was like, Well, we did say this was going to be a mystery campaign, but Why did everybody use intelligence as their dump stat except for Seraphina?

It didn't make any sense. I feel, I think I focused on wisdom next. That might be why. That was like, I think that fitted, fitted, that fit, uh, Ulua's, like, figuring out people as a Comshire that made sense. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably a mistake, I didn't think about, just, cause I think intelligence is a common dumpstep for warlocks, and it's just, I didn't think about, like, investigation roles requiring good intelligence.

It was my favorite mistake for this campaign to have. Yeah. And even better, the people who constantly investigate it weren't the people who should be doing the investigations. It's like, cool, this is going to make it really muddy. I mean, that's, I think that's something that a lot of people also, even though we did it unintentionally, um, shy away from, and like, when building out a character, like, they lean, they shy away from putting a needed stat.

I think, let me rephrase this, I think the temptation to min max, uh, characters is really strong. Um, especially for people who are just starting out and so I want to assure people that if you're building a character, it doesn't have to be your first one, you know, I, I will be the first to admit that my very first character was a fucking badass.

Uh, I, I, I min, I min maxed her. in a way that I liked, not in a way that felt like I'm winning D& D because you're not supposed to win D& D. That's not how that works. But I felt like she, she was really good at the things I wanted her to be good at, but she also had a strength of eight. So, um, so she didn't always, she couldn't always do the things I wanted her to do.

But, um, Occasionally rolled some good rolls on that. And even then you're like, Dang it. I know. I know. Um. My first, my first character was like that too, except for his nine strength. But he was like maxed out in a bunch of other ways. And so as I've played more, and especially with Rurik, I think you, you do an amazing job of encouraging people to lean into what could essentially like be a character flaw, but is completely as a result of like a really crappy role when you're building out a character.

Um. And I think taking that risk makes the story a lot more interesting and the sessions a lot more fun and memorable, memorable, um, because you could just be like, you know what, fuck it. I, I, I really like if in this ideal situation, I would be able to shoot this arrow, you know, 20 yards as it stands. I can barely shoot at five.

I got to figure out something else, you know, and it, and it forces you to be creative. So, um, if I could. I, I know you, you know, it was a mistake per se that we didn't really pick a lot of intelligence, uh, or pick high intelligence, but I think it definitely made for a lot more moments where we were like, Well, like when I chose to knock, when we were trying to sneak around.

That was so awesome. That was when, because I feel like a lot of times That was Larissa failing an intelligence roll. I feel like a lot of times we start getting angry with each other for making dumb mistakes. And then, like, I think at that point there had been, like, Seraphina had felt like she had made a lot of mistakes and she was feeling angry at herself.

Jason had done the same thing. And then you did it. It was like We have completed the trifecta. We have all been idiots. And speaking of Gus having that moment, Gus had a whole fun backstory as well that we didn't go into at all except for his wife. So just so you all know, Gus is the son of a traitor in the Underdark.

There is a key feature of what Gus's trajectory was pre campaign that I was getting so ready to launch into when Ulua had her whip, but we never got there. And I, do you mind, Jason, if I share this one? This is the moment to tell us! No more secrets! So, Gus's, Jason's character, Gus. Gained his accolades early on with The Watch for bringing down a radical sect of Tanzanite death cult assassins.

The whip you had That was the first big case he broke. Yeah. The whip you had is the missing murder weapon from that assassin cult. Oh! So the Tanzanesian Terror, this assassin organization, you have in your possession that whip. And if you had leveled up the religion aspect just a little bit more before we reset, it was gonna be a whole thing.

I was kind of excited. Also, I love the undone things in a campaign and story. See, my intention for that cult was actually, um, to play on that Tanzanite accidentally created a species of people at the end of the game. campaign one on accident. And that was my thought is like that some like sect of those people had split off and become a cult.

And I was using it for dirty deeds. Were they done dirt cheap? No, sorry. Yeah, there are also some really good jokes that Jason had built into this character's background. We never accessed those. I wasn't really sure how to bring up the The politician Magic Mike. I really wanted to the whole time. We did.

Magic Mike was the serial killer. We did that. That was it. We did do Magic Mike. We didn't do the politician. Because then we were talking about, was it his granddaughter? Yeah, that's the one that we left hanging. Yeah. There was a lot of fun in that. There was something you were about to say about, um, uh, uh,

No, things left undone. Yeah, things left undone in It's fun. Like, just these un These unresolved threads are super fun to deal with. They just make life happy. Um, and I also I kept forgetting when we were getting into Members of the Watch, Dick Brady was the person who was planting the seeds. Evidence and I could never hold it in my head.

It was, uh, so Dick is in like detective and then Brady is apparently like police slang for somebody that like stabs you in the back or like a traitor.

It was a really cool one. Yeah. His whole thing was like, he planted evidence. Gus, some do it. Gus reported him. Gus was like asked to resign and the guy got away with it. That was like, I don't know if that ever actually came out, but that's how Gus left the watch. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we ever really got into it.

I definitely think that there were some hints. We were getting political on our podcast. Police corruption. That was my It was super fun. Well, that's what I'm saying, like, all sorts of things were happening, but, um, I really loved that, and then, throughout the campaign, Gus, it felt like Gus came into the campaign done with it all.

But over the course of the various pieces, it was like Gus was coming back to life. Yeah. Yeah. He was basically just like waiting to die. That's all he was doing. He's just like passing time with painting and like pissing around, having a few drinks at the bar, painting more. He was just waiting. Like every day was the same.

Get up, go like, just waiting to not wake up one day. That's basically like where his mindset was. Like he had a good life. He was just done. He was just ready for it to be done. He didn't have anything else. So, it's an interesting, I think all of us did a lot more like role playing in Campaign 2 than we did in Campaign 1, like emotional role playing, like getting invested.

Yeah, like getting into the head of your character. Mm hmm. Yeah. Like, I know I was like, when the first time that, the first time Gus saw his dead wife, it was less impactful the second time because it had just happened like three weeks ago. But the first time, uh, like I was almost in tears by the end of it.

Like, cause I was like trying to just put myself in his place where like this woman that he was like, spent his entire life with that he hadn't seen in decades, you know, like was, here she was, like he was in the afterlife and he wanted to stay, but he had these responsibilities. And like, So I was like really trying to put myself in that space and I think that's the most I've ever like acted out a character.

So that was like a new experience for me. Like, Asher was just a big, Asher was just smartass. Like, I didn't Asher was you. Asher was me. Yeah, exactly. Like, maybe we can talk about that. And that's why Jess loved him so much. Mmm. Wink. Yeah. Exaggerated wink. Jess and Lorissa, do you have any questions about that bit of Gus history?

Well, I mean And also just the

So, I think, I always enjoy watching other characters get into it. Um, I never know when it's going to happen to me. It just kind of happens. So I'm kind of curious to, to pick everybody, including Rurik. brain on, in those moments where

things are emotional or should be emotional, what, what kind of flips in your brain or at least, okay, so let me say what it is for me and then maybe y'all can say how it felt, how it felt to you because I know everybody's brains work differently. Um, Transcribed Uh, I think the moment that flipped hard for me that I wasn't expecting was telling Tanzanite, like, to pass on a message to Oksana and, uh, Rodax.

I didn't expect that to actually make me tear up and all of a sudden I was just like, I was like, oh, okay, well, okay, we're feeling this. Um, so I'd be curious. I don't know, Rurik as, as D. As GM, do you think that those moments happen to you, too? Or do you find that that happens less often if you're not coming from one character's perspective all the time?

I think when I really get excited about an NPC that comes through, I think one of the things that I've been doing to protect myself with the NPCs that I've been using is none of them are ones that I care that much about. Um, there's been so many campaigns that I've run where people just killed my favorite NPCs left and right, that I try not to get emotionally invested.

We're fortunately not very murder hobo y, so. So, it's been starting to peak out. Sir Gregor is one. Okay. If you had all chosen to help Sir Gregor, it would have been a big deal. And when I rolled, without anybody around, it was all by myself. When I rolled his death, I fell apart. Aww. Um, and, you know, I rolled that, I realized what it would mean for the city, and kind of the deterioration of the situation, I kind of just took a couple of hours break before I got back to it.

And that was a really long night of planning. Rolled up a little wish spell, put it in a ball, tossed it into the world. Yep, pretty much. Oh my gosh. Gotta get this out of here. Gotta get this done. Um, some characters I've hated, like, because I inhabit your antagonists a lot. Watching you kill somebody I hate, because I put my least favorite aspects into some of the characters.

And it hasn't happened in this campaign as much, but in the last campaign there were a lot of those characters I really hated. Um, that weren't dragons? Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. There was a bunch of them. Before we get away from this, Jess, the, uh, the moment that you did that really got me was when we were in like the WhisperNet bar and we found out about your brother and then you like stormed over to the guy and like demanded that he had to be wrong.

And I felt like you were really, really feeling that because I felt it like from you. I get it. Maybe choke up like the way that you played that. I thought that was, I think we all had those moments, like in this campaign that we maybe didn't have in the last one. I'm just curious how you felt about it.

Yeah. Uh, that's definitely one of the moments I felt it. Um,

I mean, coming from like a performer side, I know we're all performers, the four of us, but for those who may be listening and watching who are not. So often as an actor, you, a part of you is in these characters, um, and, you know, sometimes you can't tell if it's character side of you that's starting to, like, feel these things or if it's you feeling those things, but just, like, all of a sudden I was like, you have to be shitting me that he's dead.

I was like, all this shit that's happened to her in this family, it's, it's just not, it's not happening. It's not, that's not an option. It's not an option. But like, also, you know, so, you know, I sometimes found myself wanting to back off of that. Cause I was like, Oh, am I mad or is she mad or is both of us mad?

So, so yeah. I mean, I think, I think the answer is to, to that question is yes. And I think that's, that's, yeah, I think. Like, from an acting perspective, that you, you have to feel it. Um, you don't have to be it. Like, I, like, I, I don't know that I, like, method acting versus. Not, you know, I don't think you have to be a character 24 7 in order to fully understand a character.

But I do think you have to be able to feel what it is they're supposed to be feeling in that moment. Um, and so, that's why I think it's really important when those moments to come up, to run with them. Um, and to just say, okay. And like, that's, it's a big yes. And in that moment, um, and it, and it worked out beautifully because one of the five stages of grief is denial, you know, and so, and another one is anger.

And so it was like, it was a completely natural reaction. And that's why I think it worked so well. Um, and then it also gave us a moment to react to how we would support through someone, support someone going through that moment. Um, so yeah, I think, I think that's something that I really just to kind of wrap up on this particular topic is I really appreciate about, about each and every one of you is that we are not afraid to be vulnerable with each other.

We're not trying to. When this game, like, we're here to play these characters in a way that can make authentic connections and authentic stories, you know, kind of evolve out of unexpected, you know, or unknown circumstances. Does that make sense? Yeah. I feel like I'm rambling. You are, but it's good rambles.

Oh no! I talked too much. Speaking of all this, there was this huge reset for all of your characters. But one of the things that I said to you all is keep your stats.

But I wanna know, do we keep our stuff? Like, do I just wake barstool with a bag of holding on my hip, like, That's what I want to talk about. What do you think happened? Do you think? Because I had been thinking about it going back and forth, and I was honestly thinking, yeah. I think yes, we would still have all this stuff.

Because they're all things that would have, could have been attained, whether the Slotty had come or not. Not yours. Not, not your, not the thing that turned you. Oh, that's true. But like, my cool weapon, I could have gotten. I probably wouldn't have, but like, I think she would find that at some point and be like, Whoa!

What's that? This is a really interesting thing because one of the things, One of the things I think about a lot as a GM, is I don't want to punish you for making a really awesome choice in the moment to use that wish. Like, you group chose it because you all collaborated on that. So by group choosing it, you really made an audacious choice, and I don't want to punish that by taking away what you have.

I don't want to take away your levels, I don't want to do that. So, it's an interesting place mechanically, but then in terms of story, what might have happened if I didn't take those away and you just discovered them about your places and had all these questions? Um, it would have been a little bit different if, say, one of you had retained your memories, but the roles didn't.

Uh, StickyPink would be the only one who retained anything, who's very, very confused, by the way. He was about to die to the Modron before this wish happened. Wow. Yeah, I am curious about that. So, he was hiding on the floating island, er, in the floating city. And then, like, what? Like, was he trying to escape?

Was he just gonna, like, wait for reinforcements? What was, what was his plan? So I left him there as a placeholder. I, he, Stinky Beak's stealth roles are stupid. You know, like your charisma roles were stupid and Seraphina's intelligence roles were stupid. Stinky Beak had. A dumb level of sneakiness. And there isn't any way anything was ever seeing him.

Um, I kind of built him that way originally, and then as we went through the campaign and I kind of leveled him to keep him with you, Um, he was over leveled to you all initially, and then as you started inching up into the 789s, I started bumping him up with you. So he wasn't going to have any problems sneaking around, and I thought, okay, I can have him be, if they decide that they're going to go and try to knock out the Modron, if that's the angle they're going to take.

Um, Because that's a more obvious threat, if they have like some plan or they're going to go recruit, uh, some mage or ascended person to go and banish the city or something like that. Like whatever creative thing you all came up with, I can get you an in because you have somebody embedded on the other side.

Hmm. And the unfortunate thing with the slow evolution of the modern city was that I did not have it well planned out. It just kept filling in some gaps story wise and it kept giving me an opportunity to push you all to get back on task. What? Us? Never. I was also trying to use the Newsies to do that, but I couldn't always be very successful, you know.

It's little hard. I, I feel like that was definitely those moments where we would be like, oh yeah, well, shit, whoops,

mean at the end of the day, we did just basically let the city burn and then fixed it. I mean, that's, that's what you chose to do. But then you had this, I feel like that fell was, I feel like that was the, uh, result of not going after the slutty into the hole. Right? In the orphanage? Yeah. If you had followed the slutty down further, in the maudrin, um, that would have been either a choice to finish off the slutty through, and save the crag side crowds, and then have the opportunity to either negotiate with, or, um, fight the maudrin, or rather the city to fight the maudrin.

Um, but because you all just exited the orphanage. I mean, I was on fumes, I don't know about anybody else. Yeah, I was at like half health, no spells. Like, I was fine because I did nothing. That's where pushing and having all of the group working together is important. We should have sent Jess down the hole by herself.

Go, go kill them. Go down this weird cave hole. That's fine. Take my map. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that it's kind of like the nature of the game is mechanically you've spent these things. What do you do when you're down to your dregs? And that's honestly where some of the most magical rolls might happen.

It's also where a TPK might happen. Mm hmm. And TPKs might say it's a roll of the dice. I was fully prepared for Gus to die, I'm just saying. You all had a TPK of sorts if you want to think about the wish spell as a reset. That was a little bit of a total party kill. Yeah, I suppose. I still think one of my favorite moments, although at the moment we were probably all like, God damn it, um, is the fact that we climbed up Sticky Beans toilet.

I love that. Instead of just moving the rocks. So I had a map and I'm like,

I had this map and I was like, I knew where everything laid. And, in my head I thought, Oh, if they go down through the right side, They'll hear Stickybeak, I'll have Stickybeak yelling for them. If that had been your first choice, rather than going to the left where the, rat kingdom was. If you had gone to the right, you would have gone past and you would have seen this pile of bird feces and that would have clued you in and you could have yelled up and then he'd say well help me clear the rocks I can't do it whatever anything that could have happened in that zone but instead I mean we looked down and we and it looked like a dead end so

instead you crawled out of the pooper It was great. I loved it. It was a great, it was a great story. And then Stickybeak tried to fire us after we went through all the trouble to climb up his toilet. Yeah! So rude! Son of a bitch. That was, actually spawned a little bit from things I had been dealing with in my work life right then.

Is like, getting people to communicate. Because people weren't sharing what their updates and so like, how am I supposed to, let their other people know what's happening and do things to support them. And one of the things that I was thinking, I was like, you know what, if I kept getting reports of all these bad things happening and was starting to, and it was a wise investigator and was sitting there going like, oh shit, I think that might be my people.

And then to find out what was my people be like, how am I supposed to get through my, I've made promises now. Yeah. So it was a little fun moment. It was a fair reaction, but also like, I know earlier, Jason said we aren't, we weren't really motor home, more murder hobos. We kind of were in the beginning. We didn't murder hobos, guys.

They attacked us. That's murder. Hovering is just like, we were always attacked for their stuff. That's murder. That's true. But like tried to tell him sticky beak that apparently that's what I kept trying to say. It was all self defense. That wasn't good enough! So, we're at a section of our outline where I wanted to ask if you had any questions for me or each other.

Um, things that you, I mean you've asked me as we've gone, so why don't you ask me that many maybe? Maybe you've answered all the questions you have. But if you have questions for each other about like, character interactions or, um, any like, metagaming experiences, they're just like, oh yeah, that was a moment.

Or things that you asked me in chat. Some of you asked me things in chat quietly that I never answered. Um, or even like MPCs, anything about MPCs? Thoughts on favorites? I have a question. Larissa, will you marry me?

you're saying I never answered you if you don't know. Uh, we're already married. That's why. That's funny to me. But anyway. No, I, I actually asked the other day about the, uh. I completely forgot. This is one of the things Larissa was talking about. I was editing, and we did the thing in the orphanage with the fight, and, uh, we looted five gems out of those Slot E.

No idea what they're for, what they do. Um, so I was like, oh shit, we're never gonna know now. What do they do? And then Rurik wouldn't tell me. So Rurik, what do the gems do? So, I found a bit of D and D lore on, um, DM Academy. And the whole thing is These gems can be used to control Sloth. And what I was thinking was, is if you tried to evaluate them or anything like that, you would have realized that something, somebody, is controlling the Sloth.

And you could have used that to lure the Modron away, maybe, or You know, there was a lot of different takes with that, that you could have done. But I was trying to, like, set up a situation where you could use some of the subterfuge if you wanted to. Knowing that gems allowed control of the Slutty, um, you could be engaged in some dangerous, you know, what is it?

Mouse and cat sort of shenanigans? Cat and mouse shenanigans? And get the modded city to float away. Gus can build his own Slut Army. That too. He could have. Um, so yeah, it was, it was this whole thing of like, you would be able to control. Some slot or figure out that the person that was doing that and then like unravel the whole thing because maybe Figuring out who they were and putting them out They would have lost control of some spell or something like that and it would unraveled everything Just like I tried not to fix it too much But because I had run across this concept that the gems contained the life force of the slods And was useful for controlling them.

I was like, Oh, here's a gift I can give them. If they investigate it, they can find something out. And you never looked at him again. We got distracted by the fact that Seraphina was turning into a robot. All that, and then Seraphina was turning into a robot.

No biggie. I mean, Jess did say she was cool with being partly robotic. I did. Rick asked, like, if, if I were to be cured, would I want anything? And I was like, yeah. I was like, robotic arms, maybe some like, metal horns, I think that'd be cool. A little tink tink. Isn't that something I really would like? A tink tink!

With metal fingertips, just so that you can go tink tink tink tink tink tink tink tink This is an area that I definitely encourage other GMs, DMs to pay attention to. If you are going to inflict something on your player characters that might change their beautiful, wonderful, magical paper doll creation, This is their child.

This is their imaginary child that they have created. They love it. And if you do something that's going to significantly and permanently change that character, you better verify first. I have seen many players leave a campaign because the GM did something unilaterally to their character that was not reversible.

Uh huh. Or that really went against something that's at the heart of what they believe in or feel. So like having a temporary situation where you're slowly becoming robotic, oh no, it's dangerous, it's scary, that's fine. Your brother, Yeah. Is dead. That's not your character to your story and your family, and it's like, ah, that's horrifying.

But there's things in D and D that can fix that. There are resurrection spells of different types, and there's other ways of fixing these things. If you're gonna try to create a permanent character change, verify it with your players first. That's great advice. I don't always remember that for some things, but I definitely view it as really important.

Um, unless it's reversible, because then somebody can, like, if Jason said to me, I'm really uncomfortable with having rainbow, uh, uh, spells. It makes me feel weird. With having rainbows coming out of my ass! I invented rainbow spells. Which I think was actually Jason's idea. Yeah. It was. If it was something he was really uncomfortable with, then We can change it.

We can both retcon and or just say, well, that's curable. Your character just needs to talk with their patron. How cool would that have been? Trying to get to the Feywild at that point. Oh god. Can you imagine? Oh god, it would be hilarious. It made more sense, I hope, after we found out that my patron was like an archfey leprechaun.

That, uh, uh, that's why all of his spells are rainbow. I you guys made that connection or not. I was going to, uh, there was a spell you had, I can't remember which one it was, but you never got a chance to use it, and I was going to have it spawned, Uh, uh, pot of gold. Pot of gold. That would have been incredible.

You were always short of cash as a group. And I was trying to find plausible ways to give you some cash. And then, sometimes I would have the idea, but you moved too quickly through something. I'd be like, Uh, Stickybeak wants to give you money, but you're already headed off to solve the world's issues.

Good job. Good for you. Good choice. This is like a little metagame y of all of us, I think, because we, uh, we tend to be, like, all trying to pay for things and not wanting to take money from anyone for things in real life. Like, if we go to dinner, like, I'll reach for the check, whatever. But, like, so I feel like we get in these situations where someone's trying to pay for a quest and we're like, Well, the right thing to do would be that I did the right thing by doing this quest.

You should just Have it. Keep the money. Like, yeah. Like, yo, you're a, you're a poor fisherman. Like, you don't have money to give us a quest reward. You should keep your stuff and we'll just keep our shitty armor and weapons and we don't need your grandpa's legendary sword. Like. Yeah. Like, I feel like we, we shoot ourselves in the feet a lot and it's just like our real personalities coming through trying to like do the right thing all the time and like not take the, take things from other people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I think so. I definitely have seen that in you all. And there's been a few times where I was like, damn it, like you're, you're negotiating with somebody like get, get aggressive. Like we could have got way more than 10 percent of that mushroom business. I'm just saying. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, honestly, you could have just gotten the money up front that you've got and just set 50%.

Yeah. And like really demanded a lot of this person and made them work hard in the short term and probably started getting a return on investment instead. You were very kind and like, yeah, go figure it out. Good luck. I don't want to have to worry about it. I, I'm interested to. If it's, if it's okay, I keep like kind of derailing, but I, there, I guess there is like a, a question that I would be interested on everybody's opinion, but you might have to think about it for a little bit is what is one mechanic that you love in, I guess D& D specifically and one mechanic that you hate.

So I'm trying to think of like good examples, whether it's like action economy or I don't know, spell rules or speed, walking speed or something. I don't know. Is that a silly question? You start, because I already know the answer to both of these. Yeah, you start because you'll give us ideas. Y'all think about it for a hot minute.

My answer is whatever Beric says. Bullshit. You can't take mine. You can use it as inspiration, but you can't take it. Part of conspiration. The spell components, vocal, somatic, and material. They are such cool features that if you dig in just a tiny bit to utilize them, you can Super fun, that knock makes a loud knocking noise that you can't pull off.

Um, unless you have a focus or something, but like, there are certain things that cost you money to cast the spell. These set up so many fun opportunities for someone to really like invest in. What does it mean for your character? Have to go find the gilded cup of Gilderoy in order to summon your familiar, familiar, not familiar.

Whatever. My sommelier! Now I need to have a familiar that's a sommelier and it's my sommelier. That's, yes. Well I have some in Fay and I never did it because I didn't have the, I couldn't afford the stuff the whole time because we were broke the whole time. Like Sticky Beak right at the end there gave me the stuff but I never had a chance to use it.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That would have been super awesome. And then the one that I hate, absolutely hate, I don't like trying to track it, is Opportunity attack. Oh, no, no, no. Wait. Wait. In the game that I run, I hate opportunity attacks. Trying to track those is a pain in the ass. Every monster has a different range, um, and then, like, I give you false consonants because you, especially we do Theater of the Mind a lot, you move ten feet out, and you think you're safe, but it's still within their range.

So they can't do But you think you're safe, and that they didn't do it, and that I'm or that I'm forgetting that part of the action economy. Um, in general, the thing I hate in D& D is encumbrance. Mm. Ugh. Yeah. It makes sense when somebody's doing something stupid over weight, but if you're still being reasonable, like, yeah, we have this stuff.

So that's why I'm, like, really liberal with some sort of bag of holding early on. Like, I'm not gonna waste time on this. It's too much work. Somebody in the party needs a bag of holding. And if we want more, we want more. I don't care because I don't want to have to count how many ration packs you've stacked up.

You have 60 rations? Great. You got like 4, 000 arrows? Good luck. Good luck not not poking yourself in the ass. Yeah, I did. But I also like the realism because like if somebody's going around saying and I do get sticky about this. It's like, yeah. I'm going to put the whole library in my backpack.

Asher. I'm going to carry three people on my broom. Uh huh. That stuff. The library was Gus. That was in the temple. That was Gus. Gus did that. But Asher was the first time I've encountered somebody trying to take an entire library of books, which I think we were in, uh, like one of the earlier dungeons when, uh, Jess was, Taking a hiatus for a little bit.

Cause she had the other things. I honestly don't remember that, but it sounds like something. Oh yeah. Yeah. The, when we killed the guy outside of Fisherton, the scientist, that's what it was, I just remembered there being like, oh, there's, this is going to drive me crazy. Where's, oh, but we're doing an emerging campaign.

So there's not really a back of holding yet. Oh, how can I force a bag of holding into being, and then Mrs. M adopted all the books for me. Oh man, Sam, because we could never actually remember her name. Love it. I didn't remember it towards the end. I found it in my notes and now I don't remember it again. I have it in my notes when I first wrote the character up.

I can't find the note. I think I must've thrown it away. That was back when I was using sticky notes for everything. She really wants to know how I can go find the journal, but doesn't seem relevant right now. Not that relevant. All right. So what about you all? Who wants to go next? Stop thinking. I call bulletsmiths at warlocks and they'll get two spell slots.

It's rough, but It is hard. I mean, like, Eldritch Blast is a great spell, but it's not I found myself very frustrated, like, almost every encounter. Because I was immediately out of spells. The cool thing with a warlock And I think this takes Significant planning. It's like, yeah, you're living on, um, Like, it's great that, it's great that you can, like, get him back in a short rest, but also, like, a short rest doesn't do me any good in the middle of a fight when I've gone more than two rounds, and now I don't have any spells.

I don't know. I think that there's definitely the frustration of you only have the two slots, but you're always at the highest level you can cast. All spells are always cast that way. invocations. That's just. Free spells, um, the problem is is if you don't have the right ones set up or the ones that fit the situation It's really difficult.

I think that's why I've always gravitated towards wizards or I like bards, but they're stuck with the spells they have usually or clerics or druids Rip them apart like Asher and then put a bunch of spells in and then put them back together. That's what I do I took a lot of really weird feats to make Asher do a lot of really weird things.

I just like taking a nap and then being able to redo my spells based on what I think's coming for the day. So knowing that, you know, with the dawn, the druid is going to be able to rearrange their spells. Super fun. Wizard, spending some time studying. I think it'd be really cool to have a wizard and a warlock hanging out together because the wizard during that short rest.

Can work on sorting things out depending on their build and and the subclass and the warlock can just refresh those So it becomes the group that's like very conscientious about every day We're gonna take our two short rests because that's it's the meta level of the action economy

So what's one thing you like then Jason?

I like that Rurik doesn't make us, um, Like, this is a homebrew thing, but Rurik doesn't make us spend action economy to say things to each other. Yeah, I really like that. Look, I don't ever want to be in a situation where I have to choose between casting a fireball And saying, hey, look out, I'm gonna cast a fireball.

And then, like, wait a whole nother turn. You're like, Which I think some DMs are, like, really hardcore about, so, um, I do like the freedom of the free actions that you give us for conversational purposes and roleplaying purposes.

I don't, I feel like saying stuff is part of the storytelling, and I'm not a huge, you all know this, I'm not a huge fan of combat because it doesn't always,

it doesn't always make sense. But being able to shout in the midst of combat, while you're casting the spell, and throw a potion into somebody's hand, that's Fun. That's exciting. That gives energy to the combat. It becomes storytelling. But if all you're doing is saying, listing your three things that you're doing dampens the fun for me.

So, I like it when you all get excited about that.

Jess, you wanna go? I'm having a really hard time of thinking of things. I, I, I really love, um, the fact that you can only use 25 words for Sending?

Or flights. Every one of us now, we're all Yeah. I just think it's so fun. I mean, I feel like, I think Laura Bailey in Critical Role Really made that a fun thing with Jester. Yeah. And seeing That way of doing it is hilarious because she wants to use every single word. Yeah. Do do do do do do do. I like that it kind of constrains what you're saying.

That's solid. But I'm not terribly worried about going slightly over. And I don't feel like you have to do the whole set of words, but when somebody like, traps themselves and they need to do all 25 words, it is hilarious to watch. Yeah. Um, and I guess I don't like,

the, the, the walking speed gets me sometimes. Cause it's like, I feel like it's always just never quite. Yeah. Like, if you think, think about it, like, logically, like 30 feet is not very far for six full seconds. Like, I don't know. I feel like I could, I'm like a disabled veteran person and I'm pretty sure I could still run more than 30 feet in six seconds if I really needed to.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just like not. Properly imagining how far 30 feet is in my head, but I'm almost sure that it doesn't add up. It's 10 meters, so I'm trying to hit I'm thinking of a football field. Same ish? Close enough? I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm The so it's, yeah, 10 yards. I'm generally guessing that it's I'm not specific on the meters, but It doesn't take 6 seconds to get a first down.

How's that?

Yeah. Yeah. I think that the interesting part for me is that you're doing a magic action, something you're doing something physical. Yeah. Plus you're doing. I suppose. Yeah. Cause it's all of it together. It's not like. And so. Yeah. So I'm thinking about it. And I, like, I love the concept of just, there's probably somebody who's already done this, like of somebody going and practicing, like, I'm going to swing my sword three times like a fighter, or I'm going to shoot my arrow three times like a ranger.

While running across the field and chugging a small vial of something as if it's a potion of healing, and just see what I actually accomplished and how long it takes me to do that. Yeah. Somebody physically fit, so not me. Um, I'm working at getting physically fit, but So are we all. I think about working about getting physically fit a lot.

Whether I'm working at it, I don't know. There's a name for that stage. I should remember what it's called. The Depression. Pre pre pre precontemplation stage, is what that's called. Look at that. Mmmm Yay! I'm still tryna write here.

So those are mine. I guess. Yeah, pre contemplation. It's like you're thinking about thinking about starting. Yeah. Um, I guess for me, something that I struggle with, which I think has become apparent in both, both of the campaigns, is

maintenance mechanics. So Ah, you hate that. You do. You just, I hate that. So things that require upkeep, things that require like Feeding an earworm so it doesn't eat your brain. Feeding an earworm so it doesn't eat your brain. I mean, that one, like, if it was just feeding the earworm, I probably wouldn't be as So like, like I wouldn't have been opposed to using it right away, but like the fact that like the threat of it eating my brain, if I forgot to feed it, I was just like, well, then I'm not going to take that risk, you know, like, just, I so enjoyed that whole sequence of things with you all, and I felt bad.

Afterwards, because I saw how like freaked out you were, but part of my brain was like, but this is so good. I can't not, the way Larissa's reacting, and I fully expected you to pee at me and be like, dude, you gotta get rid of the earworms, I can't handle it. But you never did, so I was like, okay, she's handling it.

Oh, I just didn't use it. I just La la la, it's not here, out of sight, out of mind. I just want to add before you continue, the fact that one of my mechanics for Seraphina, let me give you the proper terminology, uh, one of my nope, not that. One of my things, I swear it's on topic, was that What was it called?

Uh, features? Here it is.

Am I going to be able to find it? I don't know if I'm going to be able to find it. Basically, as a tinkerer, I got options of things, and one of the options I chose was that I can make, essentially like on command, a list of items. and at the very beginning, before we started. I had chosen Sending Stones. Did I ever pull them out?

No. Then we got these fucking worms, and I was like, I should've pulled these out already. But now we have these weird worms. I feel like this is awkward. It's like, never touched them. Well, we also had that one, I think, from Gr from Mrs. Brand? No. Yeah, cause she rebranded. Yep. Yep, and we never told her anything.

By the way, we solved your husband's murder. It wasn't time! Ugh! What do you mean? So does that mean Grand is A lot? Yeah, because your wish was specifically that the slutty never found the plane. Mm hmm. That's why I said never came, never found. Yes. You rewound everything. So, the canary never dies. I knew that one.

Um, Sticky Beak. So, like, I imagine this poor character of Sticky Beak who remembers everything, right? Yeah. They intentionally left him out so he wouldn't remember, like, the love of his life dying. Like, that's why we left him out. Mm hmm. That he fucking remembered anyway. He wasn't there for the wish spell, so he doesn't even realize why he knows, he's like, Oh no!

Just imagine, you just groundhogged Dade, this person. They're sitting there like, the hell, everything's back to And, then they Like, they're having a little deja vu, but it's the wrong deja vu, cause they're, nobody's coming and telling him that his girlfriend was killed at the theater. Nobody's coming and saying, oh, you can't do that because Gran died.

So he's got like two non things happening. He's like, so what does he do then? Well, he's going to run to the theater to go make sure his girlfriend didn't die. So he's at the theater and she's about to perform. So he watches the performance and it's like having an emotional moment with her and I'm saying like mapping out how much time it's going to take the whole time by the time you all got together waiting for her to die on stage so he can like stop it like a hundred percent because he knows how it happened right and so like he's fully invested like I can just imagine like he reveals the gambling den that's going on and all all the other stuff he's like Exposé is happening.

He's checking back at his public office to make sure that nobody's come to tell him that Gran died and he's confused as all get out. Poor birdie. And he's out of stupid paper because he's been up on the modern space. So he can't send messages to his three investigators. Comes hunting you all in the spaces in places he knows you all are in.

So in my head, I was like, well, he would first go to Gus because he knows you were all at Gus's and you kind of had an encampment situation. He knew that was a touch base. It's just an empty cabin quietly in the woods. Nobody's there. Okay. Second, where does he go? Well, he knows where Seraphina's brother has his office.

Go check out that. Nobody's there. Cause Seraphina's brother's where? With Seraphina. So I'm just imagining this dude tearing around the city. freaking out, looking up at the sky every five seconds just to check to see if there's an incoming city. He finally arrives at All Y'all, hanging out at the bar with Celia, having a nice chat, and reading these letters and being very confused.

And I'm like, hey man, it's been a few years, what you do?

That was one of my favorite ways to just see, I didn't even think I should have him come in, but I couldn't resist. No, that was so good.

Uh, I guess an effector that I, or a mechanic that I like are, um, uh, passives. I think those are you do those you picked good ones because you do because we're like well my passive What about my passive? I try to bargain a lot with my passive. Um, but you know passive wisdom you could use Eh, or it's just like, and , you know, my passive charisma is 96

You know the, I probably wasn't very fair to you, especially if you like that mechanic a lot, Larissa, because I often just used your passives for your win. There were a lot of interactions, both you and Gus had Alu and Gus had with characters. I was like, yeah, here's the information because you're lowest.

Passive ratio for chrismas and deceptions and performance checks were so high. I was like, yep, here's the info. So I didn't always tell you when you had passed a passive, but knowing that you like that now. Oh, no, we will utilize that. I think, well, I think it's, I think it's a cool mechanic because I think it gives an opportunity for people to, To really like to sit in their character a little bit more rather than having to worry about rolling It's just like to naturally know It's kind of like when you take a feat and you're like well I would I should definitely know this because of this but like so you can you you can have a little bit more confidence in situations It could, it could end up being like a fault, you know, you could be over and then it could result in overconfidence, which could also create some fun moments.

Um, so I just, I, I think it's a fun mechanic that doesn't always necessarily get, uh, and this is not feedback in this particular case. I'm just saying in general, in with, with people that I played, uh, uh, games with just being, it's not often used, I think, often touched on, but of the people that I played with, I think Rurik, you use it, uh, or let us use it.

more often than not, so. Yeah. Well, I think that passives are super useful. Honestly, they're a time saving mechanic, too. Um, I think I could be more transparent about when they've been successful because it just highlights how good your character is at things, like, where they're awesome. And so, like, you should be able to show that off.

Um, Jess, what is, what is Seraphina's passive perception? Perception? Uh huh. I'm just curious.

Passive, um, I am, my passive investigation's the best, so passive perception 16. What's your investigation? 23. This is crazy! And this gets to the thing I said earlier. The characters who never investigated and should have always been investigated. There wasn't whenever Jess whenever Jess said, I'm looking at this thing I was like, are you like, looking?

Or are you just looking? So I was trying to decide if she was perceptioning or investigating. If she was investigating this thing. I might have her roll half the time. I was sitting there going like, she's not going to need to roll for this. I mean, the other issue is that, like, when Jessi er, where Seraphine, I guess, specifically, was investigating things, it was like, she stuck her hand in a in something and, like, would have died if she didn't have some sort of stone skin feature.

Ah, that was the coolest thing, and I Jessica was so sad that I lost my sparkle. You could have been a sparkly robot at the end if you just held on to it. So, I knew that you were going to have that Wish spell come up, and I was actually trying to cause you a dilemma as a, as a player. Because Me? Yeah. I was targeting you just hardcore with that Wish spell.

Because I had just shared, like a session or two before, That the only way to save somebody from the full, slotty infection is a wish. Mm hmm. And you got this brother out there who's now dead. And, like, I was really hoping that you'd have that as, like, Ooh, I'll use the wish spell for that. Or Now I've got an issue where this mechanical crawly thing is happening.

I could do something to stop that. And you all went big level. Did you, did you expect us to use the wish in that way? When you Or did you, like, ever consider it as a possibility? I just wanted to give you some fun, crazy things that were Like, I really enjoyed this group of characters dealing with things beyond their scope.

I'm glad you did. I'm just kidding. Ulua had Yeah, yeah, I think, I think it frustrated us a couple of times. As in, like, uh We're just not sure like that moment where Sir Gregor is like, will you decide where like you're the, you're on the freaking hollow council. Tell me where to go. You son of a bitch.

You're in charge of this city. Oh my God. Don't make me decide. I've very often as an educator, uh, my life before been in the position of not being the decider, but being asked to make the decision. So I find a lot of joy in passing that on to others. It's like, what would you do? Ah, it's that, you use it on students as well, you're like, What do you think you should do?

Do you think that was a good choice? I'm not going to tell you it was a good or bad choice, but do you think it was a good choice? If Sir Gregor would have picked, maybe he wouldn't have died. Yeah. Nah. I think Sir Gregor would have chosen what you had him do. Um. I think that I'm a little sad. I never got my Dick Brady show down.

I'm not gonna lie. Yeah. Your wait. You threw what? Threw you? Threw it at me a couple times, but it just wasn't convenient to follow it. Wouldn it. Dick Brady. I wasn't really, not what I heard. Like there was a lot of things that I threw out from your backs, stories occasionally that I wasn't always sure that you were picking up on.

And I just watched this TikTok the other day. They were saying we caught all four of your clues. Oh yeah. And the DM says. Yeah, all four of the 12, 000 that I threw out to you. And I'm never sure when you're just making a choice to avoid something or I'm being too subtle. Always assume that you're being too subtle.

I have a friend of a three year old. It's usually like Jason will message me and be like, I think this is what is happening. Like he catches on quicker than you and I, Jess, I'm just sitting there like, okay, wait, what do I have to do next? What do I have to do next? You all gotta resurrect a meta chat. You might need a meta chat because your characters might have picked up on that and you can decide.

Like, honestly, metas to me are a useful part of D& D. This is supposed to be fun. Don't get so trapped in the idea that a meta situation is bad. I think, I mean, this might, I'm proselytizing to people out there who might be like, no, I disagree with that. I think meta is terrible. But to me, meta used wisely and responsibly is a way to make sure you're all having fun.

If you feel like you're keep missing things because you don't catch it, but somebody else in the group does, and they're like, I think your character would have caught this. Let me explain it to you. You can always sit there and discard it. Remember, it's role playing. You're imagining. You can pretend that you definitely didn't catch that, or you can pretend that you did, and it's okay.

I don't know shit. Instead of meta, I'm going to start using Deus Ex Machina. I'm just going to have Asher come in as a god and just give the answer to people and then disappear again. Awesome. Nice. Well, with that, I think we had a really fun campaign that came to a surprise conclusion. And I loved that.

That was hilarious. Yeah, we did approach the end very suddenly. Kind of happened. Yes, we did. Like I kept, Jason kept asking me like, how many sessions do you think are left? And I was like, five to seven. Nope. One.

I wish the campaign was over. That's basically what happened. Oh, no! Well, we could have continued, but I think that this was such a super fun and exciting way to conclude that it was worth it. I mean, it was a real cliffhanger because we weren't even sure if that was the end. So, you got us. We were like, wait, what?

What? What? I rolled and I went like, okay. And it could have been a bad situation. It could have been a flub, you know, life happens. I'm just, I was so sure Gus was going to die from the wishbone. I thought it was going to kill him. He wasn't going to make it to the other side. It was a high probability. Well, Seraphina was so sure it was going to work that her letters were two sentences long, being like, I think it's going to work!

Here we go, guys! Oh my god. Y'all cracked me up. So Jason, something for the audience. I asked everybody to write a letter. To the other two characters and we were, I was using that to help build the, um, table I had for the roles, um, and the roles were going to like result in what happened. And so I was using a lot of information from those letters to kind of put things together and some mechanics from the world and just like create a fun list.

Um, and then I'm reading Jason's and Jason has these heartfelt, deep letters that were like three, four paragraphs long. The rest that sends me I think it was like two paragraphs for each of them decent solid and just like I believe in you.

And it cracked me up. So hardcore. She was like, oh no, it's going to be perfect. The best, the best part is I think either the day before or two days before we recorded this episode where like, and Rurik was like, hey, you could really use those letters guys. Number one priority. Yeah, I know. I know. And Jason's like, I don't really know what we're supposed to be doing with these letters, right?

The whole fucking thing. Like, show off. I loved it. I love that like, Jess, I think typically in our interactions, you've been like the last to send things in because you like hold on for too long. And this one you were like on it. You just did it. You had it done. I'm telling you, she knew. She's like, this is going to work.

This is great. I'll see y'all in a bit. All I know is thankfully I have six figures of student loan debt and it allows me now to write quick letters quickly that are pretty good. I think my six figures of student loan debt allows me to be a really good curriculum writer and a really good scenario writer.

I can put. I don't want to be direct, but I can put context into place. Honestly, like I work enough now that this is my creative outlet. So all of my creative writing degree gets funneled into this. That's where all my creativity goes. It's backstories. There are worse things. Yeah. Well, we're wrapping up this session.

This is a little long. Anybody who stayed with us for the whole thing, we really appreciate you for that. We are going to be doing a series of one shots for a while, and we're going to move to an every other week schedule, um, after this session. And we will announce if we are going to do another campaign or not.

But what I would love to invite you all to do is reach out if you know how to contact us. You can see the things up on the screen right now. Um, I'm normally the jerk who says you can't have my pod, but this trio of ne'er do wells has convinced me that it's okay to share the pod with you all. If you would like to join us for a session, reach out.

We're going to do a whole bunch of one shots, inviting people. We're going to invite our friends. We're going to Drag family in occasionally, and if you're interested in joining us, please connect. We'll try to get things on a schedule. The most fun thing about d and d is that it's impossible to get schedules together, but we'll get you in.

We'll do a couple sessions of, of fun for validity for a couple months before we make better decisions or worse decision. Who knows? It's the holidays. We're taking a break and honest. Yeah, and honestly, like if you've. I think I would love to make sure that we get Like, if you've never had the chance to play D& D, you don't know how to start playing D& D, you don't know how to connect with your group, like, I think we could be a good opportunity for you to try it out.

Because that's, that's literally how we met. Was, we all just took a chance, uh, on a random group making event for D& D. Uh, and two of us, there we go, two of us hadn't played before, and then, and then this one had vaguely played but hadn't played in years, and so like, it just, like, come play with us. Yeah.

Come play with us. Become a podling. Become a podling. Become a podling. Is that really what we're gonna go with? I like it. Podlets? Podlings? Podlets? I like podlings. I like podlings. Podlings. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you have a wonderful time. Find your pod, or join ours. Bye! Okay, goodbye! Bye!

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!